Prayer Worrier Or Warrior After Hours

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Enjoy it and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. North Carolina masculine journey after hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The masculine journey after hours starts here now. Welcome to masculine journey after hours and we are talking about prayer. We're going to take it a little deeper and we're a little more seriously evidently after I've been woefully abused during the break and by multiple members of the team.

I won't say much about it other than that kind of like holding seven or eight corks under the water at the same time. But we were talking about prayer and intimacy and prayer. And so I had to put my defenses up. And we've been dissecting parts of it.

I mean, it's such a topic that you could probably make several different pillars out of it. Couldn't you run? I think you would be the one to do that, Danny. Yes, I'm the blanket guy.

I didn't know what a pill was other than the thing that you put a cover on on the bed. Anyway, the we'll play a couple more clips and dive in a little deeper. So first clip we have is from you, Mr. Smoot. OK, let's see, Danny, you asked like several questions when you're setting up this topic because it was great because you actually really had spent some time with this topic yourself as a prayer warrior and trying to figure out, well, somebody calls me this. Am I really what does it really mean to be a prayer warrior? And you put out a great little thought as to where your mind was at with this topic. And it just hit me when you came and asked. Hey, does does does my prayer really matter? And all I could think of was this clip. So play it.

Blood and urine tests every 48 hours to see if there's any change in his physical condition. Do you know that they use the most sophisticated training methods from the Soviet Union, East and West Germany and the newest Olympic power, Trinidad Tobago? But it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. Even if we win, even if we play so far over our heads that our noses bleed for a week to 10 days, even if God in heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field, even if every man, woman and child held hands together and prayed for us to win.

It just wouldn't matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they got all the money. It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose. It just doesn't matter. So, Danny, does it matter?

Absolutely. And that's where you made me think, you know, as I was reading through your your topic and I was like, there are some things that matter, some things that really yes, they may matter, but they don't matter as much. So, you know, you have the general questions that come up when you're trying to problem solve or you're trying to figure things out or you're trying to understand something like who, what, when, where, why, how and those kinds of things. And getting back to our last topic, what is the topic? As long as we're focused on the who when it comes to prayer, I'm like, well, everything else really just doesn't matter.

I mean, just be focused on the who. And that's Jesus for anybody who's got any, you know, questions as to who is. You're focused on either the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit in your prayer time. And typically, you know, we pray to the Father through Jesus Christ.

That's the typical pattern. But you can pray to any one of the Godhead, the Trinity. And if you're focused on Him, you're going to be in the right place with your prayer.

Because your attitude, like He talks about in the earlier clip, you know, the attitude with an attitude like that. Well, attitude does matter, but it's not the most important thing because everything else will come right as you focus and pour into God. And that's the beauty of prayer is you can go to Him, like we talked about earlier, driving in the car. You can have a casual conversation. You can have a deep, intimate prayer or you can have something that's structured and rode out.

Any one of these ways, there's nothing wrong. It's a matter of trying to go reach deeper with Him in whatever situation you're in. I pray like when some of your guys' clips come up in there, because there's some great clips in this week because it's all about prayer. And during those times I'm listening to the clips, I'm like, there's things that will hit me and I just say a few words on, like, Lord, help me to learn how to pray better. You know, like in your clip, Danny. It's like, Lord, help me see you in this.

There's just small things that come up and that's a part of like where Robby's always like, don't hang up the phone. So that's really my most intentional thing right now is try not to go very long without praying. And if I'm in a situation, I'm in the middle of something, instead of beating myself up for, boy, I should have prayed before I got into this, just do it now.

Just say a few words, you know, just to yourself, real quietly, you know, you're in the middle of this, Lord, I don't know how to deal with this person, help me. Just anything like that helps hugely. Just, you know, I like Harold's kiss method, works for me.

You know, there's no reason to over-complicate things here. And I think, Sam. Did you get, you prayed for shoes for my clip, right? Well, once it started happening, I'm like, I really do need a new pair of shoes.

The black sparkly part. Yeah, those are my favorite. But the flip side of that, Rodney, is the other side of the- Flip shoes. Yeah, flip flops. Is that sometimes I think, sadly, as Christians, and I don't know if you guys ever been in, I mean, y'all are saved and sanctified and all that good stuff.

We still are from last time. Working on it, yeah. But is that I wonder if my prayers matter, will it really make a difference?

And sometimes that comes from that beggar mentality, I think, that does it really, you know, maybe if Robby prayed, it would be different because, you know, I don't have what it takes. You see where that ties in? Yeah. So that's kind of where, when I first saw your clip, to be honest, I'm like, okay, where is he going with this?

But when I played it, it made sense to me, and I thought, man, you could play that on both sides of the coin. Yeah, with topics, with clips, everybody's wondering, where is he going with this? Yeah. Yeah, that happens with most of us, right? Okay, where is he going with this?

But anyway, Mr. Robby. Yeah, so when Danny brought up this topic, it actually caused a bit of a concern in my head, because he was like, well, this idea of being a prayer warrior, and I've heard a lot of things said about that term, good and bad. And then Danny started to share his heart, which was really spectacular from my standpoint. He shared something that came out of his soul, and fortunately for me, my soul picked it up. He's talking about, he stole this from his pastor, but nonetheless, he had it, and it set up the whole topic perfectly for me. He said that God is not disappointed in us when we don't pray. He's disappointed for us. To Rodney's point, that we've gone for the last 45 minutes or whatever period of time that we were not in communion with him, whatever that looked like in that particular moment.

And I've actually quoted you probably 10 or 15 times since you've said it. I used it in church last Wednesday night, because I just think that's really relevant, that God is sitting on the sidelines like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like when we often are waiting for that call from our child that we've missed so desperately. So in this particular clip, this is one of my favorite love movies, you know, people that know me. It's a Christmas love movie.

What better could be for Robby, you know? So in this particular one, you'll find it on Puriflex, it's called Banking on Love. And this clip, this couple hate each other like in most love movies.

They start off really at odds with each other. He is looking for a loan. She's his loan officer. He's at the bank. They're having a big discussion that he's not going to get this loan. He's not very happy with her.

It's Christmas Eve weekend. And as he leaves the building, these robbers go to rob the place and throw these two in the bank vault for the entire Christmas weekend. So here are these two people that hate each other, and there they are.

And she's engaged to be a guy that really, to a guy that doesn't really turn out to be what she needs. And through this, they begin to share one another's story. And in their own way, whether they realize it or not, they begin to pray with each other. In other words, we're really getting intimate here.

We're really sharing what it is that we feel and what we're experiencing. And you can hear that begin to open up as they begin to pray with each other. All of a sudden, the thought occurs to her, hey, maybe we should pray. Which is where I find myself, oh, you know, 80 times every single day of my life. Oh, I remember you, Jesus. Oh, man, so here you go.

And then let me just share also that to me that all of a sudden the prayer is a lot more authentic based on how authentic they have been with each other prior to this. Good morning. 5.30 in the morning.

Christmas Eve day. I used to say that, too, when I was a kid. I'm sorry I said those things to you.

Which ones? That you have nowhere to be. I was just scared, but that's no reason to... My dad's in the hospital. I should be there. Why didn't you say anything? What difference would it have made? I was going to magically open because my dad's sick.

He went in Thursday night. Stroke. Jack, I am so sorry. Will you pray with me, Jack? Yeah, I don't know why we didn't say, pray for God to get us out of here earlier. I'm asking to pray for what happens after. On the other side of those doors. To have the courage and wisdom to live better and more fulfilling lives.

What does that look like? Pray to discover it. Ask that the Lord show us His intentions for us. To live without fear. I've lived my whole life waiting for the win. When I get the job. When I get married. Yeah, God wants us to live an abundant life now, not when. To do more than just make the best of it. We pray for these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. So to add a little context, she is actually wanting to be. She works at the bank, but she's a stand-up comedian.

That is afraid to get on stage. And so the fear thing, this is real for both of them. He's been a mechanic, or actually running his dad's shop, but his dad's piece of work.

You know, living his father's dream and failing miserably. And so it's interesting to me as they began to get real with each other. They really called each other out and then saw God in that. Realizing, you know, you could hear Him say, yeah, that's right, God wants you to be a stand-up comedian and she's saying, yeah, God doesn't want you, He's actually going to be a chef. He wants you to be, in other words, they were seeing the other person's glory and beginning to call that out in each other when they themselves were walking in fear along that. And the intimacy of that spoke to the other thing that you had said that night. We had this discussion about all these things that didn't matter, as Rodney put it. But you had said something else that I thought was really, really good, that you had said, you know how you're at work and all of a sudden, you could be in the middle of the biggest meeting, but if it's your son or your daughter calling, that's a call you're going to take.

You're going to drop whatever else is going on and you're going to take that call, hopefully for your wife, hopefully for the people that are close to you. You know, that's an important thing. And he said, that's how God feels about, and that's what Danny said, that's what God feels about me. It's Danny calling, whoa, hold the press. Danny's calling, okay?

And of course, you know, of course, that's exactly how that works from my perspective. And, you know, that part that you said, that God's disappointed for me, you know, because how many times has he just given me something absolutely spectacular when I finally, you know, I'll have to give you a good example this morning. I'm just walking, you know, I'm doing my walk. The people that know me know that I've been walking lately for, I walk through the woods, and, you know, I've realized I've been walking for 10 minutes without a word to God, and I was like, you know, God, you know, it would be nice if you showed me something cool. You know, because I see a lot of, you know, there's trees, you know, I spy something green, tree, okay, another tree. And, you know, I'm like, you know, Libby, and all of a sudden, there are these giant purple flowers that are on the top of these big, like, pool thing. They're huge. And they were at the New River we went tubing a few weeks ago, and I noticed to them that they're really beautiful. Well, there are these two gigantic monarch butterflies, and I have pictures on my phone that God's, I mean, these monarch butterflies were, you know, whatever, three inches long, and, you know, the tails that come way down, and they were on this big, huge purple flower, and the monarchs were yellow with this purple background, and I was just like, oh, God, man, that is just off the hook right there. And just right there, easy to see, and he's winking at me saying, yeah, yeah, Robby, if you'd, you know, dialed 1-800-Remember-Me, you know, we could have been having a good time the whole way, but, you know, it's all right, it's all right.

He's patient with me, you know. What a story. I think about those things, and, you know, my wife tells a story of, she does things like that, Robby, like, God show off for me. That's one of her favorite things to do, and her and her mom were down at Emerald Isle fishing, and they're catching little pinfish and stuff like that, and she says, God, I'd really like to see the fish that eat these fish, and she's got a picture of three, one of them's a hammerhead shark.

These sharks are like 8 to 10 feet, swimming right by the pier, and she's going, that's not what I meant, that's not what I meant. And, you know, so, she'll probably kill me for telling that on the air, but, you know, those are the things that, you know, if we view God that way, I mean, it's beautiful that, you know, He will show off. He will, you know, engage us in many different ways, and, you know, I think about all of us in a circle, how diverse we are.

I mean, we are as different a day and night, and we pick at each other and we do those kind of things, but, you know, we're all the same in the fact that we love Jesus, and, you know, we're trying to do life the right way, but our perspective on things is what I think makes us the strongest, and, you know, what I'd like for us to do at the time we've got left is tell a prayer story, something you got, I mean, and, yeah, Wayne's got the mic, so. And he hasn't said anything, so it's just fine. And he backed away from it. He's backing off.

They accused me of getting away from the microphone. Well, I'll let him think, because this sort of bounces off what Robby was just talking about. Our prayers, to me, are the ones that have meaning are the ones where God can love on us through them.

The outcome rarely, like Robby, or Rodney, I'm messing it up too, like Rodney had. It really doesn't matter. The outcome of all of our prayers in this life are not, it's what happens here doesn't matter. I thought of a very serious one, and this was 20-something years ago when I was doing a year-long residency as a chaplain, and me and two other chaplain buddies, one close friend, Tom, who a lot of guys here have met, called us down to come pray with a couple. They were engaged. They were 18, 19 years old. She had cancer. And Tom said, you know, we really want to pray for this couple. They were godly young folks. They were going to be missionaries together after they were married. And everything about it screamed, oh, here's a miracle, and I'm going to get to be part of it. Yay me. It was anticipating what God was going to do.