Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: My hope, my goal, my prayer for this sermon is not that you'll know more about prayer. It's that you will pray.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Devotion. Let's listen in as JP gives part two of Prayer.

JP Jones: I’ll tell you a second thing that scripture tells us to pray for as we pray for one another. It's found in Colossians chapter four. In Colossians chapter four, it says this, verses two through six: "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."

Paul says, "Pray for me, and pray for me that I might speak forth the mystery of the gospel. Pray for me that I might have the clarity to know how to respond to everybody's question. Pray for me that my words will be filled with grace, so that I might speak to those that I'm talking to, speak to those that I'm rubbing shoulders with." Not only are we to pray for one another's spiritual transformation, we're to pray for one another's testimony, for one another's witness, for one another's influence for Christ.

Again, think of what would happen if we took this to heart. Just among us here at Crossline, think about if we began to seriously pray for one another. Every one of us would be praying for someone else, and someone would be praying for us. We'd be praying that we'd be spiritually transformed, and we'd be praying that our words would be a gracious witness for Christ and our life would be a powerful example for Christ. Do you realize that would change our lives? That would change this community we live in because God would be real, and God would be working because God answers prayer, and prayer changes things.

And so the Apostle Paul here at the opening of this letter to this brand-new church, he tells us we ought to pray thankfully and we ought to pray intercedingly. Here's a third observation. We ought to pray specifically. Pray specifically. Paul says, "We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you."

Paul remembered specifically what was happening in their lives, and he prayed specifically for what was happening in their lives. He mentions here their faith, their hope, and their love. This is a trilogy of character qualities that summarize what Jesus Christ produces in our lives. When someone opens up their life to Christ and begins to follow after Christ and experience what Christ does in their life, what he produces is faith, hope, and love. It's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, that great chapter on prayer, when he summarizes and says, "Now there remains three things: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love."

Paul says, "I observed your faith, your hope, and your love," but he even describes it. He says, "your work of faith." It's the Greek word *ergon*. It's the idea of pouring energy into something towards a purposeful result. It's the work that produced faith. He says, "I remember your labor of hope and love." The labor is the Greek word *kopiao*. It means to work at something so hard you reach the point of exhaustion. So there was a work of faith, there was a labor of love, and then he says, "there was an endurance of hope." It's the Greek word *hypomone*, and *hypomone* means to remain under even when everything gets tough, you stay in there.

This is what Paul is saying: "I have an awareness of your life, your commitment, your work, your labor, and your endurance." You know what that tells me? It tells me that my prayers for others can only be as specific as my personal relationship with them. If I don't have any relationship with you, all I can pray for you is in real general terms. But the more I know you, the more I rub shoulders with you, the more contact I have with you, the more specific my prayers can be for you, the more potent my prayers can be for you because I'm praying specifically for what you need.

And so what that means is for us to have the kind of prayers that really lay hold of God's resources and really make a difference in the lives of others, we need to have the kind of relationships that those prayers come out of. We need to have the kind of community and connectedness with one another so that we know what's going on in each other's lives. Let's be honest: an occasional encounter on a Sunday morning does not produce an intimate friendship. The only way we can have those kind of relationships so that we can have that kind of prayer life is we've got to get up close and personal.

We've got to be in one another's homes. We need to be meeting one another for coffee. We need to be working through life together. We need to be part of a small group. We need to be in intimate fellowship so that we understand what's happening and what we're dealing with, and we share openly, and then out of that, we pray for each other. And then those prayers make a difference. They change our lives, you see. God wants us to have that type of prayer that is specific.

I might have shared this with you, and I think I shared it with the men, but some years back when I was working in youth ministry, one of the guys that I worked with, Dave White—he's a pastor now up in the Valencia area—but we worked with Campus Crusade together at the UC Santa Barbara campus. We were involved in all types of student ministries, and Dave had played basketball, so he gathered a bunch of guys together and they played in the intramural basketball league on campus.

Before their first basketball game, he gathered these guys together and said, "Let's have some prayer before we play in this game." And so the guys prayed, and one guy prayed, "Lord, I pray that none of us have any injuries during this basketball game." And another guy prayed, "Lord, help us watch our temper and really be good examples for Christ." And another guy prayed, "Lord, use this basketball game for your glory." And they said, "Amen."

Dave looked at them and said, "That's it? That's all you're going to pray for?" And the guys go, "Well, yeah." And he goes, "No, no, no. Let's pray." And he pulled them back together and said, "Lord, we want to win this game. We want to beat these guys. We want to beat them so badly they'll never want to play us again. Amen." Now Dave's the pastor, and they're looking at Dave like, "Can you pray that way?" And Dave said, "Is that what you want?" And they said, "Well, yeah." And he said, "Well then, pray for it."

Do you know you can pray for what you want? You can pray for what you want in your life. You can pray for what you want in the lives of your family members. You can pray for what you want in this church. You can pray for what you want for people. And this is what will happen when you pray specifically. One, God might say, "I know that's what you want, but it's not what I want," and he might lead you to stop praying that way. Two, he may give you exactly what you asked for exactly the way you asked for it. Or three, he might say, "I know that's what you want, and it's what I want too, but just wait. Just wait because the timing's not right."

But we will never enter into that intimacy with God and lay hold of God that way until we pray and pray specifically. Paul said, "I pray specifically for your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfastness of hope." Paul prayed thankfully and he prayed intercedingly, he prayed specifically. Here's a fourth example from this passage that we need to implement in our prayer life. That is, we need to pray consistently. Pray consistently. It says here in 1 Thessalonians 1, "We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfast endurance of hope."

Paul highlights these words "always" and "continually." Our prayers need to be regular and they need to be continuous. In Acts 2:42, the first church that's established after the day of Pentecost, it says in Acts 2:41 that about 3,000 people heard the message, they believed it, and they were baptized and added to the church. Acts 2:42 says, "And they were all gathered together and they devoted themselves to prayer, to the Apostle's teaching, to the breaking of bread, and to fellowship." That first church that had world-changing impact was characterized by certain key spiritual devotions, and at the top of the list was prayer.

Paul says in Colossians 4—we looked at it, Colossians 4:2—"Devote yourselves to prayer." In Luke chapter 18, Jesus gives this story because he wants to teach us how we need to keep on praying for some things. Not just pray it once, not just pray it twice, but to keep on praying for it. He says in Luke chapter 18, and he prefaces it to teach us how we ought to pray and not lose heart but to continue to pray, tells the story of a woman who is not getting justice and she's trying to get her case adjudicated by a judge who was an unfair judge.

And so she went to him every day and every night pounding on his door, asking for justice. And in the story in Luke 18, it says, finally, because the woman hounded him day and night, he finally gave her justice. Here's the argument of Jesus. If the unjust judge finally gives the woman her answer because she continually came to him day and night, how much more will a loving Heavenly Father who delights in giving good gifts to his children, how much more will he give us what we ask of him if we come to him and keep on coming to him with our requests?

We need to be regular and continuous in our prayers. But to do that, there's a few things that need to be in place in our lives. First of all, we need to have a prayer attitude 24/7. We need to be in fellowship with God in such a way that at any time we need to pray about something, there's not a wall there that stops us from being able to pray. When I graduated from college and I went to work with Campus Crusade for Christ, I was working at the UCLA campus, and the director and his wife of that ministry, Don and Renee Carson, Renee was a real prayer warrior.

And I remember one time Renee telling me that she wanted to have a relationship with God that was so pure, she had such short accounts with God, that anytime anyone needed prayer, she could immediately pray and know that there wasn't any business with God she had to go through before she was in a right relationship with God. So she'd committed herself to living a pure life so that she could pray anytime, anywhere, for anyone. We need to have a relationship with God that's 24/7. Brother Lawrence wrote this book, *Practicing the Presence of God*, where he talked about when he was in the monastery peeling potatoes in the kitchen, kind of seeing the other priests going to the prayer chapel.

He realized, "I don't have to go to the prayer chapel to have fellowship with God. In fact, I could have just as meaningful worship experience here in the kitchen peeling potatoes because I can, in my own thoughts and in my own heart, be in a right connection with God. I can be practicing his presence right here." Do you realize anywhere we are, we can practice the presence of God so that we could be prepared to pray? That's one thing that needs to be true. Second thing, if we're going to pray continuously, we need to be having in our arsenal, in our toolbox, those little missile prayers that we offer up.

Because we don't always have time to get on our knees and quote scripture and just spend devoted silence before God. Sometimes you've got to pray right there on the spot. "Lord, help my children. Lord, protect my husband. Lord, give me wisdom. Lord, be with that family right now." Those are that immediate missile kind of prayer that we ought to be regularly offering up to God. As well, if we're going to be people who pray consistently, we need to have regular times in our schedule marked out, carved out, prioritized just for prayer.

We need to have a time or times, multiple times, that we get alone or we get with others just for the purpose of prayer. That's why we take some time the first of the week, every Monday morning, as a staff just to pray. That's why men gather together every Thursday morning up at the church office just for prayer. This past week, Darren and I hadn't had a chance to connect, and so we got together on Thursday and we walked through and talked through this service and what was going to take place over the service.

And then I said, "Let's just spend some time praying together." And so we sat and had just an extended time just praying, praying for this service, praying for our church, praying for some of you by name, asking God to do what only he could do. There needs to be time set aside just for the purpose of prayer. One last observation from this passage. We're to pray thankfully, we're to pray intercedingly, we're to pray specifically, we're to pray consistently, and we're to pray confidently. Confidently.

"We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We constantly remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, for we know, brothers beloved by God, that he has chosen you." These prayers came out of a level of conviction, came out of a level of confidence. When we pray with confidence, we are praying in harmony with what God wants to do, and we're putting ourselves and we're placing others in a position to experience all of God's work in their life.

But I have learned this through trial and error in my life. It's this: confidence in prayer is directly related to praying according to God's will. If I'm praying about something and I don't have confidence that it's God's will, well then, it's just a wish. It's a hope. But if I'm praying about something that I know is God's will, I can bring energy and conviction into my prayers because I know it's what God wants to do, and I'm lining my requests up with what God wants to do, and I fully expect it to be done. I mean, that's how this church was birthed.

It wasn't very many months ago where I was in a season of my life kind of at a crossroads and not really sure what God wanted to do. Some of you were folks that I talked about it with. And there was a day where a few of the men of this church, we went up to Forest Home as a place where God has spoken to me and met me in powerful ways in the past. Guys took a day off of work, and we just spent the whole day at Forest Home just praying and asking God to give us direction, to give me direction specifically.

We went to the place where Billy Graham had an encounter with God and came to the place of conviction about launching his evangelistic crusades. We stood in that very spot and prayed, and there were six guys there and three guys on this side and three guys on this side to hold my arms up. We overlooked the valley up there at Forest Home, and we just prayed that God would show me what he wanted me to do. And out of that came some intense searching and discussion with my wife and with others.

And then I launched into a time of prayer and fasting. I was reading in scripture, studying about fasting, and I came across several passages that talked about three-day fasts. And so I committed myself to go on a three-day fast and really seek God in terms of his direction. At the end of those three days, I didn't have that level of conviction that I thought I would have. And so I continued the fast, and there have been people who've prayed and fasted a lot more than me, so I'm not saying this in any way, shape, or form to boast.

But I went on a 10-day fast and just prayed and came to a place of absolute certainty about the direction that God wanted to have. And you're the answer. We are the answer. This church is the answer, you see. When we pray with confidence, God changes things. But that means we need to know his will. And how is it that we can know his will? Well, you can't know God's will unless you spend some time with him. You've got to spend time with him. You've got to get into his word. You need to understand his attributes, his purposes, his ways.

And when you develop a deeper intimacy with God, you know the kinds of things that God wants to do, and you have a sense of the direction that God wants to go in. I'll tell you the most powerful way that you can be confident of God's will, and that's claiming his word. Because God is always true to his word. It says in 1 John 5:14 and 15, "This is the confidence that we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, we know that we have the requests that we have asked from him."

So when we pray scripture back to God, when we claim promises in God's word back to him, when we pray the statements of truth in scripture back to him, we know we're praying according to his will. Therefore, we can pray with confidence about what it is he wants to do. When I was in high school, I took two classes: Driver's Ed and Driver's Training. Now in Driver's Ed, I learned all about the rules of driving, saw all these movies about what happens when you drive too fast and drink and drive and red asphalt and all those scary things that they try to put before you so you won't drive like a maniac.

Saw the Disney movie with Goofy, telling you, "Keep your eyes moving. Leave yourself an out. Make sure they see you." All the rules of safe driving. At the end of Driver's Ed, I knew a lot about driving, but I still didn't know how to drive. I took another class called Driver's Training, and in Driver's Training, I had to sit behind the wheel, had to start the car, had to put the car in gear, had to take off. I had to drive. At the end of Driver's Training, I knew how to drive.

My hope, my goal, my prayer for this sermon is not that you'll know more about prayer. It's that you will pray. It's that you'll pray. And maybe your next step is to take that prayer guide that I send out every day as an email and to use it. Just pray those prayers that are there. Maybe your next step is to carve out 10 minutes every day. Just take 10 minutes and set them aside, put it in your calendar, mark it off. And in those 10 minutes, you're going to pray. Maybe your next step is to come to our Wednesday night Bible study and prayer time and gather with some other believers in prayer.

If you're a guy, to come on Thursday morning to our men's prayer time and pray. Maybe your next step is to partner with somebody here in this church to exchange your phone numbers and to actually become prayer partners with each other and spend some time together, spend some time over the phone, emailing one another and going deeper and committing and covenanting with each other. Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, there's a next step. And the next step is to pray.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment. But before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. You know there is a next step in prayer. What's your step? Maybe it's to practice prayer as a daily habit. Maybe it's to pray for others in your life. Maybe it's to spend time alone with God in his word and prayer in quiet time. In Mark chapter one, it says Jesus went away to a lonely place to pray. It was the habit of Jesus to pray every day, to start his day in prayer. Here in 1 Thessalonians chapter one, the Apostle Paul in writing to this young church and encouraging them in the faith, first thing he says is that he prays for them and that he gives thanks to God for them and that he remembers them before God night and day.

Prayer was a vital part of Paul's ministry. Prayer was a part of shaping this church at Thessalonica. And prayer is to be a vital part of our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. It's one of those key habits that helps us grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ. You know, in Acts chapter two, when it speaks of the early church in Acts 2:42, it says that they were devoting themselves to prayer, to the word, to fellowship, and to the breaking of bread. Those four key disciplines were part of the building blocks of that early church.

And they need to be the building blocks of any church and any individual follower of Jesus Christ. And at the top of the list is prayer. What is your next step in prayer? How are you making prayer a vital part of your experience with Jesus? One of the things that I suggest is that you just take the prayers of the Bible and pray them back to God. Take the prayer in Ephesians chapter one or the prayer in Ephesians chapter three and pray that prayer back to God. Pray it for yourself. Pray it for your spouse. Pray it for your kids. Pray it for the folks in your small group. Pray for the people in your church. Pray for your pastors. Please, pray it for me and ask God to do the work that only he can do, the work that is generated by prayer.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.