When You Haven't Got a Prayer - Part B

When you pray, you are calling on the big gun. You're involving God.

You're bringing him instead of, you know, hand to hand combat. I'm going to fight the devil on this. You're bringing God into this. No wonder Satan wants to keep you from prayer.

He didn't want the big guns. Samuel Chadwick wrote, the one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He laughs at our toil.

He mocks at our wisdom. But he trembles when we pray. The Apostle Paul urged the believers in his day to be faithful in prayer. Connect with Skip Heitzig today as he shares why prayer is an essential weapon in your life against spiritual enemies. Then stay tuned after the message as Skip and his wife Lenya share practical ways you can grow in your prayer life. And it's all the different prayers of the Bible categorized and then put in a daily from the first of the month to the 31st of the month. And it helps me pray that day, Bible centered prayers of thanksgiving, of confession, of a number of things.

Thank you, Skip. Be sure to stay with us after today's message to hear the full discussion. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that will help you grow even stronger in your knowledge of God's word. Holidays and special days of celebration wake us up from the daily grind and provide a backdrop for creating memories. But beyond traditions, time off and intentional family time, holidays can illuminate spiritual truths as we hear from Skip Heitzig. You may not know that Valentine's Day has Christian roots, but time and secular culture have transformed what was a great celebration of those who would stay true to the Christian faith.

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800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now, as we join Skip Heitzig for today's teaching, we're in First Samuel Chapter 12. There's a role of an intercessor spoken about in the Old Testament as somebody who stands in the gap. Have you ever heard that phrase? Standing in the gap.

You wonder where it comes from? It comes from Ezekiel Chapter 22 where God said, I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of this land that I should not destroy it. God said, I really want to do something.

I don't want to destroy these people. I'm just looking for somebody who will be an intercessor who will stand before me in prayer on behalf of them. So to stand in the gap is somebody who forms a link between God and people so that God can work. Example, Abraham stood in the gap for King Gerar.

King Gerar or King of Gerar was named Abimelech. Remember the story when Abraham goes down to Gerar and he lies about his wife saying, well, that's really my sister. And so the King of Gerar takes Sarah, his wife, thinking because he lied to him. So my sister takes him home as part of his harem. That night God appears to Abimelech in a dream and says, you're a dead man. You just took a man's wife. You restore that man back his wife.

Listen to this. God said, for he is a prophet and he will pray for you. If I'm King of Abimelech, I said, that guy's a prophet.

He just lied to me. That guy's a creepy husband and he's going to pray for me. But he didn't want to die. So he brought Sarah back to Abraham and it says Abraham prayed for him and the Lord enabled Abimelech's wife to have children.

So God even honored a creepy husband's prayer in intercession. He stood in the gap. Moses stood in the gap for Pharaoh when Pharaoh said, ask your God to stop this hailstorm, Exodus chapter 9. Next chapter, ask your God to stop the plague of locusts, Exodus chapter 10. Moses stood in the gap.

Job stood in the gap for his friends. If you know the book of Job, it's Job suffering and his three and then fourth friend bad mouthing him through the book and telling Job why he's suffering and why God allowed this to happen. At the end of the book, God says, I'm angry with you, to his three friends. I'm angry with you because what you have said about me and about Job isn't right.

And listen to this. This is Job 42 verse 7. My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer.

That's the role of standing in the gap, an intercessor. Did you know that nine times in the New Testament, Paul the Apostle asks his audience to pray for him, to stand in the gap for him? You know why he asked for prayer?

It's easy, because he believed it would work. If you pray for me, if you intercede for me, if you stand in the gap, it will work. John Wesley stood in the gap for his nation. John Wesley and a few friends had a club at Oxford University. Get this, it was called the Holy Club. The Holy Club.

We need some clubs like that today, especially on campus. The Holy Club, Oxford University, were students, John Wesley and a few of his buddies. Every Wednesday, they would pray and fast. And the result of the Holy Club was God brought revival to that nation. They stood in the gap. Evan Roberts and his friends stood in the gap for their country of Wales. Night after night, night after night, they prayed. God sent a two year plus revival called the Welsh Revival in which 150,000 people were radically converted to Christ. They're intercessors.

They stood in the gap. Now, something else about intercession quickly. When you engage in it, that's when you realize that prayer is a battle.

You will be amazed at the disturbances that come your way. When you say, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to pray about that and pray for these people and intercede, you will be amazed at the interruptions. You sit down to pray, the telephone rings. You sit down to pray, somebody's at the door. Who's at the door? Sit down to pray for somebody. That's when you get the text message you've been waiting for all day but didn't get it till now.

That's when all the emails are coming. You go, what is going on? What just happened? I'll tell you what just happened. You just brought a gun to a knife fight. Do you get the analogy? You're in a fight.

You're working it out yourself. Suddenly you bring a gun to the knife fight. Fight is over. When you pray, you are calling on the big gun. You're involving God.

You're bringing him instead of, you know, hand to hand combat. I'm going to fight the devil on this. You're bringing God into this. No wonder Satan wants to keep you from prayer.

He didn't want the big guns. Samuel Chadwick wrote, the one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil. He mocks at our wisdom. But he trembles when we pray.

As one person put it, Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees. Prayer is needful. Intercession is powerful. Let's take it down another layer, another level.

Let's go deeper. Obedience is essential. Obedience is essential. So they come to Samuel and say, Pray for us.

We don't want to die. Verse 20. Samuel said to the people, Do not fear. You have done all this wickedness. In other words, it is on you.

Your right to confess it. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And do not turn aside, for then you would go after empty things, that's idols, which cannot profit or deliver, for they are nothing. For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you his people. What Samuel is basically telling this crowd is, look, God's not going to forsake you. Now, you just make sure that you don't forsake God any longer. You asked me to pray for you. You've come to me to pray for you. But don't expect me just to shoot up a prayer while you live any way you want to live. Prayer is not some 911 call. You still need to stay close to the Lord, stay true to the Lord, trust the Lord, walk with the Lord, be obedient. Don't turn from him. There's obedience on your part.

There's a great principle here before we move on to the next. Never use someone else's prayers as a crutch for your disobedience. I've got people come all the time, hey, would you pray for me? I've got this and that going on.

Yeah, but there's a lifestyle issue we're dealing with. Well, just pray for me. Never use somebody else's prayers as a crutch for your disobedience, or never use somebody else's holiness as an excuse for your unholiness. Obedience is essential. Let's take it down to the fourth and the last level. Okay, so you've been really good in this series, and there have been some hard-hitting sermons. I just want to preface this with great love. This is the last point. This is where it packs its punch.

This is where it hurts a little bit. Prayerlessness is sinful. Prayerlessness is sinful. Look at verse 23. Moreover, he says to these people, as for me, Samuel the prophet, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.

But I will teach you the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart, for consider what great things He has done for you. Question, why does He call this sin, not praying for you, prayerlessness? Why does He call that sin? And why does He say it's against the Lord? God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. Ah, that's the kernel of truth that I want to get at. It's a sin against the Lord, number one, because prayerlessness insults God.

Would you agree with that? That prayerlessness, not praying, insults God? You say, why does it insult God?

Well, think of it. He's the creator of everything, and as the creator of everything, yet He invites you into His presence. He says, come, talk to me, come, fellowship with me, come involve me in your life, and I will work when you do. Call on me, Jeremiah 33-3, and I will answer you, and I will show you great and mighty things which you know not. That's an invitation from God. So if you were to say, well, God, I don't have time to talk to you.

Which is, most of us would have that as an excuse. I just, it's hard to make the time to pray. Okay?

I would counter that by asking you this. Do you have time to binge watch that series on Netflix and Hulu? Do you have time to get in a workout at the gym? Do you have time to play a round of golf? Do you have time to go shopping? Oh, there's always time for shopping.

Do you have time to practice that musical instrument so to become proficient at it? The average person lives, to what age do you think? Average. Average person lives 77 is the average lifespan. The average person lives 77 years. That equals 28,000 days or 670,000 hours or 40 million minutes.

Okay, follow me. The average person spends 24 minutes a day getting dressed. Some more. That equals 13 hours a month or seven days a year or one year in your lifetime. The average person spends 40 minutes a day on the phone.

Some more. That's 20 hours a month. That's 10 days a year.

That's two years in your lifetime. The average person spends one hour a day in the bathroom. That's 30 hours a month. That's 15 days a year. That's three years in the bathroom in your lifetime. The average person spends three hours a day watching television. Some way more. That's 90 hours a month. That's 45 days a year.

That's nine years in a lifetime. I'm not going to even get it out looking at your mobile phone. That's a whole different issue. A whole different skew. But get this. The average Christian spends less than 10 minutes a day.

Now hold on to that. Less than 10 minutes a day. But let's just be generous. Say 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day. If it were the case, 10 minutes a day, that'd be six hours a month.

That'd be three days a year or a total of seven months in a lifetime. According to Barna research, they've researched this for decades, right? If you know anything about the Barna group, research Christian's behavior.

They do in-depth research. According to Barna research, the average Christian prays one minute a day. One minute a day. Prayerlessness insults God. There's a second reason he calls it a sin. Prayerlessness impoverishes us. I lose out on an opportunity to partner with God in a work he wants to do. How awesome to say, look what happened. I prayed about that.

It impoverishes us. Jesus said, you know this, ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall, tell me, fine. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. That's what Jesus told us.

That's a command. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened unto you.

So doesn't it make sense? If you never ask, you'll never what? You'll never receive. I don't, I don't, I can't, I don't receive anything. Did you ask?

You have not because you asked not. So prayerlessness insults God. Prayerlessness impoverishes us. And finally, prayerlessness injures others. It injures others. Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord and ceasing to pray for you. What do you mean it robs others?

Well, it robs people of the blessings God wants to give them. And that is the epitome of selfishness. Now I've noticed something.

I bet you have too. It's becoming Vogue lately, just very recently. Whenever there's a crisis, whenever there's a desperate situation, a tragedy occurs and people say, our thoughts and prayers are with you. We tweet that out. We say that it's now become Vogue to say, we don't want your thoughts and prayers. You heard that? That's not enough. You know what they're saying is don't just tell us you're going to pray for us and think about us.

Do something about this. That's what they mean. And I understand that. But they say thoughts and prayers are not enough. Well, I guess it depends on who is doing the thoughts and prayers and to whom the thoughts and prayers are being directed. Because in prayer, I am saying to the creator of the universe, God, I know I live in a fallen world. Father, I know that bad things happen to all people.

Would you please give comfort and encouragement and peace to the victims and families of this tragedy? There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, there's everything right with that. That doesn't mean you stop and you do not act. It's not like done my job. I thought about him and I prayed about him. Because when you think and you pray, you're probably next going to be moved into action or you should.

But what I want to underscore is this. Prayer is action. It's the first action because we're engaging God in the process.

You can always do more than pray after you've prayed, but you can never do more than pray until you've prayed. Peter Marshall, if you know anything about Peter Marshall, I would commend his biography that his wife wrote about him. Peter Marshall was the chaplain at one time to the United States Senate. And Peter Marshall began a Senate session with this prayer. Oh, Lord, forgive us for thinking that prayer is a waste of time and help us to see that without prayer, our work is a waste of time.

I like that. So let me bring this to a close and say this. If there is a God and if that God invites us to come into his presence, talk in fellowship with him and promises to involve himself in our daily activities and promises to act on our behalf. And if he has made that way possible by sending his son to bleed on a cross so that we could have fellowship with him and pray to him and he would act, then what are we thinking not doing that? What on earth could we be possibly thinking not doing that? And could that be the reason that we lack real power?

Could the reason for our lack of power be just that right there? I'll close with this story. Herbert Jackson was a missionary. He went to the mission field and part of the package of him being a missionary in this mission field was a mission car.

It was beat up. It didn't start like this with a key. He had to push start this car. So Herbert Jackson figured out how he was going to do it. He lived and worked near a school and worked at the school. Sometimes they all knew him. So what he would do is he would get some of the kids out of class to push the car, to push start the car in second gear.

I don't know if you've ever done that. I lived that way for a while. And they pushed start the car. So he would then drive around, make his rounds. And whenever he'd make his rounds and drive out on the bush, he did one of two things. A, he left the car running so he wouldn't have to try to start it. Or B, he would find a hill and park it on the hill so it would be facing downward.

You could just let it go and start it in second gear and get it going. He did that for two years. Eventually he got sick, had to come back to the United States. A new missionary came to replace him. Herbert Jackson said, hey, with this deal, you get a car, but it doesn't work.

But I figured out the school system how, told them all about it. The guy wasn't impressed. He said, do you mind if I pop the hood? So the new missionary popped the hood, noticed a cable was disconnected, connected it, got in the car, turned it on and started. Now just think about that.

For two years, Herbert Jackson lived that way. Now listen to how this goes. The power was available to him. The only problem was a loose connection. Get my drift? Power is available to us.

The only problem is a loose connection. Get connected, stay connected, and live in his power. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from his series, Wide Collar Sins.

Now, here's Skip and Lenya as they share practical ways you can grow in your prayer life. Today you reminded us that prayerlessness is a sin. So often I look at things on TV or that come across my social media. I look at it and think, oh my gosh, that's terrible.

But I don't turn that. And so I can be so prayerless that I forget to pray when I see a situation. So God has invited us to engage with him in prayer, and we've all been guilty of not responding obediently to that invitation his Holy Spirit gives us. Skip, can you share some practical things that you've done to cultivate a healthy prayer life? Listen, I'm like the next guy. When it comes to prayer, I think, yep, I need to do it more than I do.

I think we all feel that. I think, though, a journal does help. I do keep a journal.

I'm not always good at it. I'm not regular at it, but I do keep it irregularly, and I'll write things down I'm praying for, and I'll look back through the months and years, and that's very helpful to me. Also, I have books on prayer, and from time to time, I like to pull out an E. M. Bounds book or a Torrey book and just be refreshed for a few minutes in the older school of prayer. And then I use Bible prayers. I have a book.

I love this book. It's called Drawing Near, and it's all the different prayers of the Bible categorized and then put in a daily from the first of the month to the 31st of the month, and it helps me pray that day Bible-centered prayers of thanksgiving, of confession, of a number of things, all the different categories. I find that as a discipline that's very helpful to my personal prayer life.

I've been doing it a long time. Here's another key. The disciples prayer that Jesus taught, there's the model.

I mean, we don't have to like find something or write something or make something up. He said, when you pray, do it this way, and he gave us a perfect kind of skeletal model that you can ornament and add things on personally that fit in those categories and just pray through the Lord's Prayer with that model every day. That'll improve things immensely.

So good. And then, of course, for some of us that are really pretty social, get a prayer partner. That's good. It's really good to have somebody else and that they're going to ask you, what prayer requests can I have and how can I pray for you? And so sometimes it's the same thing with losing weight.

If you find someone to join the diet with you or exercise with you, you're more successful. So I'd encourage you to find prayer partners. That's really good.

I'll add one more thing for me. I like to take walks and pray. You do. I've done that for a long time, so I'll take a walk, and sometimes I'll walk the dogs and do it. But if I'm doing it alone, I like to talk out loud. So if you're looking at me in the trail, you think he's nuts.

He's crazy. But when I talk, when I pray aloud, it's like having a conversation. I don't get distracted as easily. I don't divert. I don't stop or check my email. I'm actually having the conversation, and I find that, for me, helpful. Thanks, Skip and Lenya.

Well, we hope this conversation has encouraged you. And right now, we want to tell you how you can help keep these teachings you love coming to you and encourage others by connecting them to Jesus. Just call 800-922-1888. That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate.

Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heiseck begins a series called Crash and Burn about people in the Bible who made some big mistakes and the encouraging truths that their lives reveal to you. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heiseck is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.