Faith Works: The Power of Prayer and Perseverance

1) "Faith works in trouble. We're living in a time where many people are experiencing all kinds of different kinds of trouble. They're going through trials whether it be relational, whether it be in the business sector, whether it be just living in a community, whether it be about the behavior of people in the communities that we live in. We find ourselves sometimes because of the things that we do and sometimes because of the things that other people are doing, we find ourselves in a place of trouble. And the question is, how do you respond? And James is saying, pray. Sometimes the trouble that we experience has got nothing to do with anything that we have done. It almost seems as if trouble just comes and finds us. And James says, pray." [52:13] (64 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "When we are faced with trouble, when we go down and on our knees or whether we're just praying in whatever posture in our prayer closets, when we are praying, it's like we're saying, we're telling God, this is a situation that we submit to you. We believe that you are the almighty God and we would have you deal with our difficulty in the way that you understand. You know better than we do. And praying is an act of faith. It's showing that we really trust God and that we're going to wait on God for his answer to come through." [55:07] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "The most important thing that we need when we're in trouble is hope. We've been reading about situations where people lose hope when they feel like this is the end. There's nothing that can be done about the situation that they're in. And when they get to the place of hopelessness, well then bad things happen. And the decisions that hopeless people make are not healthy decisions. The amount of pain that comes from decisions that come from hopelessness is beyond what we're designed to be able to bear. It really, really is difficult. And so always, always hold on to hope." [57:26] (48 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "Give your situation over to God and trust Him. He is a loving Heavenly Father who knows what's good for you. And even if it be a 70-year ordeal, trust that God is going to bring something good out of the situation. He can and He will. What Daniel did when he was distressed about how long he'd been there, he'd seen the Babylonian empire come and take him away. He'd seen that empire overthrown by the Medes and the Persians. And he'd seen Darius, the king that favored him incredibly, the one who, when he was thrown into the lion's den, went into fasting and didn't eat that night and didn't want entertainment and was there first thing in the morning." [58:04] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "Sometimes in order to get to the place where you will fully, completely rely on God, you need to feel like there's need or reason, reason to rely on God. And sometimes the weaknesses that we have will take us to that place. What am I saying? I'm saying that this Paul who has the power to heal sick people, despite a cloth being transferred to that person. There was one time, Acts chapter 20, Paul was with a group in Troas and he was planning to leave the next day, so he preached until midnight. And this dozy Christian sitting in the window just falls out from the second story. They picked him up dead and Paul raised him back to life again." [01:15:21] (54 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "Sometimes it has to do with faith. But here we've just had a testimony of a woman and a pastor comes in and says, I think God wants to heal you. It's like he's saying, I'm not really sure, but let's just pray and see. And then the woman thinks, God does heal, but not me. Somebody else maybe, but I think, and she doesn't have the faith that you would expect her to have in order to be healed. And, and, gets to be discharged and not even a scar. And we're sitting there saying, what gives? How do we understand this? And while we don't, let's always allow when we're facing sicknesses and when we're facing difficulties in life, let's allow our first step to be the one where we're saying, God, I want to engage you in my life." [01:18:13] (53 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "The thing about sin, and we learn this from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is when we have sin into our lives, and it's not like it came into our lives. Let's be honest. We bring sin into our lives. When that happens, our general tendency is to hide away from God. It's the relationship starts to break down. The prayer life ultimately becomes non-existent. And sometimes, the only prayers that we utter when we're in sin, and when our sin is at that level of disobedience, the only prayers is help. You know, in the desperate and the worst situations is when we turn to God. But generally, in general conversation, sin is a barrier." [01:20:56] (55 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "If we want to be righteous in the eyes of God, then all we have to do is believe in Jesus that he justifies us. And we confess our sins, we get to be forgiven, and we're in this place. Sometimes in prayer, prayer is a real struggle. There was a time when the disciples, Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration and nine of them, nine of his disciples were together. A man brought a child to him for prayer. And when Jesus came back from the Transfiguration Mount, the man went to Jesus and said, I've got this problem. There's a demon that is just disturbing my son and I took him to your disciples and they couldn't do anything about it." [01:25:52] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9) "The God that we serve is powerful and effective. He can take care of whatever the situation is that you're facing, whatever the problem that you have in your life, there is a God who loves you. He is merciful. Sometimes we need to come forward and we need to confess some things. Sometimes we just need to draw closer to him. We've been attracted to things and perhaps we're in a form of idolatry where we're not giving God the kind of allegiance that we need to give to him. Sometimes he sees us as an incredible example of faith and he is showing spiritual forces and powers that no matter what we go through like Job, whether it be the loss of everything that we have or whether it be physical health that we're struggling with, no matter the pressure, those spiritual forces need to know and see we will never abandon the trust that we have for a God who loves us, who put his life on a cross for us to be able to go through life with the peace of eternal salvation." [01:31:36] (69 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)