Faith filled: prayer

[0:00] of what a lot of primary school age children say, what is prayer? But now I want to ask you, what is prayer? Pull out your answers. I need some people to give answers. Sorry? Okay. Prayer is like a telephone. Excellent. What else? Talking and listening to God. Brilliant. Anything else?

[0:18] One or two more. Talking to God. Yep. So you're making yourself available to God and conversation. So talking and listening. Those are all correct answers. So this morning, as we think about praying, being faithful in prayer, we're going to do this in three parts. Our first part, we've done that bit. That's our reading. Pray expectantly. I need a volunteer. Preferably, I'm looking at our children and young people. Someone who doesn't mind going on a short walk for me. Okay. Do you want to go for Kate? Okay. So, Kate, what I need you to do is you might have to open a door on your way, but I need you to walk down the stairs round and back up through this door, but I need you to take exactly one minute. Can you do that for me? Okay.

[1:07] Somebody wants to go with Kate and say, do you want to try and time a minute? Go for Annie. Okay. Start the minute from when you leave the door. While they're not in the room, I'm going to explain what we're doing. I need three more volunteers, but I need at least one person who thinks they know Kate very well. I'm looking at Emily's The Obvious. Like somebody who actually doesn't know Kate, and then I just need a third volunteer as well, but I'll need them so quickly. Actually, I need you to probably stay sat down. I'll call you up in a minute because obviously we don't want Kate to know who the volunteers are. So, I need two more volunteers. I'll need them quickly before they come back. Otherwise, I might have to pick on some people. Okay. And Elijah, if you want to be our third volunteer, so I'll ask you to come up in a minute because when Kate gets back, I'm going to blindfold her. And then we're going to see how well Kate can recognize the people that are talking to her. Excellent. Was that exactly a minute? Okay. Well done. That is still pretty good. Okay. Kate,

[2:19] I need you to come up to the front and I need you to put this blindfold on. That's right. Nothing's going to happen to you. If you want, I'll stay over here while you're wearing the blindfold. Okay. How many things am I holding up? No, I'm not holding up any. Okay. Blindfold works.

[2:35] Okay. If we leave this one off and I'll just use this. Okay. Make sure you can't see anything on your blindfold. Okay. I'd like my three volunteers to please come and join me over at this side.

[2:53] So, Kate, to explain to, I've already explained to everyone else what was happening. This is why, this is actually why I sent you out of the room and was so that I can explain what we're doing. We've got three volunteers here who in a minute, I'm going to ask them a question about you. We're going to see if they know the answer, but you need to listen carefully because I want you to tell me who you think answered that question. You good with that? Excellent. Okay. We're going to start with our volunteer here. I was about to say your name then. I won't. Our first question, we're going to start off quite easily. Easy. How old is Kate? Ten. Okay. Do you think you know who it is or should I ask him to say a little bit longer? Who is it? Elijah, is it you? It is. Okay. Elijah, if you can go and sit down for me. Our second question might be a little bit harder.

[3:47] What is Kate's favorite color? Kaki. Is that the correct answer, Kate? Do you know who answered that question? Okay. Why don't you know who answered the question? Okay. That's fine. Keep the blindfold on and I'm going to ask you to stay there for a moment. And our third volunteer, we're going to come up with a more difficult question. Where was the last place that Kate went on holiday? York. Do you know who answered this question? It was your mom. Okay. If you want to take your blindfold off and have a look at the second answer. Okay. If you want to sit down for me, but I will take the blindfold.

[4:26] So Kate, there's a reason why I asked you to do that. Because so you got Elijah and you got your mom very quickly. What gave that away? Okay. Excellent. If you can sit down for me. So you recognized, we're going to come back to this in a little bit. So you recognize the voice of Elijah and the voice of your mom. I want you to hold on to that for a moment because we're going to come back to that in a bit. First, I want to go to, we're actually going to come back to that in part two.

[4:54] But first, I want to go to the Bible story that we read, the story of the centurion. You could be asking, actually, what does this have to do with prayer? It doesn't talk about prayer in the story itself. But actually what it does tell us is it tells us a centurion. So not, not a Jewish person, a Roman citizen, a Roman soldier goes to Jesus and says, Jesus, my servant is unwell. Can you please heal them? And Jesus says, of course, I'll come to you and I will heal them for you. But the centurion says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't come to my house. I'm not worthy to have you.

[5:31] But I know if you just say the word, my servant will be healed. And that is a story of faith. The centurion was, the centurion was expectant to, yeah, the centurion was expectant that when he asked for his servant to be healed, it would happen. Praying, being faith-filled is about expecting things. When we pray, expect God to respond. I want to tell you a story. This is a story about this baby here. And actually it doesn't start off a particularly nice story. So before this baby was born, the parents were told there were a lot of difficulties and complications during the pregnancy.

[6:17] The parents were told, look, your baby's not going to be born alive. And on the slim chance that they are, they're going to have severe learning difficulties, disabilities. They'll probably never walk.

[6:30] They'll probably never learn to talk properly. And actually they really, really encouraged the parents of this baby to have an abortion for that reason. The parents responded by saying no.

[6:41] They decided what we're going to do is we're going to pray. So they prayed. Their friends and their family prayed. Their church all prayed. Church they were moving on to, the husband or the father was going to become an associate pastor at a church. And they passed on the news and that church prayed.

[7:03] I move on to the next slide. Obviously you can see there the baby was born. Move on to the next slide. It's the baby at 10 months old. And the doctors were still saying to them, when the baby was born, well, originally actually, so stepping back a bit, all of this prayer happened. And then the parents had a really rough night. They didn't sleep at all. So they went to the hospital the next day and the doctors and the nurses looked at the scans and they said, this is impossible.

[7:29] So they brought in some more doctors to look at the scans and they said, this is impossible. They brought in some more doctors and they said, this is impossible. None of them could understand what had changed. None of them could understand how there was any chance that all of these complications that were happening during the pregnancy weren't there.

[7:50] They were still convinced that there was going to be severe learning difficulties, disabilities, all of that. And actually they said to the parents, your baby's probably not going to last beyond six months. Well, there's, there's him at 10 months beyond a year, beyond 18 months, three years, five years. At that point they gave up because they basically, we've been predicting this for so long and it's actually, it's not a nice thing to do at all, but they kept that child on in close watch in case they were ill, in case there were any problems, in case they weren't eating properly.

[8:23] Early on in the life, the first few months of the life, actually he was fighting for survival, but he did and he survived. And the good news of that story is 32 years later, he is alive and he's healthy, mostly. And he's standing in a church in South London doing something that he never thought he'd be able to do for years. And the only speech issue there is, is that sometimes he talks a little bit too much. If you haven't picked it up, that, that child is me. And I've heard my parents telling this story so many times and I didn't completely understand it for a long time, but my parents prayed, a lot of people prayed. And there was no point in praying if they were just thinking, oh, it might help us feel a little bit more comfortable or it might help us get an answer to us. Actually, they prayed because they expected something to happen. So when we're being filled with faith in our prayer, we need to be expectant, pray expectantly. We're going to come back to this question in a moment. We're going to go on to our next worship song. And if you're able to stand, please do and we'll sing, how great is our God. Okay, our next question. Who do you talk to the most?

[9:42] Hopefully this one will be quite easy question for a lot of you. Who do you talk to the most? Good answer. What about anyone else? Who do you talk to the most? How many of you talk to your husband or wife the most? Or talk to your parents the most? Or a brother or sister? Or a friend at school or work? Okay, so I want you to, I want you to try and think about the person that you talk to the most. And I'm going to do our second reading is from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and it's verses 16 to 18. It's a short one. Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So I was sharing a story with somebody earlier in the week that as I was starting to plan this, that actually I used to think, pray continually, like how can somebody do that? Like spending your whole day with your eyes closed, hands together, praying, it's like, if you know me, you probably know I get distracted quite easily. I couldn't do that for the whole day. I would get very distracted. I'd probably actually get a little bit bored if I'm being perfectly honest. But then actually, one day, I discovered that that's not what it means by pray continually.

[11:04] Some people do that. Some people devote their life to prayer like that. And that is amazing for the people that can do it. But not all of us can. If we can go back to the PowerPoint. So I asked, so we had Kate up at the front earlier. And I asked Kate, how does she recognize her mum and Elijah? And you said, it's because you recognize their voices. And you also said that actually your mum was the only person in the room at the time who would have known where you went away on holiday. So actually, you recognize people who knew something about you, people who you talk to regularly, you recognized. Or pray constantly is, in another version, it says pray constantly. And actually, it's important. So when I asked earlier, what is prayer? A couple of you said that it's talking and listening to God. It's being, it's being communication with God. It's making ourselves available to God. Actually, the more, I want you to think about the person that you talk to a lot. Imagine if you were to just stop talking to them for six months, maybe a year. And then all of a sudden, you get a phone call from them, but it's an unknown number. I want you to think, actually, would you still recognize their voice?

[12:17] Would you still, because I'm sure, actually, Kate, I'm sure if you were to speak to your mum on the phone, you would recognize her immediately. If you didn't hear her voice for a year, would you still recognize that voice? If you didn't speak to somebody for a year, would they still really know anything about you? Pray continually. It is so important. Actually, being filled with faith when we pray, it's not just about nagging God for something. Actually, we really need an answer to something.

[12:47] Praying consistently for the same thing is good and is important. The Bible tells us to do that. But praying continually is about being in constant communication with God. So it's about when I'm here speaking to all on a Sunday morning, it's about trying to listen to God and knowing that God's with me. But when I go home later and I'm sat down playing video games or watching TV, it's about being in communication with God then or when I'm going to bed or when I'm eating or when we're playing a game with the youth later. It's about being in communication with God all the time. It's not, that doesn't necessarily mean always being in that quiet space where we verbally talk out loud and we wait for God to respond. But it's about being ready to, maybe you're going out on a walk in a park and you just see a particularly beautiful tree. We're not, we're not far off spring, that's going to happen soon.

[13:40] Pray continually means just taking a moment to think, wow, that tree looks amazing and God, you created that. So pray continually is being part of being faith-filled when we pray. I want us to have our, we've got another video and then I'm going to share another story.

[14:05] Prayer is a conversation with God and a conversation is just talking. That means prayer is just talking to God. And God loves having conversations. He wants to have a conversation with you all the time.

[14:21] The best part, you'll never interrupt God. He's not busy at work. He's not busy eating dinner. He's not busy editing his photos. He is always ready to have a conversation with you, always.

[14:35] Anytime and anywhere. Because you matter to God. So as we said, prayer is a conversation with God and God is always there ready to listen.

[14:52] He's never busy editing his photos or preparing dinner or talking to someone else. He is talking to other people, but he's, he is always available for us. We can go back to the PowerPoint.

[15:03] PowerPoint. I warned there was going to be a bit of come and go to the PowerPoint today. So I want to tell another story. I've shared a little bit of this story before.

[15:15] And I've shared a little bit of my story with mental health, particularly with depression and anxiety. Summer of 2016 was probably my most difficult year with that. And actually I was catching up with a couple of friends last night and we were talking about it and we were praying about it. And I had some friends who really helped me through that. And one of the ways they did that was through prayer. And I decided that summer, I, so since 2013, up until the pandemic, I helped on youth team at New Wine every single year and I loved doing it. It came to 2016. I'd applied to be on team. And actually I said, I am not in a good state to go anywhere. I don't feel like going out. I don't feel like seeing people. And actually there's no way I could be a good youth leader at the moment. So I withdrew my application thinking that, thinking there's no point even trying. I was later convinced by some friends to go to the doctors to start to try and get some help to get things sorted. And that made a huge difference. And actually doing that is as important as prayer is. Talking to God is really important. But also God does say that I've given you people around you to help as well.

[16:32] But then all of that helped. It created a bit of space for me to think, for me to recover a little bit. And I decided that, okay, it's really late. This was five days before team were due to go to New Wine. I decided, okay, actually maybe I am feeling up for it. Okay, God, if you want me on team, it's probably too late, but if you want me on team, make it happen. So I applied to team, or I reapplied to team. And I got a phone call from the team leader that pretty much that day, who said, of course, we want you on team. We understand that it's not easy. And we will support you as much as we can. But we want you here on team. We've worked with you for the last few years. And it's been amazing. So I did. Five days later, I arranged a lift as quickly as I could.

[17:20] But five days later, I was traveling down to Shepton Mallet. And I was on team. And it was hard. It was exhausting. I was not at my full strength. And actually, I was given a lot of grace with that.

[17:33] And I was told, actually, if I need to just take some time out, do it. Every single year at New Wine, the two youth groups, the older and younger youth groups joined together. And that's followed by a time of team ministry. It's a time for team to just focus on worshiping and praying together.

[17:48] And during that time, I spent a bit of time worshiping. And then I sat down. And then I started to think. And then my mind took over. So if you if you don't know, I am diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Typically, anxiety can kick in can kick in very quickly, very easily. And then actually, if that's not dealt with, if that's not kept in check, that can lead me down the path to feeling very low, and struggling with depression. And actually, if I'm already feeling low anyway, it doesn't help. So there I was just going further and further and further down that path, asking myself, why am I here? What is the point in me being here? I've been applying to be a youth worker for years, and it's never worked. This isn't what this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing, doing anymore. And like the people, everyone who's here is busy with other things. They don't really care about me or anything like that. And I started, and I started going down those thoughts. And then I had, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. And somebody started praying for me. And that hand was there for about 20, 30 minutes or so I was told. I was completely out of it. I did had no concept of time passing. But they prayed for me. And as they prayed, those thoughts started to change. And they started, I started to move away from all of that struggling, all of those thoughts of anxiety. And actually, I was starting to look at things in a much better and a much more positive way. And eventually, I was able to snap out of it. And then after that, my friends came and they started to pray for me. And all of that prayer made such a huge difference. So when I came back home at the end of the week, I went to my next session of CBT with the psychologist. And they said to me, why are things so different? What has changed between now and two weeks ago? This doesn't make, we don't see this in such a short amount of time. So I was able to share a story about actually how prayer had made such a huge difference. That wasn't the end of it. As I said, I didn't say I struggled with depression and anxiety. I said that I'm diagnosed, I struggle with it. Every single day,

[19:57] I have, I am in prayer with God. Maybe actually, I'm not always good at actively starting the day by saying, God, I want you to help me today. I wish I was better at it. But every single day, I'm in communication with God. And I'm saying to God, God, this is, this is who I am. This is what I'm bringing to you today. Actually, sometimes I'm saying to like, God, I feel absolute rubbish today.

[20:19] I need, I need you to be there. And it's that every single day being in constant communication with God that I think makes such a huge difference in my life. So that's our second point, is pray continually.

[20:35] We're going to go into our next worship song. During the song, if we can take the offering. I'm just going to very quickly pray for offering. Father God, I want to thank you for the offering that we've been given today, both for those who have gifted this morning, but also those who give regular donations online through standing orders as well. We pray that you will bless this offering to the work here at the church and in the local communities. Amen. If we can have the notice.

[21:06] Good morning, everyone. So after church today, we're having a church lunch. It's a Lent church lunch. So it's soup and bread. Having seen some of the soup, I'm not sure if much abstinence is required.

[21:21] But please do stay and enjoy that time of fellowship. Also this afternoon, some of our older youth are coming into church for pizza and a games afternoon. And then to 31. Okay. On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God.

[21:46] Sovereign Lord, they said, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David.

[21:58] Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

[22:47] Thanks be to God for his words. And thank you. So if we can have the PowerPoint back up, but while that's coming up, what was part one? Pray expectantly. And part two was pray constantly. Yep. So we're going to go into part three, which hopefully will be up in a moment, but it's pray for the Holy Spirit.

[23:07] There's loads of stories that we could have taken from the Bible about actually when the Holy Spirit came. Before we get to it, actually, I have my next question for everybody. Turn this on.

[23:22] Go back a little bit. There we go. Question. What's the bravest thing you've ever done? Yep. Wow. Abseiling. Where did you abseil? Excellent. What about anyone else? Yep.

[23:33] Wow. Paragliding. What about anyone else? Maybe anything that isn't heights related. Yep. Walking with lions. Wow. Definitely brave. Yep. At the back.

[23:48] Underwater swimming in a cave. Brilliant. And last one. Excellent. It's a wonderful one to bring up. So actually, sometimes the bravest thing that you can do is physically demanding, maybe on heights or swimming underwater. It could be dangerous, such as walking with lions, or actually it could be putting yourself at risk in a different way. But it could be doing something selfless for other people. So a little bit of background for me. If you don't know, I grew up as a performer. I basically grew up on the stage, whether it was music or drama and theatre.

[24:26] I loved being on the stage. But then when I first started doing youth work, the bravest, the most terrifying thing that I've ever done was to stand up at the front and give a talk to a group of about 20 or 30 young people. I'm used to being on the stage. I'm a natural performer.

[24:48] Doing an all-age service that actually has a bit of performance to it, that's easy to me. The nativity service, I love doing. Or the Christmas story service, I love doing something like that. Actually standing up as myself, sharing stories that are really personal to me.

[25:04] That first story that I shared about the baby, about myself, that was the same story that I shared with that youth group the very first time I ever did a youth talk to that number of people.

[25:14] And I was terrified, which you might say really doesn't make any sense. But for me, being in character is easy. Being myself is scary. And that's one of the bravest things I've ever done.

[25:27] And there was only one way that I could do it. And that is praying for the Holy Spirit. Actually, I want to suggest that being faith-filled in prayer, being Christians who pray, the bravest thing that we can do is to pray for the Holy Spirit. I've been part of the New Wine Network for about 10 years now. And one of the things that I've picked up from there is that so many, but I know this happens in a lot of other churches as well, but so many people, if they're praying and they're not sure what to say, or they're still just praying because they want to keep that direct communication with God, but they don't have any words anymore, they just choose three words.

[26:09] Come Holy Spirit. And I want to suggest that is one of the bravest things that we can do. What are some of the ways that the Holy Spirit, what are some of the things that happened when the Holy Spirit showed up in the Bible? We've read one of them just a minute ago. Yep, that is, but we're going to come back to that. But I want to see some of the effects. So we read a minute ago, actually the room shook. It was almost like, it was like an earthquake. Yep, they did speak the word. Okay, we don't so much want to see what is the transformation on the people. What are some of the things, what are some of the signs that happened that showed the Holy Spirit was there?

[26:44] Tongues of fire on the head. I don't know about you, but I'd be terrified if I saw fire over everyone's head. A few weeks ago, when we had our first session, we took the young people out to the park. And actually, one of our young people said that that would probably, that would be really cool, but also probably quite terrifying. And I think I'd agree with that. We also see that actually, when Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit came down as a dove. So it wasn't all big, dangerous, threatening signs. We can go back to Elijah. And actually, the Holy Spirit didn't move in the earthquake or in the thunderstorm, it moved in the whisper. But there is one thing that is constant every single time the Holy Spirit comes. And actually, we can see that this way we come back to thousands of people gave their life to God. People spoke the word in boldness. People spoke in tongues. They spoke in languages, were earthly languages, that they had never even heard before.

[27:38] And everybody understood in their own language. The one thing that happens every single time the Holy Spirit moves is things change. There we go. Every time the Holy Spirit appears, things change.

[27:52] That's why I want to suggest actually it's one of the bravest things that we can do when we pray. Because when we say, come Holy Spirit, when we pray for the Holy Spirit with absolute faith, we are surrendering control. We don't always know. Maybe the Holy Spirit will decide to put tongues of fire onto everybody. Maybe the room will start shaking. Maybe it will come down like a whisper or a dove. Maybe we'll all start speaking in tongues or in different languages. We never know what the Holy Spirit is going to do. But things will change. And that can be scary. It can be frightening.

[28:27] But I also think it's one of the bravest things we can do. And actually, if we want to be faith-filled in the way that we pray, we need to pray for the Holy Spirit, knowing that we are saying to God, God, take control away from me, you take the driving seat. You take control. So I, we're going to go into our last worship song in a moment. And then I'm going to come back and just do our finishing bit before we all close up with the Lord's Prayer. Actually, before we go into this song, I want to issue a challenge. We're going to sing, Holy Spirit, you're welcome here. As I've just said, if we're really inviting the Holy Spirit here, we may not be leaving this room the same again.

[29:08] Things may change before we come back next week. It is the bravest thing that you can do. So actually, I want to challenge you. If you think that we're ready for that, actually give as much oomph as you can to this song. If you don't, that's okay. Sing along or sit and listen to the words.

[29:25] Shall we stand if we're able and we'll sing our last song together?