Calvary Chapel Staten Island

For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now, Denise, Leigh, and Shelly are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends, the podcast. Each week they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's word, and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs, and a lot of Jesus to hold it together, Circle of Friends, the podcast, is waiting for you. Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts, and circle up with Point of Grace.

Guest (Female): Hello and welcome to God in Our City, the daily edition. Your host and Bible teacher is Pastor Dave Watson. Pastor Dave has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island for 35 years. In addition, he is the co-founder and president of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies.

To receive a special downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Now, here's Pastor Dave and our show.

Pastor Dave Watson: Hello everybody, welcome again to God in Our City, the daily edition. If there's a daily edition, there has to be a weekend edition, right? Absolutely. Sunday mornings at 11:30, the Calvary Chapel worship service is carried live and we call that God in Our City as well. As was articulated so well by Ally, our announcer, my name is Pastor Dave Watson, pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island, as well as the president and one of the co-founders of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies, as well as the guy who gets the privilege of sharing the word of God with you here on the daily edition.

How is your week going so far? I've been preaching through some Psalms in this season as we talk about prayer. One thing I found just fascinating about Psalm 57 is that David said he was steadfast. He's there in a cave, Psalm 57, the context is a cave. He says he's steadfast, which means he's prepared. He's done some preparation before he arrived in the cave. I know how most of us think, I think the same way. It is not until we hit a crisis that we try to get things together.

You get your finances together when you find out your last check bounced, or you get your health together when you find out the doctor said, "I'm going to have to put you in a hospital." But when it comes to your spiritual life, it's not smart to do that. I don't think it's ever smart to do that, probably, but in terms of our spiritual lives, we don't want to be people who have to be in a cave working through prayer 101.

When you're in a cave, when you're in difficult times, you want to be able to be a person whose prayer life is at a very strong level. How do you do that? Right now, you focus on your prayer life. Right now, you focus on your devotional life. That's really what we've been doing all this month of January is talking about prayer, hoping to take all of our prayer game, as it were, up. Prayer is the battle, as Luther said. If we can get on our knees and pray and learn to pray and learn how to get a hold of heaven, as we used to say, we will be so much better off than if we wait until our lives collapse.

This whole month we've called it the Theology of Prayer. We're on our last week. We only have the rest of this week on prayer. I'm not going to tell you until Thursday or Friday what we're studying, but it's amazing what we're looking at next. You're going to be so excited as I am, but I'm going to hold it back just another day or so.

We're talking about prayer, and what I've been teaching, the theology of prayer, is also what I teach at the New York Institute for Biblical Studies. This class, the theology of prayer, we've offered on a couple of occasions. One we offered it here, another in our satellite campus upstate. It's a great course. We have lots of great courses at the New York Institute for Biblical Studies, and we'd love to have you seriously consider taking a course. We would like that to be your case.

How do I take a course, you might even ask? I like to hear the Bible this way. How can I take a course? Go to nyibs.net. You will see our course offerings for this particular time. We call this Spring Quarter 1, though there's really no spring in it. You'll see we have a course in communicating the Bible. We're talking about preparing biblical messages. We have another course on leadership in the church. We have another course on the book of 1 Peter. We have another course upstate on apologetics. We have another course on Wednesday nights in person on the book of Hebrews.

We're trying to offer you some good stuff. All our courses are taught by people who have master's degrees or the equivalent or above. Myself and Dr. Taylor, who are teaching this time around, both have doctorates. We are cost-effective; you're not going to break the bank. We're close now, closer than ever because we're virtual. A lot of our classes are virtual. We're caring; we care about you. We're not a huge school.

Please consider taking a course. You can call us if you need more information or go to nyibs.net to look at what we're offering and make some decisions. There are three types of people, really, in the world: people who make it happen, people who watch it happen, and people who say, "What happened?" I want to be someone who's being used by God. That's our whole ideal with the New York Institute for Biblical Studies. We're trying to be people who are equipping God's people with God's word to do God's service.

We want you to be part of that. We're not here to change your church. We want you to serve in your church. We're not here to proselytize you to our way of thinking about everything, although I think I'm right about everything, all of our professors do. But we want you to grow in your faith. Maybe you've been stuck, you've not been able to go any further in your Christian experience, and you're wondering what you need. Well, maybe you need a little kick in the fanny, and the New York Institute for Biblical Studies will give you just that.

Having talked about them, just a couple of other things we want to make clear. The Theology of Prayer notes, which is the entire set of notes for this entire month of January, is available to you free of charge. Just download it at calvarychapelsi.org. Also there you will, in addition to that, find an offer to get praying the 21 greatest promises in the Bible, the book by my friend Dave Early. Many of you have taken advantage of that. Please call 718-720-5390 or go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc and just ask for the book. It's free. We pay postage and handling, which is just our way of saying thanks for being a listener.

Please consider going there and getting a free book. Also, praying for others, the prayer guide with Bible verses embedded in it is available there free. While you're there, please consider seriously making a gift to God in Our City. Every gift right now is doubled. We're in a double matching fund challenge. We're way behind where we need to be, so if you can help us, we would greatly appreciate it.

I feel like I've talked way too much. Yesterday we read John 14. Today we're going to read from the book of Matthew, the seventh through the ninth verse. Pray and get into our study. "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if a son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?"

Heavenly Father, be our teacher, be our guide. Draw us ever so close to yourself, Lord, this time that we have together. Lord, change our prayer lives. Help us to become proficient in praying to you, efficient in praying to you. Lord, help us to be genuine, help us to see you change us. We are grateful for our listeners and we ask that you meet all of their needs, Lord. Not all their greeds, but all of their needs. We thank you for your grace to us, your love to us, your presence among us. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

We talked yesterday about the person of prayer, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ, and about praying in Jesus' name. We said it wasn't a magical password, but when we prayed in Jesus' name, we're praying that the Father may be glorified in the Son. We talked a little bit about as we pray, praying to the Father as Jesus did, praying in the name of the Son as Jesus taught us to do, and praying in the power or in the sphere of the enablement of the Holy Spirit. We talked about just trying not to confuse people by our prayers and not to be ashamed for telling people to pray in Jesus' name.

We're going to go a step further today and talk about persistence in prayer. The model prayer gives us a program for prayer. Some call it the "Our Father," some call it the "Disciples' Prayer," some call it the "Lord's Prayer," but it gives us a model for prayer, a program for prayer. We looked yesterday at the person of prayer, and now we want to talk about persistence.

From the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching his disciples how things need to be different with them than they were with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He tells them, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?" But the tense of those three verbs are continuous. Literally, it's saying ask continually or keep asking, and also keep seeking, keep asking, and then keep knocking.

It's also found, this same idea, after the disciples' prayer, the model prayer in Luke. He says in Luke 11:9-11, "And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

He compares an earthly father to our heavenly Father and he talks about the whole idea of persistence or almost the idea of annoying. What does persistence in prayer show? It shows that I am serious. It shows that I'm serious. If I'm not willing to put in the time on my knees, then how really serious am I about that which I'm requesting? If I'm praying for a lost person, a lost friend, and I'm not on my knees praying to God for them for a period of time, how concerned am I really about them? It doesn't seem like if I won't put in the time that I can say I'm serious about it.

Or if I'm asking for God to give me wisdom or discernment and I won't put the time in on my knees to seek that wisdom, to seek that discernment, then how serious am I about it? The second thing it does, it not only shows persistence, but it also filters my prayers or refines my prayers. As I pray, I get maybe a better sense of what God would have me to think about or pray about. He's sifting it, he's helping me to work through it so that as I'm praying, the way I'm praying is changing.

I'm getting a better sense of how God might want this to happen and as I'm praying, also, the circumstances on the ground are changing. Maybe things are opening up, maybe things are beginning to be put in place and I can see the spots or the puzzle pieces and how I need to pray for things to come together. This contrasts a little bit with earlier in the book of Matthew when it says that you don't need to pray all these babbling things because you're not heard because of the number of your words. Your Father has no need for that; he knows what you have before you ask.

Why then does he keep having me ask, keep having me seek, keep having me knock? It's because again, it shows the seriousness I have, it shows that as I'm praying, I'm going to see that it's maneuvering, it's changing, and I'm going to be able to refine my prayers regarding that. It does one more important thing. It really does put us in a kingdom mindset and it helps us to genuinely be thankful and not take what God gives us for granted. Notice it doesn't here say there needs to be a lot of words. It means that we're going to persevere in this prayer. We're going to be persistent in this prayer.

He gives a story here of a widow in Luke 18. The Lord says, "Hear what the unrighteous judge says." This widow is bothering him, keeps trying to get justice from him. He says, "Will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" But the story talks about an unjust judge doing a just thing because the widow would not stop bothering him. The picture is that the Lord is not unjust. Don't you think that he is going to do the right thing by you?

Earlier it was the earthly father versus the heavenly Father and the earthly father, as he's asked over and over and over again, is going to decide to bless the one asking. Not because he's a great dad, but because he's being continually asked. The passage talks about the fact that the Father is more than ready to give us good gifts, more than ready to bless us.

Then Paul in Colossians 4:2-4 says, "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak." He's saying keep praying and don't give up in prayer. Continue steadfastly in prayer. Persevere in prayer, watching as you're persevering, being thankful as you're persevering. Then praying for Paul and praying for his ministry, but please note the persistency that's being asked for in prayer.

It's an amazing thing when you read of great guys in the Bible, great men in the Bible who are not the apostles. One such man is this guy, Epaphras, and we find him in the book of Colossians, chapter four, verse 12. It says there, "Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God." You may say, "Pastor Dave, asking, seeking, knocking continually, that's hard work." Yeah, it is. Absolutely.

We need more Epaphrases in the church who are praying, but their prayer is accompanied with struggling. The word there is where we get our word "agonizing" from. So Epaphras was agonizing for the Colossae believers that they may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. In all the will of God. Let me ask you this: have you ever prayed for somebody, somebody other than your kids? Have you ever prayed that way?

We need more Epaphras prayers, people who pray like Epaphras. Maybe one of the reasons believers are so shallow is that their discipleship is not accompanied by prayer. Epaphras gives us this amazing example of prayer, praying, agonizing in prayer, persevering in prayer. May God help you, may God help me to be a person who, as I think about other believers, don't throw up a "bless you, bless you," but I keep asking, I keep knocking, I keep seeking, and then I keep knocking that you might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. That God might do something amazing in you to the point that you are not the same.

May God help me and help you and help God's church to have people like that so that lives are genuinely, genuinely changed and people are different for the kingdom and the glory of God. Just a reminder, we would love to have you this semester at the New York Institute for Biblical Studies. Please consider joining us at nyibs.net. We would love for you to join us, be part of us. You'll enjoy the classes we have to offer. If you have questions, if you want to know more, simply go to nyibs.net or call us at 718-354-9971. Well, let's pray and then we'll end our time together.

Heavenly Father, thank you that we could be here this evening studying about prayer. Lord, not only praying or studying about the necessity of praying in Jesus' name, the person of prayer, but the necessity of persevering in prayer. Help us not to quit, Lord. Help us not to quit as we pray. Help us to pray like it all depended on us, and Lord, help us to know that it depends on you. But help us, Lord. Help each of us your children to develop a habit of persistence in prayer. I bring this before you now in Jesus' name, amen.

Reminders that you can get the study guide for the Theology of Prayer at calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. You can get praying the 21 greatest promises in the Bible just by requesting it at the same website. Get the prayer sheets with the prayer verses embedded, same website. While you're there, consider making a gift to God in Our City. Every gift is important, every gift makes a difference, every gift is tax-deductible, and right now every gift is doubled. Thank you for joining us. God bless you.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to God in Our City with your host, Pastor Dave Watson. We hope the show was a blessing to you. Again, to receive a downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Please check out Pastor Dave's blog at nycshepherd.com. That's nycshepherd.com. Please invite a friend and join us every weekday for another edition of God in Our City.

Guest (Female): For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now, Denise, Leigh, and Shelly are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends, the podcast. Each week they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's word, and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs, and a lot of Jesus to hold it together, Circle of Friends, the podcast, is waiting for you. Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts, and circle up with Point of Grace.