Get Your Shine On…As You Pray (cont'd)

You say, well how do you get your shine on and you pray? Because while people, I'm not trying to impress them, they're going to see God bless me, they're going to see God take me through my trials, they're going to see God get me through my hardships, they're going to see God manifest his blessings in my life, they're going to see the answers to prayer. Hello and welcome to this Friday edition of Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California.

Thanks for spending part of this day with us. Here's what Philippians 4 verses 6 and 7 tell us about the power of prayer. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Just one more reason why our prayer life can be a way of letting our light shine before man.

Today's message is straight ahead. Stay right here or visit pastorpaul.net to listen on demand anytime. That's pastorpaul.net.

You can also listen to or subscribe to the Destined for Victory podcast at iHeart or wherever you go to get your podcasts. Now, let's join Pastor Paul for today's Destined for Victory message. Get your shine on as you pray. I got a couple of friends, they're pilots and they fly their plane. When I fly with them, of course, we're not doing it during COVID.

I haven't been in nobody's plane during COVID. When this devil leave here and we get back to life, then I will go back to flying with my friends. When we get in the plane before we take off, one of us prays. I'm praying, I'm trusting God. The plane has been checked out, but we're trusting God for safe flight and safe arrival. The fact of the matter is you just need to be a person of prayer and you need to understand that if folk around don't get condemned, you're praying not to be seen, but you're praying because you need to connect with heaven.

The how-to is don't intentionally try to impress people at all. Instead, what you want to do is make sure you get a hearing in heaven. Look at what Jesus said. He said, you're praying in secret, but the important thing is you know that your Father sees what you're doing or hears what you're doing in secret.

Look at this. He says, he will reward you openly. See, that's where I let my light shine. You say, well, how do you get your shine on and you pray? Because while people, I'm not trying to impress them, they're going to see the results of my prayer life because they're going to see God bless me. They're going to see God take me through my trials. They're going to see God get me through my hardships. They're going to see God manifest his blessings in my life.

They're going to see the answers to prayer. So don't worry that you're praying in secret, Jesus said, because the answer is going to show up and other folk are going to know the Lord is with you because he's blessing you. Not just with stuff, God blesses you with grace. God blesses you with peace.

All of that is the result of you praying. You've read Philippians chapter 4, you know how to get God to bless you non materially. Paul said in Philippians 4, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I tell you rejoice. He said, let your moderation be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Then he said, don't worry about anything, but pray about everything.

And finally he gives us the promise. He says, and the peace of God, which passes understanding will guard your heart and mind. Do you know one of the most effective prayers that will be manifest and other folk will see it is when God gives you his peace. When everybody else around you is going crazy. I don't know if you've ever experienced it, but I know the blessing of just the peace of God. When you ought to be losing it, when you ought to have lost your mind by now, something is holding you. And that's an answer to prayer because only God can give you that peace.

Paul called that surpasses understanding. And so you need to be a person of prayer. You need to make prayer a regular part of your life. So examine why you pray, examine how you pray.

And then point number three is what you pray about. Let's take a look at what you pray about. How am I going to make prayer a matter of lifestyle? Why should I pray every day? What do I have to say to God every day? Somebody who wasn't raised in a prayer environment, you might honestly be asking that question.

So I'm not going to belittle you. Let me answer the question because some of you would say, well, I wouldn't know what to say to God all day. Let me help you. Let me give you some categories of prayer. First of all, you want to pray prayers of praise and thanksgiving every day of your life. Take some time and praise God and thank God.

What do I mean by that? When I praise him, I'm worshiping him for who he is. And when I thank him, I'm thanking him for what he does. So one of the first things you want to develop in your daily lifestyle is the pattern of praising God for who he is.

Say, who is he? Read your Bible and he reveals himself from Genesis all the way to Revelation about who he is. You'll see his nature.

You'll see his goodness in every book of the Bible. And you learn to praise God for who he is. Then you want to thank him for what he has done for you.

And so you need to make that daily. Pray prayers of praise and thanksgiving. Another thing is you want to pray that God's will be done. And I'm using, as I say these things, what I'm thinking about is the model prayer Jesus taught us to pray. People call it the Lord's prayer. And let me just tell you it technically shouldn't be called the Lord's prayer because it's the prayer he taught his disciples to pray. But we call it the Lord's prayer. It starts out with hallowing the name of God. That's the praise and thanksgiving. And then the second thing Jesus gave us in the model prayer was he said thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What does that mean? That means I'm going to pray that God's will be done starting in my life and then God's will be done in the lives of the people I want to influence by my prayers. So let me help you think through this. If you're going to develop a strong prayer life, one of the things I want to encourage you to do is develop a list of the names of people in your life, in your sphere of influence, whether in your family, on your job, your circle of acquaintances, whoever it is. Develop a list of all the people in your sphere of influence that you know don't know the Lord. And write their names down and then whatever that list is, however long that list is, take some of those names every day and ask the Lord to bring them to a saving knowledge of who he is. Pray for your unsaved loved ones and acquaintances every day. Not all of them every day, but take some of the names and pray through your day and so that eventually you've called all of their names to the Lord. God, I want you to show them, just like you saved me, I want you to bring them to the place where they come to know you for themselves.

Saints, you know why that's important? Because a lot of us are saved because somebody prayed for us. I hope you don't think you just got it like that. One day I recognized I needed the Lord and that's why I got saved.

No, I beg to differ. You got saved because before you recognized your need for him, somebody else recognized your need for him and they prayed for you. Some of y'all saying, nah, I'm the only saved person in my soul. No, nobody prayed for me. I didn't say your family prayed for you, but somebody prayed for you. Whether it was a church in your community, whether it was a believer who met you somewhere along the line, somebody prayed for you.

The song said, had you on their mind, took the time and prayed for you. And you need to know someone went to the Lord on your behalf even before you got saved. So you need to do that for other folks. You need to do that to the people in your sphere of influence who don't know the Lord. Call their name, pray for them by name and to the extent that you know it, by their personal needs. And you need to pray that his kingdom come in their lives. We also need to pray.

Talk about your daily prayer life. Make sure you do some praying for the church to wake up and be who God has called us to be. In other words, pray for revival. Pray for a divine breakthrough because the church in America has become stagnant and become complacent and we're not going to see people saved in mass until we catch on fire. How did the early church begin to see massive numbers of people get saved is because it started with 120 people in an upper room in Jerusalem and they let God have his way. The Spirit of God fell on them.

The power of God hit their lives and as a result of that, it spread everywhere they went and the next thing you know, thousands are coming to Christ. I want to see that happen in 21st century America. I want to see fresh revival. I want to see a fresh move of God. I want to see God do some exciting things. God knows we need it and the answer is not in politics.

The answer is not in anything human. The only way our country is going to change for the better is if the church gets on the halter and says, God, revive us and begin with me. We need to let the Lord have his way and so I want you to pray, not only prayers of praise and thanksgiving, but pray that souls will be saved. Pray for a revival to break out among God's people. Pray for the advancement of the kingdom of God. Pray that God will have his way everywhere you go that he'll use you to be a change agent in this world. Then, as Jesus gave us that bottle of prayer, he went on to talk about the fact that you should pray for your personal needs to be met. He said, give us this day our daily bread, which means you should take some time daily and pray whatever the needs are in your life and in the lives of people you know. Pray about them. Don't just be humanist.

Don't just say, oh, I got to figure out a way to get through this period of unemployment or I got to figure out a way to get through this period of whatever challenge you're facing. Up next, the second half of today's Destined for Victory message with Pastor Paul Shepherd. We want to thank all of you whose prayers and financial support helped Pastor Paul share the gospel all over the world and in our current social and political climate when things seem more uncertain than perhaps they've ever been. Your support is even more critical today because in times of crisis, people are looking for answers that only God can give. So as God leads, we would ask you to prayerfully consider making a gift to Destined for Victory today. You can do that right now securely online at pastorpaul.net. The kingdom of God needs warriors, not worriers, and a consistent prayer life is one of the best ways to make that transformation. Here's Pastor Paul again with the rest of today's message. Get your shine on as you pray.

No, you don't have to figure anything out. You need to go to God and say, Lord, give me your mind. Give me the ability.

Give me the wisdom. If I need creativity, give me the creative ideas. Give me the seed of the thing that will change my life for the better. You need to pray about your personal needs. It's okay for you to say, Lord, here are my practical needs. Here are my financial needs.

Here's my material needs. Pray about what you need. Don't just hope for it. Pray for it. Lord, I need a car. Lord, I need somewhere to live.

Lord, I need some whatever it is. Talk to your father and say, God, I'm looking to you to help me and to meet me at the point of this need. What does the Bible say? The Bible says we have not.

Why? Because we ask not. That's what the apostle James said. There's some things we don't have because we didn't ask God. And so you need to make sure that you ask the Lord that your needs be met.

What else? He goes on to say in the model prayer, he says, Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who trespass against us. So pray about making sure that you pardon your offenders while you're asking God to pardon your sins. See, don't pray for God's forgiveness and then you refuse to forgive people who have sinned against you. Now, I've taught about it a lot, but let me just remind you, when people have not asked for your forgiveness, you don't have to say to them, I forgive you, because they didn't ask to be forgiven. But what you do have to do is release them to God.

You have to do what Jesus did on the cross. He looked at the people crucifying him and he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing. He wasn't forgiving them. He was praying that God would deal with them.

Same thing with Stephen. When Stephen was dying as the first martyr in the early church, Acts chapter 7, as they were stoning him, he looked up to heaven and he said, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. So Jesus taught you, make sure that you release people when you pray. Don't hold grudges. Saints, I want you to know the importance of not holding grudges. It'll mess up your life.

It'll mess up your prayer life. People have done some wrong things to me over the years. Oh, I've had some wrong done to me. But I have quickly learned that as long as you hold them in unforgiveness, you'll mess up your own blessings. What you got to learn to do is release them so that your blessings can come to you.

And so let them go, give them to God. And then the other thing he said in the model prayer is, he said, deliver us from evil and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. In other words, pray for your spiritual protection and proclaim your victory over the evil one. Don't let the devil think he can have his way in your life.

Deliver us from evil. And Lord, I'm looking to you to help me walk in victory over every plan, every plot of the devil. Brothers and sisters, when you look at that model prayer, it should be a foregone conclusion. You need to pray every day. You need to thank God every day for what he's done.

You need to praise him for who he is. You need to pray about all these matters that I mentioned and anything else that comes to your mind and your heart. You need to be a person of prayer. And so find your prayer time. Find your prayer space.

Most of us do better if you have a place you go to pray. But even if you don't have a designated prayer ground, make sure that you pray every day of your life. If you're in your car and driving, sometimes if you're like me, you're listening to music and all that stuff, but other times your car is a good place for you to pray. Now make sure you don't close your eyes when you're driving and praying.

Keep your eyes open, but you need to talk to God while you're driving. Sometimes stuff comes to your mind even when it's not your devotional time. When it comes to your mind, stop and pray about it right on the spot. And so make prayer a lifestyle. Prayer needs to be like breathing with you. Pray when you're in the shower. That's some good praying.

I love praying in the shower. Talk to God while you're in there cleaning your body. Get your spirit cleaned out.

Get your mind cleared out of all the junk, all the crazy stuff that happens. Just give crazy folk to God when you're in there. And when folk getting on your nerves, tell them about it and just go ahead and give them over to God.

Whatever you do, develop a lifestyle of prayer. The Bible says you don't have to be in a particular posture. When you look throughout the scriptures, some folk prayed standing up. Some folk prayed sitting down. Some people prayed kneeling. Some people prayed with their arms raised.

Some people prayed laying prostrate on the ground. I've prayed in all those positions. I love praying. I love laying out before the Lord sometimes in my prayer time to just get as low as you can and to stretch out before God and to pray your heart out.

Whatever position, God doesn't care about your position. And Jesus said in the passage, and he doesn't care about your words, how long you pray. I grew up around longs praying saints. So I grew up learning how to pray long prayers.

I had to make myself pray short prayers because I grew up around folk. They prayed till they got through. We had prayer meeting and I mean they told God everything that was on their mind.

But there was nothing wrong with it. Jesus said just don't think it's the number of words that's going to get you the answer. Instead, he said, you just want to make sure that you have a heart to heart connection with God when you pray. Finally, let me just remind you that prayer matters. God answers prayer. All you got to do is read the early church and see that. Look at the book of Acts when you get a chance. In Acts chapter one, the disciples prayed in the upper room. And in Acts chapter two, God answered those prayers. And the day of Pentecost came, the Holy Spirit fell on them. And they burst out of that upper room, praising God, speaking in other tongues and having supernatural visitation that spread all throughout Jerusalem. In Acts chapter three, Peter and John on their way up to the temple, for what reason?

To pray to the Lord. And when they got there, they ended up not only praying, they ended up healing a man who was lame from birth. In Acts chapter four, the disciples prayed because persecution and threats came to them for the first time.

And they prayed not that the threats would go away, they prayed that God would give them the boldness to witness and get their shine on even while their lives were being threatened. In Acts chapter six, the apostles appointed deacons for the very reason that they didn't want to stop doing what they were doing to attend to the physical needs of the people. So they appointed deacons, but look at what they said in Acts 10. They said, we're going to appoint these men to cover the practical needs of the church so that we can go back to what? Prayer and the ministry of the word.

That's how important it was. In Acts chapter seven, Stephen is dying, as I just mentioned, and he's praying while he's dying. In Acts chapter eight, a deacon named Philip went to the city of Samaria.

God used him to work signs and wonders, and he prayed over people, cast demons out of folk, and revival broke out in the city of Samaria because of prayer and the power of God. In Acts chapter nine, a persecutor named Saul is on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there, and he runs smack into Jesus in the middle of the Damascus road. And you know the story, when he got through having that divine encounter with the Lord, he showed up at a man's house, and he prayed, and the Lord sent a disciple named Ananias to him.

And Ananias said, you really want me to go to that guy? And Jesus said, no, he's all right now, because when you get there, you'll find he's praying. In Acts chapter 10, the household of Conellias, the first Gentiles who experienced the Holy Spirit, they were people who feared God, but they needed more contact, more revelation. So God sent Peter to them, and you know the story. He met him, he said, we've been here praying, and the Lord told us that you were coming.

Whatever he's got to say through you, we're ready to receive it. And God filled those Gentiles with the Holy Ghost. In Acts 12, the saints prayed for Peter because he was in jail, had been locked up by the Roman authorities.

And you know the story as well as I do. The saints were praying, but God answered their prayer, busted Peter out of jail. Peter went to the house where they were praying.

They didn't even believe it was him out there. Sometimes you don't even believe the power of your own prayers, but pray anyway. And one more thing. In Acts 16, same thing happened this time with Paul and Silas. They were imprisoned because of their work for the Lord. And instead of moaning and complaining, the Bible says at midnight, they prayed and praised God and sang praises. And God broke them out of jail, and they had a midnight jail break because of the power of prayer.

Let me tell you something. If God answered prayer for them, he's no respecter of persons, and he'll answer prayer for you too. Whatever you do, my brother, my sister, get your shine on and learn how to pray and pray with power, because God is going to hear and answer your prayers. You know the answers to prayer that we see in the Bible aren't just stories of what God did in the past. They're proof of what God can do in the present as we diligently seek him in prayer. When you get right down to it, God has us here for no other reason than to worship him and to share his gospel, his light, in an ever darkening world. That's why Destined for Victory exists, because Pastor Paul Shepherd wants to introduce as many people as he can to Jesus Christ, the only name by which we can be saved.

But he can't do it alone. It takes people like you, men and women from all walks of life, who are committed to praying for the ministry and offering financial support when you can. As you make your generous gift this month, we have a gift of our own to share with you, Pastor Paul's booklet, Your Purpose is Calling. If you're seeking God's specific will for your life, this will be a great resource for you, one that will give you three directives to help you discover his unique plans for you. That's Your Purpose is Calling, our gift to you by request, for your generous gift to Destined for Victory. 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 Destined for Victory, post office box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. Jesus came into this earth to establish a relationship between God and man, and he came to do that by telling us in no uncertain terms that we are to seek first and place as our highest priority God and his kingdom and to make that our lifestyle. That's next time in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, Get Your Shine On Living a Kingdom First Lifestyle. But until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are Destined for Victory.