Live Free with Josh Howerton - The Powerful Impact of Prayer | Ep. 36 | Monday March 27, 2023

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Offering up a few moments of your time to pray for someone can impact that person for *life* and might start a butterfly effect that touches more than just the two of you. In today’s episode, Pastor Mike shares about a time that this happened to him years ago and how he still is moved by it to this day. The powerful story is followed by a question that will prompt you to try this out in your own life. You won’t want to miss it! For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. Church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, thanks for joining us today. My name is Mike, and we're spending just a few minutes every day, Monday through Friday anyway, listening to God. And hopefully you're listening to God on Saturday and Sunday as well. But on this podcast, we're doing it five days a week. And I got to tell you, this is so fun for me,

just working through all this with you, what I'm personally walking through, and just really grateful to be on this journey with you. And what we're doing, we're walking through a little book in the back of the New Testament of the Bible called Philippians. Actually is a letter written by a guy known as the Apostle Paul, the title simply made. means that he was chosen by God to be his spokesperson and spreading the good news of Jesus around the world. And this guy was radically transformed, and he worked tirelessly dispensing the same kind of grace that he had received from God. And he writes a lot of the back half of the New Testament of the Bible, and all of it is in letter form. And most of these letters were written from prison, where he was unjustly incarcerated for his faith. He starts the letter with these 12 words,

every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God. And we challenged each other, come up with a list of people that we could say that about, and then let them know. So let me ask you, how'd you do? You know, gratitude is a heart changer. And relational gratitude changes families. It changes marriages, friendships, teams, workplaces. Keep that every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God thing going.

Then the day, Paul goes on, verse four, here we go. Whenever I pray, I make my request for all of you with joy. For you have been my partners in spreading the good news about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. I think this is cool. Not only does he thank God for them, he also prays specifically for them. I'm finding that having people on a gratitude list is so good for my soul. And to also have people that I'm praying for, people on that list, it gets my eyes off myself. Now, you probably don't wrestle with self-centeredness, but I do. Oh, you do too. I find that taking time to talk to God about other people instead of just always bringing my stuff to him has been extremely life-giving to me. As I work down through my list today, in fact, just praying for people with all kinds of stuff going on their life. A friend going through chemo, a few of them actually, some friends trying to beat addictions, some families with prodigal kids right now, mental health, issues, relational struggles, people going through court battles, church conflict, financial

hardships, people trying to figure out their future, and they need wisdom. I mean, you name it. I prayed for that today. And because I can be a real airhead when people ask me, hey, bro, could you pray for me? I usually do it right then, in my mind at least, in the moment so I don't forget, or I put their name in my phone, so I will remember to talk to God about them. And this has just been a good practice for me. I can actually remember the first time somebody told me that they were praying for me. It was a college classmate. It was a guy that I played basketball with. I was 19 years old, and I was getting ready to preach in front of the entire school, professors and all. And I was stressed out about it, and my friend knew it. And this guy went out of his way to hunt me down in the

gym and tell me, hey, bro, I just wanted to let you know that I prayed for you this morning. And he meant it. And I can just remember as a 19-year-old guy being overwhelmed by the fact that somebody had been actually talking to God about me. So who are you talking to God about? Who are you praying for today? Why not think through a list of people that could use somebody like you talking to God about them and do it today? Okay, I promise, I promise we'll go further tomorrow. If we don't, we'll be in Philippians for the next 10 years. but it seems like we blow by this introductory stuff way too often.

We fail to stop and practice it. So I'm challenging to today, take the time to pray for people today. Thank God for them and talk to him about their needs. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you,

would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out. For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.combe.combe.combe.