Pastor Jeff on the Radio

Guest (Male): You're listening to Jeff Schwarzentraub, senior pastor of Brave Church. At Brave, we believe God has called His church to stand boldly for truth, not on defense, but to advance, proclaiming His word with clarity and without compromise. If you're looking for a church where scripture is preached with conviction and Jesus Christ is exalted, we'd love to have you. Join us on Sundays at our Englewood or Westminster locations at 8:30 or 10:30 AM. Learn more at brave.org. Once again, that's brave.org. Now, here's Pastor Jeff with today's message.

Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub: Now when I saw God move on somebody's life, then I'm like, "Man, if you pray for people, you'll screw it up." You can screw their lives up for the good.

So I started praying for people. And the more I started praying for people, the more I saw God start moving in their lives. That's why God calls us to pray for the saints. When you read every one of Paul's letters: "I've been wrestling in prayer," "We've been praying for you day and night," because Paul believes that through prayer, God can impart spiritual power into other people so that His kingdom can be manifested in them.

Pray. And it doesn't just mean pray for those that are hurting and wayward—we should—but pray for those who are doing well. Pray for the marriages that are already good, that they would continue to flourish and have an impact for the kingdom. Pray for the kids in high school that are already walking with the Lord, so they can have influence in their school. I mean, pray. There's spiritual power that can be unleashed.

And when you pray as a victor and not a victim, it becomes difficult because even Christians will tell you, "Well, don't pray that way because God may not do it." See, I believe God still opens wombs, I believe God still delivers from drugs, I believe God still heals people. Does He do it every single time? No. I mean, there's only three answers you can get when you pray. You ready?

Pray and God's going to say, "Yes, it's done," "No, it's never going to happen," third, "It's just not time yet." And God never changes His mind. "God, am I going to marry her?" No. You might as well break up right now. It'll just save you lots of time.

"God, am I going to get married?" Not yet. "But how come she got married and she doesn't even walk with you like I do? How come he got married and he doesn't even do what you... how come they..." "God, am I going to have a baby?" "Well, how come she has one and they have one and what..." See, here's what I believe. Sometimes God doesn't do it in our time. It's either go, no, or slow.

And it's usually the answer we don't want at that time. That's what I've found. That usually when I'm praying about something and God's like, "Go," it's like, "Well, I'm not ready yet." And usually when I want it, He's like, "Slow" or "No," and I'm like, "Come on, God."

Knowing God is getting into God's heart so we can pray what God wants, because every time we pray what God wants, God does exactly what He's going to do. When Elijah's praying for no rain, God told them back in Deuteronomy that if people weren't obedient, He would dry up the land. All Elijah's doing is praying for what God promised. So he's just praying, "Here's what God said He was going to do. I'm praying that God will do what He says He's going to do." He did it. In 1 Kings 18, God says, "I'm about ready to bring rain." So Elijah starts praying for rain. Elijah didn't do anything except ask for what God already wanted to do. That's what prayer is.

Does God want to see people healed? Yes, pray for it. Does God want to see people delivered? Yes, pray for it. Does God want to see wombs opened so that people can raise kids? Yes, pray for it. Does that mean God will always do what you want? No. God may not open your womb. God may give you a heart and desire to foster or adopt. That's fine. But God will change who you are in the process to get done what He wants to get done. There are spiritual power given to those who seek His face.

And that's why we gotta continue to pray and not give up, because we view God as like a microwave, like, "I want to plop it in for 30 seconds and come out with this really hot meal." And sometimes it's not 30 seconds, and sometimes it's not three months, and sometimes it's not even three years. Some of you have prayed for the same thing for 30 years and God's still hearing your prayer, and He's going to do it. Pray and don't give up, right? But there's power available to you. I mean, you can access the power every single time you pray.

Let's continue in this prayer. Let me give you a third reason we want to pray: because prayer provides access to a provision that meets needs. This is our favorite. Verse 11: "Give us this day our daily bread." Now, notice two words in there: day and daily. That means today. "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." Sometimes we're praying for our monthly bread, our yearly bread. "God, by the end of this year I need." He's like, "I see what you need, just pray for it today." I mean, our daily bread.

Now, bread is not just money, bread is not just food, bread is any sustenance you need today to accomplish God's kingdom agenda in the world. I mean, we just got done praying for His kingdom to come, for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. That means, "God, I'm praying for your power to come. I'm praying for Jesus Christ in all of His fullness to be here. And until you get here, let me live as a representative on earth for everything that's happening in heaven. Pour your power through me in such a way that the world knows that Jesus Christ is alive. Now give us this day our daily bread."

Give it, give it, give it, give it. Some say, "Well, that sounds kind of rude, just gimme gimme gimme gimme." See, if your heart is aligned with God, you'll know exactly what to ask for Him to give you. Like if you want what God wants, all you're doing is asking for Him to release from heaven the very things that you need. So you're going to ask prayers according to His will, and in John 15, says, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish" and what? "Sometimes I might do it, sometimes I might not." No, that's not what it says. "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, it will be done for you."

So what do you need? See, sometimes we don't have clarity on what we need. We just we have a lot of wants, but we're not clarity on what we need to accomplish what God wants us to do, because we don't even know what God what God wants us to do. When you know what God wants you to do, then you can ask for the specific things you need to accomplish what God wants you to accomplish. And every time you ask for those things, God hears it and says, "Yeah, I can do that."

Now you've heard this story before, but many of you have, but I tell it again because this story changed my whole life in prayer. I mean, my first church that I was pastored as a youth pastor had about 100 people on a weekend and four youth. That's what we had. I don't know how they hired me. Our annual budget for the year was 113,000 dollars. That included the pastor's salary, my part-time salary, and taking care of all the church ministries. Our annual budget for the student ministry was 500 dollars for the year, okay?

Our youth group grew from four to about 100. Our kids decided we want to reach our high school. One way they thought they wanted to reach the high school was by doing this barn dance type of thing on a Friday night where we'd invite all the kids from the high school to come and do line dancing and all this stuff. And I'm like, "Okay, if you want to meet your friends and we'll share the gospel with them, I mean, come on." And these kids were fired up evangelists, so we said, "Let's do it." So we found a place that a guy let us rent his barn and we got ready to go.

Now the kids kept telling me, "We need bales of hay." I said, "What for?" "Cause we want to decorate, we want a place for us to sit, places to take pictures. It'd be fun to have bales of hay." So I said, "No problem." So I started calling all the farmers in West Illinois and asking them, "Okay, you have bales of hay?" They're like, "Yeah." Every bale of hay cost between three and five dollars a bale, and we needed 100 or 200. So I couldn't conceive of spending our entire youth ministry budget on bales of hay for the year. I couldn't justify that.

So I'd seen God answer prayer from the women in our church that prayed, so I began to pray every day for hay. I mean, I was like Dr. Seuss for about a period of two months. And the kids would come ask me, "Did we get hay, did we get hay?" I'm like, "I can't find any." "Well, we got a friend." Okay, so I'd call them, it didn't work. Every day I prayed for hay, nothing happened. On Thursday night we went to set up this barn before the Friday night dance that we were going to have. Music got put in, speakers got put in, decorations got put in—all this stuff. There were like 70 kids there decorating.

The guy that let us borrow his barn said to me, "Hey, your kids are awesome. I mean, the fact they want to reach their friends with the gospel and do all this, I'm just excited I can participate." I told him, "Hey, thanks for letting us do this." I said, "The only problem that we have in the whole thing is that we just wanted some bales of hay." And he said, "Well, what do you mean?" I said, "Well, the kids wanted like bales of hay to sit on and have pictures." He said, "Well, how many do you need?" I'm like, "I don't know, like 100 or 200." He said, "Well, wait right here."

And he went inside and made a phone call, and he came back out and he said, "Hey, get seven of your kids to come with me." And I went out behind and he owned a towing company, so he had a flatbed trailer and he said, "Get seven of your kids, stand on the back." He got us on this trailer, he drove us one mile down the road from his barn to another barn. He said, "This is my friend's barn. He said you can have as many bales of hay as you want. If you break one it's a dollar, otherwise I'll bring all of them back for you." And he opened up the door to the barn and there were thousands of bales of hay one mile from where we needed bales of hay.

Now here's what went off in my heart. I was like, "Are you kidding me?" If God cares that much about hay, what more does He care? It changed the way I pray. I ask: "God, give me what I need." When we prayed for our building, right? And we were a smaller church and we needed to raise 1.73 million dollars in six days. I knew God had called us as elders to go for it. It was so crystal clear. I preached with authority the Sunday before, waiting for the following Saturday when we collected the money, which was great until I went home that day and I was like, "Oh, that was bad. There's no way we're going to get this money."

And then I started getting scared because then I was like, "What's going to happen to our church? We're going to have a church split, I'm probably not going to pastor anymore, we're going to have to move away from Denver." I mean, all these thoughts are going on. And on Thursday, I just started reading through my Bible because I was so terrified, I was almost crying in my office, and I read through Psalm 27. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; whom shall I dread?" And it ends by saying this: "I would have despaired had I not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Take heart, wait on the Lord, have courage." I mean, and I was kept praying to the Lord. I'm like, "Lord, we don't have enough people. We don't have enough people to get that kind of money."

And as I'm reading Psalm 27, I hear the Lord—and when I say hear the Lord, I didn't hear an audible voice, I've never heard an audible voice, I know His voice in my spirit—I heard Him say this: "Jeff, I'm coming to the meeting on Saturday night and it is finished." And on Thursday in my office, I went from crying to like, "Whoo, it's done!" So for the next three days I was fine, and the elders at the time said, "Hey, we'll count the money, we'll let you know." I'm like, "You do whatever you want, it's done. I already know we got the money." I didn't hear until Sunday morning, but I already knew that we had the money on Thursday because God told me He was going to do that. See, that's when it means to pray and seek His face.

Now here's what's really interesting. Do you remember the disciples when Jesus came off the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John, and He comes down and there's this whole ruckus of things going on? And during this whole ruckus, this man brings his son to Jesus. He's probably got epilepsy or something like that. He's throwing himself in the fire, he's throwing himself in water, he's foaming at the mouth—all these things are going on. And the man says this: "I brought him to your disciples and they couldn't do anything." Do you remember Jesus's answer?

You would think He would say, "Well, we're talking about a serious physical condition here, it's not you know I mean give him a break. I'm God, they're not." Here's what Jesus says: "How long do I have to put up with you, you perverse generation? Bring the boy to me!" And when they bring the boy to Him, He throws himself down and Jesus casts out the demon and he goes. Now the disciples are listening to all this. The rebuke that's happening like, "You couldn't do this?" And later privately, they ask the Lord, "Hey, why couldn't we cast it out?" What did Jesus tell them? "Because this type only comes out by prayer."

I used to read that for years and be like, "What does that mean? Like if you pray really hard when you get in that situation then you can do..." No, no, it means this: if you ain't prayed up when the situation arises, you're going to have no power to dispense. You can't start lifting weights if you're an NFL player on Sunday afternoon right before the game and expect to be strong. You can't start praying when a bad situation arises. If you're seeking the Lord in prayer, there is spiritual power in your life so that no matter what comes along and no matter what happens, God is able to accomplish in that moment anything He wants to do in and through you. Pray! That was His rebuke to the disciples: "You guys don't pray."

You don't seek me. And because you don't have spiritual power, it's why you don't see the things happening that you want to see happen. Now, I've read through the Bible several times, and I'm going to tell you, I see nowhere in the Bible where you see any verse where the Holy Spirit says, "I'm turning off my power now and I don't do this stuff anymore." There's not a chapter or a verse. Well, Pastor Jeff, how come we don't see healings and how come we don't see this? I guess we gotta go to the mission field to see it. No, what you see on the mission field is people that pray.

If our people prayed, you would see healings, you would see demonic deliverance, you would see restoration of marriages, you would see—cause when God's people pray, the Holy Spirit says, "Let's go to work! They're asking for it, let's do it!" Right, that's what it means. "Give us this day our daily bread." God, give us what we need as a church. God, give us what we need financially. God, do all this. I mean, and God shows up in everything.

I remember one time when I was young in my faith, I was a youth pastor and I'd been reading through the Bible and I saw that everybody that got saved got baptized. Like they got immersed and they got baptized. I'm like, "I never was." I was in a tradition you sprinkled infants, that's what I was taught. But every time I read the Word, I'm like, "How come I'm not baptized?" And I didn't know who to talk to cause nobody I knew that was a Christian ever got baptized in water.

And I'm like, "Lord, if this is what you want for me, like, show me you want it because like there's this burning thing in me to get baptized, but I don't want to like step into one of those freaky charismatic churches and have somebody do some..." I mean, I was kind of scared of that whole thing. So I was praying all the time about baptism. Wouldn't you know I was a camp speaker at this place one time? And as I was speaking there, they said, "Hey, we want to bring up one of our missionaries," and the 70-year-old guy comes up from the Congo, Zaire. And he gets up and preaches for 30 minutes. Guess what he taught on?

Oh, he happened to just be teaching on baptism and the importance of believers to get baptized. As soon as he got done, like, before he even said amen, I was already standing in his face saying, "Baptize me right now." Right? Why? Because God answers His word. God always answers His prayer. In 2003, I had been part of a church planting residency. I moved from Dallas to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2002. I knew for fact God had called me to plant a church, there was no doubt in my mind. So I moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, I went through the residency, and it was probably one of the worst seasons in my life.

That didn't work out, had a engagement that broke off, I mean, all sort—it was just bad timing. And I end up leaving the program early. And in the spring of 2003, I'm just asking God questions like, "Lord, I went to seminary, I'm willing to do whatever you want." I sent out letters to college football coaches telling them I'd come work for them for free, I sent business letters out. I'm like, "Lord, I'll just do whatever you want. I got no skin in the game, but just show me what you want me to do."

And it just so happened to fly over to visit my friend who's a missionary in Czech Republic. Got to preach in Czech and in Wales and in Switzerland and do some different things. And during my time there, God used the book of Jeremiah and Ezekiel to teach me that He was going to take me to my home nation of America and I was going to call a group of people there to go follow Him and go send people all over the world. And I said, "Lord, if that's really you, you gotta teach me how to do this." And I happened to see this prayer video from a pastor named Jim Cymbala, who pastors Brooklyn Tabernacle, that talked about prayer so powerfully that I just began to pray every day and ask the Lord, "Lord, if you're really in my preaching, you gotta let me know."

And I was scheduled to preach at this large church that I knew very well, about 4,500 people, when I got home. And the Lord showed me just preach the gospel. He told me exactly what to do, and He said, "And at the end of your message, have people stand up that want to trust me." I said, "Okay." So I—and it was a real simple message. It was just the fact that you're a sinner and that Christ died for you and rose and you need to give your life to Him. But not only did I pray, I began to fast. I'd never fasted before. So I started to fast. I'm like, "Lord, just show me if this fasting thing works." So I stopped eating for a while and started praying more and doing all this.

So I went back to my hometown of Peoria, Illinois, to preach to this church one weekend. And I'm going in on Saturday night and I hear this voice in my head. It said this: "This is the last time you're ever going to preach. This will be your last sermon ever. They're never going to invite you back because you're at a church where the gospel get preached; everyone knows this stuff anyway." And I was like, "I'm cool if it's last time I ever preach." I already told the Lord that, no problem. And I knew that was the voice of the enemy.

So I got up and preached that night and I told the people I was going to be sharing the gospel. So they put these "Yes" packets out in the lobby. They put about 35 or 40 out there for the 4,500 people because there'd probably be a few people that would trust Christ that weekend. And I got up and preached the gospel that weekend. At the end of my message I said, "And so anybody who's ready to give their lives to Christ, I just want you to stand." Now I didn't know that that church had never asked people to stand, which caused a problem, but 200 people plus stood up on Saturday night to give their lives to Christ. And I was like, "That's pretty cool."

So I walk off the stage and this guy comes running around, he's like, "You gotta go back out there! You gotta tell these people how how they can grow in Christ. We're way short on 'Yes' packets!" So I went back out and explained to them the gospel and come back next week and who we're going to do. So I preached the next day. There were over 750 people that weekend that gave their lives to Jesus Christ in that one church. And I was hearing stories afterwards of men that were up here. One guy was bawling his eyes out saying, "Hey, I was supposed to be on the flight that flew into the Twin Towers. I'm a pilot. I got rerouted that day, I wasn't on that flight. I've been flying with an atheist, I've been questioning my Christianity," and then he started bawling. He goes, "Now I know why I wasn't on that flight, because Jesus Christ wanted to save my life."

Story after story after story. When you pray, God moves! My wife and I pray. We're prayers; that's what we do and it's important because God will always meet your needs when you pray. I know we're going long and I don't care. Cause this is important.

So I want to tell you about a fourth privilege that you have. A fourth access that you have. You have access to the privilege of living in freedom. Did you hear what I said? You have the access of living in freedom. You can be liberated.

Now notice this. After we "Give us this day our daily bread": "and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors." Forgive us our sins in the same way that we forgive other people's sins. It means forgiveness is a requirement for the believer. Because unforgiveness is a spiritual malady that manifests itself in the physical. If you are spiritually unforgiving another, you will have physical manifestations that are negative because of your unforgiveness.

How can you as a believer who's been forgiven everything by a perfect God, knowing you're imperfect, not forgive someone else who's imperfect? It's an impossibility. Many Christians live in bondage because they are unwilling to forgive someone who hurt them. Because being hurt is painful.

So I'm going to teach you how you can do that. Because there's an immediacy to it and there's a process to it. But forgiveness is an act of a will. It's not a feeling. You're never going to feel like forgiving someone. If someone hurt you, you're never going to feel like forgiving them. But you forgive them so that you can be liberated. You forgive them so that God's Spirit and power can move in and through you. Forgive, right?

I have permission to share this story because I'm just being vulnerable today. You gotta hear this stuff. Because sometimes when you come into church—because I used to always go into church as a single and I see husbands and wives sit together, arm around each other, holding hands. Like, all I saw was perfect marriages when I was single in the church. And then I got married. And then I knew there was at least one that wasn't perfect. And then as I started studying and I realized a lot of them ain't perfect.

And then I realized there's no such thing as a perfect marriage. But like, when my wife and I got married, we had known each other for a couple years. I knew her character, I knew her heart for Jesus, I knew her family, I loved them all. She loved me. I mean, we used to look at people that had trouble in their marriage when we were single and be like, "Man, can you believe them? Oh man, gosh, they just don't get it." I mean, we were like the experts on marriage before we got married.

And then when we said "I do," it was as if the Holy Spirit was standing above us going, "Ha ha ha ha!" I mean, we were just weeks into our marriage where it wasn't working. I mean, it wasn't working, like, really not working, like, every day I didn't want to go home. Now I loved her, but I didn't want to go home, and she would have been fine if I wouldn't have come home. I mean, it was a two-way street. And remember one night we had dinner with some friends and we got in an argument in the car on the way home, and the D-word came up as we were driving.

And she didn't say, "Jeff, you're so delightful." And as I heard that word, I started thinking, "Divorce." Okay. And honestly, when I heard it, I'm like, "I don't care." Like, this is so stinking hard, I don't care. The only reason I really cared was because of my pride, and I knew that if I got divorced, I couldn't do ministry anymore, which means I had to find a different job.

So in my pride, here's what I began to do. I began to pray and I told the Lord this: "Lord, if we get divorced, I cannot control that. So I'm not asking you to change Kim anymore," because I was praying for God to change Kim all the time, like daily, and then I was helping God to try to change Kim and it wasn't working.

And so I shut my mouth to Kim and I started talking to God, and I started telling him the things he needed to change about her. Like, "God, I just feel like when I come home, she doesn't show me the respect I deserve." And then this is what I heard: "Jeff, there's times I don't feel like I get the respect I deserve from you. Why don't you focus on that?" Okay, so I started to focus on that.

"Hey God, when we're in a group sometimes, sometimes I feel like she's not being totally authentic about who she is with me and her Christian walk." And He would say, "Well, Jeff, sometimes when you're in a group of people, you're not totally authentic about who you are with me in your Christian walk. Why don't you work on that?" God had so much for me to work on, so I just started working on all that and quit worrying about my wife, and I'm just like, "I'm going to be who I am, and I'm going to learn to encourage her and out-serve her and all that stuff."

Now, at the same time, God got a hold of my wife's life. She started reading this book called *The Power of a Praying Wife*. She hated the book! Because she told me every time she was mad at me, she had to sit down and write out a prayer of blessing over me. So God's working on her to change her. I'm telling you, within a matter of weeks, our love for one another went far beyond what it ever was when we were dating because we weren't trying to manipulate and control each other.

Now, why am I telling you this? This week we had a stack of 50 sheets of prayer requests. There's a ton in there. "My husband doesn't do this, my husband did this, my wife is like..." Here's the deal. Flip it around. Forgive them and let God work on you. He'll take care of your spouse. Flip it around. Or how about in your own personal life? Because I know there's some of you here. I mean, I know your story and I'm not trying to belittle it because some of you are here like, "Well, how do I turn around and how do I forgive somebody that abused me when I was just a little girl or just a little boy?" Like, what am I supposed to do? I don't even know who it was.

See, even when you bring that before the Lord, you'll hear something like this: "Oh, I know what it's like to be stripped and beaten. I know what it's like to be hung publicly and shamed. I know exactly how it feels and it's totally wrong, and I want you to know I was right there the whole time, and if you can forgive, I can put my power through you in a way that you can liberate others." See what I'm saying? See, forgiveness sets you free to have a ministry to other people. Amen?

I mean, I'm telling you, I'm married because of prayer. I'm telling you, I'm not drunk every day because of prayer. I'm telling you, I'm becoming a better pastor because of prayer. Like, even now, like, it's little things. Like if our elders don't agree on something or I'm feeling this inside, I realize it's only because there's something in me that I'm trying to control that I want it to go my way. And until I get to a place where I can physically bless everybody on there and don't care about the direction anymore, I'm not in a good place.

Every time you're irritated about something, it's God's called you to be free. It's God's called you to take let go of the control because we have so many expectations as to how things should go. "This the way our marriage should have gone, this the way our kids should be, this the way my family should look, this is the way I should be, this is the way people should treat me." When you live like that, you pray wrong. When you get the heart of God and say, "God, you led me here, God, you're doing this, what do you want to do? You can do whatever you want," God moves in your heart.

You have the privilege of living free. Wives, you don't need to go home and beg your husband to be the spiritual leader. You do your part. The impossible part. Submit to him in everything as to the Lord. Do that and see what God does in your husband. Husbands, you don't need to go home and change your wife. Husbands, you need to go home and love your wife like Christ loved the church, even though she's totally unlovable, and then see what God does.

That's what God does. That's what prayer does. You can't do that apart from having supernatural power in your life. And there's a privilege of living in freedom. It's for freedom that Christ Jesus set us free. If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, then you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free. That's why He goes on in verses 14 and 15 that we don't have much time to talk about today about forgiving others their transgressions and how important it is for us.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's message. If you're in the Denver area, join us Sundays at our Englewood or Westminster locations at 8:30 or 10:30 AM. We'd love to meet you. And before you go, remember that when you give to Brave, you're not just supporting a ministry, you're advancing the gospel. Your gift makes an eternal impact on those who come to know Jesus and strengthens believers who are growing deeper in their faith. Join us next time for more bold, biblical teaching from Pastor Jeff.