Aligning Prayer with God's Wisdom and Goodness

1) "There are things that God wants us to understand, but in order for us to truly appreciate them, for the things that He wants to give to us, the things that we're meant to receive, we actually have to shift our perspective and begin to see things from a different point of view. And this is going to be a challenge to us. And this is hard for some of us because we just have expectations that how we got those expectations, whether good, bad, or ugly, we have them. And they're not always right. They're not always good." [02:37] (28 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "The enemy tries to come in and steal the word of God from you. Comes to try to resist the word of God in you. The cares of this life and the things that we need in this world, the pressures we face seek to choke out God's word and its effectiveness in our life. And while we're praying for those things that God promised to come to pass, there are challenges to our faith. And Jesus said, listen, when you're praying, you need to learn how to pray and pray and pray and not lose heart." [06:18] (23 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "We need to learn how to ask and how to seek and how to knock with discernment, with judgment, if we want the right things, if we want the good things in this life. And when we can learn to identify the difference between our desires and the will of God, because there is a difference often, we can experience what the Bible calls contentment. You know what contentment is? It's when we can experience what the Bible calls contentment. Contentment is that feeling of satisfaction, that when your situation or your status or your stuff is how you want it to be. You're just content. I'm satisfied. It's good. I have peace." [07:36] (34 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "When it comes down to it for most Christians, when we pray and come to God to ask him for provision or answers or opportunities, we really just want what we want. I mean, let's be honest. When you pray and you tell God what you want, you just want him to give you what you asked for, right? You don't want him to deviate your plan, do you? Oh God, I want that job. And God says, well, I got a better one, but I want this job. And God says, no, this ain't the job. I want this job. We want what we want, don't we?" [10:17] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "We suffer from a psychological phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Anybody ever heard of that before? You've not heard of that before. Okay. I'm going to tell you what it is. It's the tendency for us to overestimate our experience, our knowledge, our expertise, our understanding. In other words, we think, we're better than we are right now. That's the very simplified non-clinical textbook definition, but it is, we think we know more than we know. We think we have more experience than we do. And we really don't." [11:46] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "We need to learn how to trust that God's answers to our prayers are always good, and this is the lesson in judgment that we need to learn. We need to recognize that God's answers for us are always good. God is good, and he is the giver of every good and perfect gift. God is never tempted by evil. All of his ways are good. He's never like, that sounds like a good option. Let's do a shortcut. Let's bypass this. You know what? I'll let you have this one this time." [18:40] (27 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "Remember that God is good. This is a starting point. You need to start off remembering that God is good. Nahum 1.7, the Bible says, the Lord is good. And he knows those who trust in him. When God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus chapter 34, verse six, this is how he described himself. It says, and the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth. God is good and he abounds in goodness. He overflows with goodness. He exudes goodness. He's got so much goodness, he can't stop." [19:59] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "Remember that God knows what is good. See, God isn't just good in himself. He also knows what's good for us. Amen. Look at James chapter four with me. James four, verses one through three. This is a New Living Translation I'm going to read from. It says, What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them." [24:14] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9) "Whatever God does is just, right and good. So God's yes is good. And God's no is good. When God tells you, no, guess what? It's good. I need to let you, that needs to sink in. God's answer is good. And God's silence is good. God's open door is good. And God's closed door is good. I'm just letting that settle because I can feel the Holy Spirit. You just got to think about that for a second, because so much are, we're trained that it's yes, it's the open door. It's the, it's the, it's the confirmation that's all good, but no, with God, everything is good." [32:32] (49 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10) "If Jonah would have just said, I'm just going to die in this fish or I'm just going to go down with the ship, he would have never accomplished what he was called to accomplish. He would have never found, you know, Jonah has the greatest sermon recorded in think about it. With one sentence, 120,000 people repented and got saved. I don't know of any other sermon that's ever done that. And none of that would have happened if he'd have misinterpreted what was going on. I wonder what we're missing. Because in the final judgment of all things, everything God does is good." [38:29] (38 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)