Prayer That Changes Us: Yes, No, Wait

``It's one thing for me to be praying for someone and for them to get healed. That's not necessarily a mark of my spiritual maturity. That is God at work. Right? It's not me. That's God at work. So that isn't necessarily a mark of spiritual maturity. The mark of spiritual maturity is what do I do when someone cuts in line in front of me at the gas pump, or cuts me off in traffic, or perhaps when one of my kids steals that last piece of chocolate cake that I was really looking forward to. That's a real life situation. I'm just bringing it up here. This is my free therapy session. But that's when the mark of spiritual maturity comes to play. Right? What is the fruit of the spirit actually looking like in my life? [00:25:45] (51 seconds)  #PrayerIsRelationship

See, spiritual disciplines are a means to an end. They're they're not the thing, they're the thing that gets us to the thing. Spiritual disciplines get us to Jesus. We talked about nine classic classic disciplines. Disciplines. There's a list of them. There's the Sabbath, the solitude, there's prayer, fasting, scripture, community, generosity, service, and witness, other lists include a few others. But the other thing we learned is that spiritual disciplines are not a mark of spiritual maturity. The fruit of the spirit is a mark of spiritual maturity. [00:25:06] (39 seconds)

I I've shared this story before as we received the doctor's report for our youngest child before she was born, and they said don't expect much. She most likely won't survive birth. Well, downstairs right now is a pretty intense nine year old that is running, I'm sure. Prayer works. It really does. And I would love to get up here as we talked about last week and give you a formula on how prayer works, but I don't have all the pieces because faith must play a role into this. [00:22:29] (32 seconds)

I remember there was this person standing in front of me. They had hurt their ankle, and it was incredibly swollen. They were dealing with some ongoing pain, and there was a few of us gathered there, and we started to pray for them. And we saw right in front of our very eyes, the swelling on their ankle just disappeared right there and then. It went away. And I was like, well, God, I know that wasn't me because I I can't do that. I know that was you. [00:21:00] (28 seconds)

We would have no need for God, just his power. If it was as simple as a formula, if I pray this way and do this thing, then that is gonna happen. Where is the need for faith for our personal relationship with him? We would have it all figured out. We'd have a formula. All we need is God's power. We're good. But that's not the way it is. As we look throughout scriptures, we look in the life of Jesus, it was through a ever growing deep relationship with the father that we saw answers to prayer in his life. [00:35:45] (37 seconds)

We kinda went through about how prayer is simply just talking to God, and you can talk to him like you would to a friend, or you can pray the scriptures, all of these things that any way you pray, I think, is just the right way. Just praying, talking to God, listening to God. Sometimes, some of the most powerful moments in prayer I've had is where I just say, hey, God. I'm here. And I just sit and I listen or I spend time in his presence. And he's done things in my personal life or in other people's lives where I didn't even have to say a thing, and I just know that it was him. All these different dynamics to prayer, and I think one thing that I think is really important in all of it is to not overcomplicate it. [00:31:49] (44 seconds)

It's me who's taken my eyes off of him, much like you see in the story where Jesus calls Peter out of the boat. Or more so Peter challenges, hey, if that's you, ask for me to come out of the boat. And he does, and he starts to walk on water, but it's the moment he gets his eyes off of Jesus that he starts to sink. Now, I love that the story doesn't end there because it makes it feel like it's this moment of like, oh, I'm gonna mess this up. I know I'm gonna sink. Like, I that's just a given. I I can look back on my life, and I know many times where I've taken my eyes off of God. But yet in that story, I'm so glad it does not end there because then Jesus walks over to Peter and picks him up out of the water. It's all Jesus. It's all Jesus. [00:30:29] (48 seconds)

God, where are you? I don't understand. In some dark moments in life, I've prayed this prayer. I know my mind knows that God has never left me. He will never leave me. He will never forsake me. But yet in that moment, I'm feeling like this. God, did you forget? Did you forget? [00:29:22] (19 seconds)