Words That Reach Heaven

Well, like she said, my name is Carl Gulley. I serve here as an elder and also serve our U.S. churches. And I got to be in church last week and hear this amazing sermon by Mattie Eccles. Did anybody else get rocked by that message? Then I go to the office on Monday and our single mom's pastor, Heather Ray, we passed in the hallway and she was like, Carl, did you hear that sermon? I was like, I did. She's like, I'm having to listen to it again. Just to get it in me. That sermon was life changing. And then she said, I feel for whoever the person is that has to follow in her footsteps and preach next week. Do you know who that person is? And I was like. So thank you, Mattie, for raising the bar. And I hope you do go online and listen to that sermon if you didn't get it. It literally is a life altering revelation that we all need. But the truth of the matter is today's not about me. Today is graduation Sunday. And it's a time that we stop every year to remember those that are just stepping into a massive transition. We have over 30 graduates that have graduated from various colleges here in town that just graduated. One was Sarah who just led us in worship

here on the left side of the stage. But then we also had a senior night for all the high school seniors that are graduating. This room was filled with families and high school seniors. And Sean and Shannon Jones, our youth pastor, celebrated the 65 high school seniors that are about to step into this brand new transition place. And so really excited for all of them. But I realize it's not just those people that graduate. We've got people that are graduating from getting seminary, your master's, all kinds of graduate. So if you did just graduate or you're about to this summer, would you stand to your feet so we can see who you are? Just any graduates that are about to graduate, stand up. Come on, now stay up. Stay standing, don't sit down. Don't sit down. A lot in this service, a lot more in the last service. Well done, mom and dad for helping them along the way and for being here today. But I want you to stay standing and not sit down because this is your moment. I mean, you just graduated. You don't get a lot of these in your lifetime. So we wanna celebrate with you whatever age or stage you are in, proud of you for this accomplishment. But secondly, it's very often that we stand for the reading of God's word

whenever the preacher gets up to preach a text. But I want you to be the ones who read God's word. Now you're gonna be very loud because you don't have 1,000 people helping you, okay? So they're not gonna read it with you. They're gonna be quiet as you read Isaiah 55, 11 along with me. Let's do that right now, graduates. So will my word be which goes out of my mouth. It will not return to me void, useless, without result, without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. In Jesus' name. And all the graduates said? Amen, amen. You can sit down, graduates. Well, this is that time of year. And this is that year where we have to go to a lot of graduations. Sorry, we get to go to a lot of graduations. And we get to go to these extremely long college graduation services. We get to listen to multiple speeches by valedictorians and salutatorians and guest speakers. And what I've learned is give it about a week and most of us will forget everything that those speakers have actually said. The reason for that is, no offense if you're a guest speaker this year, but most of those speeches say the same thing

in repackaged ways. You did it. You have what it takes. Now go get them. And if you get the privilege as I did as a youth pastor to go to about 10 graduations a year for 10 years, you get to hear it again at another graduation the next day. You did it. You have what it takes. So let her rip. And so whatever version of that is, it continues to happen. What I learned is that most graduates within 24 hours can't name a thing that was said the night before. So what I would like to do, graduates, is share with you a completely different message. And it's just really, really encouraging. And here's what it is. Let me just be really honest. You don't have what it takes. I mean, yes, we love you. And we are so proud of you. And if you're about to leave Waco, man, we are gonna miss you. And the truth is, your parents or your family and important, faithful people in your life like teachers and professors, they've done their best to prepare you

to the best they can. But if you actually are a follower of Jesus, you have subscribed to a gospel that says that apart from Jesus, you don't have what it takes. I mean, what prepares you for the insanity of college? What prepares you for the craziness of marriage or parenting? A little loud amen there, bro. But what prepares you for the hardships that life are going to throw at you in every season of life? I mean, listen, you're going to be shocked by the amount of times that you're going to be screaming. I don't know what to do in this moment. Again, back to the sermon from last week, Maddie's message was the epitome of this phenomenon. No one prepared me for this. It was not on my bingo card. And if you want to be further encouraged by this sermon, the time when people who have grown up following Jesus abandon their faith and walk away from it completely typically happens between the ages of 18 and 22 years old. It's the most vulnerable time period for people to say, I'm done with this God thing. Here's what we found though. It's not a loud splash. It's not a loud declaration. It's typically just a quiet drift where they just begin to kind of slip off into a different way of living. This is actually why I want to encourage everybody in this room to get this new book that just came out this week called Quiet Drift. And it was written by one of our own, Chris Delanier. A lot of you know Chris and Libby. They've been faithful and part of our church and planted a couple of churches. And just some beautiful truth in here.

I've already read a couple of chapters. This thing moves quick. It is fantastic. I've had a front row seat to watching Chris both live and then coach others how to avoid this drift that comes after all of us. And on the back, he has these powerful two sentences that say, most people don't quit the race. They just stop running the right one. Graduates, the reason you might be tempted to do that are basically twofold. Number one, also statistically speaking, if you are a follower of Jesus, it is most likely because of the home environment you were brought up in. However, mom and dad's Jesus has been wonderful for mom and dad and you up to this point. But their Jesus got you here and he will not get you there. Because at some point, you can't just love mom and dad's Jesus. Mom and dad's Jesus has to become your Jesus. Secondly, many young believers have been told you should pray. And all Christians know we should. Very few have actually been taught how to pray. And so they don't have practical tools for communion with God. In fact, just yesterday I heard a pastor sharing how he felt like he needed to teach his kids how to pray. And then they were at a sporting event, one of his kids got hurt and he was like, now's the moment. So he got his son and said, go over there and pray for your brother to be healed. He was like, get up, you can do it. So the boy walked over and he looked back at his dad like he was crazy. And he's like, you have what it takes, go for it. So he was like, Jesus, bless this food we're about to eat, in Jesus' name, amen. And the pastor was like, I think we've got some more training to do. I don't know that he's capturing what we're talking about.

And if all you've learned to do is to pray at mealtimes or bedtimes or crisis times, or when you're in a church service being led in prayer by Sarah Grace, like she just led us in, those are awesome training wheel moments. But learning to have ongoing communication with God and communion with God, and having been trained to host a consistent conversation with God, it's gonna be a game changer in this next season of your life. And as a church, we've been studying the book of Ephesians this past semester. The Apostle Paul wrote a letter speaking to the Ephesians about this very thing. And he says it in Ephesians chapter six, verse 10, and then also in 17 and 18. But he says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. The indication there is you could actually be weak in the Lord, and not be strong in his power. So he's gonna tell you how to be strong. And he says this, take the helmet of salvation, take it. That's an action step. You're gonna put a helmet on and start thinking like a saved person. And then he says, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. And with this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying. So he says, take up this sword, take up this helmet, be alert, and always keep on praying. And maybe the question is, how do you do that? If you just indulge me for a moment, I'll tell you how this has shaped my life specifically. Because if you ask me, Carl, what's the earliest memory you have? In your 51 years of life, if you go back as far as you can, what's the earliest memory? My earliest memory is me being in bed one night, my mom kneeling by my side, I can see her, she's like stroking the side of my arm and she's praying over me as I go to bed. And while she would pray, she would say these words,

that all of her children would be disciples of the Lord, obedient to his will, that great would be their peace and then the next phrase, I didn't understand, it was undisturbed composure, but I always thought she was saying undisturbed proposure. I didn't know what she meant. I didn't know what she was doing. I did not know what that was. Some of you may not know what that is, but I could not have told you, oh, those words are in the Bible. All I knew is our family was falling apart. They say that children are expert observers of what is happening in their home, but terrible interpreters of what's happening. So I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know what it was. Mom did, and in that very moment, she was seeking to intervene and to counteract the brokenness that was happening in our home with the presence of God. So she was decreeing Isaiah 54, 13 in the midst of all that was going on. Now, if you didn't ever know my mom, my mom grew up in a fantastic church in San Antonio, Texas, actually. She was taught to bring her Bible to church. She had a little white Bible with her name, Laurie Dockery, inscribed in gold. And in her own words, she took that to church

every single week to her knowledge. She never opened it up nor read it. Somehow she goes to Baylor University and meets a wild man by the name of Ed Gulley. And he adores her. He's listening to her and really enjoys her. And they get married, but then it would soon come out that he could not control the wild addictions that were in his life. And nothing was able to help him and help him to become the husband and the father that he wanted to be. Then I'm born. My dad actually said he felt like I led him to Jesus because I was born and he went, oh, blink, I need to get my life together. But that didn't work either. He crashes back into addiction. It's 1975, guys. So this is, I mean, you couldn't ask chat GPT, how do I pray for my struggling husband? There was no go to Google and Google how to persevere. There's none of that. If we wanted anything, we had to like send off a catalog and hope for the best that they got it and they returned it to us. But during that time, while this struggle was going on in my family, someone gave my mom a book called Scriptures for Prayer. And in this book, it listed every dynamic

a human could go through and a scripture that should be prayed over that very dynamic. The whole crux of this book came from Isaiah chapter 54, verse 11, our text for today. I had our graduates read it earlier, but I'm thinking maybe a few others in this room could use this message as well. Would you all read this out loud with me? So will my word be which goes out of my mouth. It will not return to me void, useless, without result, without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. So this scripture became the basis for this book that my mom devoured. And the whole premise was that sometimes we pray with mixed motives, don't we? And sometimes we don't know what to pray or how to pray, but if you pray the word of God, if you're praying the scriptures back to God, he promises it's not like a boomerang that's just gonna come back. It's actually gonna stop midway and it's gonna go accomplish what it was sent forth to do. So my mom made this her mission in her life and throughout my entire life. I woke up to a mom who was sitting on the couch, cuddled up with her amplified Bible, and she would just whisper those scriptures and recite them over her struggling husband, her five sons, her friends, and herself.

Now, I didn't understand all of that. Most of us were growing up, we're all just selfish people taking care of us, thinking about us, and for boys especially, our brain isn't totally formed, about 25. So in the midst of all that, I had no idea that she was doing all of that for us until I graduated from high school. It was a pivotal moment for me. It was 1993. Y'all wanna see what I looked like in that time? There we are right there. I mean, looking confident and really dark hair. Oh, those are the days. But this guy right here knew he did not have what it takes. I was very confident following high school that I wanted God, but I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to sustain a lifelong discipleship of Jesus as Maddie talked about last week. So I actually jumped into the discipleship school Sarah Grace described, and I gave that year to following Jesus and made some very hard choices so that I could kind of put my life onto the track of following him with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so. I lived with a different family in Waco during that time, and then the Christmas holidays came, and our director looked at us and he said,

here's the deal, the number one reason people say they don't pray is they don't have time to do so. You're about to have three weeks, and you have time and the desire, so I wanna challenge you, get up every day, and for 30 to 60 minutes, worship God, pray, and get in his word, and come back after three weeks and see if you're not a different person. That was the challenge. So I go home for the holidays, and I got up the first day before everybody else did so that I wouldn't get caught up in some, you know, Mike Tyson's Punch Out tournament, or I mean, you know, or Tecmo Bulk conference, I mean tournament, so I walk out the door, and I put on my yellow Walkman, you remember those with the tape and everything, and I'm listening to some vineyard worship tape, and I'm praying, because I'm trying to make sure I don't fall asleep, because if I sit still, I'm gonna fall asleep. I come back to read the Bible, and that's when I realized I didn't have my Bible, I left it at the other house where I was staying. Now, you have to remember, friends, there is no iPhone. There is no Bible app that you go to. I have to have a hard copy, so I'm looking around our house

without trying to wake anybody up, I couldn't find one, I'm just trying to find a hard copy of the Bible, and I come across my mom's. And I didn't like my mom's, I mean, the truth is, I love prayer and worship, but I didn't like reading the Bible. I didn't like reading. And so mom's Bible was called the Amplified. They tried to make it like double the size of what our Bibles are, and I was like, I sure as heck don't wanna read that many words. But I didn't have one. So I opened it, I can still see all those little tabs she had on the side, and it just fell open to Psalms. And when it opened, I didn't notice the scriptures, I noticed her beautiful handwriting in red off to the side that said Carl, Carl, Carl. And then I would turn the page, and I would see James Mark. And then other scriptures, Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan, Stephen. Jeff gave us all heart attacks, so he was on about 25 pages. Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Joyce, Joyce, Joyce, Pam, Pam, Carl, Carl, Carl, Carl,

I was her favorite, Carl, Carl, Carl, Carl. And I'm just, I don't even know what Bible verses I read, but somewhere I just kept looking, I was like, oh my gosh. And it hit me. Maybe the yes that I am saying to Jesus right now is not because I'm some spiritually mature, tenacious Christian. I may be fulfilling the spirit and scripture-based prayers my mom's been hurling towards heaven, and they are now not returning to her empty and void. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, my mom went to be with Jesus in 2019, and if you knew my mom, you knew she was a very quiet-spoken, gentle, feminine presence. But when her eyes closed, and she grabbed that Amplified Bible, hell would quake in its boots. And I just wanna tell you, that woman had a verse for everything. And I mean everything. She did not pray God bless everybody prayers. I'm talking everything.

I mean, when Blair and I got pregnant with our first child, Blair invited her mom and my mom to be in the labor and delivery room when we had that child. And I can still see my mom, she's over in the corner, and she was trying to keep to herself so she wasn't a bother. And when the nurse walked in, she could see my mom, she's got her hands like in this book over her mouth, and I can kind of see her mouth moving a little bit, really quiet. And the nurse walked in, and the nurse goes, Grandma, chill out. Like, stop being so anxious, we've got this. And my mom was a very gentle sweetie, but that kicked her off. And she comes firing back at this nurse, and she goes, I am not anxious, I am praying God's word. Well, it got a little tense in the room there. And I was like, Mom, what are you praying? And she said, well, I'm praying that she would have a five hour birth. And I was like, is that in there?

Lord knows if it is, she's the one that was gonna find it. Immediately Exodus chapter one, verse 19 comes out. The midwife said to Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. She had inserted Blair's name, and this is what she told me when I said that's in there. She goes, Blair is not like normal women, for Blair is vigorous and gives birth before the midwife even comes to her. Layers on the front row, you can ask her, she gave birth in four hours and 57 minutes. So, Ladies, if you don't believe anything I'm saying, maybe take this one to the hospital. I mean, you don't have my mom in the corner praying for you, so I got no promises. But I'm telling you, this woman had this Word of God stored up inside of her. And then when she passed away, the people at Waco Memorial Cemetery were asking us what we wanted on the tombstone. And I remember thinking, like, if we do like the whole mother-daughter-friend thing, that's great, but people will gloss over it.

I wish they would stop it for a moment. And over my mom's fireplace mantle for many, many years, she had eight words. So if you were to go to that cemetery, here's what you would see. Laurie Lee Gulley, pray God's Word. It will not return empty. And there's a little QR code you can actually go to and watch her preaching a message where she's telling us to do that very thing. Graduates, and everybody else who's realizing this sermon might be for you, if you can hear my voice, if I could put one thing in your hand, it would be this. You don't have what it takes, but the Word of God does. So pray God's Word. Pray God's Word as you step into your freshman year. Pray God's Word as you step into that first day on the job. Or if you're sad, you don't have a job, so you're in the middle of a job search. Pray God's Word over that job search. Pray God's Word as you start to get on Instagram, and it looks like everybody found their community during their freshman year in two weeks, and you haven't met anybody that you like yet. First of all, they're all lying. Instagram is lying, but you need to go to God's Word so you don't fall into insecurity. You stand on the promises of God's Word.

You need to pray God's Word when you start to doubt that God is real, which you will, when you start to wonder, is He even good, which you will. When those challenges come, like Maddie talked about last week, and you have to reconcile. She taught us last week how to go to Psalm 13 and to lament, praying God's Word. If I gave nothing with you today other than this, I would say this, pray God's Word. When you don't know what to do, you still have a sword. Hebrews chapter four, verse 12 is the perfect scripture. It says, for the Word of God is what? And it's, and it's, than any two-edged sword. It pierces through the division of soul, of spirit, of joints, and of marrow in discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Here's the deal, when you pray God's Word, you are not reciting dead letters. You are wielding something that is alive. I'm convinced that the power that came in my mom's whispered prayers, it wasn't because she herself had something innate inside of her. It's because she was releasing words into the spiritual atmosphere that her family and others around her and herself desperately needed. And she knew my speeches and lectures will not cut to the very places of the heart

that these boys need. So the Word of God began to do what she could not do. Now, I didn't realize it at the time, but this is exactly what Jesus did at a very critical transition in his life. In this critical juncture, he's being enticed with some awesome offers. Some things that look beautiful to the eyes, like instant satisfaction instead of delayed gratification. Create a spectacle and get a following instead of doing the hard work of disciple making. Like you could actually get all the authority and desires you want without having to suffer and go to the cross. And while these temptations are being hurled at his identity and his destiny, Jesus turns to the prayer book that he was given. And all Jewish kids had been given the Psalms. We see it like a book of the Bible. They saw it like the prayer book that they should go to. So when Satan hurls up temptation number one, he looks back in his weak, physical, weak, and weary state and he says, it's written, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Satan goes, okay, well how about a curveball? And he throws a different one. Jesus says, okay, again it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Okay, that didn't work. See, my knuckleball works.

And then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. We need to know this because a lot of us think because he was Jesus, he had the Bible memorized. He could not have related to our tensions if he landed on earth with every part of the Hebrew scriptures memorized. He was fully God, but he was fully man. And in these moments, he did not rely on his divine authority alone. He grabbed a sword. And then he grabbed the word of God that he had been praying throughout these years and he goes to work in that moment to set him up. And here's the good news. If you're like, but I'm not Jesus. I just gave my life to Jesus a few weeks ago. I don't understand anything. It feels like a whole bunch of fortune cookies and there's like serpents and in the back, there's a whole bunch of. to horses and like, it's weird. And you're like, I don't understand it. I don't have an understanding of scripture or how to use it. Here's where you begin. You begin by doing what Jesus did. You go to the Psalms and you insert your name. You begin to put the word of God in your life

and things begin to build from there. And maybe y'all have gotten to know Jason Ramos over the years. You've heard his testimony and story of freedom from addiction and the brokenness of his family. He preached the last few weeks. Has Jason not done an amazing job? I mean, so amazing, these sermons he led, the baptism service that he led. But a couple weeks ago, we were talking about this and he started to share how this dynamic really met him and shaped his life in some vulnerable moments when he first gave his life to the Lord. So I'm gonna ask Jason to come and share a little bit right now and kind of take us into a bit of his testimony. So come on over, bro. Take it away. Man. Hey, preaching the word, right? The word of God, it's so powerful. When the church started, it said that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, that the word of God was central. Psalms 107.9 says, he satisfies the thirsty and longing soul with good things. Psalms 42 says, as a deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts for you,

my soul thirsts for the living God. And then in Romans 12 too, you see that it says, no longer be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That way you may prove what is a good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. Psalms 119.30 says, the unfolding of your word gives light to the simple. And I love this. Psalms 119.11 says, I've treasured your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. The word of God. You know, I started to learn the word of God whenever I was in a place that wasn't popular to follow Jesus, but I started to follow him. And I remember every other word I used to say was bleep, bleep, or blank, blank. And it wasn't that I was trying to cuss or say negative things, that was what was in me for so long. And so I started to ask the Lord, I said, Lord, I don't wanna misrepresent you in any way. And I remember I came across the scripture as I was learning to read the word of God. See, I've got a sixth grade education. I didn't, every time I would read, I would forget what I read, and I would even tell myself this over and over, you don't know how to remember things, you can't read.

But I started to dive into the word of God. In fact, I didn't always have the sword with me, I started to have a little dagger with me. And so I would carry this thing around, and I had a red pen too, and I would underline and mark. But I came across the scripture in Ephesians 4.29. It says, let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only that which is good for the edification of others, that you may impart grace on the people's lives with the words that you speak. And so I started to pray the scripture. Every day I'd started to pray, let no unwholesome talk come out of my mouth, Lord. And little by little by little, in two weeks, the cuss words were gone. And on that day, I discovered the power of praying God's word. So I started to go everywhere. The scripture says that it's God breathed, it's profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training, and righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped. And so everything in every area of life, my parenting, my kids, started to dive into the word. I tell you what, something I've done, and walked with others to do, is go through Psalms 119. Read a verse, pray it. Go to verse two, read it, pray it.

And go through the entire chapter, and you're probably gonna discover, I'll find out, because that's the longest chapter in the Bible, so. But I'm telling you, just the power of praying God's word has changed my life. It's changed so many other people's lives. And you know, outside they have canes, right? Right now you get some sweet tea or some lemonade afterwards. Canes has done something to me. They've identified that, hey, we got chicken tenders, we got toast, we got coleslaw, right? That's what they got. You go to canes, you know what you're gonna get. You go to this, you're gonna get all kinds of things. But you go to this, you know exactly what you're gonna get. Amen? So, I wanna take the preaching from Carl. I know he had to pull back there. He was about to let go loose on all of us, right? Y'all wanna know what it's like to do prison ministry with Jason? It's this right here. This is what it's like. Hey, I wanna encourage you today. Excuse me. I wanna encourage today, if you're in here and you want a desire for the word of God and to go deep,

I'm telling you, at our ministry time, don't hesitate, come down here, pray and ask the Lord for a fresh desire for his word and an understanding of it so that you can align your prayer life with him and see his kingdom come right here in the city. Yeah, that's good, Jason, because there's a lot of warfare. You don't just like, if you're like, yeah, I just don't like the Bible. That's warfare. I don't wanna read the Bible. That's warfare. So, there is warfare. So, I love what you said. You might have to agree with someone and say, I hate reading the Bible. I just hate reading. I just need you to put your hand right here and pray God's word. And you know I need to come forward to receive that hunger and thirst for righteousness so that you might be filled as well. I love hearing from Jason. His background, so different than my mom's background. But they are both in the same place. Don't know how to pray, don't know how to change, don't know how to see things change. But now I'm learning prayers and words that I can say that reach heaven's heart. Colossians chapter three, verse 16

has these beautiful challenges and words to us. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. It's indicating you can't control the fruit but that's what you can control. What is gonna dwell in you richly? Is it his word? If so, then teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom and singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God will be an overflow of that. Again, the early church who is hearing this right here, they did not just read the psalms, they prayed the psalms. And what Jason just admonished us to do, Jason didn't invent a brand new technique. He's taking us back to this ancient practice that results in confidence that our words are reaching heaven and not just like falling and going to the floor. First John, another disciple of Jesus, writes these words. This is the confidence we have before him. If you're like, I don't know that anything I'm saying is going above the ceiling, here it is. If we ask anything according to his will, big if right here, right? How do we know that's happening? But we know he hears us if that's the case. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him. Again, but that's a really big if, isn't it? And so a lot of times our challenge is we're wondering,

am I praying God's will? How do I know if I'm praying God's will? When you are praying God's vocabulary right back to him, that's how you know you are praying God's will. And so let me just say this. Earlier you read Isaiah 55. Everybody in this room read verse 11. It's always important though, you need to understand the context, not just pull out a verse. Look at the context of what was going on. In that passage, in verse eight, there's something beautiful that God is telling you. He's basically giving my graduation speech back a million years ago. And he's basically saying, you don't have what it takes. How does he know? Because he's saying your thoughts are not my thoughts. Neither are your ways, my ways says, the Lord is saying this to us. And so he says, as the heavens are higher than the earth, my ways are higher than your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. I live in this realm, you live in this realm. And so if you're just in awe and fixated on what is going on inside of you, right in front of you, he's operating on a different plane. This is why I love what the author and pastor and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had to say about this. He's speaking to the fact

that our hearts are not helpful prayer guides. He says, God does not give us everything we want, but he does fulfill his promises. So let's pray from the riches of God's word, not the poverty of our circumstances. Come on, let's pray from the riches of God's word, here, here, not from the poverty of our circumstances up there. And in the midst of that then, in that space, here comes the rest of Isaiah 55. What does he say? As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, they don't return to it without watering the earth. They're not making, and they're making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed to the sower and bread for the eater. So is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty. It will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. There's the word of God delivering on what the scriptures will do out of the heart of what God wants to do for us. Friends, when you pray God's word over your situation, your life, your friend, your family, your impossibility, your finances, the challenges that are coming at you, you are saying, God, you said this, right? Parents, isn't that the hardest thing when you're like, when your kid comes and is like,

hey, are we going to that thing? And you're like, no, I'm tired. You're like, but you said we would. You're like, dang it, where are my keys? And how much more does the Holy Spirit, our Father, want to come and bless those when we say, you said this, I'm holding you to it. This is not presumption, friends. This is faith. And it's the same pattern that you see all throughout scripture. Jesus did not invent this technique. You go back to the second book of the Bible, you're over in Exodus. And one of the greatest men ever Moses is praying. He's looking at God. He goes God remember Abraham Isaac and Jake and Isaac and Israel your servants to whom you swore by your own self You said to them he's telling God as if God needed reminding I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I promised I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit forever He's standing on the promises of God and he's telling God God you said this I'm reminding you of it Moses is reminding God of his promises. Jesus reminded Satan of God's Word You should do the same Because you're about to enter a season graduates where nobody's probably gonna be checking up on you College graduates you won't have a college pastor texting you saying are you up right now spending time with God? High school graduates your parents aren't gonna be there in the morning saying Bible before breakfast Bible before breakfast Bible before breakfast But now it's going to be on you and there's gonna be some competing voices that are going to scream about your future about loneliness or temptations that are Overwhelming confusion about who you are or what you're supposed to do

Let me say this in those moments, you don't need good intentions you need weapons And it's the Word of God. It's the sword of God Remember your mom your grandmother that faithful person. They may have carried you to this point in prayer But now you're stepping into adulthood and you need to learn to carry the weight yourself Listen friends Nobody gets stronger by watching somebody else go to the gym So Just because you watched someone do something doesn't mean it's in you You're gonna have to start picking up that weight for yourself. It's not that others God can't use others to intercede for you It's just that God wants you to know him intimately And he wants to train you so you can fight and you can do that just by starting right where you are And I remember 1819 years old Staring into mom's Bible. I just saw you ma'am right there holding that big Bible that black I was like, wow, did you steal my mom's Bible? I mean, I think she's got it that big black zipper that she had over that thing in weight My mom was a tiny little woman If we wrestled I would whoop her But spiritually speaking When it came to knowing God praying and and praying God's Word that woman could bench 425 Here I was over here with a 5-pound weight kind of Struggling and I'm serious. I didn't know So I was thankful I grew up where there were some songs about Bible verses And we'd be like the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases his mercies never come to an end They are new every morning great as I faithfulness. The Lord is my portion says my soul says Carl's soul Therefore I will therefore Carl will hope and all I had was a 5-pound weight of a song That I've been taught as a kid, so I started putting my name into the songs I'm a 5-pound weightlifter. My mom's benching 425 and crushing me Here's the thing about spiritual muscle it grows And every time you open the Bible and pray you insert God's Word into your situation you're doing a rep

And you're building strength and then 10 years from now when your child is struggling When your marriage takes a hit When your career seems like it's collapsing Or if you're just teaching a teenager how to drive and scared for your own life You won't be scrambling on Google to see if there's something out there for you You'll have a lifetime of reps behind you because you will know God's Word and God's Word will know you So we're gonna do that right now, like I said, you're not gonna get stronger by going that's a good sermon today You can't get Muscular spiritually by watching someone else go to the gym. So I want everybody in this room to pull out your phone right now everybody I Don't think I've ever said that in a church service in my life, but I want everybody I mean some of you are like what I've been on it the whole time. So great. Perfect. Just keep going And I want you To find one verse for yourself and one verse for another person who needs a spiritual intervention And if you don't know how to do it, here's how you do it. You're like, I don't have any peace. So you Google verses about peace and Then what you do is you start sticking your name in blanks or their situation So let's just say you're wiped out right now. You're exhausted from all this graduation and madness. You've been sick for a year, people asking you where you're going to college. So you just go, I thank you, Lord. You said your grace is sufficient for me. Or maybe you're gonna pray for somebody else. Your power is made perfect in Micah's weakness. And you start putting their name there. What if you're struggling with purity? You don't have what it takes to take on the demons of lust. You don't have what it takes

to fight the kingdom of darkness with your strong-willed grit. So God gives you a sword that you will wield in that time when you're alone and you are weary. And you say, Father, you said that I can keep my way pure by guiding it, guarding it according to your word. Or maybe you're gonna pray this for someone else, for me, for your child. With my son's whole heart, he will seek you. With my daughter's whole heart, she will not wander from your commandments, for she has stored up your word in her heart that she might not sin against you. Now you have something to fight with. And if you need something else, Isaiah 54, 13. Parents, it's a great one. Or here's six others that you could choose. But we're just gonna pause for a moment now. This homework assignment, graduates, might be the most important one you've ever had. Because this is not gonna be memorize this so that you can put it on a test and get a grade. This could be in a place where you are going through a temptation that is fighting for your identity and your destiny. And you will stand there and be like, wow, I've been doing some reps, I'm ready for this one. But it's not just graduates, we all need this. So I just want you to take a couple moments. And if you don't know what to do,

here's a few verses you could choose from. If you need something completely different going on, just pull out your phone. I'd encourage you this, if you're not a follower of Jesus, give this a shot. See if praying his word won't change something inside of you in your situations. But I'm gonna give you two minutes to just do a little search, put some blanks in there, and then just start praying it. Don't wait for me, just start praying it over your situation and over that person. Ready? Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.

Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. One. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Like I said, don't wait for me. Start praying it right now. Just so you know, we're not manipulating God here. We're not trying to earn his favor. That favor's already been accomplished through the work of the cross. But James makes this powerful point, and if you don't know how to start these kind of prayers, the disciple James is gonna teach you how to do it. This is the half-brother of Jesus, and there's this beautiful phrase that says, let me put it up here. We don't have it? Great. A righteous person has great power as it is working. So you can even say, Lord, you said, or the version I know is different,

that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. So I'm standing on your word. So if you're at home right now, begin to stand on that word. If you're behind bars right now, one of our friends in TDCJ or around the nation, begin to pray these words. Just do it right now, in these closing moments. You're wielding a sword. You're wielding a sword. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Take about 30 more seconds there. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ If you're still working on that, you sure are welcome to keep going. But as we wrap up this service, I want to make something abundantly clear. My mom's prayers did not save me. My mom's prayers did not save my dad. Jesus did that work.

But God enabled my mom to partner with him and stand on promises that had been finished through the work of the cross. So graduates, this is what I'm asking you today to do. Not just today, but going forward. This week is a lifestyle. Find one promise and stand on it. Find one promise in Scripture for somebody else and repeat it day in, day out. Start doing those reps if you're not already. And let God begin to do this work inside of you. You need to remind him of his word, not because he forgot, but because he delights in his children coming to him with his own words in their mouths. So as you approach graduation, you're going to be hearing a lot of speeches that are telling you, go chase your dreams. I'm telling you something different. I'm saying, pray the promises of God until they are shaped inside of you. And then his dreams will become your dreams. And you will be shaped from the inside out with joy of the Lord that truly is strength and life changing. And with that in mind, will we all just stand to our feet? And our ministry teams are going to come in these closing moments and we're going to get to sing a song of declaration of his truth being spoken over us. Like Jason said, if you need help to love God's word because you really don't, come get with one of these friends and ask them to pray with you. But you may have something else completely going on, something else completely different. And if so, that's okay.

Just say, I need prayer for this and for that, and they're going to pray and pray God's word. But together today, we can all stand confident that we have a God who's letting these words reach heaven. Father, we come to you right now. We ask that you would meet us in this moment and inscribe your words on our heart in Jesus name. Come forward at this time, let's sing this song together.