CAPITAL BIBLE CHURCH March 30, 2014 SERMON NOTES PASTOR BILL HAKEN Draw the Circle Pray Hard Luke 18:1 5 1. Big problems? Or Big God? God asked Moses in Numbers 11:23,...Is there any limit to my power? Answer: No, there is nothing He cannot do God is Omnipotent. Yet many of us pray as if our problems are bigger than God. So, let s remind ourselves of this high octane truth that should fuel your faith: God is infinitely bigger than your biggest problem or your biggest dream. When we say that, we re not intending to minimize anyone s problems they re facing. But to maintain a healthy, godly perspective on your problems you have to personally ask and answer the question: Are your problems bigger than God, or is God bigger than your problems? Stop and think about that for a moment. A.W. Tozer believed that, Our biggest problem is our low view of God. That is the cause of all lesser evils. And a high view of God is the solution to all other problems. Is there a limit to my power? Have you answered that question, the question? Only 2 options: Yes or no. Until you come to the conclusion that God s grace and power know no limits you will pray small prayers and draw small prayer circles. Once you embrace the omnipotence of God you will pray with ever enlarging circles around your problems and dreams. The size of our prayers depends on the size of our God. And since God knows no limits, then neither should our prayers. God exists outside the 4 space time dimensions He created, and so should our prayers. Illus./Joke: Like the one about the man who asked God, God how long is a million years to you? God said, A million years is like a second. Then the man asked, How much is a million dollars to you? God replied, A million dollars is like a penny. The man smiled and said, Could you spare a penny? God smiled back and said, Sure, just wait a second. With God there is no big or small, hard or easy, simple or difficult! It s all small to God, because nothing s as big as Him! Illustration I talk to many people who say "I don't want to bother God with my problems, because they seem so minor compared to people who have much bigger problems!" I try to help them understand that they're all small to God He never has any big problems!
With God it s never a question of Can He? It s always only a question of Will He? And while you may not always know His will, you always know He can so that s why we should pray with confidence, with... 2. Persistence and perseverance Luke 18:1 One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. This story of the persistent widow is one of the most multi faceted pictures of prayer in the Bible. It shows us what praying hard looks like: knocking until your knuckles are raw, crying out until your voice is lost, and pleading until your tears run dry. Praying hard is praying through. And if you pray through, God will come through. But it will always be in God s will, God s way. The phrase she is wearing me out used here to describe the widow s persistence is boxing terminology. Praying hard is going 12 rounds with God now a heavyweight prayer bout with God can be exhausting, but that is what wins prayer victories. Praying hard is more than words then, it s blood sweat and tears. Praying hard is 2 dimensional: praying like it all depends on God and working like it all depends on you. It s persisting in prayer no matter how long it takes. It s doing whatever it takes to show God you re serious. Like Elijah who prayed for a drought and God sent it for 3 years. Then he prayed for rain, how many times? Look at 1 Kings 18. 3. A small cloud 1 Kings 18: Elijah climbed to the top of Mount Carmel, where he bent down to the ground with his head between his knees. 43Then Elijah said to his servant, Go and look toward the sea. The servant went and looked. I see nothing, he said. Elijah told him to go and look again. This happened seven times. 44The seventh time, the servant said, I see a small cloud, the size of a human fist, coming from the sea. What if Elijah had quit praying after the sixth time? But he did not stop Elijah prayed through and God came through. The reason many of us give up and stop praying too soon is because we feel like we have failed if God doesn t answer our prayer. That is not failure. The only way you can fail is if you stop praying. Prayer is a no lose proposition. However, many of us feel like God only does miracles for other people, but for us, well... That s where we are much of the time, in the ellipsis! What s an ellipsis? You remember from English class right? The three dots at the end of a line that indicates a pause?
When we re waiting for God to answer a prayer, it s a period of ellipsis. And in that time, you can either give up, or hang on. You can let go, or pray through. You can get frustrated and upset with God, or like John the Baptist, you can choose to live unoffended. Luke 7:23 Blessed is the one who is not offended because of me. I admit that it s hard to hang on when we don t understand what God is doing and why He s not doing for us what He s doing for others. But I can tell you with certainty that 100% of the prayers we don t pray won t get answered! You have to remember what an old preacher said in his message titled: 4. God s grammar Never put a comma where God puts a period, and never put a period where God puts a comma. Sometimes what we think is a period is really just a comma. We think God s silence is the end of the sentence but it s just a providential pause. Praying through is what allows God to not just finish the sentence but to make a statement. Notice the amazing conjunction Martha puts right in the middle of her complaint to Jesus. Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask. John 11:22 Turn in your Bibles to John 11 to see why this is one of the most amazing statements of faith in the Bible. Lazarus has been dead 4 days but Martha refuses to give up hope. Even when it seems like God is 4 days late, it s too soon to give up. Notice the two levels of faith in those verses (21 & 22). The first kind believes God can stop or prevent things from happening. The next level believes God can turn disappointments into His appointments and bring good out of evil, like Joseph said (Genesis 50:20). It s a faith that believes it s not over until God says it s over! So...how do you get to that second level of faith? No easy answer, but I know from experience that it s the hard times that teach us to pray hard. Even when the job application is denied, or the adoption falls through, or the business goes bankrupt, you put a comma there. Even then you believe even now! Here is a great, helpful principle to remember: Our most powerful prayers are hyper linked to the promises of God! When you start praying the promises of God you can pray with holy confidence, a holy boldness. It s the difference between praying on thin ice or on solid ground. You don t have to wonder because you know God wants you to double click on His promises. It was all settled on the Cross when Jesus said, It is finished. It wasn t just the final installment on our sin debt; it was the down payment on all of His promises. 2 Corinthians 1:20 The yes to all of God s promises is in Christ, and through Christ we say yes to the glory of God.
The Promises of God are the ground we stand on. Here is another powerful principle that can revolutionize the way you read the Bible and the way you pray. Instead of looking at those as two distinct, different things, what if you looked at them as connected, as hyper linked? Many times people can t/don t pray very long because they run out of things to pray about and it turns into a bunch of trivial, over used clichés. So, what s the solution? Pray through the Bible! See, the Bible is both a promise book and a prayer book. While reading is reactive, prayer is proactive. Reading is the way you get through the Bible; prayer is the way you get the Bible through you. As you read it, the Holy Spirit will bring to life certain promises and they will become your promises. You need to circle/or underline them both in your Bible with a pen, and then circle them in prayer! 5. Watching and waiting Jeremiah 1: 12Then the LORD said to me, You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it. There is nothing God loves more than keeping His promises. And praying hard is standing on the promises of God. And when we stand on His Word God stands by His Word. His Word is His bond. Psalm 84:11 No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly. But if you re truly going to be willing to pray hard, you have to be willing to remember something. Praying hard is really asking God to make your life harder. Why? The harder you pray, the harder you will have to work, and that is a blessing from God. See, praying hard is hard, because you can t just pray like it all depends on God. You have to work like it all depends on you! 6. Work hard...go fish You can t just be willing to pray about it, you have to be willing to do something about it. Many people get stuck spiritually right here, because they re willing to pray right up to the point of discomfort, but if it gets too uncomfortable or inconvenient they quit! You have to be willing to take the steps of faith when you hear the promptings of God. Praying fervently/earnestly... James 5:15, Not only means to pray hard, but to act on your prayers because you expect God to answer! Like Elijah who told his servant 7 times to go look to see if there was a rain cloud. Like the time he told the widow lady to bake a loaf of bread with her last batch of dough and bring the first cakes to him. Like when the children of Israel were about to enter the Promised Land and they had to cross the Jordon River, God told the priests to step into the water, get their feet wet, and then He would part the waters for them. Be like Peter, and get out of the boat when Jesus says come to you. This means you have to be spiritually alert/awake to hear, to feel the promptings of the Holy Spirit of God. But if you are alert and listening
for His voice, God will take you some wild places. See, your response to these promptings may seem crazy or insane, but if you stay in the boat you ll never walk on the water! Remember when Peter was asked if Jesus paid the temple tax, and Jesus gave Peter a crazy command? He told Peter to go fishing and take the first fish he caught, open its mouth, and there he would find a coin then he was to take the coin and pay the tax! Why did Jesus choose to do the miracle this way? Possibly because he wanted Peter to trust him in the area he thought he was most proficient and might have been tempted to think he didn t need Jesus. If you ve caught thousands of fish and none had a coin in its mouth before, how do you find out if the next one will have the coin in its mouth? Go Fish! Only one way to find out if God will keep His promise: obey the prompting, step out by faith and believe God. So let s make it personal and wrap it up. Are you willing to pray hard, to believe God, to keep on keeping on and not quit? Where do you feel like in your life you need God the least? That may be precisely where God wants you to trust Him to do something beyond your ability. And as you obey His promptings, as crazy as they might seem, you never know what kind of crazy miracle He is waiting to do for you! Remember our starting text for this series? Jeremiah 33:3 Call unto me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things...