Praying Effectively for Other People

If you want to build an effective prayer life, you've come to the right place. Pastor Paul Shepherd tells you how next in today's Destined for Victory message, praying effectively for other people. But before we get going, Pastor Paul joins me from his studio in California. Pastor, thanks for your time. We started this year with a couple of messages that look toward the future. In fact, the booklet that we're offering to everyone who gives such a generous gift right now is called It Pays to Serve Jesus.

Can we talk about the booklet and what's in it? What's going to be helpful to us? Pastor Paul said that he was unwilling to part with his many possessions in order to gain eternal life. After that encounter, the disciples said, Well, we've given up everything. And it kind of made them rethink, okay, what are we getting out of this deal? We gave up everything. And what do we have to look forward to?

And what do we have to look forward to? And Jesus' response is what the series is based on. Jesus said, no one gives up everything, and he listed a number of things. He said, who doesn't receive in this life with persecution 100 fold, and then they'll receive eternal life thereafter. And I'm helping people understand that an eternal perspective must always be in focus. The fact is, it pays, it really does pay, both in this life and in the life to come. It pays to serve Jesus, but it calls us to sacrifice and to surrender. And those of us that are willing to do it, we're going to see God bless us in wonderful ways. That's a great word of encouragement, Pastor Paul. And now more than ever, we want to lead people to a life of service and devotion to Jesus. Of course, as a ministry that is 100% listener supported, we can't do that without your prayers and financial support. And right now, when you give a generous donation this month, we'll be happy to send you Pastor Paul's booklet, It Pays to Serve Jesus. Consider the words of our Lord in the Gospel of Luke, verses 29 and 30. Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times more in this age and in the age to come eternal life. This is a promise from the very mouth of God. And as you dive into this resource from Pastor Paul, you'll be encouraged to remember that every promise God makes is a promise God keeps. Again, the booklet is called, It Pays to Serve Jesus. It's our gift to you by request for your generous gift to Destin for Victory today. Call 855-339-5500 to give over the phone, or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online.

You can also mail your gift to Destin for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. Start out with praise when you pray. Yes, there are those emergency times where you start right in on your petition because you're in an emergency. God's not mad at you, you didn't even praise me first. He's just saying, generally speaking, when you come into the presence of God, come in being thankful and grateful for who he is and what he has done. So praise is the first part of the prayer agenda. When God lived with us on earth, he gave us a model for prayer, one that begins with praise for who he is. As you'll see today on Destin for Victory, the Lord's Prayer contains several other elements that he taught us to implement in our own prayer life.

Here's Pastor Paul with today's Destin for Victory message, Praying Effectively for Other People. Jesus gave us some practical keys to developing an effective prayer life, and I don't have time to go back over those. Now we're looking at the prayer agenda that Jesus gave us. We typically call it the Lord's Prayer. That's unfortunate because it is not the Lord's Prayer. If you want to see the Lord's Prayer, you'd have to look at places like John's Gospel Chapter 17, where Jesus prayed an extensive prayer while he was here on earth to his father. He prayed for us, but that was his prayer on his heart. When he gave us this prayer in Matthew Chapter 6, technically that's not the Lord's Prayer. That's the prayer he taught in response to the request, Lord, teach us to pray. And they asked him, help us learn how to pray, just like the disciples of John, they learned things like that, John the Baptist, we want to know how you want us to pray. And his response is what I'm entitling, When You Pray. And I want you to note, in Matthew 6, verse 9, Jesus said, in this manner, therefore pray. In this manner, therefore pray. In other words, he's teaching you, when you pray, here is the manner in which you should pray.

Not the words you should say when you pray, but rather here's the manner. So I see this as a prayer agenda. This is a prayer agenda.

It is an agenda Jesus gave us so that we can know how to pray effectively. And I ended the last message by giving you the first part of the prayer agenda, which is praise, praise. And when Jesus taught us to make praise part of your praying, that includes worship and thanksgiving. Worshipping God for who he is, is what worship and praise is all about.

And then thanking him for what he's done is what thanksgiving is all about. So Jesus says, make sure when you pray to stop and give the Lord praise for who he is and to give him thanks for what he has done. I want to teach you, many of you are just new to faith, and so you're learning these things. I love the fact that you don't know how to pray yet, because I get to teach you from the Word how to pray right.

Because if you had examples in your life that have these religious practices and they don't stop and distinguish for you why they do what they do, you'll say words or mimic what you've seen or heard and you still won't know what you're doing. And I don't want you to, I pray this because this is what my grandmama said. No, no, I don't want you praying what your grandmother said unless you understood what your grandmother meant when she did what she did in prayer. You know, because sometimes in church we just get into habits and we mimic and we follow patterns and don't even know what the pattern is about. I don't want you to do that, you who are new to faith, you who are developing your relationship with Christ.

And frankly, some of you, you're not new to faith, you've walked with God for a long time, but nobody ever stopped and taught you how to pray. And so I want to make sure you get it so that you don't fall into patterns that you don't understand. I've often told this story to illustrate the importance of understanding. There was a woman who was baking a ham and her daughter was watching her bake the ham and she noticed that her mother cut off both ends of the ham before she inserted it into the pan and into the oven. And so the daughter said, Mommy, why did you cut off both ends of the ham as you got ready to insert the ham into the oven?

And the mother said, come think of it baby, I don't know, I got that from my mother. Why don't you run in the other room and ask your grandmother? And she ran in and asked grandma, grandma, I was watching mom bake a ham and she cut off both ends before she put it in the oven. I asked her why and she told me to ask you. And grandma said, well, baby, come think of it.

I don't know. I got that from my mother said, if you really want to know, why don't you call your great grandmother and ask her? She picked up the phone call great grandma and said, I was watching mom bake a ham. I asked her why she cut off both ends. She said, I don't know. Told me to ask her mother. I asked her and she said, I don't know.

Ask you. I'm trying to find out why we cutting off both ends of the ham before we put it in the oven. Great grandmother started laughing. And she said, I had a small pan.

You get it? She had a reason. If I'm a bake this ham, it got to fit in my pan.

It doesn't fit. Let's I cut off the ends. See how she inadvertently passed on a tradition that meant nothing. But until somebody asked, it was going to continue.

That little girl would have grown up cutting off the ends. That's why I'm talking about prayer because I don't want you to get into patterns that make no sense for you. I want you to connect with heaven. I don't know if you realize it, but you need to connect with heaven every time you pray and there are things you need to talk to God about because the Bible says he does hear and answer prayer and therefore we're not going to cut off the ends of the ham. We're going to pray in a way that makes sense. So Jesus said the first way to do that is to praise. Before you get into your praying, before you get into your asking, stop and say, Lord, I honor you. I praise you.

I worship you. The way Jesus put it in this prayer agenda, he said, hallowed be your name, honored, sacred to be respected, to be revered is your name. Don't become so earthly that you don't recognize our father in heaven is above all and is worthy of the highest honor. God is worthy of the highest adoration and so in this manner say our father in heaven hallowed be your name and he wasn't giving us merely words, he's giving us an agenda. The first part of the agenda is praise which includes thanks and worship. So before you start asking, teach yourself to start praising. Lord I bless you.

I thank you. I worship you for who you are. I gave you last week, I can't repeat it in the interest of time, but I told you about some of the Hebrew names of God. Thank you that you are Jehovah Jireh, you're the God who provides. Thank you that you're Jehovah Shammah, the God who is present with me. That you are Jehovah Shalom, you are the God who is my peace and on and on and on. And remember I ended that message by saying don't worry about it, if you haven't studied Hebrew well I guess I can't pray right.

You got one name that will cover it all. Just call the name of Jesus and say I thank you for Jesus because in Jesus I have everything I need. I have all of the provision, I have all the sanctification, I have all of the peace, I have all of the presence of God, et cetera.

You are my banner of victory and in Jesus is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. So in this manner pray, the first is in your prayer agenda, make sure praise is in your prayer. In fact David taught us enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto him and bless his name, why? For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting and his truth endures to all generations. And so start out with praise when you pray.

Yes there are those emergency times where you start right in on your petition because you're in an emergency. God's not mad at you, you didn't even praise me first. No no, he's not copping an attitude, he's just saying generally speaking when you come into the presence of God, come in being thankful and grateful for who he is and what he has done. So praise is the first part of the prayer agenda. Up next, the second half of today's Destined for Victory message with Pastor Paul Shepherd. Listen to the broadcast on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net where you'll find a host of great resources in our online store.

You can also download and subscribe to the podcast at Google Podcasts or wherever you go to get yours. The Lord's Prayer is a model for us to follow, what Paul Shepherd calls our prayer agenda given to us by God himself. First on the list is lifting up the name of God.

Second is lifting up the needs of others. And here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's message, Praying Effectively for Other People. Now I want to cover the second part of the prayer agenda and that is petitions on behalf of others. The first part of your prayer agenda, praise. The second part of your prayer agenda, petitions on behalf of others. I'm giving them to you in peace because I want you to memorize them. When you praise God, you're inviting his presence through your praise, you're about to ask him some things but first you want to recognize who he is and give him thanks and praise for that.

Now we're going to move into petitions on behalf of others. Look at what Jesus said in verse 10 of Matthew 6. He said, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Or your kingdom come would be new King James. I grew up with old King James so I'm used to saying thy. But your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's the second part of the prayer agenda Jesus gave us. What am I saying to God when I say your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Well, God's kingdom is the sphere in which he rules and reigns supreme.

Jot that down if you need to. When we say God's kingdom, what are we talking about? We're talking about the sphere in which he rules and reigns supreme.

Now let me help you understand. God is God over all. At the end of it all, God is in charge.

However, don't fool yourself. We live in a fallen world. We live among fallen people and so we need to understand that the kingdom of God is important because it is different than the kingdoms of this world. In the kingdoms of this world, you have some dictators leading. In the kingdoms of this world, you have some demagogues leading. In the kingdoms of this world, you have all kinds of leadership.

Isn't it true? Not every leader who leads an earthly kingdom is currently recognizing the kingdom of God. In fact, many of them don't even acknowledge God. In communist places in the world, for instance, they don't acknowledge that there is a supreme being of any type. Fortunately, God is not running for election.

And so he's not, I don't believe, they don't recognize, the Bible says the day is coming when every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, that God is who he says he is in scripture. And so God has not been out of shape because we live in a fallen world. At the end of it all, he is in charge. Remember, God is sovereign. We have free will and so we see a lot of corrupt free will going on throughout the earth. But don't fool yourself, free will is not the same as sovereignty. If your free will was sovereignty, that means you would never have to answer to anyone or anybody.

But all of us, though having free will, none of us have sovereignty. Because one day, Jesus will appear and all of us will acknowledge he is Lord. So when we pray your kingdom come, your will be done in earth as it is in heaven, we're saying God, despite a lot of the things in this world that are not as you would have it be, we want to ask you that your will be done, your kingdom come in the things we're about to petition you about.

So you understand that? That's why you want to pray regularly because there are a lot of things and there are a lot of people you want to invite the Lord to manifest himself in. And therefore, we need to pray. We need to pray your kingdom come as we petition God on behalf of others, your kingdom come, which means the spear of your rule and your reigning supreme, we want to see that take place in their lives.

So let's get practical. How many of you have unsaved relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors that you want to one day see come to know Jesus as savior? Exactly. All of us do. None of us, everybody I see all day every day knows Jesus. Not true. Some of you can't even say everybody in the house I live in knows Jesus.

Isn't that true? In fact, some of you could say I'm the only saved person in my family right now. When I go to family reunion, most of them don't know the Lord. That's why you got to go pray it up to the family reunion because they're going to be there rocking and acting crazy. Come on, some of y'all, they're going to be turned all kinds of up. Come on.

The pastor heard about turn up. Yes, I know, I got to stay in touch. I got to know what y'all doing. I got to understand. And so recently I learned about Siroc because I kept hearing it. I asked somebody, what is Siroc? They said, pastor, that's vodka.

I said, oh. So these folks going to be Siroc-ing and carrying on, you go to 4th of July, whatever it is, and you better learn how to pray for people because the only way they're going to come to know Jesus is somebody has to pray, Lord, your kingdom come, your will be done in his or her life. I know right now they're acting crazy. Right now they lack direction. Right now they lack focus. Right now they're making all kinds of crazy mistakes and decisions in their life. Right now they're getting ready to bust hell wide open.

But God, I'm going to be an intercessor. I'm going to petition you on their behalf. Lord, don't let them be lost. Bring them to a saving knowledge of who you are. Let them know how good you are.

Let them know how compelling your love is. Let them know that you can take them off the wrong road and put them on the right road. Let them know that just like the apostle Paul, you can turn them around and head them in a different direction. And I want to encourage you, start praying for the people in your life. That's why you want to pray regularly because we have too many lost people to pray for in the same prayer session. So pray for some of them Monday, some of them Tuesday, some of them Wednesday, some of them Thursday, some of them Friday, some of them Saturday. When we pray on Sunday, get some of them and pray on Sunday. Literally you got too many folk to pray about. So you can't pray about everybody every day. But create your prayer list.

I'm talking literally. Sometimes you need to literally create a prayer list and call their name every week, every 10 days, however often you can get to their name. And some of y'all know good and well, with your immediate family and friends, you want to pray about them regularly. So there's some folk you want to call their name every single day because they need Jesus. Without Jesus, they're lost. And somebody prayed you into the kingdom. Come on, you need to be grateful.

You didn't get here because you just got it like that. You are here because in the words of that chorus, somebody prayed for me, had me on their mind, took the time and prayed for me. I'm so glad they prayed. I'm so glad they prayed. I'm so glad they prayed for me.

It is wonderful when folk get a hold of you in prayer and they will not stop until you're saved. I grew up around folk who would pray. Some of them got saved after they had been married. Some of the old folks that grew up in, I grew up in the church where they attended. And many of them, or some of them I would say, had an unsaved husband, for instance.

That's because they got married when they were young. Neither one of them was saved. And then she got saved somewhere along the line. But I grew up watching people pray for their unsaved husbands, wives, children, parents, anybody in their immediate family who wasn't saved. I grew up seeing folk pray for them every time there was a prayer session. They called those folks' names to the Lord.

What were they doing? They were saying, your kingdom come, your will be done in their life. I'm not going to stand by and let the devil take them. I'm not going to stand by and let them be lost. I'm standing in the gap.

I'm an intercessor. If I don't stand in the gap, all hell will break loose. But I'm going to stand here with my authority and say, in Jesus' name, I rebuke the devil. I rebuke spiritual blindness.

I will not let my relatives go to hell because they don't see the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. And they prayed. I saw people pray their spouses, their kids into the kingdom when you wouldn't have given a dime for those folk to ever get saved.

Thanks so much for joining us for today's message. Praying effectively for other people. If you'd like more information about the Destined for Victory ministry or this month's special offer of Pastor Paul's booklet, It Pays to Serve Jesus, be sure to stop by our website, pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net. See, you need to learn to pray over the people in your life.

I don't want to see them lost. Now, I don't get to determine whether you get saved, but I can sure pray in such a way that it's going to be awfully hard for you to get around them prayers and try to be a heathen. You see what I'm saying? That's your job as an intercessor.

Make it hard for folk. That's tomorrow in Pastor Paul's message, Praying Effectively for Other People. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.