The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 12: A Journey of Prayer

Episode Date: March 26, 2017

“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. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him ca stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:7-11

Amen. Amen. Welcome. If you have your Bibles, you're going to open those up to Colossians Chapter 4. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you, and we would love for you to take that. And you can actually take that home with you. That'll be our gift to you. We'd love for you to have access to the scriptures and use them as much as humanly possible. Today, we're going to continue in this before all things journey, where we, for the last 12 weeks have been asking and answering the question, God, what does it look like to put you before all things in our lives? What does it?

it look like to put you before all things in our relationships, in our jobs, in our marriages, as a parent, in our finances, in all stages of life? God, what does it mean to have you set before all things? And we've been studying the book of Colossians verse by verse by verse. And this book was written by the Apostle Paul, who at one point was a religious terrorist. And he has this radical encounter with God on a road to a town called Damascus, where he meets Jesus face to face. And forever changed and he stops persecuting Christians and he begins to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ telling people about how good God is, what God has for us and for his children and he gets arrested for doing so and he gets thrown into prison. And in prison he pins this letter to a small church

in a town called Colossae. And that is where we pick up in Colossius chapter 4. So let's read it together. Colossius 4 starting in verse 2. It says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with Thanksgiving. And 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. When you first read those three verses, if you just took them at face value, they just sound like encouraging verses. They just sound like a nice little, you know, encouragement from a writer. But when you really put them in context, and when you study scriptures, context is not everything,

but it's a lot of thing. And context matters a lot. And when you read this phrase, continues steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with Thanksgiving. And you consider the context under which Paul writes it. You see, Paul is in prison. And I'm not just talking about any prison. I'm talking about a first century prison. He's not getting three squares a day. He doesn't get to go out to the yard in the afternoon and work out and play basketball. He is under a great deal of torment and suffering and persecution. He never knows what's coming around the corner. He has no idea what the plan is for him getting out. He was doing what God told him to do and it landed him in prison. And from there he is writing, pray for us with Thanksgiving in your heart.

And not just pray for us with Thanksgiving in your heart. Pray for us that God would make it possible for us to go and do the thing that landed us in prison in the first place. What has happened to a man that from prison in the midst of great suffering, he could say, pray with a heart filled with gratitude? Pray that God would move in such a way. that we could go and do the thing that got us arrested in the first place. The reason we're suffering, please pray for us that God would make a way for us to do some more of it. What happened to him? How could a man say that? And it is this question, this concept that we are going to

chew through today as a church, and we are going to walk through what it means to be on a journey of prayer. What prayer does to us if we'll let it. over time. Now I've been a Christian for a while and I've been around Christianity for a while and if you're new to Christianity or you're new to church or life with God and I welcome you and I would just encourage you with this little tidbit of information, Christians are weird. Not you, the person next to you. All of y'all are normal. It's the other people that are weird. Sometimes Christians do weird stuff and you're not going to encounter any like weirder stuff than when you pray with Christians sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes. We all have different techniques. We all have

different learnings, ways that we go about it. I mean, I've employed a few different techniques along the way, and I'm just going to share a few of these with you. One of my favorite techniques in prayer, I call it the great negotiator. Have you ever tried to negotiate with God in prayer? I mean, you know that moment in time right before you accept the reality that you have the stomach flu or that you're nauseous? Like you're trying to say, like, you're, you're, you're trying to say, You think in your mind, I can fight this nausea off. I'm just going to rally. I'm going to muscle up.

I can overcome this with willpower. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I can't overcome this willpower. And you start negotiating with God before what's going on in here, starts coming out, what's going on up here, you know? And you're like, dear Lord, if I could just not throw up, I'll never cuss again. I will never say another bad word. I will, I surrender. Whatever you want, Lord.

I will just take this away. It's called the Great Negotiator. One time I had a kidney stone, and I was making all kinds of crazy deals with God. I was like, listen, Lord, if you'll just take this demon out of me, I will get a bullhorn. And I will go to every Atlanta Braves game for the rest of my life. And I will just stand on the sidewalk preaching at people. I will do anything you want. I will wear an a-frame sign that says Jesus saves all the days of my life.

whatever, just get this out of me. The great negotiator, it never really worked out for me too good, mostly because I never hold up my end of the deal. But that's one way. I mean, I'm not saying this the way. I'm just saying it's that way. The long prayer? Not the long prayer, but the long prayerer that prays the long prayer.

I personally believe that every disciple group needs a long prayer in there. You know the long prayer. You know when they start praying, you're like, the first you're into it. You're like, oh, yeah, man, I'm into this. Just doing praying the fire down. I like it. And then they get to the second verse. and you're like, uh, and you start looking at your, you like start doing the like eye crack thing,

peeking at your watch, you know? And then all of a sudden you find yourself praying while they're praying and you're just like, all right, dear Lord, I have two episodes left in my Netflix show. And I would really like to get through those tonight. If you could just somehow get them to take that to their prayer closet, all the rest of us would be much happier. And then you like come back to in the long, prayer still doing the praying thing and they just are good they're starting on the missionaries by

name and they're at the letter a and you're like oh lord let's go that's the long prayer everybody everybody needs to encounter a long prayer at some point in their life I had a college roommate he did what I call the deep breather he was a deep breather he'd be like dear lord you're so good god I love you so much thank you for everything you've done here's the best god of yours is so important the whole time he's like breathing this deep breathing in and I think I'm just standing there praying, we'd be huddled up, and I'd be like, dear Lord, I pray this brother had a mint. If you could just heal him of the chronic bad breath, that would just be. My all-time favorite is the baptismatic. That's what you get when you cross a Baptist with a

charismatic, the baptismatic. They almost believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, but they're not real sure because they sure don't want something crazy to happen. And so if you're ever sick and you pray with the baptismatic, this is how you'll know. They'll be praying for you. And they almost believe the Holy Spirit has all the power, but not really. And they'll pray and they'll be like, dear Lord, I just pray for my brother or sister who's sick. And we just pray that you'd heal them unless it's not your will. Unless it's not your will, God. But we do.

No, we want you to heal them in Jesus' name unless you don't want to. And then we want you to do whatever you want to do, God. And God, we just pray that you would just make them comfortable. Wait, no, we can't say that. No, Lord, we pray for healing. even though we don't know that's what you want to do. And before too long, if you're the sick person, you're so confused. You're like, does God even like me?

I just wanted somebody to tell me God loves me and was pray a healing over me, but now I'm so confused. So that's the badmatics. No matter what school you come out of, no matter what camp of thinking you've come through in religion, no matter what your church history is or experience, here's the truth. prayer is the lifeblood of what it means to be a believer. It is the lifeblood of the believer. Prayer is the essential ingredient in knowing God and knowing that you are known by God. Prayer is the cornerstone of what it means to be in a relationship with God.

It's the lifeblood. You see, it's not just the lifeblood of the believer. It is also the lifeblood of this moment. movement. When I was getting ready for this weekend, I started to just do some simple math. And I started to add up all the people that I know that are my friends and people I'm in relationship with that spend regular habitual time praying for this church. And I got up to about 200 people that I know spend time every week praying for this movement. And I got to around those 200 people, I found that over 350 hours of prayer are sewn into this church every

week. We pray over the prayer cards diligently. We pray over people who need healing. We want to see people healed by God's grace. We want to see people set free by God's grace. We want you to come to our services and encounter God face to face. And there are people praying hour upon hour upon hour to that end every week. And it is a good thing. Because listen to me, Church, if this church, if this thing is built on giftedness, then God help us. If this built on strategy, then God will stop us. If it is built on entertainment, then God save us. But if it's built on prayer, then God is in it. And if God is for us, then who can be against us? I pray that our church is a church that is built on prayer. Amen, church? Amen. So here's what we're going to do today for the rest of

time. Originally when I was given this sermon, this topic to preach on prayer, my original intent was that I was going to do this long, everything's long here. I was going to do a nice long talk on a, do a theological expose on prayer. I was going to get my white boards out and I was going to draw all these diagrams about what God does in prayer, which is pretty much everything and what we do in prayer, which is pretty much be obedient and pray. I was just going to walk through all this information and right ways to pray and right ways to believe about prayer, but the Spirit of God just would not let me go down that road. He kept leading me in a different direction. And so instead of giving you all of this exposition of information, here's what I'm going to do today,

I'm just going to tell you a story. I'm just going to tell you a story of my faith-building journey with prayer, and there's something I need from you. I've never told this story this way until this weekend, and I haven't walked down the hallways of my heart like this in a long, long time. And so from you, I'm going to need some grace. There may be some times when I'm telling this that it feels like I'm stuck, well, it's because I am stuck. It may feel like I'm buried in my notes, and it doesn't just feel that way. it's because I'm actually buried in my notes because I'm just going to do my best to be as faithful

as I can to what I believe God wants me to share. And so I would love it and I would welcome any grace that you would give me as I tell this story. Amen to giving me grace. Amen. Thank you. So here's my story of faith-building, faith-defining, journey of prayer. When I was 12 years old, my life changed dramatically. You see up until that point, I had lived the dream. I had a loving parents. I had grandparents that were involved. We grew up on a huge farm with all of our family and extended family all around. And we loved each other. We had good times. There's a lot of celebration, a lot of happiness. Our home was filled with laughter. Our home was filled with fun. Our home was a God-centered home, a gospel-centered place. We loved Jesus. We made much of him. The church was

the center of our lives. My cousins were my best friends. It could not have been a better childhood. It could not have been a better childhood. I couldn't have had better parents. I couldn't have grown up in a better environment. And then I was 12 years old. I was at my friend's house one night. And we were doing what 12 year olds do. And we were just sitting there playing Sega Genesis, playing Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis. And about 8.30, I hear a knock on the door. and the door opens and in walks my aunt and uncle. And they tell me, hey, we need you to come with us. We're going to take you home.

And this was strange because I was supposed to stay the night. But without a lot of argument, I get in the car and we ride back to our house. And when we pull up in our driveway, our driveway is full of cars. And it was at this point in time where I realized that either we were having a party that nobody told me about, or something had gone terribly wrong. And as I walked into our house, I see my brother sitting across the room, and he's always been my best friend, my older brother.

And I walk over to him and I just sit down and the room is just heavy. And as a 12-year-old, I just sat there, scared to death. Just scared. And my mom and dad sat down with us and they proceeded to tell us the worst news I had ever heard in my entire life. They told us, boys, it's crazy. I can still hear my dad's like, I can hear him saying it as I'm saying it to you. He says, boys, we found out today that your mom has cancer. You see, at that time, I don't think I knew very much about cancer. I don't think I had ever known anyone that had cancer. I didn't really know what that meant, but I knew it wasn't good. And I just remember looking across the room at my father and looking at him just hoping that he could fix it.

But somehow he could make it better. And so as we sat there with what felt like 10,000 pounds of pressure on our family, my dad said these words. He said, let's pray. And little did I know at the time that this prayer would have profound impact on me throughout the journey of my life. You see, we had prayed a million times as a family, and we had had a million different things to pray about.

But this one, this one stuck on me a little bit different. And this is what my dad said when he prayed. He said, God, there's a lot we don't understand. But will you give us faith to believe when we cannot see? And so the journey with cancer began. The next year was marked in pain and hardship. My mom endured a long surgery and then a year of chemotherapy. My mom's name was Catherine Ann Britt.

She had long brown hair and big beautiful brown eyes. She had this big smile in her life, her life. could light up a room. Everywhere she went, joy followed. She was an incredibly special woman. You're going to want to remember those details as the story goes on. After my mom's first surgery, they led us into her room. And she laid a hospital bed, and she was just writhing in pain.

And I found myself just standing at the edge of her bed, mortified, just completely terrified. I was scared to death. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have anything to say. There were no words. I felt completely helpless. So standing there at the edge of a hospital bed, the only thing I could do was pray.

And so I prayed. I just wanted God to help my mama. I just wanted something different than what I was experiencing. I wanted him just to fix it. So I just prayed for it. for her. And this was the first time in my life that I think I had ever actually prayed for someone other than myself. See, in this really strange way, standing at the edge of a hospital bed, it was the first time in my life, I realized that life's not all about me. And then there's this mysterious thing

about prayer that prayer relieves us from the burden of self-absorption. See, it was when I realized I had no control, that there was nothing that I could do. It was then that I went to God. and through prayer he showed me that I could be free from self-absorption. I wanted life to be about me, man. I wanted it. I wanted to get my way. I wanted more than anything for life to be about me, but it just wasn't. And it just isn't. And so I prayed.

And after we leave the hospital bed and we finally get her home every Monday, she would go and get her chemo drip, and she would be violently ill for days. As a 12 or 13-year-old boy, I didn't really have a category for this. I didn't really understand what was happening. And honestly, somehow I blocked the majority of it out of my subconscious. I know that it was brutal. I know this, more than 20 years later,

I cannot watch a television show with someone who has cancer without smelling the stench of sickness. I can still smell it like it's happening right in front of me. And through that season of hardship and pain, Here's what chemotherapy taught me about prayer. It taught me that prayer changes your perspective. If you were to bowl down the power of prayer in one sentence from my story, is that prayer has the ability to change your perspective.

You see, I had a million questions. Why is this happening? God, what are you doing? Why won't you just healer? Why won't you just fix this? I had a million questions. God, why are you so angry with us? What did we do wrong?

What did I do wrong that you're punishing through my mother? What is happening? God, where are you? You see, it was through these questions, some of which I don't even have good answers for today. And some of these questions are deeply flawed questions at their onset. But despite all of that, here is what I know. prayer helped me to understand how to have hope when I was completely hopeless.

Prayer seemed and proved itself to be a place of help when I felt completely helpless. Have you ever been in a quiet moment of prayer? And then you just started praying for stuff that just didn't make any sense. You have no idea why you're praying for it. It's almost like God himself is putting the words in your mouth. Well, it's because he is. In the book of Romans, it says it like this. It says, likewise, the Spirit of God helps us in our weakness.

For we do not know what to pray for as we ought to. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. There is a reality beyond what we can taste, touch, see, and feel. There is something deeper going on. And the spirit does this inside-out work. You see, God uses the vehicle of prayer to change our perspective and ultimately change our position according to his will. Prayer has power.

You see, pain does one of two things. It either pushes us deeper into ourselves or it pulls us closer to God. And by God's grace, God was pulling me. I was pushing on him. that is for sure. I was resistant and I was hurt and I was pushing on God, but by his grace, he just kept pulling me on him. After a year of chemotherapy, my mom went in for her final checkup.

And we had this big party planned. And we had this celebration planned and you're cured. God is good. We were so excited. We had family and friends. We had this whole thing planned. And my mom went in for her final checkup and they ran some tests. they had not previously run, and they found some things they had not previously seen.

They found a new tumor, twice the size of the first one, and this meant more surgery. This was devastating news. To be honest with you, the gap between the time we received that news and the next surgery is a mystery to me. It's like a black cloud in my memory. I have no idea what happened. But I know this. I was sitting in the waiting room, the day of surgery. We sat there for hours, just waiting on any word. And then the phone on the wall rang. My dad walks over to the wall and he picks it up and he answers it. And after a short conversation, he just burst into tears. And then I burst into tears. And I ran out of the room. And I just laid down in the hallway of the hospital. And my aunt followed me out. And I just found myself laying in this hallway. And I just found myself laying in this

hallway with my head in my aunt's lap just crying and crying and crying. Angry tears. Confused. I was just praying and I was crying. And in all of those tears, I just started to pray. Why? What else was I going to do? Where else was I going to go? And so I prayed. And over the years, people have asked me, didn't you feel like God was letting you down? And the answer is sometimes. Sometimes I felt like God was letting me down. Of course I felt like God wasn't doing what I wanted him to do, the way I wanted him to do it.

Of course I was mad. Of course I was sad and everything in between. But even when I was raging mad, even when I was cussing at God, even when I was just broken in sadness, no matter what my emotions were, God was there. He was with me. You see this brokenness, this reality of pain, this is nothing new. King David writes about it in Psalm 22.

Thousands of years before Christ uttered these words on the cross. King David, a man after God's on heart, the anointed king of Israel, he writes, the Holy Spirit prompts him to write these words in Psalm 22, which are, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? My soul is dry. I feel like a desert. I feel all alone. I am trapped in pain.

My enemies are all around me. God, where are you? I feel forsaken. And in my own way, with my own words, that's ultimately what I was saying to God. God, where are you? I feel forsaken. And in this, I learned that God is not afraid of my feelings.

He's not afraid of my emotions. There's no question that I can, and bring to God that he's scared of. You see, God and I are in a relationship together. And relationships are full of emotions. Good and bad. Relationships are complicated sometimes. In relationships, sometimes things are not always super clear.

I mean, I know that as a pastor, I'm supposed to sit here, and I'm supposed to tell you that if you love God, everything in your life is going to turn out to be cherries and ice cream, but I can't do that. I can't lie to you. because honestly, I don't always know what God's up to. I can't explain all the mysteries of God. I cannot explain everything about why God does what God does.

But I know this. I know that Romans chapter 8, verse 28, says that if you love God and you're called according to his purpose, then he is working everything out for your good. Everything. I can tell you this. it didn't feel good sitting at the edge of a hospital bed. But 20 years later, I believe that more than I ever have in my life. The news my father received that day was not good news.

My mother did not die on the operating table, but it wasn't looking good. The tumor they went on to operate was attached to her stomach and located in such a way that they couldn't get it out. And that ultimately meant that her cancer was inoperable. and there was just nothing else that they could do. And so over the course of the next month, we brought my mom home and we tried a bunch of different things, man. We had prayer meeting on top of prayer meeting, on top of prayer meeting. We anointed her with oil.

We pastored her up. We counseled her. We doctored her up. We even sent her to Mexico with my father for five weeks for this experimental drug treatment that has never been approved by our FDA. And we sent her down there just hope. something miraculous was going to happen. And while my parents were in Mexico, my dad starts a Bible study for the patients and ends up leading some of them to Christ. And they come back home and for a few

months, for a couple of months, she was a little bit stronger, but eventually the cancer won out. And in the last weeks of her life, she was on home care. And they moved to bed just like this one into my house. She deteriorated and the cancer eventually ate her body away. She weighed about 90 pounds. She lost the ability to speak. And every night, we would go into her room and we would sit with her. And we would just talk about our day. And then we would pray.

For weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, my dad would just sit next to her holding a Bible in one hand and her hand in the other. And he would just rock. He would just pray. We prayed, man, and we prayed and we prayed. persistent praying, just like what Jesus tells us to do. We were asking, we were seeking, and we were knocking. And on January 14th of 1996, my older brother walks into my bedroom, puts his hand on my leg, and he says, Mom just died. I didn't do anything. I just laid there. Just numb. I didn't cry. I didn't cuss, yell, scream.

I didn't do anything. I just laid there. Eventually, I pulled myself out of bed, and I remember walking down the stairs, seeing them carry my mother's body out the front door in my house. I can still remember what those men were wearing. The next day, we found ourselves at the funeral home, and I just stayed in the back as hundreds and what felt like thousands of people came through to see our family, to love on us and care for us. and I just remember standing off to the side of the room as my dad greeted more people than I can count. He was full of grace and composure

as he stood next to the open casket where his wife of 22 years lay. He just shook hands and he hugged people. Then at some point he saw me across the room and he did a slow walk through a sea of people. He hugged next and he showed lots of gratitude but eventually he got over to me. And when he walked over to me, he put his hand on my shoulder, and he looked me in the face, and he said,

son, I know this is hard, but God is good. Now, you may be sitting there wondering, how could he say that? How could a man look at his son who just lost his mother and say, I know this is hard, but God is good. How could he say that? I don't know. But he did. And the only thing I can figure is that my dad spent thousands of hours in prayer, hundreds of days fasting. And somewhere in all of that, God proved himself faithful to my father. And it was standing on God's faithfulness that my dad could look me in the face and say, even though you just lost your mother, God is good. You see, prayer does this thing where it tunes our heart into the heart of God. It takes us. It takes us. It takes a us into deeper places than our situations can.

There are deeper things for us to experience than what's right in front of us. There's a supernatural world where the king of the universe, the almighty God is, and he, by some miracle of grace, breathes himself into us, and he draws us by his spirit to where he is, and we can sit with him, and we can talk with him. And we can have face-to-face encounters with the God of the universe. He wants to commune with us. He invites us to his table so that we can feast on his goodness. And it is from that place and only that place that we can grow and have a confidence in the almighty sovereignty of God.

We can have face-to-face encounters with God. when we do, it produces a supernatural confidence in God's faithfulness. How can Paul write from prison? Pray steadfastly with Thanksgiving in your heart in the midst of great suffering because he had seen the Lord. He had seen the Lord. He had tasted something better than his situation had to offer. Prayer changes us.

Some have asked and may ask, how could you pray to a a God that would let this happen? How could you pray to a God that would let this happen to you? And I would just simply ask back, how could you not? I mean, what am I going to do? Am I going to get angry and bitter? Cous? Cold-hearted, full of delusionment? Or disillusionment? What am I going to do? Am I going to live that way? Or I can live in a world where I don't have all the answers, but I have access to a God who does. And if I have to choose between a cold, bitter, hurt, angry existence, or an existence where I can choose to know and be known by a God who has all the answers, even though I don't, I choose God. I choose God. I choose God. I choose God. I choose

God and ultimately, honestly, at this point in my life, I feel like I don't even have a choice. I am with God because by His grace, I know that I cannot do this life on my own. And that in and of itself, that truth in and of itself is a gift from God. That God would make known to me my own limitations and that I cannot do this on my own. You see, when our prayers move us past a place of a mere declaration of wants, into a willful act of necessity, then we are moving from this natural world into the supernatural things of God. You see prayer at its core, prayer is dependency on God. It is a willful act of necessity that's saying, Lord, I need you. I need you. You see, for the believer, we need God like we need

air. In prayer is spiritual breathing. Many come to me and they say they, they say things that sound a lot like they're spiritually choking, they're emotionally choking, they're spiritually dry, they need fresh wind, they need fresh breath. And I would just ask, if that is you today, I would ask you, how much time are you spending praying? Are you breathing in the supernatural things of God in prayer? You see, maybe the last thing this journey taught me, as I reflect on it, is this simple truth. That prayer comes with a promise. Prayer comes with a promise. In Matthew 7, Jesus says it like this.

He says, ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receive, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. or which one of you, if his son ask him for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him? And the promise that comes with prayer is this,

is that in prayer, we get God's presence. We get his presence. You see, when Jesus says, seek and knock, ask for what? Seek for what? Knock on what? What Jesus is saying here is that if you're looking for God, he's saying the same thing that the prophet Jeremiah says in chapter 29, verse 13,

which he says, search for me with all of your heart. If you search for me, you will find me. What Jesus is saying is that if you ask, seek, and knock, then God will meet you. He will meet you. You will find him, and when you do, you are getting more than you ever even knew to ask for. You see, for many of us, I know for me, my pursuit of God started with me seeking God, trying to get Him to help me. That's where it started for me.

It was just trying to get God to help me. But somehow, over time, it changed. into something else. It morphed into something better. Let me finish the story. You see, my mom's funeral was a celebration. Her life on this earth was over, but God was not done yet.

Through her funeral, we had a full choir, there were preachers, there were thousands of people packed into this church, we had limousines for our family riding down the road, we were shutting down city blocks so that the funeral could come through. And it was in this that I saw what it meant to celebrate

someone's life. And with a couple of decades now to ponder this season of life and what it taught me, there is a question that I've landed on. And this question has profoundly shaped my life with God, specifically my prayer life. And the question that God has shown me through this process that has such a deep profound impact on me is this. Is God primarily useful or beautiful? Is God primarily useful or beautiful? You see, through cancer, I didn't get what I wanted. I got what I needed. The entire time, I wanted God to do something for me. I wanted him to do what I thought was best for

my mom. I wanted him to fix my situation. But here's what I know now that I didn't know then. And it's that God gave me something better than a fix. He gave me himself. He showed himself to me. He gave my mom something better than a cure. He gave her a new body. You see, God made himself known to me through pain-filled prayers, through deep, deep hurt. Through frustration and confusion and anger, God made himself known to me. He gave me the gift of himself. I learned that this life is not all about me. I learned that God has a plan for pain, that God has a plan for suffering, that God has a plan through sickness. I don't like that people get sick and die. I don't like it at all. And I'm not supposed to. But the most beautiful of all the things that God could have ever done for me. me is to show me himself, to show me himself. And it's because of this revelation of the beauty of God's self that I'm here today. This season of pain and prayer has to find everything about my life. Everything about me has come through this season. And who knows what the ripple effects are going

to be of this faith building, faith-defining journey throughout a lifetime. Who knows what the ripple effects are going to be of your faith building, of your faith-defining journey that God has you on. You think you're all alone. You are not. God is with you. You don't feel God. God is there. You see, we can, over time, we can look back and see God's faithfulness, and I hope that is true for you. Could God have done this differently? Sure. sure God could have done it differently, but he didn't, and I love him for it. You see, I love God deeply, and I credit that to the fact that I had been wounded deeply. And it's in the midst of this great wound through this prison of pain that God met me, and he has never left me alone since.

Some of you have been miraculously healed by God through prayer. Praise the Lord. God, God, does heal people. Praise God. Some of you have fought the good fight against cancer and you have won. Praise the Lord. Some of you have testimonies of a life filled with pain and atrocities that my story pales in comparison to. And to you, I would say this. I am so sorry. And God is good. And he wants to be near you. I want to close with this. Let's fast forward 15 years from that dark day in 1996. I find myself at the side of another hospital bed. And this time my wife's in it.

She's given birth to our first child. And in the midst of the delivery, some things start to go wrong. Her blood pressure drops to the floor and so does the babies. And immediately nurses and doctors rush in. And I'm standing there at the side of this hospital bed and I am completely terrified. I'm scared to death. So what did I do? I prayed.

I told God thank you for my wife. Thank you for nurses and doctors. And I ask him, will you please help us? Will you please help us? Shortly thereafter, my wife stabilized and our first daughter was born. healthy. A few minutes later, I'm standing there and I'm beholding this little baby girl. Her name's Anna Catherine Britt, named after my mother. She's got these big, beautiful brown eyes and this beautiful brown hair. She's got a smile and a laugh that can light up her room. And every time that little

girl snuggles up next to me, every time she kisses me on the face, every time I hear her seeing, or laugh, I am reminded that God is good. See, I'm reminded that God makes promises to those who pray. I'm reminded of God's faithfulness. I am reminded that God answers prayers in his own good way. It may not be the way that I want. It may not be the answers that I'm looking for. It may not help me feel any better in the middle of the situation, but I am reminded that God, God in his own good way, he answers prayers. He answers them. So I have wondered and wondered and racked my brain as to why God would want me to share this story with you.

Maybe you're here today and you are trapped in a prison of pain. Maybe you're walking through something similar. And you're on that line where you're having to decide, do I press deeper into self-absorption and self-loathing? or do I press into God through prayer? I would beg you, choose God. Choose prayer. Maybe you've walked through a season of life and you've seen the victorious hand of God

proof himself to you. And maybe today is just a reminder that you should have and do have a heart full of gratitude and thanksgiving for what God has done and more importantly, who God is. So maybe today you just should spend some time with Him. in prayer. You see, the Bible teaches us to pray consistently. Pray steadfastly. Pray persistently. Pray without

ceasing. In the mountaintops of life, we pray. In the valleys of death that we walk through, we pray as God's children, as His people. We pray because it is there where we meet with our dad who loves us and wants to be near us. So that's how I want to close our service today, is that I just want to invite us to pray. You see, if the word of God goes out at our church, we respond to that word a few different ways. We pray, we worship, and we give.

Today I would ask that we focus our hearts in on the prayer side of that. You see, at all of our locations, we have carved out some sacred space down here at the front where you can come. You can just spend some time praying to God. It's going good, pray. It's going bad?

Pray. You're healed? Pray. You're hurting? Pray. We would invite you to come and to pray. If praying through worship, praying through singing is how you want to respond, then by all means, do so.

And you can give at the giving boxes on your way out. But we are going to respond to the goodness of God together as a family over the next few minutes. And we would invite you to come. come and meet with him who loves you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you do love us. I thank you for helping me tell this story. Father, I just pray that your name would be glorified.

Above all things, Father, that we would leave here. We would love you more than when we walked in here. Lord, I just pray that you'd help me be different than when I came. You'd draw me to where you are. are. Father, we know that you want to meet with us. So help us to get rid of ourselves so that we can see you for who you really are. I pray for my brothers and sisters who are here today, Father, I pray that in the next few minutes that your presence would invade us and that we would breathe you in and see you as the gift that you are. We pray all these things by the power of your blood, Jesus, and in your

name, amen.