Intimacy With Jesus

In this heartfelt solo episode, Pastor Josh shares a personal journey of discovering the transformative power of prayer, emphasizing its role in intimacy with Jesus, spiritual growth, and effective ministry. Learn practical steps to deepen your prayer life and experience God's presence more fully.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: The Heart of Prayer
00:31 Planting Seeds: The Hidden Work of Ministry
01:55 Why Attendance Doesn't Define Success
02:49 Fruit from Intimacy with Jesus
03:42 Making Prayer a Personal Commitment
04:11 Deciding to Make Prayer a Priority in 2018
05:07 Establishing a Daily Prayer Routine
07:01 Experiencing God's Presence in Prayer
08:54 Prayer as Refuge in Difficult Times
09:48 Prayer as the Source of Life and Power
10:47 The Holy Spirit and Power for Ministry
11:56 The Love of God and Its Impact
12:55 The Secret Place and God's Rewards
13:57 The Goal of Prayer: Simply Be with God
15:17 Practical Tips to Start and Grow Your Prayer Life
16:40 The Supernatural Rewards of Prayer
19:26 The Fruit of Prayer: Calling and Purpose
22:08 The Impact of Prayer on Evangelism and Power
23:34 Encouragement to Prioritize Prayer
24:28 Starting Small: Five Minutes of Silence
25:52 Extended Prayer: Going Beyond the Comfort Zone
26:49 Accessing All God Has for You in Prayer

Creators and Guests

Host

Josh Brake

Lead Pastor at Breakthrough Church

What is Breakthrough Church Podcast?

Josh and his family are planting Breakthrough Church in Richardson, TX. Their prayer is that Jesus would use them to advance His Kingdom and to see many receive healing and deliverance in His name. Josh is married to Abby and has three kids, two boys and one girl.

Breakthrough Church (00:01.122)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Breakthrough Church podcast. It's just me today. I know we've done some interviews the last couple of weeks, but I wanted to just share from my heart about something that is really, really near and dear to my heart, and it's prayer. And I don't know what you think when I say prayer, but let me give you just some context or some quick updates, I guess I'll say.

I'm just really excited about what the Lord is doing at Breakthrough. And there's just there are so many things happening at Breakthrough under the surface that really makes the language of planting a church make sense because you plant a church and most everything that you're doing remains hidden for a time. And as those seeds begin to plant and honestly die,

There's a lot of death in this process in my heart of my own plans, agendas, ego. As those seeds have been planted and die and they begin to form roots, you still don't see anything above ground. And I do feel like a little bit that's a little bit what's happening. And so one of the first things I think about is attendance. I can get kind of discouraged because it feels like any given Saturday, only a half of the people that would show up are showing up and

That's also true of church. Any churches, most churches are going through that. It was kind of a COVID thing. So I'm not super discouraged, you know, one of the, just the easiest ways to, not the easiest, one of the most surface level ways you can try to gauge how you're doing is attendance. And I don't think that's right. I think, and I'm not just saying this because we have inconsistent attendance, because everybody does on some level.

But when you're starting something new, you wanna see people gravitate to it and latch on quickly. And that's happening just in ways that aren't adding up to having everybody show up on a Saturday. And I was in a management team meeting a couple of weeks ago and I was reminded again that attendance does not tell our story. And that's especially true when you're a church plant. they were just encouraging me and...

Breakthrough Church (02:20.91)
they all had a similar experience when they planted attendance was really spotty and inconsistent. And then there was just a tipping point. There was just a moment where things flipped and people started coming consistently. so I'm believing God for that. But here's why this doesn't bother me. Here's why really at the end of the day, I'm not losing sleep over the fact that we aren't having this massive exponential growth on Saturday evenings in our service. Because breakthrough is simply fruit from

intimacy with Jesus. Tyler Staten at Bridgetown Church up in Portland says it this way, fruitfulness is collateral damage of intimacy with Jesus. This is what Jesus taught in John 15. He said, abide in me, apart from me you can do nothing. And that whole first part of John 15, he's saying, if you stay connected to me, the vine,

You will bear fruit and yes, there will be pruning when you bear fruit, but it's so that you bear more fruit. Abide in me, abide in my love, obey my commandments. So our job is to abide and obey. His job is to do everything else, to produce the fruit and to sustain the fruit and water the fruit and he does everything. And so I want to share some, just from my heart, just some.

A decision I made back in 2018, if you've been around for a while on this podcast or if you've been around in any sort of way with me over the last several years, you've probably heard me talk about this because it's hard to overstate how impactful this season of my life was. But in 2018, I made the decision, at the end of the year, I made the decision to make prayer my word for that year. And in fact, it might have been at the end of 2017, I made the decision going into 2018.

And I could go back and I could figure that out specifically for you, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. At the end of 2017, I'm sitting down, I was in my in-laws house because we were there for Christmas and New Year's. And it was like, I think it was New Year's Eve. And I remember thinking, I really want a word for the year. So Lord, what word do want me to have this year? And immediately prayer came to mind and that was it. I decided it was gonna be prayer. And I did, it was not this grand calling from God. It was just like prayer. And I'm like, okay. Yeah, I can do, I'll try to do that.

Breakthrough Church (04:40.096)
And I had always, I had prayed a little bit, but this was like, want to become a person of prayer. I don't want to just learn how to pray a little bit. I want to be a man of prayer that, that everything that happens in my life is surrounded with and, and, and centered on prayer. And, and, so I made some, some, easy little rules or, or guard rails or goals, whatever you want to call it. said, I'm going to pray.

Monday through Friday, I'm gonna pray, Monday, Sunday, here we go, Sunday through Thursday, I was gonna pray for 30 minutes, and then Friday, I was gonna pray for an hour. And I would literally sit down and start a timer on my clock, on my phone, for 30 minutes and then one hour on Friday. Up until that point, I probably, the amount of times, the amount of days I had spent an hour with Jesus, very far and few between, probably count them on one hand.

That was not a regular rhythm of mine, spending an hour with Jesus. that's the context. I committed to it. And the first three or four months were just disciplining myself. It was hard. I would wake up early. We didn't have kids at this time, so it was way easier when you don't have kids waking you up or anything at night. But I would wake up early and I would go into the, we had a spare room at the time.

I would sit on the floor, get my phone out, hit start on the timer, and then I would pray through my list of things to pray about. And I was done in five minutes. And so I had 25 minutes to figure out what I was gonna spend my time doing. And I filled that time with any number of things. I filled it with silence. I filled it with scripture. I filled it with the Book of Common Prayer. I filled it with this book.

that I have called the Valley of Vision, which was a collection of Puritan prayers. And I would just read one of those and just pray it to the Lord. I would begin to pray scripture and the Psalms. It was just any number of things that I didn't really stick to one thing. Maybe I did for like a month, because it felt like I was like, I really like this. And then I'll move on to something else. wasn't that my point is not to say here's what I did, but just to show you that I stayed committed to 30 minutes a day.

Breakthrough Church (07:01.702)
And about four months in, I began to really sense that there was someone else in the room with me and I really liked that person being there and it was God. It was God himself. And it's hard to have language for some of this sometimes, but I just began to really enjoy being with God. Making the decision, not just in that morning time, but I would begin to go on prayer walks in the evening and stop middle of the day.

to pray and be with the Lord because I wanted to, not because I had to or felt like I should. I really wanted to. I started to want to be with God. I not only loved him, but I liked him. And that was new for me. And I could tell without really maybe having language for it, I was like, something's changing. This is like a big deal, but it feels small right now, but it feels like also kind of like a big deal. Again, I was struggling with what was happening in my life and in my heart at the time, but here's what was going on outside of that.

It began ministry got got really hard. I had relational conflict with people at work and ended up having to fire one of my friends and dealing with all the backlash there was not fun. And it is the first time I experienced that in my life. This amount of has resistance to me personally, and my leadership. I never encountered that was really, really hard. And

What I learned right away is that prayer, when David writes about the Lord being his refuge, I really began to experience that. That when I would go along and be with the Lord for an extended period of time, my anxiety and fear would actually leave me. And I would find safety in the presence of God. True peace and warmth and awareness of Him in my life through prayer.

I was like, whoa, this is amazing. So the first thing I learned was that the Lord really is my refuge. When things go tough, I go to the Lord in prayer. It reminds me of that song, what a friend we have in Jesus. And it talks about how basically I'm suffering because I've not brought everything to God in prayer. That's what that song is about. And I was like, I began to learn that. Fast forward, just, that season of my life, changed everything for me.

Breakthrough Church (09:22.848)
I was transformed forever because I began to see prayer not as an activity that Christians have to do, but as the place that Christians find life, that is the Lord Himself. That prayer is the primary way we engage and relate to God. There's no other way that we are to engage with Him personally.

There's a reason that the disciples came to Jesus and said, teach us to pray, because they saw that the life flowing through Jesus to others that came from somewhere and it didn't come from Jesus. And so they asked, hey, teach us to pray, because they knew that prayer was the place that Jesus went to meet with his father. And from that place came out full of purpose, conviction, power, resolve, strategies, blueprints, people in mind to go seek and save.

Prayer was the source of everything for them. so prayer became less about, gotta do this, to, if I want to experience the life that God has for me, it's going to come through and be accessed in prayer. So this was kind of the thought in my mind. was like, if I want something that I don't currently have in my Christian life, I know it's gonna come through prayer.

And I didn't know I was doing this, what I was doing was John 15. I was reminding myself that I can't do anything apart from him. So then I can do anything connected to him.

which is what Jesus says. If you pray in my name, anything, I'll do it. If you pray in my name. So I was just like, man, if I'm missing out on something in the Lord, I know I can get it in prayer. And it might take a while, it might take discipline, it might take fasting, I don't know, but I'm gonna get after it. So, okay, my point in saying all of this is not to say, look how awesome I am, look how spiritual I am, because it started with me just thinking prayer, sure, I'll do prayer for a year. And it's become this lifestyle where I'm centered on the presence of God in prayer.

Breakthrough Church (11:27.64)
that I long to meet with God in prayer daily. And it's not because I'm spiritual, it's because I know and He's told me and I've seen the alternative of life apart from Him. And I know that I can do nothing apart from Him. So I actually made a list of things that happened to me and fruit from being alone with the Lord in prayer. Because that's what prayer is, prayer is relationship. Prayer is engaging with God. He doesn't want transaction, He wants relationship.

He wants to meet with you. He wants us to be with him in the secret place of prayer. Jesus says, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. Don't go shouting from the rooftops, all these fancy, big theological terms. Go to your Father who's in secret, close the door. He literally says this, go into a room, close the door by yourself. And the Father who sees in secret will reward you in secret. There is something to being alone with the Father that the Father notices and sees that as different.

than any other time in your day. Here's what I mean. This last Saturday, my rhythm is I'll come up to the Farmers Branch campus of the branch. I'll come up here, I'll sit in the sanctuary, nobody else is in the building, and it's amazing. I meet with the Lord and I pray and I just get my mind right, get in the spirit for service, and it's amazing. So I never really put this together, but when I do that on Saturdays, the moment I start getting ready for church and

and started getting ready to go to that time of prayer at FB, I began to feel my heart get pulled into that. I really feel my spirit being drawn into this time of sitting and being with the Lord in that sanctuary. And this Saturday, I was feeling that. And every step I took closer to the sanctuary, it got stronger. And I was like, man, I can't wait to meet with the Lord. I'm so excited to just be with Jesus and be with the Holy Spirit. It's going to be amazing. And then I thought, wait, why?

Why can't I have this?

Breakthrough Church (13:28.204)
Or why don't I experience this when I'm just like on the go? Now I've encountered Jesus on the go in prayer walks or in ministry and stuff, but this feels different. And then I remember Jesus's teachings about the secret place. There are things that the Lord rewards us with that he will only reward us with in the secret place. Meaning, you and the Lord alone, nobody else. And the goal of your heart in that time is not to get something from God, it's not to

present your requests to him, although we do that and we should do that regularly because Jesus said to do that too. But when the primary goal of our heart in prayer, in the secret place, is to be with him.

to simply be with the Lord, then you are rewarded with something you cannot get anywhere else.

And that's himself. His presence in a way that you can't experience in other ways. There's an intimacy there. There's a closeness. There's an awareness of how much he loves you. Think about it in a marriage. Being on a date, spending time alone with your spouse is different than spending time with your spouse with other people.

That set aside time saying like, we're gonna be alone together right now. You share things in that space that you don't share anywhere else. It's the same with the Lord. And I just wanna just issue a challenge right now for anybody listening. Why don't you test me in this? Why don't you just see if I'm telling the truth? I just wanna challenge you. Get alone with the Lord for 30 minutes a day. Maybe you do this already, praise God. So maybe 30 minutes, maybe it's an hour now. Or if you do an hour, try an hour and a half.

Breakthrough Church (15:17.494)
And don't make it legalistic. Don't make it like I'm trying to convince God to do something. But what if you went with the mentality of what if the Lord, what if the Lord has something more for me? And what if it's accessed in prayer, extended times of prayer with the God, with the Lord? Just try it. See what happens. He will share things with you in that space that he will not share with you anywhere else because he's reserved some things just for the secret place.

because from the secret place comes life. And he wants Christians to live that life, to live from that life. And so prayer is such a gift because it's a space where we get to go and meet with God and get his mind, his heart. He'll share things with us that he won't share with anybody else or with you in anywhere else. It's just a beautiful garden where you go into this garden and spend time alone with the Lord. And he gives you life.

because he's giving you himself. He's giving you himself. He's trusting you and opening up his heart to you. And that's where true life is found. That's where a feeling of the spirit is found. And when you leave that secret place, you find that you're walking in a measure of awareness of God's presence that you didn't have before. It's incredible. It's supernatural. It's sacramental. It's sacred is what I mean. And, and,

I'm speaking, like I should get like a text of scripture and like really walk us through some of these. I've mentioned some Bible passages, but Paul also talks about pray without ceasing. So there is a sense in which we should always be praying wherever we are throughout the day. But there's a reason Jesus said, go into your room and close the door. I bet everybody on this podcast listening knows how to close their door. Therefore, you know how to pray. Go into your room, close the door. And you're like, I don't know what to say. Pray whatever you think. Talk to him.

Be alone with him and talk to him. Okay, I wanna, here's four things that have resulted in my life, in my family's life, because of just meeting with God in prayer. Really simple. Number one, love for God and his presence. When I first, I mentioned this already, but when I first started meeting with God in prayer, it was really hard at first, because I was learning to discipline my body to be alone with him. Because distraction and ministry and family and stuff, it's just, your mind goes all over the place and.

Breakthrough Church (17:38.582)
It may take some time to really learn to be disciplined and not think about things, not be antsy, not feel like, I got to go do this or that. It takes some time to do that. And once you do, you begin to really focus in on the Lord and be aware of His presence. One of the first thing, I would argue the first thing that's going to happen is probably you're going to find that you not only love God, but you like Him. You want to be around Him, that you look forward to that time because you get to be with God. And it's like so much love and intimacy. Like you can't get it anywhere else.

It's life. This is why Jesus said, from me, you can do nothing. He's saying, if you don't have that time with the Father in the secret place, you will not bear fruit. Many of us are not bearing fruit because we're not spending time in the secret place. So the first thing that happened was my love for God and His presence just skyrocketed. I didn't know I could love God that way. Here's why, because I didn't know He loved me that

that he actually loved me more than I loved him, which I always knew, but then I began to experience that every time I went to prayer, he would show up because he was waiting for me and he loved me. And he showed me the cross of Jesus to prove how much he loves me. And I discovered the love of the Father for me, which made me love him more than I ever thought possible, which then made me realize how short my love really is. How do I say this? That I should love him a lot more than I do because of how much he loved me.

But I just discovered His love for me in the secret place of prayer and it lit me on fire. I mean, it lit my heart on fire for God, for His presence, for being alone with Him in prayer. But it did other things too. Not only did it light a fire in me for the Lord, it lit a fire in me for evangelism.

I mean, I don't know what the timeline, but I began to think like, I gotta tell people about the Lord. I mean, if he's really this good, I'm so satisfied in his presence. I love him. He loves me so much. I gotta go tell people about this love. began to, and it's been a journey of mine. I've shared a lot about this, but you've heard me share stories about sharing the gospel at UTD and in random Walmarts and all these places. And you might be thinking like, whoa, how did you do that? How do you get there? I'm like, hey, you know where it started? Meeting with God in the secret place.

Breakthrough Church (19:56.002)
That's when he put that fire in me. And now I'm bearing fruit, not because I tried hard, but because I surrendered, put my life on the altar in prayer and let his fire consume me. That's where it came from. Not only that, this is all very related, but these are the four things, love for God, desire for evangelism, but also power for ministry. I've shared this. So presence and power, you can think about that. Those are the increases in my heart and my life when I committed to prayer. One of those, so power,

It was back in 2021, I was praying and I've been on this journey of prayer for a while and I'll spare all the details I've shared before, but there was a two month period where I just got baptized in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. And it was unreal, anything like I've ever experienced. But what came after that is I began to pray for the sick and they would get healed. I prayed for people in pain and they got healed. I began to get prophetic words and I'm not saying it was like this.

incredible like, whoa, Josh, prophet, Josh, I'm not saying that, but there was a lot more than before that moment. And this is the goal of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And for me, it didn't come because I went to a church service where they were preaching on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It came because I was spending time with the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. I was alone with Jesus and he touched me and his spirit was imparted to me and I received greater power for ministry.

And so if you're like, man, I don't see any people get healed. I'm not seeing people. So one, keep going after it. Keep laying hands and praying. Keep seeking the prophetic word for that person. But you need to touch from Jesus. He needs to touch you so you get baptized in his spirit, which he's so eager to do, by the way.

Breakthrough Church (21:38.22)
And that comes in prayer, guys. It comes in just laying your life down in the place of prayer and letting the Lord have His way with you. it is so incredible when He has His way in your heart and that fire gets lit and you just see things happen in your life. You're like, man, this is the life I was called to live, a life of fruitfulness because He is faithful. And then lastly, ultimately, what came out of this intimacy with Jesus was calling and purpose, breakthrough, which I don't even know.

what will come from us planting breakthrough, but it is simply the byproduct, the collateral damage of me spending time with the Lord in intimacy with Jesus. I can trace every amount of fruit in my life pretty much back to a commitment to prayer. Now, there's probably more to it. There's probably a, I mean, I grew up in a Christian home, parents who imparted spiritual truths to me, I grew up in church, so.

I mean, so much of what's happening is also probably just seeing the fruit of seeds planted when I was four years old. And I'm so grateful for that as a podcast for another day. But I would say a lot of what we're seeing right now, I believe I could have missed out on it if I didn't prioritize a meeting with God in private. And I really mean that. And so I want to stir you up and provoke you, not because I think

that you're doing a bad job or you're not Christian enough, you're not varsity enough, because there's no one way to pray. It's all different ways of going about it, but there needs to be this commitment in your heart to say, I'm gonna meet with God. I'm gonna be a friend of God. I'm gonna be someone when others look at me, they think that person has been with Jesus. That person knows the Lord. I know if I tell that person to pray for me, they will and things will happen.

That's the type of people God has called us to be with authority because we are friends of God through Jesus by the Spirit. There's so much more I could share, but this is all my heart to share with you this week. So I just wanna encourage you, here's a real practical, real practical. If you have zero rhythm of prayer,

Breakthrough Church (23:58.04)
And you're like, man, I pray sometimes, but it is not consistent. I don't do it every day. And when I do, it's hard and I feel labored. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to start with five minutes of uninterrupted silence in God's presence today. Just find some time, get along with the Lord and sit there. Do not expect to hear from God. Don't anything except for you're just offering yourself to the Lord and saying, I'm here, God, come Holy Spirit. And then be silent.

and wait for five minutes. And then next week try seven minutes. And then the next week try nine minutes. And then next week try 11 minutes and get all the way up where you can do 20 minutes, 30 minutes of uninterrupted silence in the presence of the Lord. And you don't even need that. Shoot, this morning I did 10 minutes of silence before the Lord. I just said, come Holy Spirit. And I waited for 10 minutes and the 10 minutes was up. I didn't hear him say anything. I maybe felt like, he's here. Thank you, Lord.

And then I opened the Word and I read the Word and then I went for a run and I didn't kill myself trying to get a word from God or feel His presence. Just for five minutes a day, for the next week, start a timer even on your phone so you don't have to think about, have I done five minutes? Go five minutes and start and sit there with your palms facing up like this. You can't see me, but palms facing up like this, palms facing the ceiling, feet on the floor, and just say, come Holy Spirit.

and wait for five minutes, make it an offering to God, avail yourself to Him for five minutes a day, and then increase slowly but surely. And that can be real practical start. If you're somebody who you've been praying for a long time, you've been in it, you could spend an hour with Jesus every morning and it's just normal for you. Praise the Lord for that. I would encourage you, pick one day in the next week and commit half a day to the Lord.

Instead of one, go three hours, go two hours. If you can do one, you can probably do three. I don't know, maybe not. I don't know what I'm saying. All I'm saying, if you can do an hour, try two. Try two, make that a commitment. And maybe the first hour you do what you normally would do in your time with the Lord. And then for that next hour, just surrender. God, whatever you want for this time, it's yours. I avail myself to you and just wait on him for an hour and see what might happen. I think that would be really cool to hear testimonies of what God does. And it's not like God's up here

Breakthrough Church (26:21.448)
mad because we're not spending enough time with them. I'm talking about accessing all that God has for you in heaven here on earth today. And this is my closing thought. One of the driving factors in my decision to be a person of prayer was this. If there's more for me to experience in God on this side of the grave, I want it. And I'm pretty sure it will come through prayer. So therefore, I'm going to commit to prayer so that I can access

all God has for me on this side of the grave right now. And if that's your heart and you're like, God, I want more. Oh man, he's gonna pour it out on you and he's gonna bless you and it's gonna be amazing. So please share testimonies, reach out to me. We'd love to hear about that. Sorry, this episode is a little longer because I'm passionate about this, could share for a long time, but the Lord is eager to meet with us, each of us individually, every day in the secret place. And may you be blessed and experience His presence and power in greater measure from here on out in Jesus' name. Love y'all, see you next time.