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At Sandals Church, our vision is to be real with ourselves, God and others. This channel features sermons and teaching from Pastor Matt Brown and other members of the Sandals Church preaching team. You can find sermon notes, videos and more content at http://sandalschurch.com/watch
Thanks for tuning in to the Sandals church podcast.
Our vision as a church is to be real with ourselves, God, and others.
We're glad you're here, and we hope you enjoy this message.
There's a woman named Monica.
She was a single mom who was a devout Christian, so much so that we're told she would sing
hymns and pray over her baby every night.
Despite her best efforts, though, her young child, this young man, would grow to become the
exact opposite of what his mom had hoped for.
He quickly became known in his community as a drunkard and a womanizer.
This, however, did not stop his mother praying for him.
In fact, she shares a story in which she had a dream that God finally heard this prayer and
saved him.
She woke up the next day.
Nothing changed.
In fact, he was a brilliant intellectual, so much so that he became a professor, a well
known lecturer, and often used that position to dismantle the very faith that his mom had.
In fact, it took nine years after that dream that he was walking in a garden on a random
day, had an encounter with Jesus, grabbed a Bible, and that rest was history.
The man I'm telling you about is St.
Augustine of Hippo, the bishop from North Africa.
We owe so much to this man.
He is arguably the greatest christian theologian the church has ever seen.
Both religious and non religious philosophers draw insight from his work.
In fact, some of your favorite christian writers, I guarantee you, have stolen his
material.
He is a tower in the christian faith, and we owe so much not just to him, but to the way
that his mom prayed for him.
I can think of another story.
A young woman one day was at her house, and in walked her older sister and her older
sister's boyfriend.
This just happened to be a random day.
But on this particular day, her older sister's boyfriend walked in with his best friend,
which, of course caught the attention of the younger sister.
She liked what she saw.
Unfortunately, though, she was a believer and she was growing in her faith in Jesus, and
this young man could care less about following Jesus.
Over the years, though, they would have various interactions, all to her disappointment
that he still had zero interest in following Jesus.
This, however, did not stop her from praying for him either.
So much so that one day she penned a prayer in her journal, and by the grace of God, when
she set her pen down and closed that journal, the prayer didn't stop there.
So much so that on the day when she married this man who became a Christian, the pastor
officiating the wedding read from that very journal.
And the woman, I'm telling you about is Ashley.
And the person she married was me.
I became a walking, talking answer to prayer.
When you think about it, you and I are the result of what many have referred to as
intercessory prayer.
And so, as we continue in our series today, 40 days of prayer, we draw our attention once
again to the life of Jesus, and particularly to the way that he prayed for people.
You see, in our world today, there is no such thing as a self made person.
There are only people made by the grace of God and the prayers of other people.
Now, when it comes to Jesus, we often remember him doing a lot of things for people.
But what we tend to forget is the way that he actually prayed for others.
And my life, like so many of your lives, I would imagine, were changed because people were
praying for you.
Ashley was praying for me.
My parents were praying for me.
Close friends who were following Jesus, they were praying for me.
And that prayer, listen now.
Was met with a kind of power.
Now, here's the problem, though, that all of us face when it comes to prayer.
From time to time, our prayers often get stuck and hit the ceiling because of two
realities, both awe inspiring hope and also painfully real.
Doubt.
Your prayers.
My prayers are wedged in between these two massive rocks of hope and doubt, meaning for
every feel good story I can share with you about young Fredo coming to Jesus, you have
about three or four stories in which God has apparently said nothing to your prayers, which
leave us all over the course of these next 40 days, as we learn this practice of prayer,
wrestling with a deeper question, which is this, do my prayers even matter?
Because I would say all of us are living in maybe the most difficult era in human history
to pray in and to actually understand its value.
Here's what I mean by that.
Let's take the smartphone for an example and its great ability to rob us of all moments of
boredom.
Here's what I mean.
Let's rewind the tape.
Early 2000s Fredo 16.
I first got my license and I start driving.
I had a little Honda civic, black two door car.
Beautiful.
I loved her just like straight out of fast and the furious.
And I had subwoofers in the back.
So you can hear me coming 2 miles away.
And here's what would happen when I would hit a red light.
What did I have to do?
First, stop, but then secondly, wait at the red light in my boredom.
Now, today, you can just scroll on your phone.
Then you think about the topic of money.
When you think about it, money can do a lot of what prayer does, but it's way easier and
faster with zero accountability.
Which means why would I pray for my daily bread when I can doordash daily bread?
Then you think of the topic of modern science and technology.
There is so much information and power at our fingertips, so much so that I can get Chat
GPT to write my son's science project on oceanic waves.
That's a very specific example, which I just randomly thought of, right, just in case my
son's fourth grade teacher is watching.
But this keeps us very subtly from committing things to God in prayer for the long haul.
The question there is why would I ask God when I can just ask Siri to do it?
And then, of course, cynicism.
Over the last four years, life has been problematic, complicated, and difficult for
everyone for all kinds of reasons, which make holding on to hope all the more challenging.
So cynicism is just the natural air that so many of us breathe today, which would lead us
to kind of ask, well, did God really answer Ashley's prayer?
Or did you just get so depressed Christianity became a crutch for you?
Was it actually God or just coincidence or karma or the universe?
Or you rubbed the rocks the right way, right?
So my opening thought is this, if you struggle to pray, please know you are not alone.
I love the words of St.
Teresa from Avalon.
This is not Mother Teresa, but St.
Teresa.
There's a lot of Teresa's in God's family.
She said, when it comes to prayer, we are all beginners.
And so today, as we continue in our series 40 days of prayer, we are one week in.
Some of you feel like I still am a beginner.
Guess what?
We will end 40 days of prayer, and all of us, to some degree, will still very much feel
like we're beginners.
So that is okay.
Which is why all the more we need a snapshot from the life of Jesus that I think models for
us what this kind of prayer looks like.
And so with that said, I'm going to ask if you are willing and able that you would stand
with me for the reading of God's word.
And wherever you might be watching this, I would ask that you would just take a minute to
kind of stop what you're doing, take a deep breath in, and just draw your attention to what
God might say to us.
From John 17, let's read these words.
John writes from the prayer of Jesus.
I am praying not only for these disciples, but also for all who will ever believe in me
through their message.
I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one as you are in me, Father, and I
am in you.
And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
I have given them the glory you gave me so they may be one.
As we are one.
I am in them, and you are in me.
May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that
you love them as much as you love me.
This is God's word.
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, in this moment that we have gathered, we pause to pray to acknowledge that
you have gathered with us.
You're present.
And we ask now that, as Jesus said, you would give us ears to hear and eyes to see so that
we might receive all that you have for us in him.
It's in Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
Amen.
Thank you so much.
You guys can be seated.
Hi.
We're so glad that you're here.
I want to pause before we continue on in our message and just invite you that if you would
like to be a part of the work that we are doing here at Sandals church, I want to invite
you today to give.
You can go to give SC and make a donation there.
But for right now, let's jump back into the message with Pastor Fredo as we learn how to
become people of prayer.
You know, it could be argued that a Christian is lying the most whenever they say or text
these words, I'll be praying for you.
Now, I say that far more as a confession to my own personal shortcomings than any kind of
indictment on you.
I generally forget the power of what it looks like to pray for people.
And it's oftentimes my daughter Ella, at dinner when it's know, please pray for the food.
She goes off and just starts to give us all the tea.
Through her prayer, as she prays for people she regularly remembers just to pray for needs.
Like little Sammy did this.
And before you know it, Ash and I got all the dirt on everyone through her intercession.
But it is a beautiful thing when you think about it.
To pray for someone is a beautiful gift.
It's a beautiful gift, but we often neglect its power.
I am so grateful today that someone like Ashley, my wife, did not forget to pray for me,
even as a foolish person, so that today I can remind her.
Yo, girl, you prayed for this, right?
Like, when we're having issues, let me just remind you your journal, you prayed for this,
right?
But also, one of the primary ways that we actually learn to pray like Jesus is when we
practice this kind of prayer, the prayer of intercession.
And so, if you're taking note, let's begin with this.
We begin to pray like Jesus when we intercede for others, meaning, if petition is when we
ask God to do something on our behalf, then to intercede is to ask God to do something on
someone else's behalf.
And what a gift it is for all of us right now to be seated and to breathe in the reality
that Jesus, to this day is praying for you.
We're going to spend 40 days trying to learn how to pray.
But Jesus, for all eternity, has been praying for us, and he continues to do this.
Hebrew says it like this.
Therefore, he is able once and forever to save those who come to God through him.
In other words, Jesus stands now through his life, death, and resurrection as more than
enough to save anyone and everybody who desires to come to God through him.
That's good news.
And then he goes on to say he lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf.
Jesus stands ready to pray for you.
And as we see there in John 17, as he's interceding for us, there are two things he
mentions specifically.
First, that we would be united together and that we would know the depth of God's love for
us.
Think about that.
Out of everything that Jesus could have prayed for when it came to you and I, he chose to
pray for unity and love.
What do you think that says about us?
More importantly, what do you think that says about what we need most?
Because I don't know about you.
Like, if Jesus came up to me and said, fredo, what do you need?
I got a list, Lord.
But I don't know if at the top of my list is unity.
And know some of us.
Think about how exciting it is when we see Pastor Matt in the lobby.
Oh, Pastor Matt, come pray for me.
Come pray for me.
Not that we all talk like that at sandals, but imagine Jesus coming to you, say, what do
you need prayer for?
Because at the top of his list, unity and love, first unity.
There in verse 21, he says, I pray that they all will be one, just as you and I are one.
In other words, Jesus is praying that the very unity and oneness that God the father and
God the son experience would be what we also experience as his people.
Shortly after that, he takes it one step further and says that that unity that we would
share is the very proof to the watching world that the message we offer to them about Jesus
is real and true.
So the lack of unity then becomes a lack of clarity for the world as to what we're actually
trying to say to them.
Which means then that the glaring religious issue of our world today is not so much do non
believers know what we believe?
But I think they want to know if we actually believe what we say we believe because we
behave differently.
Unity is so valuable, which is why Jesus prays, for the very presence of our disunity is
keeping people from rightly and accurately seeing who Jesus is.
And I say this fully aware that we are in an election year.
Which means all of us at some degree will be tempted to become the very opposite of what
Jesus has been praying for his people.
Which means then the question is this, will your life be in step with Jesus'prayer for you
and for me?
Or will you be actively resistant to the way that Jesus has been praying for you by what
you say, what you post, all the ideas you have about what we need to do as a country.
Because apart from the power of Jesus interceding on our behalf, we are all left to our own
devices, to gossip, to slander, to backbite, to self promote, all in the name of we know
what to do is right with our limited understanding of politics.
Let us be mindful that Jesus is interceding right now for us specifically, that we would be
united as a church and as a people.
The second thing he covers is love.
John writes that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them, referring to
us as much as you love me.
That's astounding.
In other words, what's happening here in John 17 is Jesus.
We're getting a glimpse into not just how Jesus prayed, but what he specifically prayed.
And in this moment, in his mind's eye, he's envisioning future believers.
It's you and I.
And he's saying, God, would they be united?
And would they know that you love them as much as you love me?
That's an astounding reality.
Which means the deepest and truest thing that you and I need to become aware of is the
depth of God's love for us on any given day.
What you need most is to know in the deepest parts of your soul that you are forever loved
by God and kept by him.
Which also means the greatest thing about you is the fact that you are loved by God.
In Jesus Christ.
You will offer no greater gift to the world than a transformed person who's been loved by
God forever.
That keeps you secure, that keeps you balanced, that keeps you sane.
It does everything for you.
It's beginning to make more sense now as to why?
Jesus, out of everything he could have prayed for, mentions those two things.
And that love for us is so great that our sin and our failures can never outpace God's love
for us.
This is why, first, John says it like this in chapter two.
My dear children, I'm writing to you.
I'm writing this to you so that you will not sin, which is just a great reason to write
anything, right?
But he says, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the
father.
He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.
In other words, when we sin, we have an advocate.
We have someone who's already interceding on our behalf, which means then in real time,
right now, before a confession ever leaves your lips, Jesus is already praying forgiveness
over you.
What a gift that is to all of us for the purpose of us becoming, walking, talking answers
to Jesus'prayer.
What a gift it is to receive the truth that Jesus intercedes for us today.
Now, from this passage in John 17, there's a few things about intercession that I think we
all discover.
The first is this, when we do intercede for others, we pray that the future we hope for
comes to life here in the present.
Think about that for a second.
The future we are hoping for, would it become a reality here in the present?
Would it be made real here?
Simply stated, those who intercede are asking God that he make happen what has not happened
yet.
That's what Jesus is doing.
He is saying in that passage, I'm praying not only for these disciples, but for also those
who will ever believe in me through their message.
Right.
He's saying, God, what is not yet real.
Father, would you make reality now?
This is an amazing thing to think about.
He was praying for people who would come to trust in him, who would come to follow in him.
In other words, what you and I do when we intercede for someone else, we're basically
saying, God, what I know you said you will do in the future, would you do it now, here in
the reality?
It's the very practice of talking to God in prayer that he make his promises real in the
here and the now.
This is the power of intercession.
God, I know you can do it.
Would you do it now?
I know you can heal.
Would you heal now?
I know that you can provide.
Would you provide now?
The christian writer Walter Wink says it like this, which, by the way, is just a fantastic
name, Walter Wink.
But he says something that, it's a bit heady, but I want us to try to just receive this
word from him.
He writes, intercession is spiritual defiance of what is in the name of what God has
promised.
Intercession or I'm sorry, intercessors visualize an alternative future to the one
apparently faded by the momentum of current forces.
History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being.
It's amazing, he goes on to say, even a small number of people firmly committed to the new
inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations can decisively affect the shape
the future takes.
The shapers of the future are the intercessors.
It's astounding.
History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being.
It's an amazing thing for us to reflect on.
What a word for us.
Now, if that's true, I think that's why the apostle Paul taught us there in Timothy when he
writes, I urge you first of all to pray for all people, ask God to help them intercede on
their behalf, and give thanks for them.
You see, this kind of prayer calls us to expand our world as an act of love for everybody
else, meaning your kind of circle of concern when you pray grows beyond just you and your
needs.
Because let's remember in our passage, John 17, this is right before Jesus is betrayed by
friends, abandoned, unjustly tried, and then goes under a grueling, humiliating death of
crucifixion.
And what is on his mind we are.
And then even more so while he's on the cross.
You know the prayer, father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.
Intercession is an act of love.
If we truly love people.
Henry Allen writes this, if we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than
what is within our power to give them.
And this will lead us to prayer.
He says, intercession is a way of loving others.
And so I want to ask you over the next 40 days, whose future can change because of the way
you pray for them today?
Think about that.
Who in your life are you committed to interceding for?
In the same way Jesus has interceded for you.
Who is that?
And imagine their future changing because of what you decide to commit to prayer today.
Secondly, when we intercede for others our persistency to ask partners with God to make the
world right.
In other words, there's this beautiful kind of relational collaboration that's happening
when we persistently ask God to act on somebody else's behalf.
I kind of think of it like this.
Let's imagine a Saturday morning at my house, my kids come to me.
We're on the couch, and I say, yo, what do you all want to do today?
What do you want to do?
They're like, really, dad?
I'm like, yeah, what do you want to do?
And they start to list it off.
And as soon as they start to list off what they want to do, I'm like, nah, forget it.
It's a terrible idea.
I was just kidding.
Ha.
I go away, sip my coffee.
I'm like, you losers.
That would be tragic.
And here's why I wouldn't do that.
Because even though they don't have my resources, like, they can't make Saturday happen the
way I can, though they don't have my resources, they do have my heart.
They are my children.
And though we don't have all of God's resources, we have his heart and we're his children.
And so we collaborate with him through prayer on what we can do.
When you think about it, prayer is simply this.
It's you and I talking to God about what we are doing together.
What are your plans for this?
God, here's what I'd like you to do.
Here's how I want to step in between you and this person and intercede on their behalf.
God, let's work on this together.
Now, even as I share that, though, there is still this kind of subtle of just fatalism in
the church today, meaning a lot of us are still trapped in our thinking that life will just
go as it's going to go.
And I need you all to hear me that that is the exact opposite of how Jesus taught us to
pray in Luke eleven.
He said this.
And so I tell you, keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for.
Keep on seeking and you will find.
Keep on knocking and the door will be open to you.
For everyone who asks receives.
Everyone who seeks, finds.
And to everyone who knocks, the door will be open.
And so Jesus is telling us, ask.
Ask with shameless audacity and don't stop asking.
Paul Miller, who wrote a praying life, wrote it like this.
All of Jesus'teachings on prayers in the gospels can be summarized with one word, ask.
Charles Spurgeon said this, whether you like it or not, asking is the rule of the kingdom.
So how many of us have problems and issues that we are seeing in the lives of those around
us, but we have not even prayed about them yet?
How many of you are frustrated or upset by what you see taking place in the life of someone
you love, but you have not even committed it to prayer.
You see, unasked prayer is a huge problem in the church today.
Why do so many of our prayers remain unprayed?
We're invited to persistently ask, like, why don't we ask?
I ask myself this all the time.
Why don't I ask?
Why don't I ask?
I'll send you the text.
I'm praying for you.
Forget about it.
You see, as I've been thinking about this, here's what I'm coming to understand.
Asking pricks at our vulnerability.
It puts us in touch with the need for help outside of ourselves.
And one of the challenges, I'll just be very honest with you.
As a pastor, the hurt that I sometimes carry is knowing that I don't have it within me to
help this person, which makes me feel less than a pastor.
All the while, I'm neglecting to ask Jesus for help.
It is astounding that I do this as a pastor.
And if I'm doing this, I know many in our church are as well.
But asking brings us to the end of ourselves and to the very beginning of God, which is a
beautiful place to be in prayer.
And Jesus, he believes in this, which is why elsewhere he said, ask whatever you want in my
name and I'll give it to you.
That's an astounding thing.
And scholars and commentators, they do their best to try to write that verse off, but let's
just take him at his word.
Ask whatever you want in my name and I will give it to you.
Meaning to pray in Jesus'name as Larry Hurtado says it, to pray in his name means that we
enter Jesus'status in God's favor and invoke Jesus'standing with God.
In other words, we pray in Jesus'name not as like a magical cantation at the end.
Like don't forget to say in Jesus name.
But we pray it knowing that we're coming, not in our confidence, not in our name, but in
the name of Jesus.
But also we pray this because we want our will to align with his.
Last week, as we began this series, I said, let's stop asking the question, how am I doing
at prayer?
This series, 40 days of prayer, is not to make us feel more guilty as christians that we
don't know how to pray.
The better question to ask is, what is prayer doing to me?
You remember that question.
I need to go back, but what is prayer doing to me?
In other words, am I becoming the kind of person who was formed like Jesus in that what he
desires is also what I desire?
In prayer.
And when that's the case, then this becomes even more so.
True.
To ask in Jesus's name means that we must believe our prayers actually make a difference
because both our wills have been aligned.
Our confidence is coming not in our own, but in the name of Jesus.
When he taught us to pray, I don't think he was in words, may your kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
When Jesus taught us to pray like that, he's assuming two things.
Number one, that his will is not always being done on earth as it is in heaven.
Meaning in heaven, God's will is always done.
On earth, it's sometimes done.
The second thing he assumes is that prayer actually does in fact change things.
So do your prayers matter?
Absolutely they do.
When Jesus taught us to say, your kingdom come, your will be done, I think he's envisioning
you and I as his people entering heaven's bank and grabbing as many treasure and riches as
we can and then pouring them out on the earth.
So that when we pray for healing over someone that we love, we say, jesus, because in
heaven, everyone's healed.
Would you heal them here on earth?
This person needs to be provided for.
And because in heaven, everyone is provided for.
Heal them and provide for them on earth, please.
And when you pray for your wayward children, as young parents, we know that in heaven
everyone's home.
So God, would you bring them home today?
We are robbing heaven's bank with permission to make it real on earth.
It's not just a game.
Prayer is not just a game.
I love what Dallas Willard said.
He said God's response to our prayers is not a charade.
He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going
to do anyway.
Our requests really do make a difference what God does or does not do.
Now I say all this knowing full well that many of us will be so quick to poke fun at people
who are manifesting a new car this year, manifesting a better career, manifesting better
abs, manifesting a better relationship.
But honestly, let me ask this question.
What if manifesting is the parody of which prayer is the true reality?
In other words, manifesting is the copycat version of what real prayer is for those that do
manifest, it's the essential practice of believing that it is fully up to them to produce
what they need.
Where prayer is the true, genuine practice of believing that God actually hears what we say
and we partner with him to make it happen.
Some of us are so quick in the church to judge those outside of the church manifesting.
But the truth is, they're more persistent at manifesting than we are at asking.
And we actually have God's permission, y'all, what are we doing?
What are we doing?
Every prayer you pray is a partnership with God.
So ask.
And the beautiful thing is, none of it goes to waste.
No prayers are wasted.
There's this amazing place in the book of Revelation where John the writer, gets this
vision of Jesus, and I think he's, I think, just running out of words, honestly, to try to
describe what he's seeing, which makes the book difficult to translate.
But in revelation five, he gets this vision of the lion lamb, and he says, everyone in
heaven is before this lamb worshipping, praising him.
This lion lamb holds the keys to everything.
In other words, he's going to make the world right.
And then he says this.
This lion lamb, the king Jesus himself, he took the scroll, in other words, as he began to
make the world right.
This is the four living beings.
And the 24 elders fell down before the lamb.
Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense.
Listen to this.
Which are the prayers of God's people.
Your prayers are not wasted.
They become, at the end of time, the very aroma that refreshes the lion lamb, who will make
all things right.
Not a single prayer is wasted so persistently.
Ask and wait to see what God does.
Lastly, when we intercede, listen now, I believe something beautiful happens to us, and
that's that.
Our burdens shift from our shoulders into God's hands.
Earlier, I mentioned the underlining question that many of us will struggle with through
this series, which is this.
Do our prayers even matter?
It's not even so much.
Am I good at it?
But does what I say actually change anything?
And I say that because I am fully aware that many of you maybe even struggle with prayer
because you have been interceding for a long time for someone.
Maybe you've been praying for a spouse who continues to do their own thing.
You've been praying for a child.
You've been praying for a healing because of some disease.
You've been praying to see this world made right.
And it's getting very heavy.
Like the thought of that, the thought of you continuing just to pray through that is a
heavy weight to carry.
I want us to hear these words from the apostle Paul, colossians one.
He says, this Christ, the visible image of the invisible God, he existed before anything
was created and is supreme over all creation.
For through him, God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things that we can see and the things that we can't see, such as thrones,
kingdoms, rulers, authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him.
And for him, he existed before anything else.
And he holds all creation together.
He holds all creation together.
In other words, the visible image of God is him.
In other words, to see Jesus is to see God.
He's supreme.
He reigns over everything.
There's no one like him.
All of reality was made for Jesus, even the parts that we can't see.
The spiritual world, the thrones, the dominions, all of that exists for him.
And then Paul ends it by saying, and this Jesus is holding all things together.
Which mean then that intercession is the movement from carrying everything on ourselves to
placing them into the mighty hands of God who holds the world together.
This is what makes intercessory prayer such a powerful thing to practice.
Because you and I, we come to the end of ourselves.
We come to the beginning of God, and we tap into a power that Paul says is holding the
entire world together.
When we pray for others, we're confessing God.
This burden is significant, but you hold the world together.
Please do this.
Please, I'm begging you.
Would you do this?
This is the gift of intercession.
And when I think about this verse of Jesus holding the world together, I'm reminded of this
place in New York at Rockefeller center.
If you've ever been there, it's a beautiful place to go.
New York is one of my favorite cities to ever visit.
And if you go to the plaza, there is this massive statue of Atlas holding the world on his
shoulders.
You can see it here.
I try to use my own picture with me and Ashley, like, smiling.
So many people there.
It's a terrible, it's not a dynamic photo, right?
This is it.
But a christian writer a number of years ago had written about how there's something unique
about this statue.
Atlas.
When you're there, he's facing outward, holding the world.
But where he's facing is great.
He's facing the church.
He's facing a church, St.
Patrick's Cathedral.
And if you were to go inside St.
Patrick's Cathedral, you can see this image of baby Jesus, young Jesus, holding the world
in his hand.
It's a profound idea to either live life, to view your prayer life as you're going to hold
it all up like Atlas, or like Jesus, who, if I'm not mistaken, that's like Mac and cheese
eating Jesus right there, right?
That's cartoon watching Jesus and he's holding the globe, he's holding all of the world up.
I need that image of prayer so often.
And here's why.
Because I'm not going to try to give shallow answers to why God doesn't answer prayers the
way we hope he would.
I'm going to confess there's a mystery to it.
I don't know how it all works.
I don't know all the inner parts of our prayers.
God responding when he does, how he does.
I just know this, that intercession is a form of obedience.
It's a form of trust, it's a form of faith, and it is a powerful practice.
If it wasn't the case, you wouldn't be here.
I wouldn't be here.
Let's not forget Jesus prayed for us.
Intercession changes everything.
And what a gift it is for us to treat this practice of prayer as a way to avoid two things
that can potentially happen.
One pitfall is to just resign and say, this is how the world will go, this is how life will
go.
This is how my friend's life will always be.
My prayers don't ultimately matter.
The other pitfall that we can fall into is to say, it's up to me and I got to do something
about it.
Right now.
The intercession rightly holds both these things together.
I'm going to pray.
I'm going to beg of God to act.
I'm going to see what he does.
I'm going to see how he moves.
Now with that, here's how we can practice real quickly before we close.
First, it is so helpful to begin prayer with just a statement of gratitude to God for how
he's already answered prayer, begin with gratitude.
Last week we talked about entering into a place of silence and solitude.
What if out of that silence, you just began to whisper in your heart, God, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for all the ways that you actually have provided, that you have healed somebody,
that you have moved.
And as you sit there in that moment, you realize you yourself are an answer to prayer.
Say thank you to God for how he has answered prayers.
And then secondly, utilize the prayer cards to intercede for other people.
It was a beautiful thing last week if you were at a sandals church campus watching how many
people responded in writing their prayers, and some people even came up to me afterwards
and somewhat embarrassed saying like, man, I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but I forget
to just write prayers down to like write them down.
And so wherever you're watching, man, utilize the app, write your prayers down.
Allow them to become a story later on that you can think back on and see how God has been
working to change the future because of what you decide to say and pray today.
What a gift this can be to all of us, knowing that the most powerful work that's happening
is that you and I are becoming, walking, talking answers to prayer.
Let's go to God now and let's intercede.
Lord, we are grateful that you have heard our prayers.
Jesus, we are grateful that you intercede for us.
And now we come before you, God, with the needs of others.
We think about our family members who need you.
We think about those who are battling cancer.
Would you heal them?
God, we think about our wayward children.
Would you bring them home?
God, we pray for the spouses, our husbands and our wives who are in a dark spot.
Would you bring them to the light?
God, we pray in faith, knowing that you love to hear us ask and you will provide.
And so we beg in the name of Jesus that you would do a great work and that you would shape
us into people who intercede on behalf because you first have prayed for us.
We pray all this in Jesus name.
Amen.