Intro/Outro: You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
Darren Rouanzoin: Hey, 10AM. Good morning. Good morning. It's a lot of you here today. We have a 12:00 in case you didn't know.
Can we get your bibles out? Go to Let's see it. Acts and then would you turn to Acts 12? I didn't wanna do this, but I had Man, it's so hard. You're just gonna have to forgive me.
The sermon is gonna be choppy. It's gonna be less, crafted and more heartfelt. I don't know if you know the difference yet. But all week long I had this sense that God wanted to move and at the end of the day just increase our faith. So So that's what I'm praying for okay.
The title of the sermon is Crazy Prayer and I'm gonna look a little crazy so I'm gonna start right now. So I didn't wanna do this but I mean this stage is so high. It's so high up here. I do not like what they did. I love you Vanguard.
It's too we need a smaller stage. I was I take walks with my boy. My my eight year old turns nine tomorrow and and I'm gonna share this story only because I felt like Lord's like just show him how crazy you are. So forgive me. Enough apologies.
Here we go. I take prayer walks with my boy. We walk in the morning. He wakes up early. We take a walk.
I talk about Jesus and we just look for hawk feathers. Okay. Said, I'm I love birds of prey. That's not the crazy part. We did a little walk, couldn't find any feathers.
I I put him back, in the house and I I do my normal Sunday routine. I take a long walk and I pray through my sermon. Cause I don't know about you but I need to get out. I'm like, I'm very I'm embodied. We are all embodied.
That's right. And God can speak to us on the go. Amen? Right? He he can speak to you with your like you know, instrumental music and your and your latte and your fireplace going but I think he likes to speak on the go.
And I I I was coming back after thinking through this text I'm about to preach to you and I got to this section and I was like, man, I I didn't find any hawk feathers. I'm like, Lord I want a large hawk feather. Do you talk to God like this? I'm just showing this is my life. Okay?
It's not it's everyday I've learned this. I learned this from my mom who's crazy. I am a man of faith because of her tears. Like Augustine, I was away from the Lord. In fact, there's a season where I was away from the Lord and I was about to move off to college, my parents were divorced and we were struggling financially.
And my mom said to make a list of all the needs that I had and about a week before I moved to UCSB I had nothing on the list to move out, nothing. And, someone came to her from the PTA and said, heard that your son's going to UCSB and he has a bunch of needs. I would like to provide for you and she took me shopping and we bought everything on that list. I learned early on that God cares about the lists. I'll talk about that in a moment.
Lord I want a hawk feather. And right as I say that I'm not making this up a giant hawk flies over me. Now I've been hit in the face by a hawk. True story. Hawk flies over there and I'm like, alright Lord I'll follow you.
Off trail. Go through the forest. It's not a forest it's weeds. And the hawk's over here and I stumble upon a section where I on a good day I might find may In the last three weeks I have found three feathers. I found I found all of these little feathers this morning.
Hawk feathers. Hawk feathers. Hawk feathers. Look at this. This is crazy.
Right? In this little pile. I was like, Oh my gosh. That's amazing. But it's not a big one.
That's crazy. He just The hawk flies over. Right? Again, right by me. I'm not kidding.
I have a video of it. Right? Purchase on a on a spot. I'm like, I'll follow you over there. Fine.
I'll walk over there. No hawk feathers. So I go back and I start walking and I come across. You zoom in on this one. This one.
Hold on. I'm not kidding. This is ridiculous. This one and this one and there's two more in here. This is all from this morning.
Now, I know I'm crazy. The you're like, you know there are cat ladies and there are apparently birds of prey dudes. My father loves me so much. He delights in our silly conversations about hawk feathers. When Amos was born, he turns nine tomorrow, he was born with a condition that required surgery after he was born.
And about two weeks into it, we went to see the specialist at CHURCH in Orange County. And we did a He's like, hey, we can't do it now. We gotta wait till he's about three or four months old. Come back. So we went three or four months old to the pre op appointment.
The next day, he would have the surgery. Went to that appointment. I told the the man, I'm praying like crazy. It's like, great. You know, I'm a man of faith.
Great. Pray. So did the pre op appointment. The next day we go in, condition was resolved completely. Two weeks ago, was at Humble Maker in in in Seal Beach, a coffee shop called nowadays.
It used to be called Humble Humble Maker and I get knocked, tapped on the shoulder. A couple behind me has a little baby in a stroller and they're like, hey pastor Darren. This is what they said. We've been married for thirteen years. We've tried to get pregnant for seven years.
This is our daughter. She's two weeks old. We show up to one of your house churches and two weeks later we were pregnant with her. That's Dana Cochran's house church in Long Beach. I told Dana the story.
I'm gonna share it. She's like, it's not just her. There's another woman. She's about to give birth. She has the same testimony as well.
And she said, I just have so much faith for infertility. I don't know what kind of prayers you pray. Yeah. But I need you to turn the dial. Yeah.
Because God cares about the feathers and he cares about the infertility. Yeah. He cares about the cancer diagnosis. He cares about the condition that needs surgery. He cares about the low of anxiety you've made your home in.
He cares about the depression that's like a grayscale over your life. He cares and we've made homes. We've accepted these conditions. And look, I understand we live in this reality. This tension of the now in breaking of the kingdom of God.
God has now shown up and things are not yet fully realized. Because I've buried enough people from the garden church to know he doesn't always answer yes and amen. But we need to pray without ceasing. Yeah. When you become the kind of church that expects mountains to move simply because he said it.
Right. Not because it's our experience. So today I wanna talk about crazy prayer. You with me? Yes.
Let's go. Acts chapter 12. I want you to look at the tension that we sit in. Here we go. I don't I don't know how much time.
Forget the time. Yeah. We're gonna just go as long as I want. Acts 12 says this. It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church intending to persecute them.
He had James the brother of John put to death with his sword. James gets one verse. The first apostle to get killed for his faith is James, the brother of John. The first disciple of Jesus to get murdered is James, the brother of John. There is no apology, there is no detail, there is no funeral, there is simply a sentence and it moves on.
That's hard, isn't it? We wanna build a theology of the not yet. We wanna spend all of our time because most of us live in the condition of the sword. We haven't had a prayer because what the story does is it shows you two apostles arrested by the same king. One gets a sword, one gets an angel.
Yeah. And what we wanna do is figure out the formula to get the angel. We live with a sovereign God who lives and moves in a mysterious way. I wanna train you to have faith because the engine of this story is not the sword, it's what happens next. Herod, when he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also.
This happened during the festival of unleavened bread. After arresting him he put him into prison handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Count them 16. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover. So Peter was kept in prison.
So let's start with the story. Acts 12 zeros in. James gets the sword and then Herod realizes this pleases the crowd. He arrests Peter one of the leaders of the church at this time and he is held captive by 16 guards and he is arrested during the festival of the unleavened bread right before Passover. The same festival that Jesus was arrested in.
The very festival that celebrates Passover. The story of Israel being held captive by a tyrant king. That an angel comes, an angel of death and passes over a house that had a sacrificed lamb's blood put on the doorpost in the in the top. And that's the story they commemorate that an angel leads them out of captivity and sets them free. Only in Jesus' story he prays and he hears a no and goes to his death as the sacrificed lamb, the sacrificial lamb.
Here, James is in prison. Lord knows he's praying. He is met with a sword but something else is gonna happen to Peter. This this setting of the stage is so significant. There is a king, an empire, a crowd, a dead apostle and 16 soldiers.
We'll find out there's two chains and an iron gate but that human math doesn't work out when it comes to the kingdom of God. Because what happens next is one of the most significant things I need us to see because everything is stacked against Peter. And and and what I what I want you to do is expand your imagination for what's possible because we live from a different perspective. That's what Luke is trying to get you to see. That there are these conditions of life that we've been conditioned to.
Verse five says, so Peter was kept in prison but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. The church Sorry. Peter was kept in prison but the church was praying. I mean, is so significant like I need you to see what what Luke is doing as a narrative is he's drawing your attention to something significant. Prayer is how God moves in the scriptures.
We know this. It's how we partner with God. It's how we commune with God. It's our relationship with God. It's how we get things done in the kingdom of God according to Jesus.
He says, when you pray, pray your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The problem with so many of us today is when we pray we pray our wills not his will. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
We pray for our will not his will. We pray for our vision of life not his vision for our life. And we we pray as like a stamp of approval not a dependency for God to move. In fact, most of us are not living in a way that requires God to show up. We live what we what when we start praying it's usually because the things in our life are not going as planned so we need God to show up.
Then we start praying and as soon as we get the job we're done praying. We prayed for the next generation just a few moments ago. Did you come before the creator of the universe with hopeful expectation that his holy spirit would indwell in these kindergarteners moving into first grade, in these fifth graders moving into sixth grade. That their faith would be rooted and established in the love of God, that they would live with the truth and the knowledge of who Jesus is. That they would walk as resilient disciples of Jesus, empowered by the holy spirit, carrying the kingdom of God wherever they go.
Did you expect for that God to hear that prayer? Or did you just see it as a transition for the real show? Yeah. Let's go. Hudson, the only youth got prayer.
I'm like, Lord, bless this kid like crazy. Did you put that deposit in? See I think the problem is prayer. We we just don't even know how to pray as a church. We've never been We haven't been discipled into it.
We don't think God's gonna move. I think the reason we don't pray with such passion and expectation is we have unbelief. We've been conditioned by a life to just live our own lives so Jesus is either a vending machine, a life coach and or we have a distorted view as a Christian of God that he's just gonna do what he's what he wants and he's just uninterested in me in the first place. So why should I pray? Or we've been conditioned by disappointment.
I don't wanna get my hopes up again. Yeah. That's real. So I'd rather stay in this place of despair because the idea of believing God can do something now is too hard. Right.
It's the paralytic who says, I've already received enough prayer. But the friend who says, I'm gonna get you to Jesus. Yeah. Come on. Yes.
I don't know what you've been taught but if it's a lack of discipleship that's caused you to not pray, it ends today. Yeah? Because what happens next Well, let me Yeah. I'll just skip those verses. No.
I'm gonna go. There's this whole great thing that God And this great line, I'm just gonna So Peter was kept in prison but the church prays. Most of the great stories in the scripture have that little that little word in their but. I'm I'm gonna get rid of all the cheeky jokes. I hear I don't hear Jesus' voice.
I hear my wife's voice. Genesis fifty twenty says, you intended to harm me but God intended it for good. Genesis eight, the flood at its height but God remembered Noah. I'm gonna read this whole thing because this is the gospel. Ephesians two, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you were followed When you followed the way of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, Satan.
The spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving wrath, but Yes. Because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace that you have been saved.
You see the state had its prison, but the church had its prayers. Are you a praying church? Are you a praying disciple of Jesus? I know it's convicting. I know it's inconvenience.
When was the last time you were inconvenienced by your prayers? Last year, my son's about to turn nine and I I was talking to him today about the book bookmark of his years. He's like, what's a bookmark? I was like, you started your eight year old journey with an unprecedented condition in your life of anxiety. Some of you know the story.
Amos developed this anxiety that came from nowhere. It was crippling. He stopped going to church. He stopped going to his home school academy two days a week. He would not be left with anyone but his mom and I.
There was a few weeks where I would take him to work with me and he would sit in meetings because he was so anxious. He was waking up 10 times at least at night. Terrified. Night terrors. We couldn't wake him up.
This happened years ago but it was a new development that was going on. We got to go to the aiming clinics. We got brain scans. We're doing everything we can. But you know what I was doing?
I was waking up at 4AM and building a camp with God. Yes. I couldn't help it. I was I was my sleep was disrupted by his crisis. So I brought it to the Lord.
Yeah. I dwell in the shelter of the most high so he could come under that shelter. I partner with Jesus in the outcome. Yes. He learned how to face his fears.
My boy, he dances on the stage now. He goes to school. He's free. God is saying, he learned how to overcome fear. He will tell you, ask him what he what's one thing he's proud of that he's had to overcome.
He will say, I've learned how to overcome my fear. Some of you haven't learned that yet. But there's a good father that wants to teach you. Prayer. We got When was the last time?
Hold on. When was the last time your body was aching because of the posture of your prayer? When was the last time you were physically uncomfortable because you positioned yourself in a way that showed the honor and respect due to the God of the universe, who's king of kings and lord of lords? Or have you just made it so convenient to walk with God? I'm so off script but it doesn't matter does it?
The story goes on. That night verse six before Herod was to bring him to trial Peter was sleeping because that's what you do when you trust Jesus. Jesus is gonna heal sleep today. Some of you are not sleeping and it's conditioned. Some of you are not sleeping because there's like a hard wiring.
There's a nervous system that's gone crazy. There's anxiety that keeps you up. You've been trained. God's gonna bring deep sleep. Get a whoop band and test me on this.
Enemies stealing sleep from a generation who doesn't know how to shut it off. It's time to rest deeply as a spiritual act of defiance to the enemy that makes you busy. Do you know in the Hebrew day it starts at night and you wake up to the day already going because nothing important relies on you. Yeah. That's pastor Bill.
I can't I can't own that. That's his. I'm stealing his. Cite your sources. Peter was asleep between two soldiers.
Alright. Bound with two chains and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel appeared and the light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side, woke him up. Quick get up.
And the chains fell off Peter's wrist. Oh, what? No key? Then an angel said to him, put on your clothes and your sandals and Peter did. So wrap your cloak around you and follow me.
The angel told him. So Peter followed him out of the prison but he had no idea what the angel was doing was really happening. He thought he was seeing a vision. Then he passed the first and then the second guards and came into the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself and they went through it.
When they had walked, the length of one street suddenly the angel left and Peter came to himself and said, now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent an angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen. When this had dawned on him, he went to a house, Mary, mother of John, also called Mark, wrote the gospel of Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked on the door of the entrance and the servant named Rhoda came to answer it. When she recognized Peter's voice she was overjoyed and she ran back without opening it. Peter's at the door.
You're out of your mind. Translation. You're crazy. They told him. When she kept insisting that it was him.
They said, it's probably an angel. Because that makes more sense. Than the prayer meeting we have to free Peter. It's more likely an angelic host shows up and knocks out the door than Peter sleeping with two guards in a locked prison with 16 other guards is at the door. Peter kept knocking.
When they opened the door they saw him and they were astonished. Peter told him, be quiet. Told him what happened. Tell the brothers and then Herod finds out what happens and he executes the soldiers. The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. With the time I have I wanna I wanna talk about crazy prayer. Number I got three points. I got two points. Forget the third.
I got two points. Two things for crazy prayer. You ready? Write this down. Number one.
GARDEN CHURCH is for those that wanna have a crazy life of miraculous. I can't even tell you the miracles that I know about in the last year Because the excel spreadsheet we have, recording of them is too long. Yeah. That it's categorized by miraculous healing. Miraculous salvation.
Acts of generosity and sacrifice. The stories are ridiculous. From our What we know. Let And this is just one local church and there's million There's literally God is doing this all over the world. It's not a garden thing.
It's the kingdom of God thing. Well, wanna teach you what I know. Here's what I know. Vague prayers get vague answers. So pray bull's eye prayers.
There should be a book about this. Maybe there is and you tell me what it is. Or this is maybe my second book. Pray bull's eyes. When you come you're like, oh you pray for my job.
No. I'm not gonna pray for your job. Give me what an answered prayer is for your condition. I need to make $10,000 more. I need a raise.
I I need to stop commuting everywhere. I want it to be Look. Get specific. Yeah. Want it to be.
Pray for my health. What do you want? What's the condition? What are the things? In what time frame?
This is what I'm talking about. I want I want You want. Do you want an answer to your prayer in a week? Two weeks? What's what's reasonable and then what's miraculous?
Let's get specific. Let's pray a bull's eye. This is how I know. I wrote a list that had in 2002. That's how When I went to UCSB, that's that long time ago.
My son said I looked unc today with a different shirt. I changed and I looked up. What does unc mean? So sad. What does it mean?
I'm not even gonna tell you. Don't you Google it. Wasn't nice. Talk about disrespecting his elders later. You know, he's gonna dishonor me.
Old testament, I could stone him outside. Wow. That got real fast. That went dark. I'm just That's just the bible.
Chill. Relax. Relax. 2002, my prayers were I need a down comforter. I never had one before.
A duvet. I called it a duvet. Oral b automatic toothbrush. This was on my list. My mom said, write a list.
Went to Bed Bath and Beyond with Susan Johnson from Valencia High School in 2002. The last thing was an iBook. So we went to the Apple store. It was it's iBook was the like first cool laptop in case you're wondering before like MacBook Pro. There's something called the iBook.
That was a very All those all those lists were answered. Now, that's a consumer you're like, yeah, I want that prosperity gospel. Let's go. I don't know how to get you to start thinking specific other than to tell you the ways God answers specific prayers. I've seen legs grow.
Cancer disappear. I've seen neck braces taken off in full mobility. I've seen people with bandages or or what are they called? Cast that you can take off start jumping and running. I've seen it all.
And I've also seen all of those things not get answered. But I prayed specific prayers. I wanna see just before I left I prayed for a ballet dancer who got broke his ankle that he would dance for the glory of God again. What kind of prayers are you praying? Now, let's start with yourself because some of you are business owners and you need to pray that God blesses your business.
Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with that prayer. But we need to get our eyes focused on Jesus. Yes. Because he has some prayers he wants Garden Church to lock in on.
Yeah. Lock in? You like that one? I looked that one up too. I know Hebrew and Greek, Aramaic and now I know gen whatever it's called brain rock.
Koine Greek is what that is. There's some things I think the Lord is asking us to pray for. There's some gatherings that you need to start coming to with our prayer rooms where we start banging on the door of heaven. Where we start saying, no Lord, we want a revitalization movement of the church of Southern California. It's not our church.
Lord, bless Rock Harbor Church. Bless Mariner's Church. Bless this new church. I've never seen Mesa City Church across the way. We want revival to come to oceans.
We want revival to come to Saddleback Church. We want God to move. That's what we're praying. Yes. He wants to lock in.
His heart isn't for one brand. Are you kidding me? A brand? Right. We want sons and daughters who are lost and far away to come back.
We want reconciliation between families that are strange. We want people that deconstruct and define faith in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. There are praise we praise. There are prayers that we need to pray because it's on his heart for our church to carry. Hold on.
To steward. Bulls eyes. Some of you are intercessors. You're literally like, I've been saying this for years exactly. You have a travailing prayer.
You have a guttural weeping reaction when the spirit of God comes on you. That's gonna be released because if you study revival history, travailing prayer is the most common theme outside of repentance. Most of us are gonna repent. Some of us are gonna travail. You alright?
You pray bull's eyes. You get specific. You guys are gonna laugh at this because you know I'm crazy you see these feathers right here it's clearly I'm crazy I'm the I'm the birds of prey guy. May 2024. The Lord I was I was in Kona.
I'm gonna share it with Costa Mesa because you're here not because of what GARDEN planned but because of sovereignty of the Lord. May 2024. In May 2026, I was in Kona. I was on vacation. I was in Hawaii.
I went to church. 30 people in the church, 42 kids, 30 adults, 42 kids or more. I'm just exaggerating that number. Ton of kids. Being thrown.
Song comes on. Encounter God's presence. Goodness. And I'm I'm on my knees and I'm in pews because it was a tiny church of God but this was a church plant within a church and I get on my knees, it's very uncomfortable. I like I like to get low.
And I feel the Lord just say, go back to May 2024 and look at your journal. So I find a journal. I go because I scan in my my my journals into my notes app. I go to May 2024 and I find this dialogue with Jesus and this is how I talk to God. So you know I'm crazy already.
I have this dialogue and he says, pray because I was praying about discerning moving closer to the church, moving to Orange County and Seal Beach. I lived in Long Beach. Pray for the street you wanna move to. Get specific. Number of bedrooms.
How close do you want it to the park by there? I wrote four houses from the entrance to the park on this street with a backyard into the park. That's how I pray. I moved in there two weeks ago. Yeah.
Fourth house. No. Don't clap yet. He said, when you move to Seal, this is what he said in 2024. When you move to that house, you will have a new campus, a new church in the Newport Beach area.
You will go from through two to three to four to five services. You will have to commute back and forth. You'll have multiple worship teams. You'll have multiple congregations. Your church will go from 600 to 800 to 2,000.
I'm not gonna share the rest of it because it will blow your mind because we're not there yet. But I have faith. This has nothing to do with what Garden's doing. This has everything to do with the dream of Jesus for Southern California. I'm not saying through Garden.
I'm saying from all the churches that will listen and obey. He said, we'll have multiple worship teams. I will have to train my voice and train my body but most of all train your heart. And if your church lives generously, you'll see the things that I promise you which that's a whole other story. But why do I say that?
Because God pays his bills. God keeps receipts. There there are prayers that you've prayed. There are dreams that you've had. There are ideas.
There are whispers that you're sitting on from years ago. This is a time. To pull those out and to pray bull's eye prayers. I don't know why. Things are happening fast and accelerating and I'm sorry that this isn't a normal sermon and if you're live streaming it, someone's gonna come in there like, this is dumb, this is not in the bible, you're not, you're whatever it is blah blah blah blah.
Make videos. They're gonna be me in the bottom corner and then they're gonna talk about it. Like there are Christians just reacting to Christians. What is going on? Go save somebody.
Right. Hold on. You can't save anyone. Go tell people about the one who can save somebody. I don't know what it is that we think we should just fight with Christians and police everything.
This is this is for all the online folks. Zoom in on this one for a moment. It's time to do better. Yes. Sound like we're gonna judge people by their fruit.
Yes. Misspoken content. I get it. Criticize it. Protect the local church.
Stop freaking out about all the misspoken things. Give people grace. And if you wanna critique culture, build a better culture. Yes. No culture is built by criticism.
Culture is built by making it better. By embodying it, doing the local better. That's how it works. So church, we're not gonna criticize anyone else. We're gonna build the better.
Yep. So that our kids just don't know there's a bad. That our kids don't have to heal from the wounds. Could you imagine if there's a generation that heard about a long time ago, there's something called church hurt? But they're like, wait, your pastor doesn't live live like Jesus.
He doesn't stay humble and low. He he your your pastor never apologized when he got it wrong. Look how quiet it got. What if that's what we created? Not by criticizing all the other churches and all the other ways and all the other movements we wanna leave, but by just making it better by living it here.
So Lord, we bless all the churches. Those that disagree with us we bless moving their churches. Those that don't think continuation of the Holy Spirit just moving their churches. Spirit blow. And if you wanna give them tongues, would be awesome.
Coach Mesa, I love you. We told you in the text. Yesterday. I told you. I said it was gonna happen.
The second point and I had like 72 points. So you get to So look at my notes. I had some great content. Oh, I love this. It says, so Peter was kept in prison, verse five, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
I don't think they were like, oh Lord, just give him good vibes. Oh, like, just comfort him, like, may his chains feel loose on him. If it's your will. You know how it is. Yeah.
You know exactly It's disclaimer at the end. You don't have faith as it is. You're like, Lord, it You know, maybe if you could consider, I've been doing all this stuff. Would you think about possibly answering this prayer? If it's your will, Lord.
I might have prayed. If it's his will, his will is abundant life. To destroy the works of the devil. His will is heaven is present here. And that is gonna come now sometimes.
But eventually, his will will be made reality. Jesus comes back not on a donkey, on a horse. We already taught through Revelation. It got so quiet. His will is a restored creation.
The cosmos renewed. This is where it's headed. We pray earnestly. That word is constantly, continuously, zealously, unfailing intensity. So the second point is, if you wanna be crazy in your prayers, you pray bold prayers.
Now, here's the problem and this is where I think we failed as a church to make disciples of Jesus that pray like Jesus commands. I think the problem with the prayer life we have is that we're disobeying Jesus' teachings. I think the reason you don't see the miraculous is you're disobeying Jesus' teaching on prayer. What do I mean? Well if you go to season one he taught you how to pray.
See Acts season two. Luke is season one. In the gospel of Luke there is a theme to the kind of prayer that is expected. There are postures Jesus gives you in parables as his disciples to pray the way he expects you to pray. He wants you to pray a certain way and the the in Luke chapter 11 he describes this man who runs out of bread in the middle of the night because he's baking at night as one does.
Just gotta get this recipe. Pray middle of the night comes pounding on his neighbor's door. Hey, let me in. I'm out of whatever you use to make bread. What?
Give me something. Batter? What is it? I'm a baker. I just lied.
Oil? Yeah. We'll go with oil. Yeast. What else is baking soda.
Baking powder. Hey. Give me a rib eye. I'll tell you what to do. Gladly eat your sourdough.
I love sourdough. I'm just saying, you wanna start a sourdough chain, I will receive it at the end. Just let the chain come to me when it's perfected. Okay? Anyways, Goes to the neighbor's house, let me in.
And Jesus says, even if his friendship will not get the man up because of your shameless audacity. Yeah. He will surely get up and give you as much as you need. That Greek word is without shame, without embarrassment. You know the thing that you feel when you you're like, I gotta text somebody an invite to church but I don't wanna be embarrassed by their response.
The the way he trained you to pray has nothing to do with being polite. In fact Jesus doesn't rebuke polite prayers. He rebukes small belief. And then he says, the next thing he says, ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find.
Knock and the door will be opened. That's the very phrase that Peter It's the exact same phrase. That teaching of Jesus is Peter on the outside of the door answering the prayer that the prayer meeting was gathered for. But they would rather believe it's an angel than a freed Peter. But we do the same because we make our home in the unanswered prayers.
One of my favorite stories in the Gospel of Mark, and it's the details in Gospel of Mark that I love, where blind Bartimaeus says, son of David, have mercy. The disciples are like, son of David, have mercy. Jesus says, bring him over. And it says, taking off his cloak, his robe, he came up to Jesus. And Jesus says, what do you want me to do?
He's like, I wanna see. See. But this little phrase is so important because a beggar had to wear a robe and a blind would probably cover up his eyes. And what I see about this text is before you can step into healing you gotta release the false identity with it. So many of you have an identity around the condition.
Do you not? Yeah. You've built an entire ecosystem around the condition of the unanswered prayer, of the thing that you've made your home in, of the the the lost, the lack, the past, the trauma, the triggers. Lord, he wants to set you free. At least give you hope that the God of the impossible actually is the God of the possible.
And the other posture, so he says pray like a neighbor in the middle of the night. And then he says pray like a widow. In Luke 18 Jesus tells the parable. And he says, a widow with no power, no money, no standing against a judge that didn't fear God or man. Okay?
So it's stacked against her. She wins in the parable. Not because she's strong. Not But because she still She just won't stop annoying the judge. And the judge finally caves in and Jesus says, the judge says this, she won't eventually come and attack me.
The reason the judge caves in is he's afraid of getting a black eye from the widow. When Jesus teaches you to pray, he says, pray like a widow who's about to punch a judge in the face. Write that down. That's the bible. Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?
If a corrupt judge surrenders to persistence, how will a good father surrender to your persistence? And then he finally says when he teaches us how to pray, pray like a settled son and daughter Because the audacity of a settled son and daughter is not arrogance, it's confidence. Not in what you get but in who he is. If you then though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? Feathers.
For an eight year old. Or was it for me? I don't know. So, are you banging on that stranger's door? Approach God's groan?
God's groan? Approach God's throne of grace with confidence because the spirit inside of us cries out Abba Father. That's shameless audacity. That's the boldest kind of prayer. Knowing your love can move the mountains in your life.
And the church I want you to wake up because what they say is you're out of your mind. And I think church we need to get a little crazy with our prayer life.
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Darren Rouanzoin: Hey.