Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church

Guest (Male): You are now listening to an inspirational message from Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, where Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr. is the pastor. Please join the service in progress.

Guest (Male): There’s a lily in the valley, found it to be bright as the morning star. There is a lily, Lord, in the valley, and He is bright as the morning star. Said amen, amen, oh Lord, amen. Joy is in the valley, found it to be bright as the morning star. Somebody found joy, found it in the valley, in the valley He is bright as the morning star. Somebody found joy in the valley, I know they did, bright as the morning star. Said amen, amen, oh Lord, amen. If God’s been good to you, put your hands together. Listen.

Peace is in the valley, found it to be bright as the morning star. Somebody found peace, found it in the valley, in the valley He is bright as the morning star. Somebody found peace in the valley, I know they did, bright as the morning star. Said amen, amen, oh Lord, amen. I’ve got one more. Listen.

Love is in the valley, found it to be bright as the morning star. Somebody found love, found it in the valley, in the valley He is bright as the morning star. Somebody found love in the valley, I know they did, bright as the morning star. Said amen, amen, oh Lord, amen.

Somebody found God in the valley. Somebody found peace of mind in the valley. Somebody found joy divine in the valley. Somebody found love in the valley. Somebody found hope in the valley. Whatever you need is in the valley. God’s got it all in the valley. Whatever you desire, he’ll give it to you. Jesus said, "Lo, I’ll be with you always." Whatever you need, from the Lord, He’s in the valley.

David said, "Though I walk, I’m coming through, through the valley." I’ll tell you today, we are children of God. We’re coming out, we’re coming out of the valley. Praise the Lord. Clap your hands. Has He been good to you? Did He wake you up this morning? Praise the Lord.

Listen, listen. There’s a lily in the valley, found it to be bright as the morning star. There is a lily, Lord, in the valley, and He is bright as the morning star. There is a lily, I know He is, in the valley, and He is bright as the morning star. Said amen, amen, oh Lord, amen.

Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr.: It is good to be in the valley. There is nothing wrong with the valley, especially if we walk out of that valley with what we need: the love, the joy, the peace, the good things that God finds for us in that valley. He is the bright and morning star.

Pray with me now as we ready our hearts for what God would say to us. Father, we thank You for loving us and blessing us. We thank You for bringing us safely again to this place. We thank You for watching over us and keeping us. We thank You for this day of worship and all of the services that have taken place: the songs, the scriptures, the prayers, the fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now, Lord, we need a word to help us to live. I pray that once again You would lift human out of self, that You would fill us with the Holy Spirit, that You would speak to us and through us in this moment of sharing. Bless now the words that are in our mouths and the meditations that are on our hearts. With You, there is a word. Without You, there is no word. Speak, Lord, Your servants are listening. Keep us now in Jesus’ name, amen.

I’ve been carrying this word in my heart for a little while. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to share in a prayer conference over at Guiding Light, and I talked from this text. I thought I wanted to speak again about it to us today because it fits where we are as a church. It fits what I want to say to this young man and what I want to say to all of us. How many parents are in the house? Anybody got children? That’s who I want to talk to.

The book of 2 Thessalonians is in the New Testament. 2 Thessalonians, the first chapter, chapter one. There are two verses right at the end of that chapter, verses 11 and 12. "Therefore, we also pray always for you that God would count you worthy of this calling and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ."

This is the word of God for the people of God. I want to talk to our church, I want to talk to all of us as parents, about praying for the right stuff. Praying for the right stuff. It’s clear we’re religious, and religious people pray. We’ve been praying all of our lives. I learned from my mama how to pray. My first prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

I learned how to pray in school in the days when we had devotion and we would go down the list, down the row, and everybody had to pray. I learned how to pray at home. I come from a big family. in my big family, you couldn’t eat until grace was said. It meant my daddy started first, then my mama, and then from the oldest all the way down to the youngest, each one had to have a Bible verse. You couldn’t repeat the Bible verse of somebody else, so you had to learn your own. I was number eight, and then the adults, so I had to know at least 10 or 12. By the time I was a little boy, I knew half the Bible.

Religion, prayer, and coming to church—we used to mark the deacons when I was a boy because the deacons used to line up in front of the church and they would pray. We had one man who had the same prayer every Sunday, and we knew it by heart. When he started, we beat him with it because we knew what he was going to say to the Lord.

Over the years, people have been praying, and something has happened about what we pray for now. People don’t pray like they used to pray, and people don’t pray for what they need to pray for. I talked about this at the Guiding Light Church. I remember right after World War II in the Philippines, in the islands of the South Pacific, a group of people developed that was known as the Cargo Cult.

The Cargo Cult came out as a result of when the American armies and Allied forces began to wage war. They would use those uninhabited islands in the South Pacific to build airstrips so that they could bring in their supplies and be able to be closer to the American enemy. The people of the South Pacific islands had never been exposed to civilization before.

When the American armies came in with their big planes and they unloaded their equipment—they brought in those big bulldozers and they cleared away the forest—and when they left, the islanders found the stuff. They found cigarette lighters, they found radios, they found refrigerators, they found levels of technology for that era that they had not heard of before. They found clothes, they found food that they left.

When the American armies left and the war was over, the islanders began to build replicas of what they had seen. They built airplanes that were made out of bamboo. They built hangars for planes and all, but it was good for nothing but worship. These people assumed that white men were gods, and that the gods flew in and dropped them stuff.

After the war was over, they continued to look for gods who would bring them stuff. Over the years, that life has developed. Now missionaries have gone into the South Pacific carrying the gospel, but the islanders don’t want the gospel. At first, they would be receptive to the missionaries because they thought they were the second coming of the cargo gods, and all they wanted was stuff.

What I’m saying is today in our world, we have gotten in our religion messed up. We have people who are teaching that prayer ought to be for stuff. We have made God a super Santa, and if He doesn’t bring us stuff, we don’t want any part of Him. Consequently, we are praying a lot for the wrong stuff.

We’re praying that God will bless us with wonderful homes—nothing wrong with a wonderful home, I’ve got one. We’re praying for cars—nothing wrong with cars, you need one. I grew up in the era when we had the Flintstone mobile; you almost had to pick them up and run with them. My car didn’t have no brakes; we almost had to put our foot out to stop. You need a good car today; you don’t need a hoopty no more. We were just glad to ride when I was in the classes of the early 70s.

But people are praying for husbands, and you should, because you might just get one that you can mess up. People are praying for wives, and you should. People are praying for all kinds of stuff. But when I come to the text here and I look at the life of the Apostle Paul, we see Paul giving us a prayer report on the stuff that he prays for, for the church at Thessalonica.

What he prays for them would be the right stuff. It’s the stuff I want to pray for our church, and it has caused me to pray for the church this way. It causes me to pray for my sons this way. I’m not looking for television screens and big screens and more clothes and more stuff, because all of that stuff is consumable. It doesn’t take but one gust of wind from God, it doesn’t take but one flood from Village Creek, it doesn’t take but one major situation and all of that stuff will be gone.

We need to develop our prayer life for the right stuff. What then is prayer? Prayer is the resource that we all need, but what is it? Prayer is learning to think God’s thoughts. It’s learning to like what God likes and learning to hate what God hates. The more we allow our minds to become absorbed with things that are of God, the more our prayer life will align itself with the will and ways of God.

When Paul is praying for this church, this was a young church. Paul preached there for three weeks, and after three weeks, he got run out of town. He was scared that the faith that he had tried to deliver to them had not had enough time to take a deep enough root. After he was gone, he sent one of his young protégés back to check on the church at Thessalonica.

They came back with a report: "Paul, man, what you taught, the people love. They love you, they love God, they love the word." But there’s always a "but." There was a group of folks that misunderstood your message. When you were talking about Jesus returning, some of the folks got hung up and they stopped working; they were just waiting on Jesus. Paul said you’ve got to help those folks understand that if they don’t work, they won’t eat.

There were a lot of other little things that Paul wanted to deal with, but that wasn’t what he wanted to tell them. He wanted to tell them about what he had been praying for them, because he was their pastor. He was their leader, and as their pastor and leader, he had a heart for the people. Paul says, "I pray for you always." Now, that doesn’t mean he walked around mumbling all day. That’s not what "pray without ceasing" means.

What Paul wants us to understand is that we all live on two levels. On one level, we live in the natural world. We go on jobs, we’ve got families, and we’ve got things that we have to do. A part of our everyday life consumes us. But there is a second level that we live on, and that’s a deeper level. The deeper level that we live on is the level of prayer, where we are constantly communing with God.

On that level, I can still be busy. Paul could still be traveling, he could still be teaching, he could still be persecuted, but at that deeper level, he’s still communing with God. God made us like that; we can multitask. We can drive and pray at the same time. We can wash dishes and pray at the same time. We can cut grass and pray at the same time because we are not just limited individuals.

On the second level, the deeper level of where prayer is, we see that volcanic eruption begin to come out of Paul. We see those hot gases and all of that lava begin to rise up to the forefront, and Paul begins to talk to the people about the things that he’s praying for. What he prays for is not that kind of stuff.

What he does is help them to see what his requests are. This is what I want you as parents to pick up on, and this is what I want you as a church to hear and understand, because this is my prayer as a pastor. What would I pray for the church? First, Paul says, "I pray that God would make you worthy, worthy of the call that He has on your life."

None of us are worthy. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Let’s be clear, I wasn’t born up here. I wasn’t born in the pulpit. I’ve been a fella. That’s what makes so many people so hesitant about responding to the call of God, because we all know our own humanness. We all know our own patterns, our past, and our own behavior. We don’t want to tell nobody that the Lord is doing something because we don’t want folks to say, "You?"

But God knows who we are. None of us are worthy on our own. God makes us worthy. He made us worthy when He sent the Lord Jesus Christ into the world and Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins. That gave us our worthiness to be included in the family of God.

But that’s not what Paul was talking about. He’s saying he’s praying that God will make you more worthy. What he’s speaking of here is Christian character—that God will give you what you don’t have in order to maintain His name. When I came out of college, I had been on the college campus for five years. On the college campus, we weren’t going to church. Every now and then, we'd go to Bedside Baptist. The fraternities and the sororities and all of that kind of stuff, it was fun and games.

I was in the far country. There were a lot of adult conversations and young adult activity. So when I came out, I was steeped in it. God had to do a work. Not only a worthy work to save me, but then as the years have gone, He has done an increasing work to make me more worthy of His name.

How does He do that? He does it through the trials that we go through. He does it through the sufferings that we go through. Every time we go through something, He peels off another layer of that "old me," and He fixes me. He forces me to go down on my knees, and He forces me to trust Him. Every time He comes through by answering a prayer, He says, "See there? Look at there? Who you think got you out? You know you didn’t get yourself out. You know you couldn’t fix yourself, you couldn’t help yourself."

Every time God does it, I can’t help but say, "Thank You." What it does is cause me to feel more in line with His will. I learn what He doesn’t like, I learn what He does like, I learn what He will bless, and I learn what He’s not going to bless. Consequently, He begins to make me more worthy.

The prayer for the right stuff first is for worthiness. I want all of the people who attend this church to be worthy of the name of Jesus. You go around in the community, you tell people, "I’m a Christian, I go to that church," and folks look at your life. They say, "Oh yeah? That’s what y'all doing over there? You preacher, you pastor, you whatever it might be, and that’s how you live?" Worthiness need is there. That’s something to pray for.

Every parent ought to be praying for their children that God will make them more worthy of the call of God. What call is that? It’s the call that God had before the world began. Paul also writes in the book of Romans that before time began, God foreknew you. He had already decided that you would become. He knew what period in human history that you would be born in.

I thank God for that because I tell people all the time, if I had been born in a different period of human history, I would not have done well. If I had been born during the time of the Romans, when men were fighting with swords and all they had on were little skirts, I’d have been fighting like this. I wouldn’t have done well during slavery; they'd still be looking for me. I’d be running away every day.

God knew exactly when to allow me to be born, and He knew exactly when to allow you to be born. You know y'all wouldn't have acted right. If Mr. Tom had said, "Come here," you'd have said, "You better get on away from here." It would have been a fight. So God knew what period to bring you forth.

Just as He called you, now He wants you to be more worthy of that call, to be able to own His name. It’s a strong calling to represent the name of God. What does that worthy life look like? It’s a life of humility. It’s when God has to strip back all of that pride and make you where you are a genuinely humble person. You’re not saying you’re humble just to sound pious; you’re truly humble because God has broken the pride in you.

It’s a fruitful life, it’s a productive life where things that you touch turn into gold. You’ve got the Midas touch because you know when you do certain things, God is going to bless that. When you major and focus on the things that are of God, you know God is going to hear you and answer you and bless you. Paul says, "My deep prayer life for you Thessalonians is that God would make you more worthy of the call of God." That’s the first request: that you would be worthy.

Then Paul prays secondly in the request: that you would be fulfilled, that you would live a fulfilled life. That your life would be full of good things. That’s my prayer for the church: yes, I want all of you to be filled with good things.

God is the author of good things. God made this great big beautiful world. He took six days to scoop it out and to speak and to cause a wide variety of blooming plants and wonderful beautiful places, cascade waterfalls and islands and romance. He gave you equipment and gave you everything that you could enjoy: fruit trees that give you delicious juicy fruit and all kinds of things. God has blessed you with this wide world, and He wants you to be filled with these good things.

You don’t have to pray for the wrong things. You don’t have to trick nobody to get blessed. You don’t have to undermine other people, you don’t have to dog other people out to be blessed. You don’t have to align up sides for yourself. You just do what God would want you to do. When you do what God wants you to do, God will bless you with good things.

Psalm 37, verse 4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." God will give you every good thing as long as those good things align with what He wants. God’s not going to give you things that out of line with His will. God is not the author of confusion; He’s a God of order. God wants you to have those things.

Jesus said, "I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly." So God wants you to have these things, but He also declares, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added." I’ll give them to you as bonuses. God wants you to be filled. I, as a pastor, as a father, want my children to be filled with good things, the things that be of God.

When God blesses you, you don’t even have to worry. I sleep good at night because I’m not up trying to figure out who I’m going to get. I’m not doing the Trump. I’m not trying to sick people on other folks. I’m not trying to get other folks to go after people who have spoken ill against me. You don’t do that; you don’t waste your time with that kind of stuff.

You do the right thing, and when you do the right thing for the right reasons, right results will follow. You can’t beat God giving. You can’t beat God blessing. When God chooses to bless you, I don’t care who don’t like it. David said, "He prepares a table before me," where? "In the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over." It makes people sick to see your cup running over, and they can’t stop it from running over.

Paul says the prayer for the right stuff is for worthiness and for fulfillment, that your life would be filled with good things. Then the third thing in his request that he prays for is that your life would have power, that your service would be a powerful service. Now that’s the right stuff. That’s not praying for cigarette lighters and radios and big screens and all of the cargo that the cargo gods left.

Pray for fulfillment and pray for power. When you stand to preach the word, that there would be a genuine power that will flow through you, the power that comes from God Himself, that doesn’t come from manufactured things. You don’t have to try to play on people’s emotions and things like that to have power.

The Holy Ghost is the power. You shine the light on the word. You don’t have to make up the word; you just shine the light on what God has already said and He’ll put the power to it. What kind of power is it? It’s dunamis power. It’s the power to blow up stuff—blow up crazy thoughts and attitudes and feelings and negativities. It’s the kind of power that changes people, that makes people saints who used to be sinners, that takes thugs who used to be something else and makes them different. It takes men who used to think that they were pimps and makes them something else. It takes people out of the gutter and puts them in places that they never dreamed of. The power of God can do anything but fail. That’s what we pray for. That’s the right stuff.

Paul says to the Thessalonians, "Look at my prayer." He didn’t pray for the material things. He didn’t pray for any of that stuff. Look at the spiritual request: that they would be worthy of God’s call, that they would be filled with the good things that God has, and that their life and service to God would be powerful and explosive, doing and accomplishing those things that God only would accomplish through people that He blessed.

Then the last thing: we’ve talked about the resource, which is prayer. Even those abbreviationists in the South Pacific knew that God could give. Even people in this wealth, health, and prosperity world know that God can give, so they pray. But they just pray for the wrong stuff. Prayer is the right resource when we understand the thought, the mind of God, and align our life with that so that we can receive what He wants.

The request is for worthiness and for fulfillment and for power. But the third thing is the reason. The reason for the prayer. You always need to know the why’s behind. People want the stuff, but they don’t know why. People want the position, but they don’t know the why. People want a lot of things, but they don’t ever understand the why, and it’s getting to the level of the why that makes the difference.

But when you understand the why that you want these things and do these things, that changes everything. The why Paul prays for the right thing is so that God would be glorified in you. So that you would glorify Him, and as a result of you glorifying Him, He will in turn glorify you. He’s going to put the light on you. You put the light on Him.

It’s going to be a trail. If you’ve got a flashlight in your hand and you’re shining light towards some object, the light is going to lead from where it is being shone from to the object that is being shone upon. So Paul prays these things so that the glory of God, that your light may so shine before men, that men may see the good that’s in you, that it may bring glory and honor to your Father which is in heaven.

If you glorify your Father which is in heaven, your Father in heaven will never let you out. Glorify and shine Him. That’s why the old boys in the young days said, "This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. Everywhere I go, I’m going to let it shine. I’m not going to make it shine, I’m just going to let it shine. All in my home, I’m going to let it shine. All in my neighborhood, I’m going to let it shine." Wherever you are, whatever you do, if you allow the light of Christ to shine in you and through you, then God will always make the light shine on you.

Earlier this year, the Lord took me out to Los Angeles, California. I hadn’t been out to Los Angeles in a long time. I didn’t know nobody out there, but the Lord put a little film that we had done on the stage and the folk decided that this is the best we’ve seen. They gave me an award.

A few weeks ago, a lady who was at that thing called me and she said, "I met you there at the film fest." She said, "I’m a screenwriter, and I’d like to do a screenplay of turning your life story into a movie." Yesterday I was in Atlanta, and the people there said, "We want to give you a Shining Star award." I opened email last night—I haven’t said nothing about it—another lady called me and said, "We’ve got an award we want to give you." I called a buddy of mine and he said, "Man, I’ve been trying to get up with you." He said, "You don’t know what’s happening, do you?" I said, "No, what’s happening?" He said, "Man, hold your breath."

All of this is just trying to say, I’m not talking about me, I’m just saying when you let the light of Christ shine, then Christ is going to allow His light to shine on you. I don’t care who wants to throw a blanket over it, I don’t care who don’t like it, I don’t care who gets mad about it, I don’t care what they say about it: they can’t stop what God wants to do.

God will bless you. Anybody know that God is a blesser? God will bless your life. He will pick you up, He will turn you around, He will brush you off, He will change things, He will open doors, He will make a way because that’s who God is. What we’ve got to learn to do is to pray for—come on with me—the right stuff.

If you pray for the right stuff, then you’ll see God do the right thing. I’m out now. Just want you to know God will take care of you. He will. Yes, He’s been good to me. That’s all I’m trying to say. Has God ever been good to anybody here? Won't He be good to you? Won’t He do it? Isn’t He good? Won’t He bless your life? He’s been good to me. That’s all I’m saying. He’s been good to me, and He’ll be good to you. Doors of the church are open. Anytime during the song, give God your heart. Give Him your life. Let’s begin a relationship.

Have you taken the time to count your blessings? He’s been good. Yes, He’s been good. Have you looked around to see what God has done? He’s been good, and I love Him. He’s been good. Have you ever had a problem you thought would knock you down? He’s been good. Yes, He’s been good. But before you could fall, He reached out and picked you up. He’s been good. Oh, I love Him. Yes, He’s been good.

God’s been good to me. God’s been so good to me. And I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him. He set me free. God’s been good, God’s been so good. Oh, I love Him. He’s been good. He’s my life, my joy, my all. There’s nothing in between. He’s been good. Yes, He’s been good. I’ll go with Him till the end. He’s been my best friend. He’s been good. Oh, I love Him. Yes, He’s been good.

God’s been good to me. God’s been so good to me. And I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him. He set me free. God’s been good, God’s been so good. Oh, I love Him. Yes, the Lord’s been mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty good to me. Yes, He’s been good to me. Do you love Him? I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him. He set me free.

God’s been good, God’s been so good. Oh, I love Him. Yes, the Lord’s been mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty good to me. Yes, He’s been good to me. Do you love Him? I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him, I love Him. He set me free. God’s been good, God’s been so good, God’s been good, God’s been good, God’s been good, God’s been good. Better than I’ve been to myself. God’s been good. Oh, I love Him. God’s been good. Oh, I love Him. He’s been good.

And God will always be good when you learn to pray for the right stuff. God bless you. We’re getting you out a little early because we’ve got another engagement. Stand on your feet. There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place. I want us to go to our house and get us something to eat and rest up.

There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place, and I know that it’s the Spirit of the Lord. There are sweet expressions on each face, and I know they feel the presence of the Lord. Sweet Holy Spirit, sweet heavenly Dove, stay right here with us, filling us with Your love. And for these blessings, we lift our hearts in praise. Without a doubt, we’ll know that we have been revived when we shall leave this place.

Father, we thank You for the privilege of leadership. Thank You for the years that You’ve given and the opportunities that You’ve blessed us with. As we look ahead, Lord, we think about You. We don’t pray for our will, we pray that Your will would be done.

We pray for this young man, we pray that You would bless him, bless this church, bless this congregation, bless Your people everywhere, Lord, with worthiness. Fill our lives, help us to be more worthy. We are called the people of God. We are the sheep of Your pasture. If we’re going to represent You, we need to be able to live in a way that’s representative of Your great name.

And God, we pray for fulfillment, we pray that You would fill us with the good things. You have designed every day of our life. You have the plan that You knew before the world began, before time began, You knew who we would be and You brought us forth. We pray that You would just help us to delight ourselves in You so that You might do in us what You want.

We pray that the service that we render would be powerful and God-honoring, so that the light of Christ may shine through us and bring glory to Your great name. Then if You be so kind as to shine the light back toward us and cause our lives to be all that You wanted it to be, we thank You in advance.

Bless our children, bless our families, bless our extended people everywhere. Be with us as we go our way. Bless the sick among us, bless the bereaved families, comfort those who need it. Whatever the circumstances and situations are, do it for Your people. Give us traveling grace now as we go our way. Dismiss us from here, never from Your holy presence.

We ask that the grace of God, the sweet communion of the Holy Spirit, that He will rest, rule, and abide with each one of us Your children until we meet again. God’s people said amen. Amen, amen. God bless you. See you next time.

Guest (Male): Hope you enjoyed the broadcast. You have been listening to a message from the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, where we are reaching the world for Christ. Located at 2135 Jefferson Avenue Southwest, Birmingham, Alabama 35211. For a copy of this message, you can reach us at 205-925-9750 or 925-9751, or visit us on the web at www.greatershiloh.org. For another uplifting message, we invite you to join us for our next broadcast.