Praying Jehovah

0:46How to Ask God for What You Need in Prayer

Hallelujah. Hey, if you have your Bibles, just get ready to flip a lot. We’re gonna go to a lot of places today. We’re in a series on the Lord’s Prayer, and we’re in a long series on the Lord’s Prayer. And so what we’re doing every week that we’re preaching on this is we’re saying the Lord’s Prayer, so hopefully you get the rhythm of the Lord’s Prayer down in you. So you can just pull it out and pray whenever you’re walking through your day. You can pray this in the morning, you can pray this in the afternoon, pray it in the evening. That’s like, that’s the Elephant Show.

Who remembers the Elephant Show? You can pray it in the morning and in the afternoon. You can pray it in the evening and underneath the moon. Nobody? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Those of you that aren’t excited about it, I’m sorry. Okay, it wasn’t the most exciting show in the world. But when that guy would pop his cheeks, I liked that. That was fun for me when I was a kid. I don’t know. Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer and move on from the Elephant Show here. Okay. Say this with me. Say, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” Come on, give the Lord a good praise right there. So we’ve been talking about the Lord’s Prayer, and today we are transitioning into when you start to ask the Lord for things. We’ve talked about your standing in Christ. We talked about the Our Father. Last week, we started talking about the name of the Lord, hallowed be thy name, and when we pray the name of God, we’re praying God’s character.

Last week, for the virtue of it being easy to remember, we’re trying to preach this in a way that’s easy to remember, which you’re really gonna see here in a moment. Last week, we talked about praying the Trinity: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We’re talking about who God is. Well, today, even though we’re gonna transition and talk about asking of the Lord, we’re still talking about the Lord’s character today. And so today we are gonna be talking about praying Jehovah, praying the names of God, specifically praying the song we’ve been singing ‘cause I want it to be easy for you to remember.

Jehovah Nissi fights my battle. Jehovah Jireh meets my need. Jehovah Rapha heals my body. Jehovah Shalom be your peace. So we’re gonna pray through that. We’re gonna talk about that today, and I think this is really gonna help you because every one of those names tells you how you can expect the Lord to respond to your request. See, the Lord might not even answer your prayer because you prayed it. The Lord might answer your prayer just because that’s who He is and that’s how He functions. That’s how He operates. And so when you bring it to the Lord, if you’ll tap into the things that the Lord’s into, the Lord will do those things.

Amen. Everybody say, “I’m awake.” I’m awake. Now, y’all are giving me some stares this morning, amen. We got a… I know we got a trunk-or-treat coming up. Y’all be careful tonight. I had a little bag of Skittles last night, and my 40-year-old body didn’t react well to it. In about five minutes I thought, “I feel like I have been hit with a sledgehammer,” amen. Amen. There was a time in my life I drank a Sunkist every morning for breakfast. That was my whole breakfast, John, was a Sunkist, and I was fine. I was ready to rock. Now I eat a bag of Skittles, I’m ready to die.

So, okay. So we’re gonna… Be careful. But Jehovah Rapha, He heals your body, amen. Amen.

4:33Is It Okay to Pray Selfish Prayers?

So this morning, what I wanna do is I wanna start somewhere. I wanna kinda just bring a principle to your mind, and then we’re gonna talk through each one of these names. If you’ll turn in your Bible with me to Luke chapter 7, this’ll be good for you to underline and keep in your Bible there. I wanna start here before we get into the names of the Lord because when you ask God for things, it seems like we either don’t pray at all, or we start to pray in great desperation, and the desperation will overcloud any of your normal sensibilities in prayer.

But if you were in a normal place of asking from the Lord, sometimes it feels like you can just get in this, “I don’t know if I can ask God for that. I don’t know if that’s appropriate to bring to the Lord in prayer. I don’t know if I can pray that.” And I wanna speak to that for just a moment because frankly, no prayer shocks God. In fact, me and my wife do this thing when one of us says something that’s wrong, like we mess up or we miscommunicate something or we do… And I don’t know what you and your spouse do. This is me and Ashleigh. Whenever we say something that’s wrong, mispronounce a word, whatever it is, wrong information, wrong dates, whatever, something that we just know as soon as it comes out of one of our mouths, it’s like, it’s dumb.

Whoever says it gets this look from the other person. They go… I don’t know if you do that, but me and Ashleigh in our house, this look gets flying around a lot. We’re doing that. When you go to the Lord in prayer and you start to ask for stuff that you obviously do not care about… So, some of us pray stuff we just obviously could care less and we’re trying to just act right in the presence of the Lord, which is great. I think that’s good. You ought to act right everywhere you go, but you get into the presence of the Lord, you start asking God for that, I think the Lord’s sitting there going, “Are you for real right now?

‘Cause I know what you’re thinking. I know what you really wanna ask. I’m just waiting for you to get enough courage to, I don’t know, let it bubble out of your mouth, come over your lips.” So I want you to see this. I wanna talk to you about this centurion for a moment in Luke chapter 7. If you look at Luke 7:2, it says, “Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death,” listen to this line, “who was highly valued by him. When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant.”

And then if you’ll go down to verse 9, it says, “When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’ And when those who had been sent returned to the house they found the servant well.” Jesus recognized something in the centurion. There’s a lot that we could pick apart here, but I’m gonna just hone in on this one thought. That Jesus noticed something in this centurion, and he identified it to people around him as more faith than he had seen in all of Israel, more faith than he had seen in any of God’s people.

This centurion, this one who is not one of us, this guy who just got saved, he’s got more faith than anybody we’re dealing with around here, and where is that coming from? Well, if you look at it, it says it right here. It says that the centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death who was highly valued by him. He was highly valued. We can look at this and go, “Well, this is a real virtuous prayer. He wanted this guy to get prayed for ‘cause he wanted him to be well, and he wanted him to be better, and so he’s asking for prayer for other people.”

Mike, what a great thing to do. It sounds fantastic. It’s giving up the prayer request for your buddy at work who’s going through something that nobody else knows him or anything about him, except that’s not why the guy wanted him healed. This wasn’t somebody he’s just in relationship with. This wasn’t some cousin that he grew up with or something. This is a guy who worked for him, and he’s like, “Look, this guy does good work. I don’t wanna find somebody new. I don’t wanna replace him. I don’t wanna get somebody else.” The guy was probably a slave. Property.

And he says, “I don’t wanna change this up. I don’t wanna have to get somebody else.” He was highly valued to him. And he takes that prayer to the Lord, and the Lord says, “Okay, I’ll heal the guy.” Listen to me. There is something about coming to the Lord with what you actually want. And God is good enough to protect you from your dumb prayers. And if you don’t pray some dumb prayers, you don’t pray. You oughta pray some stuff that would make other people uncomfortable to hear, amen. I’m telling you, you gotta pray real stuff. And when you come to the Lord with a real prayer, sometimes your prayer is gonna be selfish and self-indulgent and focused on you.

Well, guess what? When you feel like garbage, when you’ve got a joint or a bone or something that’s out of sorts, or you got something in your back that ain’t acting right and you go asking the Lord for prayer, yeah, that’s selfish and self-indulgent because you’re in pain, honey. And God cares. And you can pray that stuff. And when you don’t have enough money to meet your obligations you can pray for that stuff. And when your spouse acts a certain way that gets on your nerves, you can pray for that stuff. Someone told Ashleigh years ago… I actually love this couple.

They pastor a church in Las Vegas now. But Ashleigh had a pastor’s wife tell her when we first got married, she said… Well, she told her two things. First thing she said is, “The only way your marriage is gonna work is if y’all change and he’s not gonna change.” So ladies, maybe that’ll help you this morning. Amen. Okay? And then the second thing she said, “Don’t point it out, pray it out.” You can mess with the people in your… That’s just for free, by the way. You can mess with the people in your life all day long. You can talk to your spouse, talk to your kids, talk to your grandma, talk to whoever and be saying, “Don’t do this.

Don’t do this. Don’t act like that. You gotta stop doing this. You need to blah, blah, blah.” Or you could just go over their head. Take it to the Lord in prayer, and when they start acting right, just, “Thank you, Lord.” So there’s no prayer that is gonna shock God. There’s no prayer that’s too selfish. And honestly, we get uncomfortable taking things to the Lord in prayer oftentimes because we don’t feel like they’re holy. Most of the stuff you wanna ask God for is not particularly holy. I get that we all wanna pray for revival, and we wanna pray for our leaders.

These are things we ought to pray. But on the other side of that is, like, okay, I’d like revival to come, but you know what I’d really like to do? Be able to afford these eggs. I should’ve put a disclaimer. We talk about it like it really goes on here at this church. This ain’t no, we don’t give you no little fluffy little deal. And if y’all gonna be quiet, I’m gonna preach hard this morning. So y’all need to be nice to me. But we should, I wanna see revival happen. I wanna see God move. I wanna see lots of people saved. I also wanna see stuff in my house happen.

You know, I wanna walk into my house and, like, the lights turn on, right? I want stuff in my world working. I wanna be, I wanna be able to go to the grocery store and not get concerned every time I walk up to the lady at the little conveyor belt, whatever they call that. The TSA there… the Publix. Amen. And so I think it’s fair that we would appreciate what the hymn writer said when he said, “Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” I wanna just encourage you this morning, take everything to the Lord.

And so this morning, we’re gonna talk about praying through the names of the Lord using this song, Jehovah, by Elevation. Why? So you can remember it. That’s the reason. We’re teaching you how to pray right now. So, if you wanna know why we didn’t open to Romans 1 and start preaching on that for the next 32 weeks, that’s the reason why. Amen. All right.

13:01What Does Jehovah Nissi Mean?

Number one, this is the first one we’re gonna talk about, Jehovah Nissi. Jehovah Nissi. Jehovah Nissi is a name easily to remember. It’s a victorious name. It’s a God who brings victory about. By the way, we’re gonna jump throughout the Bible this morning.

You can turn with me if you want to Exodus chapter 17. I’m gonna read little portions throughout the morning. But Exodus 17:8 says, “Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, ‘Choose for us men and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.’” So they’re about to go into battle and Moses’ big plan is, “I’m gonna go stand up on this rock and hold a stick.” Okay? That’s the plan. “So Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up on top of the hill.

And whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. And whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him. And when he sat on it, Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’

And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord is my Banner.” That is Jehovah Nissi in the Hebrew, is The Lord is my Banner. “Saying, ‘A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.’” The banner that they are referring to here would be similar to a big flag that they would take on a large pole into battle that would signify, it would indicate whatever the cause was that people were fighting in a war for, fighting in a battle for in these ancient times. And what Moses is saying here is that when we go out to fight, we’re going out to fight for the cause of the Lord.

We’re not just doing it to do it. It’s for the cause of the Lord. We fight under the name of the Lord. And in the story that we read here, there’s an obvious supernatural work. It’s obvious. If you were high up in the military, and somehow you got part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and you went into the Situation Room with the president, and one of the other joint chiefs or a director of an agency or somebody walked in and came in there and said, “I’ve got a plan. Let’s send our guys out into battle. Let’s send… We’ve got… Let’s send them over into the Middle East.

I’m gonna go out there and hold a stick up in the air. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna win. I think it’s gonna work.” Well, everybody in the room would go, “That is the dumbest idea.” Why? Because there’s no way that should bring about results that end in victory. There’s no way that in military conquest, a guy holding a stick ought to have any bearings on how things go. It shouldn’t make any difference either which way. But Moses goes up on this mountain and he holds this stick in the air and at some point he starts going… Well, now they whooping us. Oh, look at them go again.

We’re back. It’s like the Alabama game yesterday. Amen. And so maybe Coach Saban had a stick. I don’t know. Maybe he was somewhere on the field and stuff. But there’s no logical reason that should work. Well, if that’s what’s causing victory, it is obvious that it’s the supernatural hand of God. So let me just ask you this. When you pray, do you want things to work? Do you end your prayers with que sera sera, whatever will be will be? Or do you pray and say, “Amen, so be it”? Does your amen sound like a que sera sera? That’s a good question in the spirit right there to ask.

Do you pray stuff that God doesn’t even need to intervene in? Do you just pray hoping the wind will blow in the right direction? We need to learn to pray. We need to learn to take this stuff to the Lord in prayer. But when you pray, you ought to wanna have the supernatural power of God moving in that situation. It ought to be something that you’re taking to the Lord that needs the divine intervention of Almighty God. And when you do that, you’ve gotta know, you’ve gotta trust that God is the one who will make that happen. Well, I wanna talk to you about how to get that done today, okay?

We’re talking about Jehovah Nissi. So this is where we’re kinda starting in prayer. You can talk about your standing. You can bring your standing before the Lord so you can come boldly before the throne of grace, and then you can pray through some of the names of God and declare His holiness and majesty, His character, and then you get into the Jehovah Nissi. And the Jehovah Nissi isn’t just that God answers some type of prayer. He’s about something. It’s not just healing. It’s not just prosperity. It’s not one thing or the other. It’s that God wants to supernaturally get involved in whatever you’re gonna ask Him.

And this is how you do it, because in the name it tells us. It’s an obvious supernatural work, and here’s the secret to getting the supernatural work. He is Jehovah Nissi, but it ends here by saying, “The Lord is my banner,” Jehovah Nissi, saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord.” A hand upon the throne of the Lord. This is what you do when you pray. When you go before the Lord, you pray through a situation. You’re suspended almost between heaven and earth because you’ve got a court. You’ve got the attention of the living God. You’re standing in the courts of heaven talking to God Almighty under the authority of His Son that has been given to you to walk in there and pray.

And you’re talking to the Lord who sits high on the throne, but you’re talking to Him about things that are existing in our very obviously earthly realm. So how do you get something to happen? You get a hand on the throne. You get a hand on the throne and you pray, and you release a supernatural work into the earth. How do you do it? Well, I don’t know. It gets on you. It gets through you, the Lord. But if you’ll get a hand on the throne. How do you get a hand on the throne? Well, you start by praying, honey. We’re gonna start by doing it for 27 minutes in 2027, for 27 days, and we’re gonna see God do a miracle in 2027.

So you get your hand on the throne and you begin to pray, and you begin to ask God, because as you get through the rest of your prayer, when you make requests of God, when you make your requests known, when you ask of Him when you beseech His hand, as you hold onto the throne of God, you’re connected to the supernatural presence of God. That’s what Jehovah Nissi is. Jehovah Nissi, He’s not just God. He’s God whom I operate under. He’s the God that is above me. He is the God that is in front of me. He’s the God that goes before me. And if you mess around and try to get slick, He’s the God that gets behind me.

I’m talking about Jehovah Nissi, supernatural power. Give the Lord a praise. I’m just telling you, there’s supernatural stuff that happens when you have a hand on the throne, when you get under Jehovah Nissi. And sometimes you don’t know what to do with the supernatural stuff. And sometimes you do things and you don’t realize they’re supernatural until you got a little bit of a rearview mirror. I got a phone call this week. Guy called me looking for something in the church. I don’t know who he is. He left… He hadn’t been here. He lives far away. And I don’t normally take… He left a voicemail.

He got my personal cell phone number. Like, this is all… I’m telling y’all that just so my wife can hear. This is stuff I do not respond well to normally. You’re gonna call me on my personal cell phone at 9 o’clock in the morning looking for something in the church that you left here five years ago? Man, let me tell… Let’s start making a list of stuff that ain’t my problem. Okay? For whatever reason, I picked the phone up. I call this guy back, and then he starts telling me he was looking for something that frankly, right up front, I’m like, “This is so weird.”

Like, it’s a weird phone call. What he was looking for was weird. What they were using it for was weird. What it is actually intended for is weird. All of it was just weird. And I told him, I said, “Man, I ain’t ever seen this. If I ever see it, though, good news, I ain’t ever gonna forget this phone call.” ‘Cause it’s just weird. We get to talking. I don’t know why. We’re on the phone for, like, 30, 45 minutes, and I’m telling you, I’m on the phone with this guy, and all I can tell you, I was talking to Andy McMillan, who came in and preached for us several months ago.

I was talking to him about it. I said, “The only indicator I had was my normal reaction wasn’t happening.” ‘Cause I wanna tell y’all, I don’t do well with weird. I don’t. You got about three seconds of a shofar before I’m gonna be down in your face going, “I think let’s tuck it away for a little while. Does that come with a case? Let’s put it back in there.” I just don’t do stuff like that. That’s not me. I had a lady one time go, “I think the Lord’s preparing me to blow a shofar in our church.” I said, “I am almost positive that He is not.” Amen. And sorry, I’m picking on shofars.

But anyway, so I’m on the phone with him, and nothing he’s saying that I’m telling you categorically I normally would would get under my skin. And I’m okay. I’m real comfortable with the guy on the phone. About 10 minutes into the phone call, He starts speaking, and y’all don’t know this, but there’s some leadership decisions that I’ve had to make. There’s nothing crazy in the background. It’s gonna sound like it’s crazier than it is. It’s just normal stuff. There’s some leadership decisions I’ve had to make since I’ve been here that I felt guilty about.

I’ve picked up the phone and I’ve had to just make some decisions and call people and tell them, “Hey, we’re gonna go in a different direction. We’re gonna do something different.” I’ve just had some guilt on me. This guy don’t know any of this stuff. He basically got… If he didn’t speak directly to it, he was rubbing shoulders with it. And he started saying, “This is what you need to do. This is what you need to do. This is what you need to do. This is what the Lord has for you. This is what needs to happen.” I felt the prophetic coming off of him, except here’s what’s crazy: It was stuff I’d already done.

I just felt really bad about it. Jehovah Nissi. You get a hand on the throne, and then suddenly the Lord will come out and do a supernatural work. And I’m telling you, I think there’s gonna be… By the way, out of that phone call, I just feel a stirring in my spirit that if the Lord’s sending me little phone calls like that, I have a feeling something’s about to happen in this church. God’s about to do something great. You might as well give the Lord a praise. All right.

24:21What Does Jehovah Jireh Mean?

Number two, Jehovah Jireh. Jehovah Jireh, our provider. The song says, “Jehovah Jireh meets my needs,” but I like to use the original version, the Martha Munizzi version that says, “Jehovah Jireh, my provider.”

So that’s what I say right here. He’s my provider. Jehovah Jireh, my provider. Genesis chapter 22 says this: “When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.” Just so you know, we’re coming into a moment where God has asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. God has asked Abraham to do something that, from this side of our understanding of who the Lord is, is unconscionable for our God to ask, but He asked it of Abraham. There’s a reason He does it.

It’s because at this time everybody was offering child sacrifices to their gods. And so the Lord said, “I want you to do that too. I want you to go do that too.” He does it for a reason, though, which you’ll see here in just a second. Verse 10: “Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ And he said, ‘Don’t lay your hand on that boy, and don’t do anything to harm him, for now I know you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.” Hallelujah. Instead of his son. Instead of his son. “And so Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide,” Jehovah Jireh. The Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’” And I just wanna say this without getting too deep. There’s some contesting over what the name Jehovah Jireh actually means.

We’re not 100% sure. Just so you know, there are words, they don’t occur super often, but there are words in the Bible that in the original languages we’re not really sure how to translate. Normally, your Bible will have a footnote or something to say that. But Jehovah Jireh is a word we’re not really sure how to translate. In the ESV it says that he will provide. Jireh, that he provides. There’s other translations, there’s other views that this word should be translated as sees. The Lord sees. There are other uses of the word that indicate that not only to see, but that He will be seen.

That the Lord will appear. So there’s kinda this cloud of translation options that the Lord provides, and that the Lord sees, and that the Lord will be seen, he will appear. And I just want you to know none of these have to operate in conflict with one another. In fact, they operate in concert very well. And you can be encouraged this morning that if you’re in a situation where you’re walking through lack, and you may be going, “Well, I thought He was Jehovah Jireh. I thought He provided,” and you’re in a situation where you’re not seeing it happen. Maybe you’re praying for a loved one, or you’re financially in a position, or you’re hoping for an opportunity, or you’re waiting on your knight in shining armor to show up.

Amen. Whatever it may be, and you haven’t seen it. You’re operating in lack right now. I want you to know that not only does the Lord provide, but he sees. He sees what you’re going through. He sees what’s happening. It just so happens that he also sees things you don’t see. He can see what’s coming down. Man, I’d hate to get a today blessing and sacrifice a next week breakthrough. Do you hear what I’m saying? Just ‘cause you want it now doesn’t mean that now’s the time. Just ‘cause you want it today doesn’t mean that today’s the day. Just because you’re tired and you’re exhausted, well, you’re gonna have to get a little bit more tired and a little bit more exhausted ‘cause God is about to do a work in your life that you wouldn’t… This is what He says to the prophet, that you wouldn’t even believe if someone were to tell you about it.

You wouldn’t even believe it. It’s gonna be so good, such an obvious God thing when it comes about. But the Lord sees you right now, and he will be seen, and he does provide, and he will provide. Hallelujah. And let me encourage you that we’ve seen God provide in our life in all types of ways. Funny thing is, we saw some great wealth come into our life several years past here, but some of my favorite stories are when we were not doing so hot. I’ll never forget walking into a store and I wanted a leather jacket. I wanted to preach in leather jackets ‘cause I just wanna die up here for some reason.

And so I wanted a gray leather jacket. I was talking to Ms. Theresa about it this morning. You didn’t know when I told you that. It was a miracle story. And I wanted a gray leather jacket, and, well, we didn’t find one, but then we found a leather jacket, and it was a good deal and so we got it. And I saw another one I liked, and I thought, “Oh, do I want this one or do I want that one?” And Ashleigh pulled out her phone and started looking for some discounts. I don’t know what she did, but she went boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And the next thing I know, we paid the on-sale price for one of the jackets and the other one we got for, like, $1.50.

Which, by the way, is free, in case you’re wondering. And so we got it, but both of them were black jackets. But I settled, I got my black jackets. We go back into this store a few weeks later. Well, actually it was the same store in a different mall. We go in a few weeks later. Funny thing is, we had to go to that mall, we never went, but they had an Apple Store and one of our phones had freaked out and we had to have it fixed so it’s an inconvenience that we’re there. While we’re there I said, “Well, let’s walk into this store.” So we go into the store, I think it was Macy’s.

And so we walked into Macy’s, and looking around, I found the gray jacket. The gray leather jacket. And I was like, “Oh, man, well I already got these other jackets. I’m not spending…” It was a time where it’s like, “Well, I’m not spending no more money on jackets.” We done spent all the money we… The jacket money is gone. Amen. And then Ashleigh went boop, boop, boop, boop. Y’all, we got that jacket for, like, 36 cents or something crazy like that. That is breakthrough. That is provision. That is Jehovah Jireh who provides for you. That’s a miracle. And for you it’s just a jacket, but for me it was a gospel preaching tool.

That’s right, it was sanctified, amen. What I have learned, though, and I’ve had more serious stuff than that, We’ve had serious medical bills, we’ve had serious things come up. We had a million dollars hanging over our head at one point that we were gonna have to pay in medical bills. We’ve seen some serious stuff. And this is what I wanna tell you, that usually before the provision comes, before God provides, before there’s a moment of breakthrough, things feel way more urgent than they really are. When you are under pressure, things seem like they are a huge deal.

However, it tends to be that after provision comes, things seem much less significant than they really were. So you can conflate the issue you’re walking through and then almost give a wink and a nod at the stuff that you’ve actually walked through where God came through for you. And I just wanna take a moment right here and have a little praise break, and I think it’d be appropriate that if God has come through for you in any area of your life, why don’t you take about 30 seconds and just give him a hallelujah praise right here in the house today. Thank you, Lord, for coming through on my behalf, in Jesus’ name.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

32:22Jehovah Rapha Meaning and God's Will to Heal

Number three. Number three, Rapha, Jehovah Rapha. He’s your healer. Jehovah Rapha, he’s your healer. Exodus 15:22 says, “Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water.” That sounds small, but when you’re in the desert, it’s a pretty big deal. This ain’t like they stopped by the gas station and they were out of Diet Coke. Hey, I just heard something that for the first time in three years Australia is putting Diet Coke back on the menu at McDonald’s.

McDonald’s… So I want y’all to just imagine a world where McDonald’s has not had Diet Coke for three years. That was for free. That ain’t no illustration. That’s real. I was really taken aback by that. Amen. So when they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter. Therefore, it was named Marah. Marah means bitter. And the people grumbled against Moses saying, “What shall we drink?” And he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log. You know, that’s what you want. You go, “Hey, Lord, we need water.” “Hey, here’s a tree.”

Sorry, I think that’s great. And he threw it into the water. And you know what’s funny about that? There’s a tree. He’s looking at a tree, so it’s obvious that somewhere at some point there’s been some water. You’re distressed and everything indicates that you’re gonna be all right. Amen. Sorry, I get to preaching. And so he takes the log, he threw it in the water, and the water became sweet. By the way, when you hear things like that, when it talks about water bitter and sweet, what that was is you’d go out into the desert, and they would find water. They would find water out there, and they would go to drink it.

What that means, bitter and sweet, it would look like spring water, but the salt content would be so high. So you would think it was the lake, but then you’d take a swig and it would taste like the Gulf. Okay? And so that was the issue. So when he says it’s made sweet, the salt content comes down to the point that you can drink it, okay? And if you ever watched The Voyage of the Mimi in school, you know why you can’t drink salt water. Amen. Okay. If you didn’t watch The Voyage of the Mimi, I’m sorry. I’m giving all the good references today, and y’all ain’t with me.

Amen. All right, verse 26 saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God and do that which is right in his eyes and give ear to His commandments, and to keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians.” Listen to this. “For I am the Lord your healer. Jehovah Rapha. I am Jehovah Rapha, the Lord your healer.” Okay. So I read in one of the commentaries that I was looking at this week. I was just perusing through some things. And I read this line. I just thought it was so good. I wanna share it with you.

It said, “This moment of physical restoration where God restores the water sets the stage for God’s self-revelation.” See, God didn’t just make the bitter water sweet because he was being a nice guy. He made the bitter water sweet, it was a physical restoration, ‘cause he wanted to show you who he is. And when it comes to healing, probably more than anything else, more than the prosperity, more than God meeting your needs, more than God being a supernatural God, when it comes to healing, you gotta know who God is. I’m telling you, there’s some people in our church right now, including me, who’ve got some stuff going on in their body.

You’ve got some things that you feel. There’s just something that’s on you all the time. Some of you got serious stuff going on in your body. I need you to hear me. If you’ve got things going on in your body, you need to prioritize knowing about how the Lord heals. Not the process, not the procedures, His character. God likes to heal people. He made the bitter water sweet so you would know that’s the stuff he likes to do. God is about bringing broken things back to full restoration. He wants you to be in the best health you’ve ever been in your life. Go ahead and give the Lord a praise.

Okay. But here’s what I want you to see. He throws the tree in the water. He throws the tree in the water. See, it’s the tree that goes in the water and makes the bitter water sweet. Now he tells the children of Israel, because he’s about to give them the law. This is right before he gives them the law of Moses. And he says, “If you’ll obey me, if you’ll do everything I tell you to do, if you’ll cross your Ts, dot your Is, if you’ll be… essentially, if you’ll be perfect little kids, then I’ll keep you healthy. And if you don’t, if you mess up, now there’s gonna be diseases that come in on you.”

In fact, he told them, “When you go into the promised land, there’s gonna be leprosy that pops up in places that you need to give attention to because these people ain’t acting right.” No. He says, “If you act perfect, I’ll heal you. If you don’t act perfect, watch out, the leprosy’s coming.” And we see this a lot. When they act up, disease will come on them throughout the Book of Exodus, throughout, all the way through Deuteronomy as well. But he threw the tree in the water. He threw the tree in the water. See, this is God showing you His character, a self-revelation of himself.

Even though he’s asking for perfection by the law for them to be healed he’s revealing his character because they threw the tree in the water. And while in the old covenant your healing depends on your obedience, in the new covenant, health comes from the tree. It doesn’t come from the… It comes from the… I’m talking about the cross, by the way. Talking about what Jesus has done at the cross. Because Jesus has shed his blood on the cross, you can be healed. Not because you get it right all the time, not because you cross every T and dot every I, not because you’ve got such good morality or you pray enough or you look good enough or you do this enough or you help enough people.

None of that. No. Your healing flows from the tree. He threw the tree in the water. It’s the tree of Calvary where healing comes from. Go ahead. You might as well. Isaiah chapter 53, this is well-known, but this is what it says. Isaiah 53:4 says, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, and upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds we are healed. By His stripes we are healed.”

Come on, somebody give the Lord a praise. Amen. This is what I want you to hear today. If you’re sick in your body, if you’ve got ailment in your body, if you’ve got issues in your body, whether it’s been diagnosed or undiagnosed, guess what? What the doctors can’t figure out, God can figure out. What the nurse can’t figure out, God can figure out. And I don’t know about y’all, but sometimes I feel like I roll in there just for them to do some tests on me. They’re just trying to poke at me a little bit. Amen. You know why? It’s because medical people are limited.

But we serve a God who is not limited. We serve a God who can figure it out. Sometimes I wonder if doctors can’t figure out what’s going on with you just so when God is given the opportunity to heal you, you go, “I can’t even put a name on it. I tell you what God healed me of but nobody could diagnose it. They said it might be this and it might be this. All I know is this thing hurt all the time, and it ain’t hurt in 10 years since I went to the altar and the Lord touched me.” Hallelujah. I’m talking about he’s a healing God. Here, listen to this. Healing is your portion.

Healing is your covenant right. Healing has already been provided. And you may be sitting here today and say, “Well, I hear that and I believe it, and I don’t feel good.” Well, guess what? Something’s gotta change then in Jesus’ name. If you don’t feel good and God has healed you, then we’re just gonna believe something has to change. Somebody say, “Something has to change.” In Jesus’ name. Amen. Multiple times throughout our marriage, me and Ashleigh have dealt with some type of critical medical diagnosis. Unfortunately, it seems like several of those times now it’s been me, ‘cause I’m 40 years old and I’ve got some things.

And we would be in a situation that was headed in a direction and suddenly it turned around. We began to pray. Suddenly it turned around. In fact, we didn’t even begin to pray. For one of them specifically, Ashleigh got people praying while I watched The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Amen. I did, in the hospital bed, just watching them ladies all day long. They were my friends in the hospital, by the way. And so I’d watch these ladies. And then the Lord, somehow it just turned it around. And all of a sudden the doctors are preparing her, “Hey, he’s probably not gonna make it.”

And overnight, phew, something changed because people began to pray. Why? Because healing is your portion. He’s Jehovah Rapha. Come on, give the Lord a…

41:47What Does Jehovah Shalom Mean?

Number four, number four, Jehovah Shalom. Jehovah Shalom. Jehovah Shalom. The Lord is peace. Judges chapter 6 verse 24 says, “And Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it The Lord is Peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah and belongs to the Abiezrites.” One of God’s greatest gifts is peace. This is one of God’s greatest gifts. As someone who grew up in a volatile environment… I was talking to someone this morning who was telling me about a family member who had a alcoholic parent and just basically had to get … They had to rescue themselves from the situation.

Mom just wasn’t ever there for them, Dad wasn’t there for them. And I’ll tell you, that’s the situation I grew up in. I just had to get myself out of it. And thank God I wasn’t left onto my own devices, and it was the Lord who drew me out of it. But I just want you to know, as someone who grew up in, like, a really turbulent environment, a really difficult environment, that I can testify to you today that there is a peace, a supernatural peace. The Bible says it’s a peace, this is Philippians chapter 4, “a peace that passes all understanding.” It’s a peace that comes in where you’re going, “I don’t know why I’m okay right now.

All evidence points to the fact that I ought to just be a wreck right now but for whatever reason, I’m okay. I just saw something, or I heard something, or I witnessed something that ought to have me in a-“ A mess of a state. But there’s something working on the inside of me. There’s a old song that they used to sing, saying, “I’ve got something on the inside working on the outside. Oh, what a change in my life. I’ve got… There’s something in me.” Well, what is that? That’s the Spirit of God. That’s the spirit of peace. He’s Jehovah Shalom. He’s the God of peace.

In fact, even the priestly blessing that the priest would speak over the people, it ends that the Lord would give you peace.

43:54Should You Wait for Peace Before Making a Decision?

But I wanna talk to you just for a moment about something as it relates to prayer. See, ‘cause I want us to be like a real praying church. I’d like to hear testimonies on a regular basis where people come in and just go, “Man, I started praying. We started doing this thing. And, like, we’ve seen God do boom, boom, boom, boom. And it’s crazy, and there was no way it was gonna work. We took it to the Lord, and then all of a sudden, bam, we saw a breakthrough in our life.”

And we wanna see that happen in our church. But because of that, you gotta kinda understand a little bit about how the Lord answers prayer. And I just wanna talk to you about this for a moment, because we have got this thing that goes around in the church, and I’m gonna correct it this morning. It’s not our church, it’s the church everywhere. And this is something that goes around. It sounds spiritual. It’s not. It sounds deep. It’s actually immature. So it’s one of those things that, like… As a pastor, I’ve run into it so much. And that’s that people make decisions on whether or not God wants them to do something based on if they have peace.

So this is what’s crazy, is I have been told over the years multiple times, “I’m not gonna do that. I just don’t have a peace about it.” The coincidence is usually the stuff they don’t have peace about would obviously honor the Lord. So you’re asking people to get involved with something that is clearly God’s will, and they’re, “Well, I just don’t have a peace about it. So I’m not gonna. I just don’t have a peace about that. I’m not…” And usually, this is how you know they really ain’t been praying about it, ‘cause it normally takes five times to get them on the phone where they finally tell you they don’t have peace about it.

So once they’re done avoiding you, they let you know they don’t have peace. Sorry. Get a little therapy moment here. Amen. What if I just started pointing at people and going, “And it’s you, you, you”? I wouldn’t do that to you. Amen. As it relates to prayer, you have to remember that God is a God of peace. God is a God of peace. God is Jehovah Shalom. You are a turbulent person. You’re just a turbulent person. You’re not a steady individual. You don’t stay at peace all the time. You know, that’s why Paul said, “May the peace of God reign.” May it. There’ll be moments it probably doesn’t, ‘cause you’re a turbulent person.

You get freaked out about stuff that doesn’t matter. Like I said earlier, a lot of times the thing you’re under pressure about seems bigger than it is, and then when God already came through for you, it seems smaller than it actually was. Because we just aren’t… We’re a little bit of a turbulent person. And so I just want you to know, you have to understand that anything that you ask of the Lord, or you get the Lord’s instruction on, or anything that you’re asking the Lord about doing, if you feel a disruption of peace in your life, generally if it goes to the point that you have to ask the Lord about, it ought to be something that disrupts your peace naturally.

In reality, anything that takes faith is going to be a normal peace disrupter. For instance, when we moved here, okay? I’ve told this and I’m gonna tell it until I get my private jet, okay? ‘Cause this is why I’ve done sowed this seed, amen. But when we came here, man, we gave up like half of the salary I was making to come down here. That ain’t a peace thing. You don’t give up that much money and just go, “Well, I just felt good about it.” Nobody feels good about it. Nobody sows seed and goes, “Oh, I just felt good about it.” Let me just tell you right now, throw a 20 in the offering this week, come back next week and write a $20,000 check.

I dare you. And see which one’s more peaceful. But I’ll tell you, there’s one that’s more significant. There’s one that’s a seed and there’s one that’s a tip. Amen. And so anyway, let me go back over here. We gave that money up. It takes… You don’t do that in peace. You do it in faith. You have to make a decision in faith. I think about Peter. Peter goes out, he’s on this boat, there’s a storm. Jesus isn’t on the boat, and then they see him walking across the lake. They’re in this boat, it’s kind of wigging out. Jesus is walking on water. They’re going, “What in the world is going on?”

And then Peter says, “Hey, if it’s really you, Lord, command me, I’ll come out to you.” He gets out there, he starts walking on the water. Okay. You don’t walk on water ‘cause you’re just feeling good about it. He didn’t go, “Well, you know, I’ve never done it before, but I feel like today might be my day.” You know, you don’t feel good about that. In fact, when he gets out there, he walks on the water, and then there’s disruption on the… There’s storms, and he starts to sink. Jesus comes and grabs him up, takes him into the boat, and he doesn’t say anything to him about his peace.

He didn’t say, “Well, even though there was a storm, why weren’t you at peace?” He talked to him about his faith. He said, “You have little faith.” He didn’t say anything about his peace. So if you start trying to be governed solely from peace, you’re gonna miss God on some things. There’s gonna be moments where God’s gonna ask you to take steps that are uncomfortable for you, and you’re gonna look at that discomfort and go, “This is a lack of peace,” and you’re gonna say no. Well, the Lord calls you out of comfortable places. The thing that’s going to bring your breakthrough about is probably gonna be some form of a response to the Lord that you are not super comfortable with.

For some of you, it’s gonna be writing a big check. I’ll just tell you right now, and that is oof. That’s the one I like the least. I’d much rather get down on the ground and spin around in circles for 30 minutes and go home and have the same amount of money in the bank I had when I came to church, amen. I’ll just roll around down here and have a good time. I’d much rather it be something like that. But God’s gonna call you to do… He’s gonna call you to make the phone call. He’s gonna call you to talk to the person. He’s gonna call you to forgive somebody.

He’s gonna call you to reach out to somebody. He’s gonna call you to step away from something. He’s gonna call you to do something you’ve never done, and then there’s breakthrough on the other side of that. But don’t miss your blessing because you think, “Well, I’m not at peace, so I’m not gonna do that.” So you have to find somewhere between the anchors of peace and faith. And you have to kinda take these anchors in prayer as you seek the Lord. ‘Cause when we get into January, we’re gonna talk about the Lord setting our priorities in prayer. It’s the next portion of the Lord’s Prayer we’re gonna hit.

And when you ask the Lord to set your priorities, the priorities He wants you to set, His priorities and your priorities are different. And if they’re not, you’re your own god and you worship an idol. Sorry, I’m just… The anointing came in right there. And so you’ve gotta… You have to get comfortable getting out. So you have to grab ahold to peace. God will give you peace, but you have to grab ahold to faith. And somewhere between the two of those things, you just kinda have to find a way in prayer and in your life to make decisions that are balanced between those two things.

And you make decisions that you don’t make them under distress, you don’t make them under panic, you don’t make them from a place of freaking out. You just get balanced in a reasonable place of faith and peace, and then you do what the Lord calls you to do. That’s why in Acts chapter 15, the apostles are making some church-wide decisions. These are decisions that are gonna have massive ramifications for the early church, continuing to today. People are still talking about the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 today and what it means for the church today. And they’re making this decision, and they come down to the end of it.

And I’m telling you, the Bible doesn’t say it explicitly, but it is written in there in between the words that this is a pretty contentious meeting. There’s some arguing, there’s some fussing, they’re at each other. And if you study church history, these guys would go into meetings, you know, in the 200s in the early church, and they’d, like, fistfight and stuff. It was awesome. Much cooler than it is now. You know? Right now you might leave with a vote you didn’t like. Back then you leave with a black eye if you’re a heretic. Amen. And so it’s a contentious meeting, and then at the end of it, they just say this.

They write in the letter that they’re sending to all the churches. They just said, “It seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit.” Just reasonable decisions somewhere in the peace and the faith zone, anchored in. This seems like the right move at the right time. And here’s good news. If you’ll make a wrong decision in faith, I have found that God honors ignorant faith faster than He honors solid rejection and disobedience. God will just honor you being silly and in faith. That’s why you can come in… Men, listen to me, okay? I want you to hear me. Some of y’all are this far from supernatural breakthrough.

I don’t know what it is, but I know for some men, getting hands from pockets to hands in the air is like, that’s Peter walking on the water for some of y’all with your sweet little Alabama Baptist upbringing. Amen. And you… The getting from here to here, just get out of that. Take a step of faith. Take a step of faith. Serve. Take a step of faith. You don’t know what to do in the church? Come tonight and be nice to kids who are dressed up like characters. You’ll know who they are. I’m pretty sure you’re a superhero, but I’ve never seen him before. Amen.

And you come in, you just take a step of faith, take a step of faith, take a step of faith. And then when you face distressing situations, you invite his peace into your life, and you invite peace to take over. And I’m telling you, you’ll take steps that are outside of your normal… You’ll do things that are outside of your normal actions. You’ll give God an opportunity through behaviors that you normally wouldn’t do, and all of a sudden, as you take those steps, the peace of God will flood in on you. And you will find that you are able to go to places in the Lord that you thought you never could.

God wants to do a work in your life this year, this coming year. And I mean, y’all can get ahead of me and get a breakthrough now. But if y’all wait till January, I get good testimonies for the POWER27 app. Amen. But I believe God wants to do a work in your life in 2027. God wants to bring supernatural breakthrough to the people in this church in a way that you’ve never seen it before. I don’t want to just come in and have church. And I’d like to have a center of people that just kind of explode into a community, that the community goes, “That guy seems blessed, and every time I meet people like him, they seem blessed.

Well, what do they do?” Well, their church talks about prayer and reading the Bible and meeting with the Lord. Maybe there’s something to that. And guess what? People can do that stuff and not come to this church, but somebody’s gotta be a model. It might as well be you. I think your breakthrough’s gonna be a good testimony to see God do a work in North Mobile. So I wanna see it come about in Jesus’ mighty name.

55:14How to Pray the Names of God

So he’s Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Rapha, Jehovah Shalom. And when you go to prayer, you can pray these things and you can trust that God wants to do these things in your life, that God wants to bring it about.

And that’s not the only time you’re gonna ask the Lord for things. This is the time that you tee up the ball, because you remind yourself who God is, and then as we get into next year and you bring that thing to the Lord that you want done, you already know, “God, I want You to heal my shoulder.” Have you ever heard people pray this? I’m gonna just go back to healing for a moment. I’m gonna pray for everybody who’s sick this morning at 1:00, so I’m not gonna do a call, but we’re gonna pray for you. I’m just feeling that right now. I wasn’t planning on it.

But have you ever gone to somebody and prayed for healing, and they start praying, “Well, Lord, just Your will be done. Your will be done. Well, Lord, if it’s Your will to heal, Lord, heal them.” You know? What if Jesus would’ve prayed that way? And then sometimes people will talk about how death is a reality. Everybody’s gonna die. It’s been appointed unto all men to die. But here, a lot of people will go, “Well, death is the ultimate healing.” Aren’t you grateful that Jesus never gave anybody the ultimate healing? Boy, that’d throw a lot of fun into the middle of Mark.

“Peter, come kill this guy.” Death isn’t the ultimate… That’s not what we’re settling for. Death happens, it comes, it’s a natural reality we take, but healing is healing. And so when we start to pray, is it God’s will to heal? Yeah, it’s God’s will to heal. Why? Because He’s Jehovah Rapha. This is who He is. So you wanna get the character of God before your prayer. So now when you actually bring it up and you go, “Well, is it the will of the Lord to heal me? God, if it’s your will, I just want you to heal this. I’m having this issue in my elbow and I want You to… Okay, no, It’s Your will to heal it.

God, heal this elbow. In Jesus’ name I speak over this elbow today and I say it’s healed in Jesus’ name.” If you got a elbow problem, maybe this is a prophetic word for you. I don’t know. But just, Lord, touch this elbow, bring it back into full health bring it back into restoration. God, I want my full strength back. I don’t even wanna have an upswing on it. I’m believing for a total turnaround on this elbow this morning in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen. And that’s not Sunday, folks, that’s Tuesday. That’s the POWER27 we’re gonna be talking about. That’s not waiting for Sunday, waiting for something to happen down here.

All right. Hallelujah.