Devoted to Prayer

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here with us to worship God together. And and to learn from his word. And I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Romans 12.

Where we will be looking at a portion of God's word this morning and seeking to hear his voice as he speaks to us with love and direction. We're doing a study through this part of the book of Romans and what we're learning here in Romans 12 is how to respond to the gospel and unleash the power and the glory, the freedom and the blessing of the gospel in our lives. And beginning in verse 9, Paul is telling us one of the ways to really unleash the gospel in your life is to walk in agape love.

And fortunately, Paul does not just say, walk in agape, but he then It takes time to describe for us what Agape looks like, and we come this morning to the last phrase in verse 12, which is where we will be spending all of our time, this morning.

So if you want to give a title to the message, it would be, you can call it Loving One Another Part 5, but, devoted to prayer would be a more specific description of where our focus will be, this morning. just, a literal translation of this passage beginning in verse 9 that we've been using in recent weeks to help us. Paul says, Agape, here's how to walk in, Agape love. Here's what it looks like.

No hypocrisy, hating the evil, clinging to the good. Devotedness to one another in brotherly love, leading one another in showing honor, in diligence, not lagging, in the spirit being fervent, for the Lord serving. In hope, rejoicing, in tribulation, persevering. And this morning we come to this description of agape.

Agape means being devoted to prayer. Devoted to prayer. What we're going to do this morning with the time that we have is to look at 3 truths that I think we can observe here. In this, end of verse 12 that hopefully will serve to deepen our devotion to prayer.

As I studied this passage this week, I could not help but think of something that happened to me in my senior year, at college. during my senior year, I would drive about an hour north from Greenville, South Carolina to Hendersonville, North Carolina. To a nursing home where I and a few other guys would conduct services at this nursing home. And after the service, on a Sunday morning, we would then visit with the residents there and there was a particular lady that I really grew attached to.

Her name was Mamie Nelson, and she was 95 years old and just a beautiful, woman of God, the woman who, grew more beautiful over the years. You could see her faith and the beauty of her faith on her countenance, and I would look forward to Sunday mornings being able to, to fellowship with her. And there was one occasion where we were talking together and I challenged her to memorize a particular psalm. And I don't remember what the psalm was, but I remember it was over 20 verses, and I challenged her to memorize that.

And with hindsight, I don't know what I was thinking. challenging a 95 year old woman to memorize basically a chapter of scripture, but she took that challenge to heart and one verse a week, she would memorize through that Psalm and then like on the 5th week, when I would see her, she would quote, not just the 5th verse, but she would quote verses 1 through 5. And she worked her way through the Psalm week by week. Until she was able to quote it in its entirety in one sitting.

I was so blessed by her work at doing that, that I told her on that Sunday, I said, what, next Sunday when I see you, I'm going to bring you a gift. And just to thank you for the blessing that you are to me and for the work that you've done on this. And in my mind, as I thought about it that week, I knew what the gift would be, and that was a rose. I wanted to bring her a red rose.

And Saturday came around and I knew tomorrow I've got to go back up to this nursing home and see this sister. but I, I did not have a rose, and being a college student, I had no money to get a rose. And so, I literally, in my prayer journal, I still have a copy of this, I wrote down the request, Lord, provide some funds so that I can get a rose for Mamie Nelson. And, and then I prayed, and just gave that to the Lord and ask God to, to provide some resource for me to be able to go to a florist shop and get a rose for her.

Prayer is not always answered this way, OK? But literally, guys, I'm not making this up. Within 5 minutes, someone knocked on the door of my dorm room. And they opened the door and peeked their head in, and they were holding 3 red roses, and the guy said, does anyone need any roses in here?

And I said, yeah, I was just actually praying that God would give me some money to get a rose. And he said, well, here, take these. And I said, I just need one of them. And that's what I was praying for.

And so he let me take one of those roses, and I stood there looking at that rose, like just marveling at the goodness of God. we see God's goodness in the big things, but sometimes it's the small things. That end up being most meaningful. And you can imagine my delight as I drove an hour with that fragile rose in the car, just so excited about giving that to my friend at this nursing home, and she was blessed to receive it, but I was more blessed to be able to give that to her and tell her the story of how God just wonderfully answered a prayer just so she could have this little token of love and appreciation.

I've often thought back on that occasion and I've been blessed on every thought of it. and part of the reason that I am blessed by, that moment was because I was able to love this sister in Christ. I was able to love her with my prayers that I prayed for her, and I was also able to love her from my prayer for her. I was able to come to her with a product of my prayer life for her.

That rose was a product of the goodness of God as it intertwined itself in my little prayers for the sister in the Lord. And that's a small moment in my life. I wish there were more of such moments, but it's such moments, big and small, in single instances and in prolonged ways. That Paul wants our life to be rich with.

And he teaches us here that if you want to walk in agape love, you want to be devoted to prayer. And Paul's gonna take us, I think, deeper into that journey of what that means for us. And let's open our hearts to what God wants to say to us through this. Three truths that we'll look at to nurture within us a deeper devotion to this wonderful thing called prayer.

And the first of these truths that we can observe in this passage is that devotion to prayer is a key expression of agape love. Devotion to prayer is a key expression of agape love. Notice again in verse 9, the heading of this section is the word agape. And then one of the forms through which agape expresses itself is in devotion.

To prayer. Agape means Paul says, being devoted to prayer. What we observe here is that love expresses itself in not just praying, but in a devotion to praying. If you want to walk in agape love, if you want to be an effective lover of other people, then you must pray.

And not only that, but you must be devoted to prayer. And it's interesting in this passage that Paul does not just call us to love other people by praying, but he challenges us to be devoted to prayer. And it's interesting the times in the New Testament where we see this very word devotion, tied together with the idea of prayer. In fact, in Acts 1:14, The 120 are gathered in the, the upper room and it says they were devoting themselves to prayer.

In Acts 2:42, after 3000 souls were saved on the day of Pentecost, Luke describes what these new believers were doing along with the 120, and he says they were continuously devoting themselves to The apostles' teaching, they were devoting themselves to fellowship. They were devoting themselves to the breaking of the bread, which is the Lord's Supper, and they were devoting themselves to prayer. In Acts chapter 6 verse 4, the apostles say to the congregation, we will devote ourselves to prayer.

In Colossians chapter 4, in verse 2, Paul delivers a command to believers, and he commands them to be devoted to prayer.

And here in our passage this morning, Paul is describing agape. He's describing love and he teaches us here that one of love's greatest expressions is in a devotion to prayer. He's saying this is part of the picture of what love looks like. It expresses itself in a devotion to prayer.

So what does it mean? We see devotion and prayer tied together a number of times in the New Testament. What does this word devotion mean? Well, literally, it's a compound word in the Greek language.

It's the word toward combined with the Greek word for strength. You can almost literally translate this as meaning to be strong toward something. Speaking of, in part, a person's disposition towards something, and they are strong towards that. They're not just towards something, they're not just in favor of something, but they are strong towards that thing.

They are strongly in favor of that thing to the point where they are passionate about that thing that they are strong towards. Like I said, this, this has the idea of denoting one's disposition towards something. For example, you can have, you can have a bunch of people in a room that are watching a football game, and everyone in that room is a fan of one team or the other. They're for one team or the other.

And you might have a husband and wife, for example, that if you ask them, which team are you for, the wife may say, well, yeah, I'm for that team. Because I like their uniforms. They're pretty. So I want, I want that team to win.

But if you ask the husband, he may want that same team to win, but he's decked out from head to toe in team colors. His face is painted. He's the guy who's been a fan for decades, and his dad was a fan for decades, and this guy goes to all of the home games and he travels to most of the away games. His face is painted and he's yelling and screaming at the television screen on just about every play.

I've actually seen guys like this. And so both of them are for a particular team, but one of them is strong towards that team. He's fanatical about a particular team, and that's almost the best way of conveying the meaning here. Paul is not just calling upon us to pray, but he's telling us to be fanatical about praying.

To be fanatical about this privilege of prayer, being in the presence of God, to be fanatical about praying for the people in our lives that God has called us to love, and to be fanatical about praying with those people in our life that God has called us to love. you will recognize someone walking in agape love in part by their fanaticism about prayer. Love shows itself in a devotion to prayer. And so speaking of the disposition of a person to be strong towards prayer means to, to be fanatical about praying, but it also has the idea of applying one's full strength towards prayer.

It speaks of someone engaging in prayer, and when they do so, they are all in, fully engaged. Someone who makes prayer a high priority to such a degree that they give their best and highest strength to prayer. Prayer gets the very best of them. It's almost as if such a person, think about it this way, think about, like throughout a normal day, when are you the strongest mentally, spiritually, The most alert, what is the best part of the day?

Is it the morning? Is it the afternoon? Is it the evening? Someone who is devoted to prayer is someone who, if at all possible, will take the very best moments of their day, when they are at their strongest and give that to prayer.

That's the idea. Prayer gets the very best piece of them. And when they pray, they're all in, fully devoted. They don't pray in a half-hearted way.

And when they're not officially praying, They mark time by when they will be able to pray next. They look forward to their seasons of prayer. And even when they're not officially praying, what they're doing is they're living out of their prayer life. They're coming out of their prayer.

They come to people in strength and in love, loving other people out of the good. Of their prayer life before God, as they've enjoyed being in his presence and have spent time in prayer for the people that they are called to love. So that's what it means. And Paul says that if you want to walk in agape love, then here's what love looks like, and that is a passionate, strong-minded devotion to praying with and for those in your life that God has called you to love.

Part of what Paul, I think is suggesting is that we owe it to the people in our lives that we are called to love, to be fanatical about praying. You owe it to your spouse, you owe it to your husband, you owe it to your wife, you owe it to your children, you owe it to your parents, you owe it to your brothers and sisters in the Lord, you owe it to the members of your care group, the members of your family, you owe it to the people of this church and to a lost and dying world around you.

You owe it to everyone in your life to be a person who is fanatical about prayer. This is a great way to express agape love to them.

And if you are devoted to prayer, you will be a blessing to the people in your life that God has called you to love. Charles Spurgeon, frequently spoke with appreciation about his mom and his dad, but there was a special place in his heart of appreciation for his mom and her prayers on his behalf. And on one occasion, he said these words, he says, Certainly I have not the powers of speech. And guys, for Spurgeon, that's saying a lot.

This guy was an amazingly eloquent man, and yet he fumbled. In his attempts to convey his appreciation for this. I have not the powers of speech with which to set forth my valuation. Of the choice blessing which the Lord bestowed upon me and making me the Son of one who prayed for me and prayed with me.

How can I ever forget her speaking of his mom's tearful eye when she warned me to escape from the wrath to come? How can I ever forget when she bowed her knee, and with her arms about my neck, praying, oh, that my son might live before thee. Spurgeon knew that his mom, Prayed passionately for him. She often prayed with him and over him.

And when she spoke to him and warned him to escape from the wrath to come, he knew where she was coming from when she spoke those words. She was coming from a deep place of prayer. And that induced in him a sobriety. He received those words in a way that I'm not sure he would have if he knew that his mom was not passionately devoted to prayer.

She was a great blessing to him because she was a woman who was devoted to prayer. You will be a great blessing to the people in your life that you are called to love if you are fanatical about prayer. Imagine you being fanatical about praying for your spouse. Praying for your husband, praying for your wife, fanatical about praying for your children, praying for your brothers and sisters in the Lord.

This is the path of agape. And we observed that in Paul's use of the word devotion. There's a second truth that we can observe that is also denoted in the word that he uses that is translated devoted. And that is that prayer is one of the best places to put our strength.

Prayer is one of the best places to put our strength. If you're like me, even pondering the little bit that we've pondered up to this point, you feel convicted, right? You're thinking, man, I don't pray like I, I should. I'm, I'm, I'm robbing the people in my life to the degree that I'm not being devoted to prayer the way that, that I should be.

I fall short. God help me to do a better job at this. And, and so you may be feeling conviction, and I want you to embrace that because that's actually a sign of life. If, if you're here and you feel no conviction, that's actually scary.

If you're feeling conviction, then that's a good indication that God's spirit is working in you. But I just want to say that I don't only want you to feel conviction, feel that, receive that, let God use that redemptively. But I also want you to receive encouragement, even in Paul's choice of words, because Paul is actually letting us in on a secret, a secret about prayer. And here's basically what Paul is saying.

He's saying if, if you want to walk in agape, then what that means is that you want to serve other people. You want to contribute to the highest possible welfare of the people in your life that God has called you to love, right? So you want that and you're like, man, I really want to serve other people and I want to contribute to their highest, ultimate good. How do I do that?

Paul says, here's how you do it. And he comes over to this thing called prayer and he points to it and says, put your strength here. Put it here. This is the way to walk in agape love.

He's letting us in on something very profound about the blessing of prayer, and he's saying that one of the best ways you can serve the people in your life is to put your strength in prayer, and praying with them, and praying for them. I think often in our lives, and I have to confess that this is true in mine, that, you ask the question, where do we put our strength? And there's been a lot of my strength over the years that's been put into sin and utter futility and things that are of absolutely no eternal value.

And then there's a lot of strength in my life that has been put into good things, and serving other people.

and sometimes, so much strength is being put into those things that, that I don't have time or strength to pray. And prayer gets put on the back burner. There's no time, there's no strength. We're so busy serving and doing good things that we don't have time for prayer.

We're so busy parenting that we don't have time for prayer. We're so busy dealing with marriage stuff that That we don't have time to pray. We're so busy engaged in ministry in the church that we don't have time to pray. We're so busy preparing sermons or putting together a Bible study or discipleship material for somebody that we're discipling that we don't have time to pray.

We're putting strength towards good things, but we're not hearkening to Paul's call to put our strength in prayer. He's saying if you really want to serve other people, then put the very best of your faculties, your resources, and your strength into prayer, and you will guaranteed be a blessing. The blessing that God wants you to be to those in your life that he has called you to love. you think about parenting, for example, and I think many of us as parents, we, we come into parenting pretty confident in our own abilities.

I went into parenting very confident. I went into marriage very confident in my own abilities. And over the years, that confidence has been stripped away and utterly eliminated, almost entirely. and you realize soon enough, I can't get into my children's hearts, and I don't have the power to be the parent that God wants me to be.

I don't have the power to be the husband that God wants me to be. And God over time brings us to a place of desperation where we then begin to realize that I must give my strength. To prayer or all else that I do, even good things, is futile. Paul Miller in his book A Praying Life tells a little bit of his own journey in parenting and how long it took him to learn that he cannot parent without prayer.

Listen to what he says. He says it took me 17 years to realize that I could not parent on my own. It was not a great spiritual insight, like don't think I'm some spiritual giant that I've realized that. It's just a realistic observation.

If I didn't pray deliberately and reflectively for the members of my family by name every morning, they'd kill one another. This is what he observes as a parent of several children. And he's realizing I can't parent them without prayer. He goes on to say I was incapable of getting inside their hearts, I was desperate, but even more, I couldn't change my self-confident heart.

My prayer journal reflects both my inability to change my kids and my inability to change my self-confidence. That's why I need grace even to pray. See that's why I'm now praying for grace to be able to pray. The way that I ought to pray.

And he's face to face with this chasm that exists between him and the hearts of his children. He's like, I cannot change their hearts. And that realization puts the focus on his own heart, and he's like, I, I can't even change my own self-confident heart. And so now I'm crying out to God, asking him to change my heart, and to change their heart.

God answers his prayer little by little, look what he says. He says, God answered my prayer. As I began to pray regularly for the children, God began to work in their hearts. For example, I began to pray for more humility in my eldest son, John.

As Jill, that's his wife, says, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. So I'm praying for more humility in my eldest son John. And about 6 months, 6 months later, he came to me and said, Dad, I've been thinking a lot about humility lately and my lack of it. It didn't take me long to realize that I did my best parenting.

By prayer I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing. So here's a man who's now learning to parent in partnership with God. He's learning to serve his children in partnership with God.

And he finds himself now speaking more to God than he did before. And saying certain things to God that he formerly would have just blurted out towards his children, and now he's parenting in partnership with God. God's brought him to a place of desperation where he's like, what, you're God and I am not. And I need my heart to be changed.

I need my children's hearts to be changed, and I'm going to come to you, God. And then when I do minister to my children, which I have to, and I have to say things to my children, I will come to them from this place of prayer. So I will love them by praying for them and I will also love them by ministering to them out of my prayers for them in a way that is shaped by my prayers for them. Guys, you do your best parenting.

By prayer. You do your best, husbanding and wifing by prayer. you do your best service for your brothers and sisters and the Lord by prayer. You render your best service to the lost by prayer, not that that's the only thing that we are to do.

But Paul says, if you really want to be a blessing, put your strength here into prayer. Put your greatest strength into this. You think about how futile the efforts would have been of the disciples and the little lad who came to Jesus. if, if the disciples would have found the lad with the loaves and fish and said, oh good, we got this, let's, let's feed these 5,000+ people.

they wouldn't have gotten very far. But what they did is they took what they had and came to God with it. They came to the God man, Jesus with it. And Jesus blessed it, and they were able to serve and feed to the full, a multitude and have baskets left over.

The best thing that the disciples and that lad did for that multitude was they went to Jesus with what they had the best. The way that we serve others is by going to God in prayer. Why does Paul point to prayer and say put your strength here, right here, put your greatest strength into prayer. Well, I think Paul is letting us in on a secret about the power of prayer.

And guys, I wanna challenge you not to get all analytical when it comes to prayer. because it's easy for us to do that in our Western culture, we got hyper analyze things like prayer and it's like, well, what difference does prayer really make? yeah, I prayed for this person. It seemed like God did a great thing in that person's life, but was that because I prayed?

What if I didn't pray? Would God have done that or not? I don't know. I prayed for this person.

There were 19 other people praying for this person. I was the 20th person. Did God answer because there were 20 praying? What if there were only 19?

Would God have moved in that person's life the way that he did? And sometimes we get so bogged down and hyper analyzing prayer and how it works, trying to quantify the difference that it might make. We get so analytical about that, that we end up not praying as we should because we don't quite have all that figured out, right? Which by the way, prayer's like almost the only thing we do that with.

No one goes to a light switch and says, just not sure how this electricity thing works. I don't know, I don't know, I'm just, I'm, I'm gonna leave the lights out because I don't, I don't understand how this works. when someone puts a meal before you, you, you're never like, what difference does this meal really make? And this bite I'm about to take, if I took it or didn't take it, what difference does it really make?

Can you quantify for me the difference this bite will make in my life? This bowl of ice cream that you're putting in front of me, what difference is this really going to make? I don't know if I should eat it. Until I have an explanation of, of all the mechanics of why this is so delicious and what difference it will make in my life.

Listen, we don't analyze just about anything else in our lives, but when it comes to prayer, God says, pray, and we're like, I don't, we start analyzing it and it can paralyze us sometimes. But we need to take it on good authority. God just says, pray, do it. And God's the one who knows the power of prayer and the difference that it can make.

Let me just give you a few things real quick, just looking more broadly at other portions of scripture, that would explain why we need to put our strength into prayer. one is in the book of Acts, we observed that epic events are birthed in prayer. It just seems like in the book of Acts that whenever some really epic changing event occurs, it's birthed in a context of prayer. The 120 are gathered together devoting themselves to prayer.

And that's what they were doing on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came and And tongues of fire rested upon each of them, and they began speaking in tongues, and a crowd gathered and the gospel was preached and 3000 people got saved. That was birthed in the context of them devoting themselves to prayer. They're devoting themselves to prayer in Acts 2:42, and, and God continues to bless and needs are being met, and the Lord was adding to their number day by day, those who were being saved.

In Acts 4, Peter and John are threatened before the Sanhedrin, and this is the first whiff of persecution that is coming their way.

And this is very pivotal, how the church responds to this first whiff of persecution, from a human standpoint, our salvation depends upon what they do in this moment. They could have said, what, this is not as easy as we thought, and they're threatening us and what, let's just keep quiet. Let's just go do something else. Let's go back to fishing and whatever else we did before.

And if they would have done that, then the spread of the gospel would have become grounded and never reached us. But Peter and John come back to the brothers and tell them what had happened, and they all go to prayer and ask God for a holy boldness and preaching the gospel. And it says, and when they prayed, the ground began to shake, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to proclaim the Word of God with boldness, and it continued to spread. In Acts 6, a grumbling occurs in this early congregation in Jerusalem.

Some were being overlooked in the ministration to widows. And they could have become divided, and the church and the spread of the gospel could have become grounded. But what, they bathe that in prayer and the disciples, the apostles say we're not going to be taken away from our devotion to prayer and the ministry of the word and so pick some men, 7 men among you who can administrate this, and so they did, and then they prayed over these men. And thus needs were met in a better way than before, and the spread of the gospel continued.

In Acts 12, we learned where Peter had been imprisoned and, and there was every expectation from a human standpoint that he was going to be killed. the next day in the early church, they're gathered in a house and they're praying for him. And it's almost like they're not even aware of the magnitude and the power of what they're messing with. They're just praying for Peter and, and what, God answers, and he doesn't always answer in that way, but an angel shows up in the prison, wakes Peter up, the chains fall off of him, the angel says, put on your sandals, get out of here.

The gates open, Peter just walks out before he even knows what's going on. And then he shows up at the house of these brothers and sisters that were praying for him. And knocks at the door and a servant girl answers and looks right in the face of the apostle Peter for whom they are praying, and she cannot believe he's standing there. And then she goes and tells people, I just saw something outside the door that looks like Peter, and they can't believe it's him, and think that maybe it's his ghost.

But then they realize it is him and they allow him in, and rejoice in God's wonderful and delicious answer to their prayer. When we pray, we are We are before God Almighty, for whom nothing is impossible, and he does not always answer as we wish, but his power is infinite and his love is equally infinite. And it is to him that we pray. The early church prayed in Acts 13, 1 of the most momentous events in the Book of Acts that has direct bearing even upon our salvation.

the Spirit of God had led Saul and Barnabas to go on a missionary journey to preach the gospel, to Gentiles. And the Lord ends up leading the leadership of the Church of Antioch to let them go. But in what context did that direction come to them? It says in Acts 13, 2 and 3, and while they were ministering to the Lord, Lord and fasting.

So they're praying, they're worshiping, they're fasting. It was in that context that the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. what guys, when, when, when you read Acts 13, like all of us should be on the edge of our seat because this is a breathtaking moment.

the likelihood is most of us in this room, if we could trace our spiritual genealogy back all the way back to the first century, the person who led us to the Lord, and then who led them to the Lord, and then who led them to the Lord all the way back. Most of us in this room, we would trace it back to this moment in Acts 13. John Piper says of this moment in the Book of Acts, he says, this is the greatest missionary breakthrough probably in the history of the world. Saul and Barnabas are now going to launch the Christian movement into Asia Minor, and then into Europe, Greece, Italy, and it moved until today.

2.1 billion people today live under the banner called Christian. He's not saying that all of them are Christians. But that the influence of Christianity across the planet is that profound, and many souls have been saved, including us, because of this breathtaking moment of adventure in Acts 13, and it was birthed in the matrix of prayer. That's why Paul is saying, he points to prayer and says, put your strength here.

Great, epic, changing things happen. Great kingdom events happen in the context of prayer. That's why also we observe in the New Testament that prayer is urged upon us in many places, just some. 1 Timothy 2:1, Paul says, here's how to conduct yourself in the household of God.

And he begins to give instructions and look what he says. First of all, first of all, here's the first thing he says, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men. So first of all, here's the first instruction. As a first resort, this is what ought to happen.

Yet for many of us, prayer is a last resort. We go into things and even ministries in our own confidence, and then that gets stripped away and after we've exhausted all of our wisdom and all of our resources, And all of our strength, we come to the end of ourselves. And as a last resort, we finally learn to pray. And then we come to scripture and Paul is pointing us to prayer, saying, no, as a first resort, pray, just get this down.

You want to know how to conduct yourself and behave and walk in the household of God, in the church as a believer in Jesus Christ. Prayer is always your first resort. He goes on in 1 Timothy 2:8. And he talks to men and to women, and he singles men out and he says, I got an instruction for men.

Here's what I need from all the men. In the church, he says, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension. Period. And then next verse, and here's what I want from the women.

It's like, he calls the men out and says, here's what I need, and he gives only one instruction, and that is pray. Pray everywhere, men. Pray together, pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. That's what we need in the church, and it's the only instruction in this section that he actually gives to men.

And you might say, well, we guys need more instruction than that, and Paul would say, I know that, and I provide that elsewhere. But Paul would say, I'm operating on the theory that if you as a man, if the men in the church are coming before God, recognizing that God is God, and they are not, And they are living dependently upon God and coming to him and brokenness and weakness, bringing their ignorance to God, and calling out to him. And praying everywhere, all the time, walking in a spirit of prayer, Paul would say, I'm thinking that if all the men are doing that, then 1000 giants are being slain in the process.

And a lot of other things that God would want to see from men will happen as a natural matter of course.

Ephesians 6, Paul was talking about the warfare that we're engaged in, the enemy that we're up against that is vicious, relentless. And we'll stop at nothing. And he says, put your armor on and then also with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the spirit. And with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, all encompassing prayer, not just pray, throw a little prayer in, but all encompassing praying.

He calls forth from us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, pray without ceasing, just pray all the time. Pray all the time. He said, I don't understand how to quantify the difference that prayer makes. Paul would say just trust God.

God says, pray all the time, just pray all the time. Paul points to prayer and says put your strength here for these reasons. And another thing that we observed that would help illustrate why Paul points to prayer and says put your strength here is because in Paul's ministry we observe that prayer had an absolutely central place. in many of his epistles, he starts by saying, I'm praying for you guys to the Colossians, we give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you.

We like, we, we don't just pray for you, we're praying all the time for you. To the Thessalonians, we give thanks to God always for all of you making mention of you in our prayers. We're always praying for you to Philemon, I thank my God always making mention of you. In my prayers, I pray for you, Philemon.

I pray for you all the time, to the Ephesians, Paul says, for this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus that exists among you, and your love for all the saints, I don't cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers. He's saying, I pray for you guys, and I, I pray for you all the time. This is not just Paul praying for them right now in the moment, although it includes that, he's letting them in on what he's been praying regarding them in the weeks and months prior.

I've been praying for you guys.

And here's what I've been praying for, that you would know the hope of your calling, that, that you would know the exceeding riches in your inheritance, that's in the saints, that you would know the surpassing greatness of the power that is toward you who believe. I've, I've been, I've been praying. On a regular basis that God would open your eyes to see these things. And I want you to know that.

And then the beautiful thing that we observe about the epistle to the Ephesians, is that, like I don't think Paul was just going through his life one day, and the Spirit of God said, write a letter to the Ephesians, and then started dictating a letter to Paul. I think Paul would say, I'll tell you how Ephesians came about. I was praying, I was praying for the Ephesians. Always.

Just asking God to open their hearts, to see the hope of their calling and the riches that belong to them and the surpassing greatness of the power that, that belongs to them in Christ. That's what I was like, unceasingly praying for them. And while I was praying, the Lord gave me the thought to participate in the answer. To that prayer.

And so I sat down and, and, and began to write a letter to them under the inspiration of the Spirit in a way that was specifically shaped to serve that end for which I had been praying for them. And so Ephesians is itself a product of the prayer life of Paul. And it came Accompanied by prayer. He prays for them in Ephesians 1 and then again in Ephesians 3, basically says, don't mind me, let me pray over you again.

Here's what I want to pray for you right now. And what that indicates? Here's Paul, an apostle with a God blessed blessed ministry. He's writing an inspired letter.

And yet he still says, I need to pray for you guys because as perfect as this letter may be, inspired by the Holy Spirit, if God doesn't show up and do a miracle of illumination in your heart, then all of this is for naught. And if Paul, an apostle writing inspired scripture, felt the burden to accompany his ministry by passionate praying for those who are the recipients of this ministry, Then we absolutely must feel the same burden to be devoted to prayer. Ephesians 12 and 3 is Paul, not just rattling off gospel truth, but he's ministering gospel truth out of his prayer life for them.

This is what I pray that God will help you to see.

And I wanna share these things with you. The best way that we can serve the people in our life that we're called to love. is to be devoted to prayer. And Paul would point to prayer and say, put your strength here.

Make this your greatest investment to pray, go before God and be mighty before him on behalf of those that you're called to love. And then when you come to your brothers and sisters and ministry to them, your ministry is seasoned by and shaped by the Lord in the context of your prayers for them. You say, well, I, I wanna pray like this, but I, I need motivation and some direction. And resources, and that leads us to the third and final truth that we'll look at, and that is that the gospel provides us ample resources and motivation to pray.

Paul would say, now why I spent 315 verses giving you gospel before I brought up this idea of you being devoted to prayer. Because what I've actually been preparing you for and giving you all these gospel truths is To be a person who can richly pray for those that you are called to love. Just real quick because we're short on time. you go through the book of Romans, and there's so much fuel for prayer.

We observe in Romans 5:1-2, that, that we have access before God. Our sins have been forgiven, we've been declared righteous, and we are now Ephesians 5, or Romans 5:1-2, we are now facing towards God in His presence. And so we have this relationship with God in the presence of God. What are we gonna do in His presence?

Well, we're gonna enjoy Him. And be blessed to be there. But we're also like, what, now that I have an audience with this God, I'm going to intercede on behalf of my brothers and sisters. I'm gonna talk about my brothers and sisters to this God that I now have this relationship with.

As a believer in Jesus, you have amazing access. That non-believers do not have. Even in your ministry to non-believers, I love doing this, getting prayer requests from someone who doesn't even know the Lord, and it may just be just some mundane thing. Not too long ago, a guy was struggling in his business, doesn't know the Lord, and, and I told him, listen, I'm gonna pray very specifically for you and began to pray that way.

He called me up like a week later and said, I just had this massive job come in. Thank you for praying. And I said, what, let's right now, let me pray right now and thank God for the goodness and the grace that he's showing to you. And he's like, yeah, do that.

I'd asked him, do you mind if I pray and thank God? He said, no, please do. And he's not accepted the Lord yet, but, but I have access to the Father. I want to use that to be a blessing.

That in the hope that maybe the kindness of God could lead this person to repentance. We have amazing love, we know that we're loved by God. We have an amazingly generous God who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all. Paul says, here's what you need to think about that.

How will this God not also with him freely give us everything we need? For life and godliness. Reason from that cross, that generosity into your prayer life, and believe deep in your bones that this God will not withhold anything from me that I need for life and godliness and for effective service to other people. For God to withhold something from me that I need for life and godliness and service to other people would be an insult to his son, whom he gave up that I might be saved and rendered fit to serve others.

We also have learned in the Gospel in Romans 8 that we have an amazing helper, the Holy Spirit, who helps us in our weaknesses when we don't know how to pray as we should. the Spirit prays with us and prays for us with groanings that we're not even able to give utterance to. So we have a helper. And so we can come to God knowing that our prayers are feeble and we babble and we're not sure what to pray, but we pray anyway, knowing that the Holy Spirit will take this mess of our prayers, and he will translate them and give full and perfect expression to the Father.

And so we know that through the Holy Spirit's intercession that our deepest need, our deepest need, and God's perfect will meet together in their fullest expression. We learn in the Gospel in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. He's praying for us always and Christ is praying for us always. so they're our prayer companions.

They're praying for us, and they're also praying for our ministry to, to others, and we want to be like them, and we want to intercede for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We have amazing promises that God works everything together for our good and His glory, Romans 8:28, and that includes even how he chooses to respond to the prayers that we pray. However he responds, he always responds in a way. That is designed to do the greatest good in us.

We also observe in the gospel that just the purpose for living that ends up giving shape to our prayer life. I would encourage you guys to ponder this. Paul, his life all about, is all about anymore, just living for the glory of God. From him and through him and to him are all things.

That's what my life is all about. And Romans 10:1, I'm praying, my heart's desire, my prayer to God for Israel is that they be saved. So Paul's prayers are so different than before he came to know the Lord. He even begins the book of Romans by telling the Romans about his prayers, regard to them.

He's like, I'm unceasingly praying that God will help me to get to you because I want to be with you in fellowship with you and impart some gift to you. I am eager to come to Rome to Gospelize or evangelize you Christians that are at Rome. That's what I'm praying for. Paul's prayer life has been changed.

He prayed before he knew Christ, but his prayer was, God, help me find some Christians so I can kill them. But his prayers have been changed. You want your prayers to God to be exactly what they ought to be. Allow the gospel.

To give shape to those prayers, to change your purpose for living, and what you pray for. In the Gospel, in Romans 5678, and on through the book, you've got an amazing list of things to pray for. Everything that is told to you that is true of you in Christ. Pray those things for your brothers and sisters, pray for the loss that God will bring them into the experience of those things.

Pray that God will open the eyes of your fellow believers to see the glories of these things. When you're reading these instructions in Romans 12, these descriptions of love, this is a great vision of what to pray for, for yourself, and to pray for, for your spouse and to pray for regarding your children. And anyone else that you are leading. No one should come to this point of the book of Romans and hear Paul say, be devoted to prayer and say, you're gonna, you're gonna have to help me out here.

I have no direction. Paul would say, no, I've given you a ton of direction. If you'll just let that direction in and begin to live a life and pray prayers that are shaped by the glory and the promise and the blessings of the gospel. Let's bow our heads together and let's pray and ask God to help us to lay hold of the power and the glory of prayer.

And to find fulfillment. And walking in agape love. In this particular form and expression of that agape. Lord, we just, we come to you right now.

I, there, there's so many ways that I am preaching over my head. I have so much to learn. I live more dependently than I used to, but I, I still feel like I'm merely on the front end of understanding these things. Lord, I ask for myself and for all of us that you would.

You would intensify the pace of teaching us these things that we need to learn. That we would be more effective lovers of one another because we're more effective fanatical prayers. For one another. That our ministry to others is mighty because we before you are mighty in prayer.

And we move your arm in prayer. And we also go to people in strength from that position of prayer and humble dependence upon you, God. Expecting and trusting you to work, maybe not on our timetable, but knowing that you are a good God and you're in control, that your ways are good and generous, and that you're doing a million things that we don't always see. And sometimes the time that is taken for us to see the answers that we long for.

Even that time is redemptive and allows you the opportunity to put your finger on other things that we didn't even think we needed to focus on. We embrace, Lord, your sovereignty and your infinite wisdom. Teach us to pray. Lord, thank you for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you.

We ask that you would receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus Christ. For it's in his name we pray. And all God's people said, Amen.