The Lord's Prayer

0:00Mark 9: this kind only comes out by prayer

Hallelujah. Well, you can open your Bibles if you have them with you this morning to Mark chapter 9. Mark chapter 9. I want to read a passage of scripture to you that I’m going to launch the message from. I won’t be preaching through this. I want to walk you through a principle found in Mark 9, and I actually preached a message on this particular passage back in the beginning of the year, so in January. So if you want to go to our YouTube channel and go back and look at some of those older messages, there’s a message in there about prayer.

We’re specifically going to be talking today about the Lord’s Prayer. But I want to start here. Mark 9, starting in verse 14. It says, “And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them.” Let me just tell you where we’re at in the text. Jesus and John and James and Peter are coming off of the mount where there was what’s called the Mount of Transfiguration. So they’re coming off of this really spiritual event, okay? And so they come down, and when they’d come to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and scribes arguing with them.

So Jesus is walking into what every senior leader loves to walk into. I’ve left my deputized lieutenants alone for a day, and everybody is screaming at them, amen. So it’s a real encouraging moment for the Lord, I’m sure. And so verse 15, “And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them,” this is what any leader would do, “What is going on here?” And he says, “What are you guys arguing about?” Verse 17, “And someone from the crowd answered him, ‘Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute.

And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams, and he grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out and they were not able.’ And he answered them, ‘O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.’ And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him,” the demon inside the boy, “immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’”

I like that moment right there. It’s just a good reminder that the father has brought him to Jesus to cast the demon out of him. He settled for the disciples, and they weren’t able to do it. Jesus knows what he’s there to do. He knows why, and the boy falls on the ground. He’s having a full-out demonic manifestation, and Jesus just looks at the father and goes, “So how long has that been going on?” Like, Jesus is so unfazed by it. Folks, I need you to hear me this morning. This ain’t in my notes. I’m just feeling it a little bit right now.

You may be going through something and you are freaking out. And you feel like you’ve settled for second best and Jesus has not intervened yet. Listen, just invite the Lord into it. He is not fazed by your situation. He can get in there and work that thing out in a heartbeat. Come on, somebody. Somebody say lickety-split. Amen. You know what I’m saying? Okay, now I’ve preached another message if y’all mess with me. Stop messing with me and I can get through this text. Amen. And Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?”

And he said, “From childhood,” so this has been going on his whole life, “and it has often cast him into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “’If you can’! All things are possible for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe, but help my unbelief.” And when Jesus saw the crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you come out of him and never enter him again.”

And after crying out and convulsing him terribly… Somebody say it got worse before it got better, amen. “It came out, and the boy was like a corpse so that most of them said, ‘He’s dead.’” Some of them thought Jesus killed the boy. “But Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him up and he arose.” And when he entered the house — this is the principle I want you to get, so I kind of preached my way around there for a minute, but I want you to hear this. Verse 28, “When he entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast that demon out?’

And he said to them,” listen to this, “’This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’” Now, some of your Bibles have what scholars are almost positive is a gloss, and it says prayer and fasting. Scholars and people who do Bible translation are almost certain the passage just says prayer. This kind cannot come out through anything but prayer. And I want you to hear me this morning. There are things that can only get accomplished, there are things that can only get done in prayer. Some of you are kicking against the goads and you’re fighting losing battles because you haven’t realized that you’re dealing with something that only gets solved in prayer.

Prayer is the most powerful attribute of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and often the last thing we do. We pray as a result of being out of options, when prayer could actually solve a lot of heartache that you’re going to walk through trying to get something done. In fact, I’d even submit to you this morning that there are times the Lord will not intervene so that you will learn his processes. There are times that the Lord’s not going to just make it go away until you ask him to come in and make it happen. Prayer is powerful. Going into 2027 — and I know it’s early to be talking about 2027, but if Walmart can put out Halloween decorations, then I can talk about 2027.

Amen. And before Halloween is over, that aisle’s going to be a Christmas aisle, Pastor John. They’re going to have it out. It’s getting earlier and earlier and earlier. And I always wonder what happens to all that good stuff when it’s gone, you know? I mean, who’s eating all them Reese’s Christmas trees they took off the shelf prematurely? Walmart, we would receive an offering of all of your leftover Reese’s Pumpkins and Reese’s Trees. Amen. Especially — Ashleigh loves those. But as we look to 2027, I want to start this series now because 2027 is going to be a year where I believe our church becomes a house of prayer.

Jesus said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” If I was to look at one thing we are lacking in our church — and to be honest with you, I feel like this was an upon-arrival thing — we are not a church that is centered around prayer. Our function, our operation, our ministry does not flow from a place of prayer, and I want to see us be a praying church. I’m not talking about a church with five people who pray. I’m talking about a church that is known for prayer. I’m talking about a people that come to church knowing that prayer is going to be part of the life of the church.

I’m talking about a church that new guests come into and go, “My word, those people pray.” We’re praying people. You talk about prayer, you just suck the air out of the room. Man, y’all are just — y’all are sleepy. Somebody get a mainline on the caffeine in here. Somebody start distributing some energy drinks. Amen. Red Bull is coming down your aisle in just a moment. We’ll receive Red Bull communion here in a moment. And so what we’re going to do is spend a considerable amount of time now and through the beginning of the year going through the Lord’s Prayer.

9:07Power 27 and the three obstacles to prayer

I am going to stop towards 2027 and walk you through a process that I’ve taught here before, and I’m going to teach it again, and I’m going to mention it today. You’re going to hear this a lot. We’re going to talk about this a lot in our church. The process of spending 27 minutes a day with Jesus Christ. It’s 27 minutes with Jesus. It’s a simple framework that I’ve broken down, and we’ve used this in our ministry, in other churches. We’ve used it here. We’ve taught it to you. In my book, Here to Here, which we give all of our first-time guests, I talk about spending 27 minutes with Jesus in there, and I actually think in 2027 I’m going to change the name of it to Power 27, because when you pray, you get power.

Amen. And so we’re going to do Power 27. But let me just break down what it is real quick. It takes about 12 minutes a day to read the Bible in one year. If you get a one-year Bible reading plan, it takes about 12 minutes. I say 15 minutes just because, you know, some of y’all are going to do it at 5:00 in the morning and you read a little slower at 5:00 AM. Amen. And so you spend 15 minutes a day reading the scripture. That’s your first 15 minutes. The next seven minutes you spend in prayer. I’ll explain that to you in just a moment. And then you spend five minutes in worship.

People ask, “Why do you spend five minutes in worship?” It’s because that’s about how long worship songs are. You just turn a worship song on. You just spend five minutes worshiping the Lord. Now, the seven minutes in prayer — we do seven minutes because it’s better than five, not as hard as 10. Amen. And if you ain’t never prayed before, you’re going to find out five minutes of prayer ain’t the easiest thing in the world. You know, 45 seconds in to your first time in prayer and you realize, “I don’t know anything else about my life.” Amen. You just can’t think through it.

So we try to get you to seven minutes, and this is the outline that we do. We tell you to thank God for one thing. Thank God for one thing that you’re actually thankful for. Don’t thank him for the, “Lord, we thank you for the day.” Don’t do all of that. Don’t thank him for the day. Don’t thank him for stuff you don’t care about. Don’t thank him for stuff that you think makes you look good to the Lord. You know, if you just got a new air fryer and you’re feeling on top of the world, just say, “Lord, I thank you for that brand-new KitchenAid air fryer. Lord, teach me by the Holy Ghost how to make the best chicken tenders in that air fryer.” You just thank the Lord for what you’re really thankful for.

And then you ask God for three to five things. You come up with three to five things that you want to see the Lord do, and you start to ask the Lord to do those things. That’s seven minutes in prayer. Now, the goal of the seven-minute prayer and the goal of the 27 minutes is not for you to pray seven minutes and to spend 27 minutes with the Lord. It’s to get you started. It’s to get your process of spending time with the Lord growing. It’s to give you a base that you can get started with. I have a little bit of awe with preachers who talk about prayer to people for the first time, talking to people who do zero minutes of prayer and talking about praying for three hours.

You know? And it’s like, man, there’s got to be an in between. You know? And so the 27 minutes, that is designed to help you pray. So we’re going to be talking about that more and more as we get to 2027. In fact, what we’re going to do — because we’re going into 2027, and I’ve been teaching people these last several years 27 minutes with Jesus, which we’re going to start calling Power 27. Somebody say Power 27. What we’re going to do is start the year — and a lot of churches do a fast at the beginning of the year, but we’re not going to do that.

We’re going to spend the first 27 days of 2027 spending a minimum of 27 minutes with the Lord Jesus every single day. We’re going to start the day after our first Sunday, so I think we start on January 4th, and we will end three or four Sundays after that. I’m not trying to tell y’all these dates. I don’t know. What virtue is there in me telling you these dates? But we’re going to end on a Sunday, and we’re going to come in here, and I believe after 27 days of having 27 minutes with all the people in the church spending time with the Lord, we’re going to see God do something in that service that might just blow your mind.

Amen. So that’s how we’re starting the year. And the reason that we want to start working through some stuff with prayer — we want to get these formats down, we want to get some frameworks, we want to do some teaching to help you pray. The reason for that is that there are usually, generally — I’m sure there’s some exception to the rule, but in my experience — there are really three obstacles to prayer. Three things that keep you out of prayer. One is discomfort.

If you’re not comfortable, you will not pray. So the first obstacle is discomfort. The second obstacle is condemnation. I think I actually have these on the screen. Can I get these on the screen? Yeah, here we go. The second obstacle is condemnation. If you don’t feel worthy, you will not go to pray. If every time you go to prayer, you try to enter into the presence of the Lord based on your own merit — you know you well enough. You may know some other people not well enough and think that they’re, like, spiritual enough to go in and pray, but you know you well enough.

You know the reason that you should not be in there. You know the reason. So the second one is condemnation. The third one is content. So if you get past the discomfort, if you get comfortable in prayer, if you get past the condemnation of feeling like you’re not worthy, that you’re not able to get before the Lord and actually go to the throne of grace — if you get there, you still have to know what to do when you get in there. And those are three obstacles that can keep you from getting active in prayer. And so the purpose of this series is, I’m going to help you with some of those odds and ends, but the main thing I’m going to give you over the next couple of months — the next several months, I should say — is I’m going to give you content to pray.

I’m going to help you. I’m going to teach through the Lord’s Prayer in a way that you’re filled up with enough content that when you go to pray, you’re going to have enough stuff you can draw on. And if you get in there and you go, “I don’t know what to do right now,” you can at least click a YouTube video of these messages and go, “Okay, well, I’ll say that stuff he’s talking about right there.” We’re going to fill you up with content. Now, the Lord’s Prayer in its essence is a framework for prayer. It’s a framework. And if you can get the Lord’s Prayer in you and internalize it and follow that framework, your prayer time is, one, going to enhance well beyond the seven-minute framework that I just gave you, but also it’s going to give you content, it’s going to give you a framework you can draw to mind that you can pray throughout the day.

As Ephesians says, to pray without ceasing, amen? And so you can continue to pray throughout the day. And so I want you to get this outline in you. I want you to get this thing inside of you, and mainly the Lord’s Prayer itself. And so what we’re going to start doing today is — we may not do it every Sunday depending on what’s going on, but every Sunday that I’m preaching on the Lord’s Prayer at least, we are going to recite the Lord’s Prayer as a church, and we’re going to recite it together. And so there are three versions of the Lord’s Prayer.

There’s one in Matthew 6, there’s one in Luke 11, and then there is the historic church version of it that is just a little — it’s written in a way that’s better for reciting as a body and for memorizing, and nothing crazy different about them, but it’s okay to use the historic church version. And that’s what we’re going to use because it’s the one that most of you probably already know. And so what I want to do is recite the Lord’s Prayer. I have it here. I’m going to read it for you one time, and then we’re going to say it together.

And every Sunday we’re going to do this. I’m going to read it for you one time just in case you’ve never heard it before, and kind of get the cadence, and then we’re going to read it together. So this is just me. 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.

This is the only time in a Spirit-filled church you say amen. Every other time it’s amen. This is your pass, though. Amen. All right, because you don’t sound Spirit-filled when you start going, “Amen, brother.” All right, so everybody, I want us to say it out loud together. Here we go. 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. And then you can give the Lord a good praise right there. Every Sunday we’ll do that. Now, different preachers have broken this down different ways. There’s certainly several ways to approach this. I’m going to do it a little my own way. There’s some great books. Dr. Yonggi Cho wrote a book on the Lord’s Prayer. Larry Lea wrote a great book on the Lord’s Prayer that taught basically a whole generation of preachers how to pray, amen. And so we’re going to address this a little bit from the Jason Mayfield school of thought this morning.

But there’s essentially seven parts to the Lord’s Prayer. Now, they’re not entirely different than the seven minutes that I taught you. So the seven minutes is, we thank God for one thing, then we ask for three to five things, and then you transition into five minutes of worship. The Lord’s Prayer actually follows a very similar path to that. It’s just more involved. It’s going to give you more content. And so what we’re going to do is, every time I get done with one section of the seven, we’re going to start a new series.

So every section, all seven sections are going to be their own series, and that’s how we’re going to preach through the next several months on the Lord’s Prayer. So seven parts to the Lord’s Prayer, and the first one is this. I want to break this down for us all the way through so you can get kind of an idea. If you ever need an overview, you can come back to this message. I’m almost not preaching for you today, I’m preaching for the library, so we have this to come back to so we can learn to pray, amen.

20:42Our Father: grace

So the first section, “Our Father who art in heaven,” is simply our Father.

When we say our Father, it’s very important that you understand we’re talking to our Father. It’s our Father, and this is a moment where we get into the throne room, we get before the Lord, and we hyper-focus on the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We hyper-focus on grace. Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.” Now, this is going to be our first series that we’re going to start next week, because it is absolutely imperative that if you’re going to be a person of prayer… I think it’s imperative for any believer in any area of life, but especially if you’re going to be a person of prayer.

It’s imperative for you to have some comprehensive understanding of the sufficient finished work of Jesus Christ on your behalf. Amen. If you can get your brain around what exactly Jesus Christ has done for you. We have simplified the cross a little bit in the church, and it is true, but it’s a little bit of a truism, meaning that it’s true, but the application of it’s not quite there — that we say that Jesus died for us because he loves us. That is true. That is significantly void of the power of what Jesus Christ did at the cross.

Jesus did not just die on the cross because he loved. Jesus flipped the whole world on a different axis by dying on the cross. What was accomplished at the cross is so significant that when you can really wrap your brain around it and understand what he has done on your behalf, but also what that credits to your account with God the Father, it changes how you live, it changes the power you walk in, and it’s going to change the way you pray. Jesus is fully sufficient. And I need you to hear this. Because Jesus went to the cross, even though you are unworthy to ask anything of a holy God, you are worthy to ask everything of a holy God.

Jesus has changed your standing. And so when you come to the Lord in prayer and you show up — because keep in mind, the scripture we read, it says, “Come boldly before the throne of grace in your time of need.” I’m telling you, when you show up before the Lord like you belong there, you pray different. When you come in and you don’t know, you’re just contrite, and you need to be broken to some degree. But man, we hyper-fixate on being broken. We hyper-fixate on weeping and crying and being sad and sorry. And no.

Yeah, I am sad and sorry, except for the fact that Jesus Christ has covered me with his own sufficient blood that flowed from Calvary. And now I’m nobody, but I’m somebody in Jesus’ name. And when I come into the throne room, I don’t have to wait for the Lord to put out his scepter anymore. It’s come in. If you’ve got the blood on you, you come in. You’ve got freedom in this place. You come and ask what you need. And when you come into prayer, don’t worry. It’s just like when your kids start talking nice to you. The Lord knows you want something.

So you come in and you get in front of the throne of grace. You get there like you belong there. And this is back to what I was talking about, the three obstacles. Of the three obstacles to prayer — discomfort, condemnation, and content — we can help you with the content. Time can help you with the discomfort. But every time you go into prayer, you have to tame condemnation. Every time you go to prayer, there’s a thousand legitimate reasons that you should not be able to do that. But there is one significant reason called the cross that makes none of them matter.

So you have to tame condemnation. Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” If you don’t keep condemnation at bay, it will eat you up, it’ll eat you alive, and it’ll keep you away from everything that can produce power in your life. The function of condemnation is not to make you feel bad. The devil don’t care if you feel good or feel bad. I don’t know if y’all have sinned, but most people do that and it don’t feel terrible. The goal is not to make you feel bad. And if sin isn’t fun, you’ve done it wrong, by the way, but just in case you didn’t know. Amen.

And so the goal is not to make you feel bad. The goal is to keep you away from any action of faith. It is to neutralize you in the faith zone. It’s to cut your spiritual legs out from under you and keep you from accessing the things that actually work. The problem is, oftentimes we feel like we need to be good enough to ask God for things, but you can’t change on the front end because prayer is the substance by which things are changed. Amen. So if you don’t feel good enough to pray, you’re never going to be good enough, because that’s the gateway you have to go through.

And let me tell you something. Prayer just does something. Prayer just does something in your life. I can’t explain it. I mean, I probably could walk you through some stuff, but prayer just changes your life. It changes who you are. It changes how you behave. It changes how people behave towards you. It has a power that just seeps out and gets on everything. So if you let condemnation keep you out, oh, that’s not good. That’s not good. So you say, “Our Father,” and then you have to declare, “God, you’re my Father. Why are you my Father?

Well, you’re my Father because the Bible says in Romans 5:17 that ‘Those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness shall reign in life.’ I’ve received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness. You’re my Father because 1 John chapter 4 says that ‘There is no fear in love.’ I don’t have to be afraid because I’ve been loved by God, because it’s not what I’ve done. It’s not that I have loved God, because in this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us by giving his Son as propitiation for our sins.

So because of these things, because I am the righteousness of God in Christ and I have become a new creation, I am able to come before the throne of grace.” You take some time, you say, “Our Father,” and then you start declaring your righteousness over yourself. I’m going to teach you for four weeks on that. Get ready, because if we get out of that and we aren’t in revival, we did something wrong. Amen. Come on.

28:01Hallowed be thy name: the names of God

Number two, the second thing: hallowed be thy name. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. When we get here, “hallowed be your name,” we’re talking about the character of God.

The character of God. I want you to see this. In Exodus chapter 3, Moses is having his encounter with the burning bush, and in verse 14 it says, “God said to Moses” — when Moses asked who he was, “What’s your name?” — he says, “’I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.’” The Lord does identify himself on occasion as Jehovah, Yahweh, the Lord. But God, in his self-professed name, is, “I’m God.” That’s who I am. I am that I am. I am. However, people who would write the Bible would observe things about the Lord and attribute it to him in name.

So there are many names in the scripture that tell you the character of God. God identifies himself as God, but people who observed how God works would write about him and give him a name. And so knowing these names helps us to pray his character. For instance, Exodus 15:26 says this: “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 keep his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord your healer.’” Well, in the Hebrew, that phrase right there, “the Lord your healer,” is Jehovah Rapha.

Jehovah Rapha. That’s a name of God, meaning I am the Lord who heals, God who heals. That reveals his character. His character is revealed by his name, and knowing and meditating on the character of God impacts the way you pray and the results you get. If I had to guess, most of the time when you pray — if we were to really do some surgery on it — it looks more like a begging session than an expectation session. I’m asking God to do it. I don’t really think he will, because either I’m not good enough, or this is not something that he does. So when you know his character, you know what the Lord will do.

When you’re aware of his character, you can know what to expect from the Lord, and your expectation will impact your results. So knowing the names of God — when you can start to pick up on just some names of God. Jehovah Tsidkenu, that means he’s our righteousness. Jehovah M’kaddesh, he’s the one who sanctifies. Jehovah Shalom, he’s our peace. Jehovah Shammah, he’s the God who is there. Amen. The Bible says he’s a very present help in a time of need. He’s the God who’s there. He’s Jehovah Rapha, he’s the God who heals.

Jehovah Jireh, he’s the God who provides. Jehovah Rohi, he’s my shepherd. Jehovah Nissi, he’s my banner who goes before me in the things that I battle in my life. When you know some of the names of God… There’s another name of God. Baal Perazim is a name of God. Baal Perazim means God of the breakthrough. Amen. He’s the God who causes breakthrough. And so when you know the names of God, you can call on his… Okay, you say, “Well, I don’t know any of the Hebrew, so I don’t know how to know the names of God.” Well, this is where songs come in real helpful.

Now, we sing one here. We sing, [worship] It ain’t on the screen. I don’t know it, Miss Sheila. I was waiting for her to telepathically send it. [worship] Now I have another one I know. I know the older version, the [worship] All right. Amen. [worship] And so there’s three names right there. I just have them.

I can say, “Jehovah Shalom, God, I thank you for your peace. You’re a God who brings peace.” And if I’m not having peace in a situation, I know that peace should be there. And you can begin to pray for peace. “I’m coming into the holidays and I know there’s going to be some turbulence, but you’re the God of peace. Uncle Jeff is coming to the house and it’s going to be a show. And Lord, we’re just praying peace over the…” You know, you just pray. Amen. And so the names of God, that gives you God’s character. So some songs that say the names of God — if you find a name of God song, you need to get that song in your spirit.

So, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

33:43Thy kingdom come: priorities

We’re talking about getting our priorities in alignment with the Lord. Our priorities in alignment with the Lord. I need you to hear me. If you’re under pressure, if you’re in a difficult situation, if money feels tight or the schedule feels hectic, I need you to hear me. It is very easy to just do the next right thing, which I would encourage you to do in wisdom.

The best thing to do is always the next right thing. Just do the next right thing. However, I’m not God, and I don’t know what’s in front of you. There is a power to pausing and saying, “Lord, I’ve been praying for seven minutes and now I’m praying the Lord’s Prayer like my preacher told me to. And I’m starting the day here, and I need to take a moment and know how you would like my day ordered, how you would like my week ordered.” And I’m going to tell you, if you keep a calendar — you got you one of them little booklets, or you got it on your phone — this is a good time to get your calendar in front of you and begin to pray through some of those things.

“God, I’ve got a meeting at 9:00 o’clock with Terry. How do you want that meeting to go? I’m planning on saying this. Do you have something different that you’d want me to say? I’m planning on telling Terry that we ain’t putting up with his mess no more at work. Is that what you want me to say?” And you never know in that moment when all of a sudden the Lord says somehow, some sense, some scripture — we have a book, Here to Hear, that will teach you how to hear from the Lord — but some way the Lord will give you some inclination that you need to ask about Terry’s mother before you start. And for all you know, the minute you bring up his mother, an extreme amount of clarity comes in on the Terry problem.

And rather than telling Terry off, you find out that Terry just needs something that you’ve got called the Holy Ghost. Amen. And it’s as simple as that, but you’re never going to know that. We think we live in the impromptu Spirit-led life, and to some degree we do. But I’m telling you, it is hard to have a good spiritual Wi-Fi signal if you don’t have a good spiritual ethernet signal. Come on. For all the nerds in here, amen. You gotta have a hard line at some point. Well, your hard line is prayer. Your hard line is prayer. So you get your priorities before the Lord.

It’s important to let the Holy Spirit shape the priorities of our day. Amen.

36:58Daily bread: provision

Number four. “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.” Give us this day our daily bread. I’m talking about physical provision. Physical provision. And I want to teach here for just a moment. I’ve run my clock out again, but I’m just going to preach through it. I try to get y’all out of here in an hour, but you’ll notice that it’s normally an hour and a half. ‘Cause I’m the pastor, gosh darn it.

And I’ll preach till I’m done. Amen. Malachi 3:8. I want to take a minute and teach through this for a second, because I pray something over y’all every week when we do the offering. It’s been a while since I have come back and just told you why I pray that. Every week I pray, “Lord, for every tither, faithful giver in the house, meet their needs, protect their stuff, bless them in ways that are obvious to others.” And sometimes I throw in, “Especially in front of their obnoxious neighbor, in Jesus’ name.” ‘Cause if I’m going to be blessed in front of other people, I want it to be people I don’t like.

Amen. Some of y’all are too sanctified when y’all come in here to get along with me. Y’all need to act like you really act, and we’ll all have a good time in church. Amen. And so I want to show you a little bit of that. Malachi 3:8 says, “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ Well, in tithes and contributions. You’re cursed with a curse, for you’re robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test,” says the Lord of hosts.

That’s a real important line there, because the Lord says you can actually get a pretty good one-to-one on whether or not this works. And let me just toss this in. This is what is not in the notes. Giving is one of the high marks of spiritual maturity, when you tithe. And I want you to know, because the tithe gives you so much of a measurable history with the supernatural work of God, it can impact the way you pray as well. Because when you tithe… We got a testimony this week from someone — I won’t say the name — someone who came back to the church, started tithing, and immediately got a raise at work, and something else happened that I don’t remember.

But I mean, they started tithing, and immediately the blessings started coming in. And so you can see a real one-to-one on the supernatural hand of God with tithing. And that’s what I like. It’s one of the only things that there’s a direct exchange almost. And so the Lord’ll prove himself in that. “And thereby put me to the test,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down on you a blessing,” listen, “until there is no more need” — meet their needs. “I will rebuke the devourer for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear fruit” — protect their stuff.

“Says the Lord of hosts. Then all the nations will call you blessed” — bless them in ways that are obvious to others. “For you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.” Now, I just wanted to touch that because I pray that every week. I want you to know. I want you to hear me. You need to talk to the Lord about your money. You need to talk to Jesus about your money. I don’t know about you, but I need stuff. I want stuff. Stuff is in the direct vision of my life. Okay? Stuff is there. And because stuff matters to me, I promise you it matters to the Lord.

Your finances need to be an ongoing conversation with the Lord. The reason for that — is it because I’m a prosperity preacher? Maybe. I don’t know where some of y’all are at, so I’ll leave it on a maybe. But do I believe God wants you to prosper? Yes. Absolutely. The Kingdom of God will not be served by everybody who’s born again being broke, busted, and disgusted. Believe it or not, some of us have to pay for this stuff. There are kingdom things that have to happen. We’re ministering all over the world right now. And you gotta understand, the cameras did not show up. They cost.

The screen doesn’t just show up. It costs. The neighbor boxes don’t just show up, they cost. There are things that cost. We need people to prosper. I want you to go get before the Lord and ask him to give you more money than you know what to do with, and then maybe he’ll tell you your preacher’s got some ideas. Amen. Hallelujah. I’m serious. You need to pray over your finances. The Bible that I use at home, just by happenstance right now, I actually have a record in there of things that I’ve asked the Lord to do financially, and then I have a column next to it of when he did it.

So you need to talk to the Lord about your money. You need to talk back to me with some amens or something. Amen. Y’all are making me nervous. I feel like I’m splitting the church right now talking about money in church. But here’s the reality. Money touches so much of your life that if you’re not bringing it to the Lord, you’re leaving a lot of your life untouched. I mean, your power bill touches a lot of your life. Your power bill touches everything. You know, some of y’all are busy, and you want to lose weight, and you just can’t figure out the diet thing.

And if you could just do one of them meal box things that they have on the internet, but it’s $800 a month, and that’s excessive. But if you had the money for it, you’d be thinner already. I’m telling you, it touches every — am I wrong? You know, it touches every area of your life. It touches every area of your life. You want to make memories with your kids? It costs money. Your kids want to be in band or football or soccer, and you don’t want to take a second mortgage out on your house? You need to pray, amen. Money touches so much.

Your parents are getting older. Money touches so much. Your kids are grown, they’ve got grandkids, you don’t live close to one another, you want to see everybody at Christmas. They can’t afford the flight. Granny, you’re going to have to write a check to Delta if you want it. It touches everything. It touches everything. So you need money to be a conversation with the Lord. And I want you to hear me. I want to be very clear, and I feel like I have a good record of this. Your money problems will not get solved simply in prayer and simply in the tithe, because the Lord will protect you from yourself. Some of y’all would do some dumb stuff if you had enough money.

But listen to me. There’s some stuff with your finances that are only going to happen through the tithe, through sowing a seed, and through prayer. It’s not the only thing in the situation. You gotta work. You don’t work, you don’t eat. If you have no job and you’re not willing to go do something that’s beneath you, prayer won’t get you out of it. But I will tell you what — doing a job you think is beneath you and taking it to the Lord in prayer, that’ll change your situation quickly. Amen. Quickly. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and drop this.

You can probably pray yourself into another tax bracket. And listen, those of you who are doing well financially, you need to do this more than anybody. You need to do this more than anybody. God wants to take you to a whole nother level financially, and I’m telling you, you get into the secret place, you get some revelation around it, God’s going to move in your life financially. “Give us this day our daily bread.” I need needs, but needs are not most of our problems. When our needs are not met in America, it’s because we’re idiots. It’s not because we don’t have our needs met.

But you can’t buy three cartons of cigarettes a day and your needs be met. You can’t say, “I don’t have money for food.” Well, why are you smoking? I mean, a pack of cigarettes costs like $102, my God. I drive by gas stations and see the signs and think, “How do people afford this?” And if you smoke, God bless you, I guess. Strange incense to burn in prayer, but whatever you gotta do. Amen. Hallelujah. Number five. I’m getting too funny, I have to move on. Amen.

46:01Forgive us our trespasses: relationships

Number five: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Number five is relationships. Relationships. Romans 12 says, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” So far as it depends on you. Sometimes, you know, it takes two to tango. But it also only takes one to shut a tango down. So you do as much as you can, and if other people don’t want to cooperate in the process, you gotta escalate how you get to peace with those folks. But one of the best ways to escalate, and maybe one of the best ways to de-escalate, is by praying through your relationships.

What relationships should you pray through? All of them. If you got relationships, you need to pray. And I’m not saying that you pray for everybody — sometimes when things are just hanging out with some people, you will have a sense of when things need to be prayed for. But I’m pretty consistent on my wife and my kids, so you want to kind of stay consistent there. Wife and kids. If you have a boss, you need to pray for your boss. Good, bad, and indifferent. The Bible says to pray for those who lead you, okay? We ought to pray for those who are in government positions as much as we can, as well as we can.

But we need to pray, especially when things are happening. We want to just pray, “God, give them wisdom.” And just by the way, I need you to know, you don’t have to agree with a politician for God to give them wisdom. Amen. Like, if you don’t like Donald Trump and something crazy’s going on, you need to pray that Donald Trump operates in wisdom. If we get another president in there that you don’t like, and something happens, you need to pray that they function and operate in wisdom. And you ought to pray, really, when we have Democrat leaders — not because they’re Democrats, but because it will be harder for the Lord to speak to them through any church leaders, because we don’t know how to behave. Because rather than treating leaders with some measure of honor and all people with some measure of dignity, we act like total idiots in the church around these people.

There’s pastors that preach you can’t be saved if you’re a Democrat. Like the cross works till it goes blue. Amen. Well, the blood is red, brother. I promise you we could find a sermon somewhere on the internet where someone has really said that. And so we gotta pray for those people, pray for those relationships. When you have a family member who’s got something on you, you need to pray. Pray for your pastor. He makes inappropriate political jokes from the platform and he needs protection.

Pray for your pastor. Pray for people who you’re in relationship with, who you’re having issues with, where there’s friction. The lady that you work with that’s driving you crazy, pray for her. Pray for her. And the reason that we do this is most of this stuff could get solved in prayer. I’ll tell you, I think your offenses would get solved quicker if you took them to the secret place before you took them to the source. Right? Let the Lord get it off of you. And that’s not easy.

That is not easy. If Ashleigh does something that I don’t like, it is easier for me to roll in the house and give her a piece of my mind than it is to humble myself and say, “Lord, she did this. It’s bothering me. Can you somehow, by the power of the Holy Ghost, make this just not a thing for me?” That’s a tougher prayer to pray. That’s a hard one. Because the flesh wants to just, “Well, let me tell you something.” Amen. And so you gotta be mindful of that. And I also think you ought to apologize in the secret place first.

Before you go and apologize, why don’t you get in the secret place and forgive them before the Lord? Just say, “Lord, I’m just going to come to you in the courts of heaven here, and I’m going to release the transgression of this person against me before you. Or I’m going to ask you for forgiveness of my transgression.” And then you go to them and then you apologize, and you can really mean it. Rather than going and apologizing and — I also like to apologize to Ashleigh while also letting her know what her fault was in the whole situation.

“Hey, I’m sorry I yelled at you and broke that lamp, but you know, you did get me riled up.” You know? And so you gotta go to the secret place first. But I’m telling you, what’s interesting about this — “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” — we need to understand this relationally. You receive in accordance to how you give. You ever had them people that are always picking on everybody and then they get picked on and they’re whimpering? They’re making jokes at everybody’s expense. The joke gets made about them, and all of a sudden they’re just in the fetal position.

You know, we say you can dish it out, but you can’t take it, right? Well, that’s because you receive in accordance to how you give. You receive in accordance to how you give. So we pray about our relationships.

51:41Deliver us from evil: protection

Number six: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Jeremy, I’m going to have you come on up to the keyboard. I want you to notice in this passage that it says, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” not deliver us from sin. Deliver us from evil, not deliver us from sin. As believers, we know — Ephesians chapter 2 tells us this — that we are being opposed by unseen forces.

Everything in your life is not a spiritual issue, and everything in your life is not an unspiritual issue. There are just moments where you are going to face measures of spiritual opposition. Not necessarily oppression, not necessarily possession, but opposition. There’s just a force that’s opposed between me and where I want to get. There’s something that’s in between. Something is opposing me. In fact, this week, getting into this, I think we’re about to have major breakthrough over the next several months in our church. God’s about to do something crazy in our church.

I’m almost certain of it. And I try not to spiritualize everything. I try to make sure I’m reading things right. But I’m telling you, this week Ashleigh and myself have both had an abnormal variety of physical issues. I’ve had three or four things physically that have made no sense in my body. I’ve had issues with my mouth this week. Last night I was having issues with my stomach that are very abnormal for me. I have hurt my back in two different locations this week, which is not normal for me because I don’t do anything. So it shouldn’t be getting hurt.

The mouth one makes sense, amen. So I’ve just faced this. And then at some point you start going, “That is some type of evil oppression. That is something that’s coming against me.” There are issues that you’re going to face in your life, and typically your issues are going to be one of two things. It’s either going to be a bad decision you make, or it’s going to be someone making a successful move against you. Whether that someone be someone in the natural or someone in the spiritual.

I’m talking about, God protect us from evil. You protect us. And sometimes evil isn’t just a person or a principality — though it often is. Sometimes evil is a… Like, we’ve got some leaks in this building, and some of them are deferred maintenance. Some of them are evil. Some of them are evil. And you just have to go, “Lord, touch that, and when I have the money to fix it, I’m going to fix it. But I’m praying against this thing.” When we went upstairs, we started the renovation upstairs, and we saw water coming in we didn’t know about.

That is evil. And we address it, but we pray against these things. We pray. We pray a hedge of protection. You hear that a lot. We pray a hedge of protection. Protect us. Because there’s an incoming against you. The minute that you give your life to Jesus Christ, there’s an incoming against you. The minute that you step up in your faith, there’s an incoming against you. You want to know why you need prayer when you tithe, that God will meet your needs and protect your stuff, protect your stuff, protect your stuff? It’s because the minute you begin to obey the Lord in the tithe, you position yourself for so much blessing that that’s the day the devil wants to kick your air conditioner.

Not with his left foot, with his right foot. He wants that thing out of commission. Why? Because he wants to put you under pressure. It’s evil coming against you. That’s evil. When you become a person of prayer, you’re going to have every reason to not pray. When you become a person of prayer, everything that triggers condemnation in your life is going to start to happen. Everything that makes you feel disqualified, it’s coming. It’s going to happen this week. You and your wife are going to get into a blow up. You’re going to say something on the job. Somebody’s going to finally push you to say them words you don’t normally say.

And now, because you dropped the F word when a sledgehammer hit your foot, you think you’re not allowed to go into the secret place. But everybody doesn’t break their forearm and go, “Gee whiz.” Well, you responded in the flesh. My flesh is what needed a response. Amen. It’s what got hurt. And so you find yourself, and now all of a sudden you go, “I can’t.” So you’re going to feel that. Well, we pray against that stuff. So Larry Lea, who I mentioned earlier, who wrote a book on the Lord’s Prayer — really a prayer guide through the Lord’s Prayer — he says at this moment what he does is he goes to Ephesians 6, and he takes the armor of God.

And he just takes a moment in prayer, and he symbolically, physically puts the armor of God on, because you’re going to get hit. You’re going to get hit. Something’s going to happen. If the devil’s going to hit you in the head, you ought to have the helmet of salvation on. If the devil’s going to punch you in the chest, you ought to put on the breastplate of righteousness. Amen. You’ve got to gird up. You’ve got to shod your feet. You’ve got to get ready. You need the sword of the Spirit that you carry around with you, and you have it in you, and you need this stuff. And everything that comes against you — I just want to say this because I’m practical enough — everything that comes against you isn’t evil.

Sometimes you’re just dumb. When you’re doing five things and you’re trying to do them all at once, and you’re holding the coffee cup right here because you’re not going to spill it, but you’re going to take something out of the oven, and the coffee spills all over you — that wasn’t the devil. You’re just too lazy to set it on the counter and take two more steps. Cost yourself an hour for 30 seconds, you know? And so there are moments where there’s just an evil and you just have to pray. You have to be ready. I want to be under the attack of the enemy and almost not know it.

Amen. Just be unfazed by it. You pray, “God, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

58:43Thine is the kingdom: worship

Number seven: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever.” The last thing that you do, similar to the seven minutes, is you end with worship. You end with worship. You end with worship. I think there’s something powerful about taking a moment and getting your eyes off of what your life is like and what you’ve got going on, and you put your eyes on how big God is. In fact, the best way to leave the secret place and enter the public square is to make much of your big God.

Psalm 34 says, “Magnify the Lord with me.” Magnify him. Make him big in your eyes, “and let us exalt his name together.” Amen. Now, the way that I do this is I use a song. So with the 27 minutes and with this, I encourage you to get you a song that you know. Get you a worship song that you know, preferably one that makes much of God. And a good way to do that is make it a slightly older song. Some of these new songs are fine. It gets a little me-focused. We’re getting better though. I will say we’re turning a corner on that, I feel like.

But sometimes a little bit of an older song can help, and you get something in you that just makes much, it just exalts the Lord. And if it does talk about you — okay, because some of these songs do talk about you, but they’re not about you — it needs to make less of you and more of the Lord. It needs to de-emphasize you and make much of the Lord and his great power. And so you just find an old song. And what I’m going to do is share a song with you this morning that I would use. And I’ve got a video, and we’re just going to sit, and you don’t have to stand.

If the Lord touches you and ministers to you, you can. But this is what I would do at the end of my prayer time. You could implement this in the next 15 minutes. I mean, if you were bad, you could find songs right now on your phone while the song plays and just go, “I’m going to worship the Lord to that when I get home.” And you find a song that ministers to you, reminds you how good the Lord is. This is an older song. It’s an older video. It’s got older text. It looks old. This isn’t newfangled and fancy, and we’re just going to take a moment, we’re going to worship the Lord, and then I’m going to conclude the service, okay?

Y’all good with that? Okay. Let’s play this. Then you exit the secret place, and you come back into life, and you’ve got something in you that you can carry around. I’m telling you, I’ve been talking about the power of these little songs that you get in you, and you can carry on. I’ve got a little song that goes, [worship]

You get little songs like that in you, and you start to have little issues in the day and stuff, and you just go, [worship] I’m feeling the oppression of this, whatever’s going on around me, [worship] You have these little songs in you that you can lean on throughout the day. Are they crutches? Yeah. But you limp. Is it less powerful than prayer?

Yeah. Is it more accessible than prayer? Yeah. Because it’s got time, tempo, a key, and Darlene Zschech to help you out. Amen. It’s the way I exit prayer. And you want to know where some of that time comes from — as you get into a song and then you… Man, I’ve had days where I’ve sat with a song for 45 minutes and just let it play over and over and over, and just experienced the presence of the Lord right there. And you want to know something? If you want to get super spiritual, that sounds so cheap. I have seen God do things in altar ministry that blew my mind, that just came out of me kind of walking out of 20 minutes of singing a song over and over again.

Not praying the devil out and the Holy Ghost in, but just having a moment in the presence of the Lord. And so you can implement that today. That’s part of the 27 minutes. 12 minutes in the Bible, seven minutes in prayer, five minutes in worship. You can start that today, and you end powerful, you end strong. If you received the Word of the Lord today, give the Lord a great big hand clap in the room. Hallelujah.