Hello and welcome to my very first prayer quest.
As I like to say, no question, no quest.
But before we get started,
I would like to open with a word of prayer
because that's why we're here, right?
Father, in the name of Jesus Christ,
I thank you for this day.
I thank you, Father, for your love, your grace, your mercy,
being wrapped around each and every person
as they listen to what's in your heart for today.
Father, I thank you that you take the words from my mouth
and wrap them in your Holy Spirit
and allow them to touch each and every person
that is listening to this.
I just lift it and I thank you for it.
In the name of our living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Now, I wanna ask you a question
because that's why we're here, right?
Why are you here?
Okay?
Have you found yourself between a rock and a hard place?
Now, I gotta get very real and vulnerable with you.
I have to get real.
For me, my hard place started about 20 years ago.
I once thought that the best thing for me to do
was to leave my family.
Yeah, you heard me right
because I mistook numbness for the peace of God.
I was not spiritual there for my family.
I wasn't there the way God intended it to be.
And about three years into this place I was at,
I decided that I'm gonna ship them off to Sweden,
which I did.
So, this is hard because I'm being as honest
as I possibly can.
Now, I tried to do the right thing by leaving them
and not knowing at that time that I was placing myself
in the hands of the enemy, the devil,
for him to steal, kill, and to destroy.
Now, let me make this clear.
Like I said before, I didn't see what was going on.
I was a Christian for 20 years.
I should have been able to see the enemy's attacks.
Instead, I thought that the best thing for me
was to leave my family.
But thank God for the Holy Spirit
who kept bringing up one thought
and that nagging thought kept on and on and on
until I finally had the courage to answer it.
And here was the question.
Did God say this woman was gonna be your wife?
Think about that.
I did.
And it scared me because if God spoke,
it was an answer to my prayer.
He fulfilled a promise.
He spoke and I was turning my back on him.
If he spoke, I was turning my back.
I was being disobedient to the creator
of the heavens and the earth.
I was being disobedient.
I was not, you know, either God was real or he was not
because if he spoke, then I was really being disobedient.
Did you get that?
I chose at that time that God spoke.
And I asked God and I asked my wife for forgiveness,
which I didn't really think I would get.
I didn't think I would get it from God
and I didn't think I would get it from my wife,
but they both said yes.
And when I came to Sweden,
I found out that there were people who were praying for me.
So prayer propelled me into my quest.
I learned that you're not between a rock and a hard place.
You are between a promise and a hard place.
Your quest is determined by your next decision.
Do you allow the hard places to determine
or to dictate the outcome?
Or
With the help of God, turn those hard places into a furnace to burn up the chaff, the doubt, the worry, even the disbelief, and grab hold to the promise of the almighty God and say yes.
Then, we're able to see the face of the promise. Oh, my God.
Because you know what, it's time to get real. Really is. It's time. It's time.
It is time to take off the gloves.
It is time, because you know what the enemy will never take it easy on you. He never will.
He will never get to the place where he says, Hey guys, come on, you know, give him a break, let him catch his breath.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He will never say that. You know why? Because the breath you take may be the breath of the living God.
He doesn't want you to ever see God for who he wants to be for you.
Now, our quest is to learn how to lean into the God of the promise and access the deep things of the heart and bring them into fruition.
Now how do we do this.
Well, first, our desire is to say yes, it doesn't matter how long you served as a Christian, how many years you humbled tried to humble yourself before God, because there's always places to be explored.
I like that you know, I really do.
Because in that explanation we will find gems that still need to be under, and to God wants to be more be intimate with you more than you can imagine.
This is what I found.
I felt that I could that I couldn't dare pray, because at that time I was shy.
So I had to, you know, say what I heard other people say.
I was an imposter, because I didn't allow God in. I didn't allow to be touched by God. That was the thing. I couldn't pray also because I thought that, gee, I'm not smart enough.
I'm dyslexic.
My words were not flowery or poetic enough.
When others prayed it seemed like heaven moved and swayed.
So who was that, that I even had the right to pray, because the enemy always tried to remind me of what I did.
I had did this, I had did that. Remember that hard place. And you want to now pray. Oh my gosh.
You know.
So, does these things resonate with you. Do you, do you see these things. Are they a part of where you were at one time. If so, maybe you have your own little story if so that's okay.
Because it still points to a rock or hard place, or it will also point to a promise that is right next to that hard place to that rock. I think that's awesome.
So, all of these explanations all of these objections to prayer are all one big lie.
The one thing I found that hinders our quest into prayer is an orphan mindset.
You know, what is an orphan. Is it more than a mindset.
What if it's spiritual.
If it is that might answer the question that an orphan is more or is not just a child without his parents, you know, Jesus took care that the spiritual side, when he hung on the cross for you and for me.
When God raised him from the dead. We were raised with him into newness of life.
And the sin nature was left behind in the grave, and now we deal with the mindset. I have it that can be changed and can be renewed.
Now, do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 22?
Let's read it.
Matthew 21, I mean.
In Matthew 21, Matthew 21, verse 22.
That would be best if I was in Matthew, I'm in Habakkuk.
Matthew 21, verse 22, it says,
and if you believe, you will receive
whatever you ask for in prayer.
Wow.
No question, no quest.
Why?
Is it that we seemingly get few answers of our prayer?
The next question is, did Jesus lie?
I don't think so.
So what is prayer?
In my humble opinion,
I believe that it describes a conversation
with the creator of the heavens and the earth.
I believe that what it does is it allows us
to tap into his heart for me, my family,
my friends, my job, my city, my country.
Basically, whatever the situation I face
and the circumstances that come my way,
God's heart on that subject must be my stance
in that circumstance.
You know, my mentor Graham Cook said,
prayer is finding out what God wants to do
and then asking him to do it.
I think that's awesome.
So what about a quest?
This is what we're on, you know.
For me, the meaning is to be in search of.
It is a diligent search for something.
And the thing that we're in diligent search of
is the deep things of God's heart.
And through our connection with him
allows you and I in on what he sees
and what we can do to bring his glory into our world.
Wow.
After all, there is something sexy about going on a quest.
That comes right out of my childhood, I'm sorry.
But I love that.
You know, as Jesus said,
whatever things we ask for in prayer,
believing we will receive.
If we are not receiving,
if we are not getting answers
or receiving answers of our prayer,
we must be, it must be that we are doing something.
You know, you don't want to say wrong
because it's not wrong.
I think that it's because of how we've been taught.
I think that's the big thing.
So tradition has taught us that we,
that when bad things happen, we should pray immediately.
And you know what?
On the surface, it looks good and it sounds right.
But as Graham Cook says,
when we rush into prayer too quickly,
we find ourselves praying out of shock, trauma, panic,
out of our worry, anxiety, and our concern.
Wow.
Think about that.
What, you know,
I know you're probably saying,
what the heck are you talking about?
We should be able to pray.
It is, we should, as soon as possible, right?
We should pray.
Yeah, we should pray, but pray what?
All we have is another flawed human's perspective
on what's happening.
Even if it's the person that is most involved
in the whole situation, we need to lean
and learn how to step back into our secret place
and confer with the one who knows best.
And that's our father.
He knows what's best.
He knows more of what's going on than we do.
And we have to let him guide us
into what we should pray for.
You know, I have to ask the question,
when it comes to prayer,
what do you think is the biggest thing
that is missing from prayer?
I think it is love.
It is family.
And I think that's why our...
quest into the father's heart is to be drenched in his love, in his understanding, and experiencing
his love for us so that we can love others. Prayer is not a juggling act, a performance.
It is an act of love, first for the father and his child, you and I. We, as children,
are like tuning forks, resonating his love and tuning others, sons and daughters,
to the frequency of the father's heart in that situation. I think that's awesome.
Here's another question. Does prayer give you access to God?
No. It's thanksgiving that brings us into his presence. We enter his gates
with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his holy name,
Psalm 104. This is our quest, and this is where we begin with thanksgiving and praise. It is
living out of Psalm 95, verse 2. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and let us
shout joyfully to him with praise. To be honest, this is not just a recitable little prayer.
Oh, Lord, thank you for letting me enter into your presence. Amen. Why? Because it is an engagement
of the heart. It is intimate. It is getting intimate, and as you know and you have experienced,
getting intimate takes time, and time on our part is to clear away the junk so that it is,
you know, it is the junk that gets in the way, right? It keeps us hindered. It keeps us bind up.
We got this. We got all this stuff going on, and when it comes time to pray, we run it all over
the place, and we can't do that. You know, C.S. Lewis said, it is in the process of being worshiped
that God communicates his presence. Wow, isn't that nice? It is in his presence where we find
our secret place, and there we still our hearts and our minds and listen to his heartbeat,
and he will speak and reveal to us what he wants to do, and then we ask him to do it.
Just like David said in Psalm 46, 46 verse 10, be still and know that I am God. Wow.
How many times have problems, excuse me, how many times have you had problems
recognizing your mother's voice?
How many times? When she calls, did you ever go,
who was that? Who's calling me? I didn't recognize that voice. For me,
when my mother called me, it was, oh, crap, what did I just do? Did I do something wrong?
Did I do something wrong? And the problem was with that little statement there. All my life,
when I heard that and thought about it, I took that scenario and placed it on God.
So whenever I thought, whenever I believed God was calling me, the first thought was,
what did I do wrong? What did I do now? Because that came out of that background,
but you know what? That's not at all true. You know, Dr. Mark Verkle said,
God's voice sounds like spontaneous thoughts.
Spontaneous thoughts that light upon our minds while our eyes are fixed on Jesus.
If you want to know God's voice, you have to still yourself, get a vision, tune the flow,
and write it down to journal. That's out of Habakkuk chapter two, verse one. Let's read that.
I'd like to read that.
Habakkuk chapter two, verse one.
And it reads,
I will stand at the watch and station myself
in the ramparts.
I will look to see what he will say to me
and I will answer and what answer I am to give him
to his complaint.
Verse three.
Then the Lord said,
write the revelation and make it,
write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald, a man, that I may run with it.
Oh my gosh.
Gotta think about that for a minute, don't you?
This is when we present our quest to God.
By stilling ourselves, keeping our eyes on Jesus,
tuning to the flow of thoughts,
because you know where he is, right?
God is out there, right?
No, he's in us.
Remember those verses of scripture that talk about
that out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.
That's the Christ in us.
So it's gonna flow out of us in thoughts.
And we write those things down
because this is where it's gonna bless us.
It's gonna bless our souls.
Now, what I want you to do is this is homework.
Find someone, a friend, a family member,
maybe someone you haven't talked to in a very long time.
And I want you to think about them.
And then I want you to ask God a question.
God, how do you see this person?
And then God, if you were gonna write him a letter,
write this person a letter, what would you say to them?
And then I want you to write it down.
You know, if you get a word here and there,
take your time, write down a couple of words,
then go back and say, okay, God,
if you're gonna put this in a letter,
what's it gonna look like?
And you start writing a little letter
and you trust that God knows him
because even if he's not a Christian,
I got a friend here, this is my audience.
Yeah.
Because God is with him as much as he is with you.
So don't you think that God knows what he needs to hear
right at that moment?
Then he's gonna tell you and you write it down.
Now, remember, remember, it has to be edifying,
exhorting, and comforting.
Because if God's gonna show you the dumb stuff he's doing,
he don't want you to write about that.
You ask him, what do you do about that?
What could you say?
What would edify him or edify this person?
Those are the things you settle for.
That's what we have to do.
And I think that we get a chance to discuss this.
And, you know, if you,
I'm not asking you to write it out
and send it to me so that I can read it.
No, no, no.
But I think that what it will do is that
maybe what you ought to do is send it to them,
to that person.
Send it to them and say, hey,
I was thinking about you today
and I thought if God was gonna write you a letter,
I thought that this might bless you.
And ask, hey, let me know what you think.
Let me know if it blessed you.
And then that's the thing that we could talk about.
Because the whole point is we wanna go deep with prayer.
We want to see God work, not only in us,
but through us to those around us.
And this is what this group is all about.
That we could explore strange new places
in the heart of God so that we could come back
and discuss them so that we could grow.
The whole point is growth.
And if we're living beings, God wants us to grow.
So I'll see you tomorrow.
God bless you.