I'm trying to feel what feels right to start this.
I don't like the interruptions, like the mic doesn't work and this, that and the other,
because it gets your mind off of where it should be.
It's another reason I try not to make myself too available before services,
because inevitably someone will come in with some kind of complaint that they want to talk about.
And it's like... and it takes your... it's not that you can't talk about it.
It gets your mind off of and onto thinking about stuff it shouldn't be thinking about.
So let's just start with some prayer.
Thank you Father for your goodness and your mercy.
Thank you Father for your children.
Thank you for your overwhelming love and kindness towards us.
Thank you for everything you do for us.
We worship you.
We give you praise.
We worship you. We worship you. We worship you.
Le'eremono sananete menesiotto comonota.
We welcome you Holy Spirit.
Come speak to us.
Talk to us. Work with us this morning.
Not only during the prayer time, but during the service time.
Speak to us. Work with us in Jesus' name.
In Jesus' name.
So I want to talk about something this morning I've talked about before.
The Lord asked me this question maybe that's a few years.
I'd say two or three, but it's probably five or six,
because the older I get the worse I am on.
It didn't seem that long ago.
Really, it was that long ago.
So it's back a ways.
He asked me this question.
He said, when you pray,
why do you pray like you're trying to convince me to do something
that I already want to do?
Which really made me stop and think.
Because, well, most of us learn to pray by watching somebody else.
If we grew up in a Christian home,
we probably learned to pray by watching our parents
or if we went to church and watched the people pray there,
we learned to pray that way.
And this is something interesting
that I've noted over the years.
And it's just, I just say it as a point of
you were given what you were given,
now you're going to have to deal with that.
For instance, I was raised in an assembly of God background.
And there's some really good things about that.
And there's some things that are not all that great.
When it comes to prayer, there's some good things.
And then there's some things that are not all that great.
So I learned to pray like the assemblies of God prayed.
And my experience, of course I'm not,
I didn't know the assemblies of God around the world.
I knew my church that I grew up in.
And my experience there was
what God asked me the question about.
Why are you asking me to do something
in a way where you're trying to convince me
when I already promised it?
And I'll give examples of that.
So I won't sit there long because we'll come back to that.
If you were raised in,
I had my best friend in high school was a Baptist
and had a few Baptist friends, good friends.
So it's nothing against them.
This is how they prayed, though.
Very short, very choppy,
because it's like it didn't flow out of them.
They had to stop and think what would be the next phrase.
And at least once in the prayer,
it would be if it's your will, God.
If it's your will, it would be nice.
And that's how they prayed.
My Lutheran friends, we had a few.
There was a small Lutheran church in town.
My Lutheran friends didn't pray much at all.
You never heard them.
And my Catholic friends never prayed.
They were quiet.
They never prayed out loud.
I mean, they prayed the rosary and stuff,
but it was quiet.
They didn't verbalize anything.
At least that was our community.
So when you come into adulthood,
that's what you bring with you.
So if as an adult,
you experienced Christ in a salvation way
that was different than early on
when you were growing up,
as an adult, then you're going to bring
that habit pattern with you.
You're going to really struggle to pray out loud
as a Catholic.
It's nothing wrong with you
other than that's how you were trained.
That's how you were taught.
So to pray out loud is going to take some practice.
It's going to take some work.
If you were like my Baptist friend,
to learn how to flow
and get rid of the attitude of,
well, we'll pray and we'll just see what God does
because we don't know what his will is,
you're going to have to lose that
if you want to pray scriptural prayers.
And you're going to have to be able to pray.
It will eventually, as you practice,
it will eventually get past one sentence,
two sentences, chopped up, broken.
That's just, in my experience,
that's how they learned how to pray,
and that's how they pray.
If you were raised full gospel,
faith, charismatic, this, that, and the other,
if you were, and I'll just come from my perspective,
everybody was probably brought up differently
whatever church they were tied into.
But if you were raised like me,
we would convince God
that he needed to do something.
And I'll just give you some examples.
Like, for instance, coming to a service,
I presume everybody prays for the services.
If not, we should teach a lesson
on why you need to pray for the church service.
But I'm presuming everybody prays for the church service,
so let's start at that presumption.
Lord, we really want you to move this morning.
If you could come and do something,
we would, God, we're just hungry for you to show up.
We're just hungry for you to do something with us
and work in the service
and that your spirit would manifest.
And please, God.
See, everything we just prayed
according to the word he already wants to do.
Why are we trying to talk him into it?
We're saying a lot of words.
We might even be very, very sincere in what we're praying.
But it's a very unscriptural prayer.
He already wants to do it.
He already promised to do it.
So we're not really exercising faith on it.
We're just asking him to do it.
Well, he already said, if two or three agree,
come together in my name.
I'm in the midst of them.
That's his desire.
Healing.
Another one.
Lord, if it be in your will,
if you could heal this person,
Lord, we believe by his stripes they are healed.
So Lord, if you would do this,
we're asking you to do this.
And there's nothing wrong with asking once or twice.
But when that becomes the whole prayer,
that becomes a problem.
So Lord, we're wanting you to do this.
You know that it would bring you glory.
You know that it would be an awesome testimony.
So we're just praying and believing, God,
that you're going to step in here and you're going to do something.
We're trying to convince him to do something.
He's already convinced he wants to heal.
I mean, that was one of the major things in the prophecies
that he died for is our healing.
So he is absolutely...
you don't have to talk him into it.
He wants to do it more than we want at times.
Oh, let's hit something that's real relevant right now.
New building.
We're believing for a new building.
So Lord, if you could give the money for that building,
we don't have the money, God.
You know we don't have the money.
So if you could find a way to make this happen,
I mean, without you we can't get this done
and we're waiting for you to do something in this.
So if you could do it sooner rather than later,
that would be better.
And Lord, we're just looking forward
to tap somebody on the shoulder
that has money so they give.
Okay, now stop and think about that prayer.
We're trying to convince him.
We're trying to convince him.
So the question is...
and again, it's just the way...
that's the way I was taught to pray.
To beg, to plead,
to lay hold to the horns of the altar.
If any of you were raised A.G., you probably heard that.
Grab the horns of the altar and don't let go.
And it's like, well the picture in my mind,
it's a nice Old Testament picture.
I have nothing wrong with the picture,
but the picture that it comes up in me
is you're going to just stay there and beg and plead
and just hang on,
hoping God does something.
And see, that's not faith.
So, what are we supposed to
approach some of these like?
What are we supposed to pray like?
Well, we know if we don't pray in faith,
nothing happens.
Faith has to be the core.
Faith has to be the source.
What is faith?
Hebrews 11-1, somebody tell me what faith is
in the NIV version.
That's King James, but that's all right.
We'll go with that.
Give me the King James.
Faith, substance of things hoped for.
Okay, does anybody know the NIV?
It'd be good to learn that one too.
Amplified too, if you've got extra time.
Faith is being sure of what you hope for.
They put sure in for the word substance,
which is another definition to that Greek word.
Faith is being sure of what you hope for
and certain of what you do not see.
What comes before faith?
According to that verse.
Hope, what's hope?
Joyful, confident expectation of something good.
How do you get hope according to the Scripture?
I believe it's found in Romans 15.
Word and...
You got half of it.
Starts with the S.
You get hope by the Word and the Spirit.
Okay?
By the Word and the Spirit, you get hope.
Okay?
For us to get hope, and we have to have hope
before we can have faith.
For us to get hope, something has to be said to us.
Let's just coin that Word and Spirit together
as something needs to be said to us.
This is the Ramah word, this is the spoken word of God.
Faith comes by hearing the Ramah.
Word.
The spoken word of God.
The Logos word, the written word,
we can read that all day long and get a lot of knowledge
but have no faith.
We can quote it and have no faith.
Faith comes when God speaks something into our heart.
Remember Romans 10.
With our heart, we believe.
And with our mouth, we confess.
Faith originates in the heart, not the head.
Logos goes to the head.
The written word goes to the head, it's knowledge.
When God speaks something to you, you get it in your head
but it drops into your heart
and the King James word is correct.
It becomes like a substance in you.
That you just know that you know.
That's what Paul is talking about in Ephesians.
He was praying for the church to have knowledge
that they know beyond knowledge.
They know beyond knowledge.
They may know in their head
but he's praying that it drops into their heart
and they know.
So when God speaks something to us
and it drops into our heart
the first thing that pops up is hope.
A joyful, confident expectation.
Whoa.
Meaning God wants to do that?
Wow.
And it drops in there and it takes form.
A joyful, confident expectation of something good.
That's not faith yet.
That's hope.
And a lot of Christians will stop right there
and think they're in faith.
No, you're in hope.
The difference, hope has to stay there
and then faith becomes sure of that hope.
The difference between hope and faith
is faith is certain.
Hope you can still be talked out of.
It's an excitement.
It's a joy, boy.
This is coming.
This is what God spoke to me.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Ah, that'll never happen for you.
Let me tell you some stories.
And by the time they're done
what's going on inside of you is like,
well, I don't know.
I thought God talked to me.
Yeah, I was all excited.
Now I'm confused.
And that's what happens to hope.
When you get the Lord speaks to you,
Holy Spirit speaks to you,
and it drops into your heart and you get hope.
At that point, my recommendation is always this.
Don't go tell anybody.
Don't go tell anybody.
Just conceal that, cover that,
nurture it, and turn it into faith.
Once you have faith,
now if you feel to share it, that's fine.
Once you have faith, nobody can talk you out of it.
Once you have faith,
when people say it won't work for you,
what comes up in you?
Oh, it's too bad.
You got to be too late because I know.
This isn't a,
we're going to figure this out in our head thing.
This is I know in my heart.
This is what God said.
And you can't talk me out of it.
But you have to nurture hope
to bring it to that point of faith.
You say, how do you nurture it?
Hope is a joyful emotion,
confident,
still kind of an emotional thing.
It can be somewhat in your heart.
Expectation, emotion.
Joyful, confident expectation of something good.
So we have a lot of emotion being stirred in hope.
And that's okay.
Emotion was actually given to help us,
not hurt us in the original design.
Now we have to fight with it some
as we're in this fall in creation.
But you have to control the emotion
and keep a handle on it.
But God still uses emotion.
See, I'm going to talk about supernatural this morning
and my mind immediately jumps to
some of the things I'm going to share there.
But I'll just throw this one thought in.
It can happen.
You can never say God can't,
because God can do what God can do.
It can happen.
But the people who receive the quickest
and the easiest and retain
are the ones who will engage emotionally
with the supernatural when it takes place.
Now that doesn't always look the same.
My emotions and my wifey emotions
look totally different.
And that's okay. Everybody's made different.
But if we're going to be stoic and solid
and I'm going to feel nothing,
pray for me.
You might get something.
But my experience is
those people get a whole lot less
if they get anything at all.
Did you know that hunger triggers an emotion?
Thirst triggers an emotion?
It's not like we're driving down the road
and all of a sudden we think,
you know, I think I feel hungry right now.
So I will be hungry.
Huh, I should find a place to eat
because I'm pretty much hungry right now.
I've decided that.
No, hunger starts in the physical body,
starts calling for food.
And the next thing that follows it is emotion.
I'm hungry.
I need something to eat.
Well, we're not eating for five more hours.
What?
That emotion stirs right up
because hunger touches, thirst touches emotion.
You get somebody really thirsty,
especially if they're a child.
I feel like I'm dying. I'm so thirsty.
What are they talking? Emotion.
So to hunger and thirst after righteousness
will move emotion.
Pure emotion less is not God.
So hope
dwells more in emotion than faith does.
Faith is almost pure logic.
There's not much emotion tied to it.
The only emotion that I find tied to my faith
is when there's an obstacle,
and it's demonic usually, there's an obstacle,
and I've been believing and believing and believing and believing
and all of a sudden something will rise up in me
and it's like I'm killing you.
I'm done with you now.
And that emotion of almost a
a holy anger comes up.
But that's the only emotion that I've really experienced
tied to faith. Faith is a very logical.
It's done. It's mine. I own it.
Amplified says faith is the title deed
of things hoped for.
We own it. It's ours.
This is just a logical fact.
So to pray in faith
we have to have heard
from God
more than just reading out of the book
and there's nothing wrong with reading out of the book
but more than just reading out of the book
we've had to
heard from God.
Faith comes by hearing
the reima, the spoken word.
Not the logos. There's two words in the New Testament
that are translated W-O-R-D.
Word. One is logos.
It's the written, printed, it's the book you carry.
The other is reima. It's the spoken
that God has given into your heart.
Faith comes by the spoken word.
One scripture spoken to us
will do as much as five books we memorized
or more.
Because just because we memorized them
doesn't mean God spoke it into our heart.
Once it's spoken to our heart, hope appears
and then we nurture that and we get into the word
and we find more scriptures.
I always ask Holy Spirit, give me more confirmations
of this. Give me more scriptures to surround this.
I want the wet concrete now
to become very solid and hard
in my heart. I know that
I know and here's what scripture says about it.
Now we've got faith.
Okay, so has God spoken to us
about the building?
So then how do we pray about it?
We already own it.
In the spirit. It's already ours.
So if you already have a car parked in your driveway,
why do you keep asking God for one?
Yeah, but it's not physically there.
Yeah, but faith calls those things that are not
physically there yet as though they were
Romans 4.
So we start with praise and thanks.
Lord, thank you for the new building.
We have received it.
See, once you receive it, you know it's yours.
Once I give you a gift
and you take it,
whose gift is it at that point?
It's yours.
Christmas is coming this week.
Just take a child and give them a gift
and then say, ah, joking.
It's not yours, mine. See what happens.
You say, that'd be horrible. That would be.
So God doesn't do that to us.
Once he gives us something,
here's what I want you to do.
Here's what I want you to have.
Here's what this should turn out like.
He speaks to us.
Receive that.
Take that in.
If we receive, how does it go in Mark?
It's Mark 11, isn't it, Jim?
The receiving believe that you have received.
There it is.
The speaking to the mountain scripture.
Believe that you have received.
And it will be yours.
So, okay.
Thank you, Father, for the building.
We call that physical structure into place.
It must manifest because you gave it to us.
You spoke it to us.
Your word is more sure
than any physical thing around us,
any physical thing going on
doesn't make any difference what the economy goes like.
God has spoken.
And when God has spoken,
it will be as God spoke.
So, we call that thing into being.
We call for the right suppliers.
We call for favor with the county.
We call...
Excuse me, we call for a moving in your spirit.
In any realm where we need help
with the plumbing, the electrical,
we're going to receive connections
and be led by your spirit to the right people
who will be the subcontractors
and you pray it into being like you own it.
That's faith.
You don't have to convince God.
He already said, I want you to do this.
Well, if you would please give us the money to do...
Do you think He didn't think ahead that far?
Well, I want you to do it,
but I tell you what,
convince me to give it to you.
That's not the Father.
It's not how He works.
He wants us to do it.
He says, get in agreement with me.
And if we'll get in agreement in our heart,
in faith, and then the word of faith is in your mouth.
Call it, declare it, speak it,
thank Him for it.
And if we start wavering,
go back and say, God,
I'm not solid enough in my faith yet.
I need to know that I know.
I own this thing.
A Sunday morning service.
Lord, thank You that where two or three agree
or gather in Your name, You're there.
So we are expecting Your presence, Your Spirit
to be strong in the place today.
Because see, that's what He wants.
And where the Spirit of the Lord is,
we're looking for the anointing.
The anointing comes to break every yoke.
Jesus, Your last name means the anointing
and the anointed one.
So as we call on Your name,
we're expecting Your anointing to show up.
And Lord, we're asking that those people
who need to be touched would get here this morning.
Those of us who need to receive
an encouraging word, to hear from You,
to get into the corporate anointing again,
to refuel, we're calling them to be here this morning.
And because this is a sanctuary
set apart for the worship of Almighty God,
we refuse any demonic activity in this place, period.
We declare You unlawful, You will not operate.
Affect anybody, influence anybody.
I command silence.
We are in the house of God before the throne of God.
And God will speak to their hearts
and God will work in their hearts
because that is Your desire for Your people
to lead them, to teach them, to guide them,
to convince them, to empower them.
Lord, we call You to minister and move
and work this morning according to Your heart.
According to Your heart.
And Holy Spirit, we're asking that You lead us.
You lead us.
We don't want our ideas.
We don't want our plans.
We want what You want done.
And yes, Lord, we've prayed about it.
We've tried to seek, what do You want done this morning?
But at any point, You want to change anything
because a different person walked in the door,
because a different situation arose.
In the name of Jesus, we will be pliable.
We will be open to Your Spirit.
We will hear You clearly.
And we will conform and change
and do anything that needs to be done.
And we rebuke the stupid demon that says
it has to be done a certain way
and in a certain timeframe.
If you want to start moving at 12 o'clock,
we will be the sheep of Your pasture
and we will let You lead us where You want to go.
We are faithful to You as You are faithful to us.
We're a people who are hungry after You.
We're a people who desire You.
We're a people who want more of You.
And we are calling a new realm of glory.
Your Word says that we're changed from glory to glory.
We want that next realm of glory this morning.
We call for that next step up in Jesus' name.
By faith, we know it's ours.
You've spoken it to us.
So we receive it.
We walk in it.
We won't be turned away from it.
We're looking for You to do great things
in the service this morning.
That's an example of praying by faith.
We own it.
We're certain of it.
We know it.
Why?
Because it's something He spoke to us.
If we haven't heard from Him,
I'll just say it this way.
It's impossible to pray in faith.
We can ask.
We can beg.
We can plead.
We can say, God, it would really be nice.
Or we can even add in our situation.
God, you know I'm broke.
God, you know I'm in pain.
God, you know I'm struggling here.
I've got thoughts of suicide.
God, I don't know what to do with this.
I could end up dead tomorrow.
God, can you do something?
None of that moves God.
It will move Him if we don't know Him.
If an unsaved prays that way,
God will respond.
If we're a baby Christian,
there's a, like I've always said,
that first six, nine months of salvation,
boy, run with that,
because it's like He gives you everything you ask for.
It's just so easy.
But once you're two, three, four years old in the Lord,
praying what I just prayed won't move God at all.
It's like the four-year-old
who's laying on the floor throwing a fit,
like they're a one-year-old,
trying to get mom to do something.
Human mothers who don't know any better
may respond to that.
God the Father won't.
He won't respond to it.
Because He expects us, by the time we're
two, three, four years into this,
He expects us to have some realm of faith
by that point,
and to be learning to walk
and live by faith.
The just live by faith.
We don't walk by sight,
we walk by faith.
Once He puts us down
and expects us to begin walking,
well, yeah, we're not going to know it all.
We're going to stumble, we're going to fall,
we're going to make mistakes.
He's looking for effort.
And the older we get,
what does Scripture say to who much is given,
much is required.
The older we get,
the more we should know how to walk out
faith.
And He expects us to do it.
But God, can't you see they're in pain?
If He responded to every person in this earth
that's in pain,
everybody would be receiving from God.
Pain doesn't move God.
You say, well, how unloving is He?
He is the epitome of love.
He is love.
But He has set up
rules or principles of how this earth operates
and God is not moved
because we have a negative emotion.
Do you know how God's moved?
Moses knew.
And Moses was before
the faith covenant, really.
Moses knew.
Here's how God's moved.
God, you said.
God, you said.
You were going to take the children of Israel
from Egypt
and you were going to bring them into the Promised Land.
You said that.
Now, if you go back in your word,
I'm holding you to what you said
when God wanted to destroy the whole works
because He got a little bit tired of
their attitudes.
You know what moved God?
Moses could have went, oh God, I'm tired of it, too.
I hate this whole thing.
Could you please do something?
They'd all ended up dead.
He got in between and said,
wait a second, no, no, no, God,
I don't want a new nation made out of me.
I want you to keep your word.
When we know in our heart
what God's told us,
that is how we pray.
Like we know it.
Like we own it.
We don't have to beg Him.
We don't have to convince Him.
We don't have to continually
try to work up emotions
so God does something.
We don't have to pray harder.
God, I'm putting everything into this.
I know how.
You say, where would you get that from?
I was told growing up.
Well, maybe you need to pray harder.
Well, what does that mean?
Do I have to show it on my face?
What do I have to do to pray harder?
See, some of the stuff is inaccurate.
That's why prayer doesn't work for us.
If we will hear from God,
let that turn into faith.
Name a word.
And then begin to speak
what He promised to us.
And let the Holy Spirit lead us.
How we should attack that.
How we should approach that.
Because we already own it.
It will manifest.
So, Lord, we thank You for what You're going to do
in this service this morning.
We know by Your Spirit
You're already here.
Because we're gathered to meet with You.
We will enter into a presence of You
as we worship in spirit
or led by the spirit.
So, Lord, as we do that this morning,
we're expecting the presence of Your Spirit.
You're anointing.
We're expecting it to grow in this place
because You said that's how it works.
So, we're going to enter in
and we're going to follow in
with what You want to happen here this morning.
And we're believing that people will leave this place
changed this morning.
They will never be the same.
They will never be the same
for we have met with God
afresh.
This isn't going to be like it's happened
for the last 20 years at Word of Life.
This is a new day
with new mercies,
new things happening every day.
And we're expecting that
to show up in our service this morning.
We're calling it.
Forgive us for any sin
where we would have been, where we would be off
or we would have done anything
to block what you want to do.
Forgive us.
Cleanse us from unrighteousness.
Sanctify us.
Work in us and change us
from day to day to day
to be more like Jesus is.
Work in us and we confess.
First John says,
if we say we are not sinners, we lie.
If we say we have no sin in us, we lie.
We know we make mistakes every day.
We know we do things wrong every day.
We are asking forgive us
because your Word says,
who wants to go up to the Holy Mountain of God?
Who wants into that presence?
He must come with clean hands.
We can't do anything to have clean hands
other than confess our sins
and he is faithful and just
to forgive us and cleanse us.
Make us clean from all unrighteousness.
So Lord, anything that would block
what you want to do here today,
we confess it, we repent of it,
we want nothing to do with it.
And in the name of Jesus,
we serve the kingdom of our heavenly Father.
We serve the kingdom of life
and it's that kingdom we submit to.
And anything of the demonic realm,
we bind you.
We demand you or we command
according to what the Word says,
it is unlawful for you to operate
here this morning.
This is not your ground.
This is not your right.
This is not your place.
We silence you and command you
to leave in Jesus' name.
And we welcome the presence
of your kingdom, Father.
Holy Spirit, do what Jesus
wants done here this morning.
We pray your angels, your messengers,
the ones from your kingdom
that represent and come and minister
to your people.
We call them, we call them
according to your Word.
Your Word says that are not your angels,
ministers of flames of fire
who have come to minister
of those who inherit.
We're inheritors.
So we call for that this morning
according to your Word.
There will be heavenly beings
roaming this place,
ministering to your people.
And we believe you will be glorified.
You will be honored
in Jesus' name.