Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. It starts with prayer and then it finishes with you and I moving to where God is leading us to bring about the answer. That's Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City with a preview of a message titled Moving to the Other Side of Prayer.
In Acts chapter 9, we find Saul of Tarsus breathing out threats and supporting murder against the disciples of the Lord. He hated the Church of Jesus Christ, but something life-changing happened to him on his journey to Damascus, all because of an earnest prayer that was prayed. Here's Carter Conlon with today's message. Now over the years, I have studied a lot on prayer and I'm sure many of you have read books and stories on the topic of prayer. And you'll always hear the term, there was a prayer movement. And people today are talking about prayer, there's a prayer movement in this church, there's a prayer movement in that city.
And I thank God. I love the terminology, but I started thinking about this whole concept of prayer movement. And when we think of the term prayer movement, we picture us coming to a central place here or at home, whatever it is, our special prayer closet, wherever we pray. And the Bible tells us that we can speak to mountains and they have to move.
And that's true. And so we anticipate that something comes out of our mouths and as we begin to pray, things around us begin to move. The Bible tells us that demons have to flee, strongholds have to be broken. So we have this mental image that we are called to stand in a specific spot. And praying in that spot, everything around us starts moving. And there's great truth to that. I'm not going to negate that even one little bit.
There's great truth to that. But I want to talk about the other side of the prayer movement tonight. It's the movement that God requires of us when we pray. We're not just moving mountains, we're not just moving away demons, we're not just pushing away false concepts of God or bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. No, there's another side to this term prayer movement. And you'll find it in the beginning.
I want to talk a little bit about it tonight. In the book of Acts chapter 9, it talks about this man Saul. The scripture says he was breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He hated the church of Jesus Christ. He had a form of prayer, I'm sure, but this prayer was obviously not connecting anywhere near God. He hated the concept of a God other than the one of his own making.
And he set out to destroy everybody who adhered to this person, Jesus Christ, and would not adhere to his concepts of what he felt truth were. Suddenly on his journey to bring more people into captivity, he encounters a brilliant light so bright, actually, that it blinded his eyes for a season. For three days he was blind because of the brightness of God, the brightness of his presence. The Bible does tell us that nobody can actually see God. In the Old Testament, nobody can see God and live. Now, that changed, of course, when God became a man in the New Testament. But Paul had this encounter with the living Christ, the living God of the universe, and it caused him to fall on the road, it caused his vision to be taken away, and it says in verse six of Acts chapter nine, so he, trembling and astonished, he said, Lord, what do you want me to do? And the Lord said to him, arise, go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. So the movement of prayer, this was Paul's first real prayer that touched God.
You understand that? All of his religion had gone nowhere. It never went any higher than the ceiling in the synagogue. Now he's in the presence of the living God. This is his first real prayer. He's now part of what I call a New Testament prayer movement. And the Lord tells him immediately, arise, go into the city, you will be told what you must do. So now the movement is now God saying, you get up and start to move in the direction that I'm calling you to. That's prayer movement. That's when you and I begin to pray, and God calls us into an unfamiliar place. He was not familiar with this place. And I love the fact that God called him immediately.
He didn't say go to a focus group and let's see who we can blame for your condition. Now I'm not downplaying that. I guess sometimes that's necessary. But I love the fact that God is able to just call us in our mess. And he was in a rage, this man. He was causing people to blaspheme in the name of God, the scripture says. He was torturing people. He was there when they killed Stephen, the young disciple, and he was holding their coats. He was an accessory to murder. And yet God doesn't even deal with any of that.
He says, just get up and go into the city and I will tell you what to do from there. I love that about God. I think sometimes we waste a whole lot of time in healing that we don't need.
Now I'm serious about that. I think sometimes when we just got up and started to go, like obviously there are things in his life that have to fall off. And you'll notice they fell off as he walked with God. As he moved towards the calling of God on his life, obviously he's got anger issues, right? He's got anger issues.
This guy's a murderer. I mean he's in a rage and the Lord doesn't say, now I'm going to have to deal with that anger issue before I can use you. No, he just says get up and go and I will tell you. So as we get up and go, the issues that made us what we are apart from God just fall away. That's the way I see it. Maybe I'm too simple, but that's the way it happened in my life. I got up and just started moving with God and then the things that plagued my life started falling away. The powers of darkness. I can tell you from personal experience as I moved towards the calling of God, the things that needed to move away from me started moving away. Attitudes of heart, things in my mind, issues that had been part of my life since I was young, words that were spoken over me. As God started to speak and I started to move, pray and move towards his call, all these other things started moving away. Now I could have spent all my time focused on these things instead of focused on what really mattered. Getting up in my weakness, getting up in our confusion, getting up with our struggles and starting to move with God.
Starting to pray and God starts to call and we start to go through the doors. In the book of Nehemiah there's a guy who's in captivity, right? He's in captivity. He's probably born and raised in captivity.
People of God have been taken captive now. And in his captivity he's kind of worked himself into a nice spot. He's the cupbearer to the king. So he's probably got a nice apartment. He's got a pretty good job except the people were always trying to poison the king and he had to kind of taste everything first and so it was kind of a high risk profession. But nevertheless it was secure, while he was alive it was secure, at least anyway.
He had access to the king, he had kind of worked his way into a comfortable place. And one day he just gets a report that the people of God are in reproach. In Israel, in Jerusalem the walls are down, the gates are burned with fire. And he had thought that the testimony of God in the earth, because in a previous generation they had been allowed to go home and rebuild and so he's just asking, of course, how are they doing with the rebuilding?
And the guy said, oh man, it's a mess. The people are discouraged, the heathen are laughing at them, their wall is still down, their gates, which is symbolic of where you stand in strength, where you have an ability to protect yourself and form battle plans and commerce and all that, is burnt with fire. In other words, the people are vulnerable.
Anybody can come in and go out. There's no line of demarcation that identifies these people as the people of God. There's a mixture going on everywhere. And the scripture tells us that he was kind of broken in heart when he heard this. It just didn't seem right. Has it ever come into your heart that it's just not right that we're not a voice in this generation the way we should be? Is it just not right that our testimony is not light and salt, that when we walk into a room people are not asking about God? Has it ever gotten into your heart that, Lord, there's got to be more to this? God, your people have the Holy Spirit in them.
The third person of the triune, God lives in this body called your church on the earth. Has it possible that we're marginalized? Has it possible that our voices don't matter?
That we're being laughed at and mocked and we're held in contempt, in a sense, by the unregenerate in our society? And he said, when I heard these words, I sat down and I wept and I mourned and I fasted and I prayed to the God of heaven. Now, his prayer obviously was, he said, Lord, do something about this. God, he said, you keep covenant and mercy with those who love you and observe your commandments. Listen to the prayers and let your eyes be opened. Hear the prayers of your servants, which I pray before you now, day and night, for the children of Israel, your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we've sinned against you and your father's house.
And his prayer was that kind of that first part of prayer movement. In other words, God, move this away. God, move this reproach away.
Push this darkness away. And he could have focused on the mockery and focused on the rubble and focused on the lack of zeal. And he could have just stayed in the palace and said, God, push this away, push it away.
Move it. That's like, and he could have said to his friends, I'm part of a prayer movement. And then he starts reminding God of his promises. He says, remember that you told Moses that if we were unfaithful and scattered among the nations, but if we turned back to you and we began to pray, you would gather us again and bring us to the place where we are supposed to be living as your people.
The place where we are bringing you again, or you are bringing yourself again through us to reputation in the earth. It's not right. God, it's not right that your people should be a reproach like this.
It's just simply not right. And so shortly after that, he's before the king and he's just doing his thing and he's giving him his food and he's giving him his drink, but there's a sorrow that's come on him. You know, when God is about to do something in your life, he will produce what I call a holy discontent in you. There's something in you that you're starting to have a burden for something that you never anticipated you would. And you're starting to feel the grief that God feels.
That's what's happening. Because you have the spirit of God, you start to feel his heart for some situation. And you know it's not your own emotions. And in that day, in that society, to come before the king sorrowfully, you had to play happy all the time. You did.
You had to be sort of like a prosperity preacher. Even if your heart was heavy, I shouldn't have said that. Even if your heart was heavy, you had to pretend you're happy, happy, happy, happy, happy. Your marriage could be falling apart, your kids were on drugs, but you had to be Mr.
Happy all the time. If you were sorrowful, it meant death. You would be put to death. You were not allowed in the presence of king with sorrow in your heart. So you had to fake it if you were down. You just could not ever be real. You had to pretend that you were other than what you were.
That was part of the job description of the cup bearer. And so the king said to him, why is your face sad? It says in chapter 2 and verse 2 of Nehemiah. This is nothing but sorrow of heart. And Nehemiah says, so I became dreadfully afraid. Dreadfully afraid. He's not exaggerating. In other words, I'm done.
I'm going to die here. I mean, you're not allowed to be sorrowful in the presence of the king. Some people think that to be a Christian, you've just got to be happy, happy, happy all the time. But our savior in the book of Isaiah says he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Then I said to the king, well, may the king live forever. There's nothing to lose now.
You might as well just try flattery if nothing else works. Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my father's tombs lies waste and its gates are burned with fire? Then the king said to me, so what do you request? And Nehemiah says, so I prayed to the God of heaven.
What do you request? Now, he's been making all kinds of requests, right? God moved this. God changed this. God delivered the people. God do something.
This is not right. You understand? And that's the way a lot of us pray, and we see a prayer movement as we stay where we are and we ask God to do something where we're not. God, you're God. You do this.
I can't. So you do it. I'm going to do my part and petition you. But what really the amazing thing about this, after he prayed, he said, I said to the king, if it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in your sight, now this is after praying, so God put this on his heart to ask this, send me to Judah, the city of my father's tombs that I may rebuild it. See, that's the second side of the prayer movement.
He was moved to pray, and then prayer moved him. It's one thing to pray for God to do something. It's a whole other thing to say, Lord, send me. You've put this burden on my heart. You've put the plan in my mind, and so, God, I have been asking for you to do something.
It never occurred that you would use me to do it. But, oh, Lord, send me. And to me, that is a prayer movement. That is the second part of a prayer movement.
It starts with prayer, and then it starts, it finishes with you and I moving to where God is leading us to bring about the answer. And, of course, the rest of it is history. He was sent with letters. He was sent with provision. He was sent with authority. He was sent with blessing. He was sent with the favor of God. This guy's a cupbearer. He's not an architect.
Oh, thank God. That's why the scripture says, consider your calling, brethren. Not many mighty, not many noble, not many wise. After the flesh was God chosen.
The foolish things of the world, the weak, those things that are despised, that what? That no flesh could glory in his presence. So Nehemiah comes into Jerusalem at that time, and he's a cupbearer. I mean, that's all he's ever been. That's what he's aspired to be. That's where he's gotten to in his life.
There's nothing that tells us he'd ever taken an architecture course or a leadership seminar. He's a cupbearer, but he prayed. And God said, go do this. And when we start to go with God, the giftings come with the calling.
The ability, the sovereign ability is given to us by God himself to do what God has asked us to do. That's what has always made the kingdom of God supernatural in the earth and brought the name of God to reputation. Nehemiah walks in, surveys the damage, and it's a mess, and starts telling people, God has sent me to do this. And just like when Moses came into Egypt, he's an 80-year-old man with a stick. He's got an 83-year-old brother. He's got a one-line sermon. That's all he's got. And Moses is so weak, he needs his brother to deliver the one line. That was so foolish in the natural. But the people believed it.
Isn't that amazing? When God is with you, you watch the authority he will give you. There's a spiritual authority when we move with God and we just tell the people, God has sent me to do this. God has called me to pray for you. God has told me to tell you that you can have eternal life. God has sent me. And they look at you and they say, wow, where's your experience to do this? Where's your pedigree?
I don't have any. I prayed, and God moved upon my heart. And I woke up and I said, God, send me.
And he sent me, so here I am. And there's a weight in your speech that is indefinable except for the presence of God. The church of Jesus Christ is a supernatural body on the earth. It started that way. It still is that way if we have the courage to recognize it. Ordinary people coming out of an upper room of prayer, gone in with their weakness, knew they were failures, prayed, give us your spirit. God answered their prayer and with the spirit of God came the calling of God. With the calling of God came the courage of God. With the courage of God came the words of God. With the words of God came the power of God. And religion bent its knee that day.
Three thousand souls bent their knee before 120 weak people who just said, Lord, hear my send me, came out of an upper room and walked into the midst of what could have been a bloodbath in a society that was not really open to the followers of Jesus Christ. That's where we live today. That's why we need to pray. That's why we need the power of God. That's why we need to get up and go where God is calling us to go. And tonight we anointed dozens and dozens of young people.
And that's not just an exercise in futility. With the anointing of God comes the call of God. With the call of God comes the power of God. With the power of God comes the open door of God. With the open door of God comes the courage that only God can give. And with the courage comes the work that only God can do. And with the work comes the wonder, not in your heart but in the hearts of those who observe what God is doing through your life. I've lived it, walked it, known it, still live it today. I don't bring you a theory about God.
I bring you a life experience. I want to be part of today's prayer movement and I want to be part of today's movement with prayer. I don't want to be just stagnant. I don't want prayer just to be something I do on Tuesday night.
It's great, thank God, but there's a Wednesday coming. And I can't just receive the anointing and kind of contain it and say, wow, I can't wait until next Tuesday to feel it again. No, no, no, there's a call that comes with the anointing.
Oh, God. How this generation needs to see Christ in you again. They don't need an argument about God. They need a demonstration of who God is. This is a visual generation, so actually we're in a good spot as the church to let Christ now give us the strength that we need. Let him give us the power.
And you were online listening tonight. May I give you a word of advice? You know, we're getting so many prayer requests from people who need to get out of this and out of that and out of this and out of that and out of this and out of that. Okay, I understand that, but to get out of this and out of that and out of this and out of that, you need to get into something.
Like I'm telling you right now, don't wait until you have it all together. Just get up and start going with God. Let them call you a failure. Let them call you a drug addict.
Listen, they didn't receive Paul right away. Hey, they said, you're a murderer, you're a blasphemer, you're an angry man, you're a violent man. But he says, I know, but God called me.
God called. You get up and start walking now and you watch what will start falling off of your life. Move to the other side of prayer.
Move to the other side. Move to where God is calling you. Listen, you might be a mess, but start telling other people what God can do for them.
Start telling them who Jesus Christ is. And you watch what God will do. Amazing what God will do. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah.
And He'll take your message, make it a message. Praise be to God. Praise be to God. Who will go for us, the Lord said.
Whom shall I send? And you've got a guy standing there. He's been at the side of the altar and he's just seen God and he says, I'm done. I'm finished. I'm done. My words are corrupt and the people I live with are corrupt. God I'm finished.
And he suddenly hears a voice. Who will go for us? Who shall I send? And I don't see it as a bold declaration. I honestly don't. I think it's like me. I'll go.
I mean if you could use me, I'll go. And God took that young man, that young man who felt so unworthy, so unclean. He felt so foolish in the presence of a holy God and made him one of the greatest prophets of all time. And gave him a word which Isaiah, the book of Isaiah is a mini Bible.
The whole truth of scripture really from beginning to end is in the book of Isaiah. He showed him the Christ. He showed him the cross. He saw it all.
Just a young man said here. And he moved to the other side of prayer. And he moved there in his weakness, not in his strength. He moved there not feeling good about himself.
Not having it all together, knowing he was undone. He moved there and God did the rest and we still speak about him today. I don't aspire to greatness but I'll tell you what I do aspire to. I want my grandkids and their kids and their kids and their kids to know about their grandpa, their great-grandpa, their great-great-grandpa. I want them to know that their great-grandpa was a man of God, walked with God.
God did the miraculous. I want them to know. I want the testimony of God to be born into my family and through my lineage. Because they're not gonna know it because I know Greek words. They're gonna know it because I walk with God. They're not gonna know it because I've got a certificate on a wall. If I had one to put on a wall, they're not gonna know it because of that. They're gonna know it because I walk with God and God walked with me.
That's why they're going to know it. And let that be the cry of your heart. I refuse to be mediocre in the kingdom of God. I refuse to be silent in a time when people need hope.
I refuse to be cowered by the threatenings of this generation. When the prisoners need to know they can be free. The blind need to know they can see. The wounded need to know they can be healed. Captains need to know there's a plan of God for their life. When those whose knees are weak and whose hands are feeble need to know there's a God who can lift them up.
And not just give them victory, but cause them to carry that victory into countless others in the future. I can't be silent when God lives. When God is willing. When God is calling. When God is speaking. I want to live on the other side of prayer. You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
