Challenges with Prayer

When I was young, I had the opportunity to swim on a youth summer swim league that our local city had for those who lived in our city and was able to enjoy that. I mean, it should come as no surprise someone with the name of Michael Phelps would eventually have tried swimming at one point on a team in his life. But I did! For a couple years as a kid, I was probably in my, probably around seven, eight, nine, maybe ten, those years of my life. I swam on the summer league for an introduce me to the idea. I'd never done it before. Me and my younger brother Troy, we started swimming. And I'll save you any photos. Thankfully, I'm not going to do a PowerPoint of me and those little speedos that the kids used to wear back in those days. Thankfully, the sport has progressed to where everybody wears a little bit different clothing. But it was a lot of fun. And one of the things that our team got to do each year was we would be able to march along in our local parade that the city would put on each summer. We would make a float. We would wear our swimsuit. We'd wear our shirts that had the team name on it. We would throw out candy. And it was a lot of fun. And I'd never been in a parade before. This is going to be my first opportunity. And so we're waking up to that day. And guess what is going on outside? It is raining. And it's pouring. The thunder is banging. And little Mike Phelps's heart is starting to get shattered and broken. Because I cannot now go into the parade. It's going to be canceled. I believe the year before something happened. Either I was sick or something else where I couldn't be part of it and missed out on it. And now here we have thunderstorms. But what is remarkable to me in that day and still sits in my memory the most is that's the first, earliest memory I have of really going to God in prayer believing that he could answer a prayer as simple as the weather. My parents had taught me over the times to pray. And we, little kid prayers that we appreciate and enjoy hearing so much. Praying about people's health, praying about food, those types of things. But this is the first time I remember knowing that God could answer a prayer with the weather. And so I still remember I can picture which room I was in. I can picture staring out the window, seeing the rain come down and just see how hard it was pouring. And I can still remember just praying to God that he would allow the rain to stop. That the parade would be able to go on and I would be able to be part of it. And you know what? God answered that prayer. Now some would say that, well, Mike, if you just looked at the weather report, you would have seen that the cloud line was going to break up. I don't believe that. I've seen too many times now, being past that year in my life, where God wants to be involved in those small prayers that we think are small. Those prayers that probably don't add up to the extent of something that is going to transform our lives one way or the other, that he's involved in those details. And so someone may think back and say, well, we knew the weather was going to break, but I know in my little Mike Phelps eight-year-old heart at that time that that was an answered prayer from God. Now you may think, since I was able to pray that prayer, that since then my prayer life must have continued to be strong and without any wavering ever.

But truth be told, my prayer life has ebbed and flowed at times. And I, like many of you, have had challenges at times with my prayer life. And when our prayer life suffers, though, other problems begin to show in our lives. Cracks begin to form. Things become off-balance. We begin to struggle. And that's why it's vital that we battle through challenges that arise in our prayer lives. So today I'd like us to consider some of the challenges with prayer that we can face in our lives. Now to take a sermon and to get into every aspect of one's prayer life where we could have a challenge is impossible to cover in one sermon. And even if we did a series of sermons, there would still be gaps. Because our prayer life with God is so unique. It's between us and the creator of the universe. And our upbringing, our experiences of life are all unique. They're different from when we were born to how we were raised, the experiences we went through. All the way through life, we've been unique and have different upbringings. And even the relationship that you may have with your own physical father could create its own unique challenge that you may have in your prayer life with God. But I'd like to take a few minutes or take some time, in the time we have, and look at a couple of common challenges that I know that occur from time to time that can negatively affect our prayer life. The first one being neglect.

We do, from time to time, neglect our relationship with God, and thus we neglect our prayer time with God. When there's a problem in our relationship with God, the problem is never on the God side of things, is it? The problem is never that God fell short of His promise, or that God withdrew Himself from us. The problem is always with us. The problem always rests on our side.

And as I mentioned before, when we neglect our prayer time with God, then other problems begin to occur in our life. We may sometimes see this occur in other physical ways with things in our lives. For example, maybe you've neglected your car from time to time. I know I have. Maybe not changing the oil on a regular basis, when you really know that you should. One that I've done before, because I had a funny tire on the car that just wouldn't hold air all the time, and how many times I'd go out and see it's running a little bit low, but I'm running behind, I don't feel like worrying about it.

Then I get home after a busy day, and I still don't feel like worrying about it. Knowing in the back of my mind every day I come out, I should be putting some air in the tire, I should put out the effort, and I'm ruining the tire, only to keep not doing it, and eventually have to replace the tire early, because it wore as it shouldn't, because it was under-inflated.

Maybe there's that squeak that you really know that should be checked out, or a small piece of rust that is starting to show. Those who like gardening and landscape projects, you know there's no end to the work that needs to be poured into a garden. If you decide that just a few weeds are okay, before you know it, weeds have now overtaken your entire garden. Again, if we neglect the yellowing leaves, if we neglect the funny spots that are starting to show up on the plants before we know it, we've got a major issue.

Same thing with neglecting our house. If we look up in the ceiling and we see a water spot, and we just say, ah, it's probably just one time that's going to happen. It won't happen again. We all know better than to assume that. Cracking the foundation, those types of things. The furnace or air conditioner begins making a funny noise. We all know that there's been times in our lives that in these physical ways, we've neglected our responsibility and what we should do in a physical way.

Just like something physical, we can neglect our prayer life to the point that it begins to become chronic. When it becomes chronic, new thoughts may begin to enter your mind. Because of the struggle, the struggle is the longer we go without doing something, the longer something is not effective, the more difficult it becomes to then get back on the horse and begin riding again. Maybe it's an exercise program. Those things are tough. You may begin to think, it's been so long since I prayed, I don't even know where to start again.

Or my sins have just piled up so high in my life, I'm too ashamed to just have to sit down and talk to God about all of them at one time because it's been so long. Or you may think, why would God want to hear from someone who hasn't taken the time to talk to him in so long? Why would God even want to hear from me anymore?

These thoughts and the neglect in our prayer life causes us to feel really distant from God, which we know is the opposite of what God wants us to feel. In Acts 17, and that's where we'll open our Bibles to this morning, Acts 17, we have the account recorded of the apostles' pulse travels to the city of Athens, where his time spent there, he walked around and saw how the entire city was given over to idolatry.

He saw the temples with their false gods set up, statues, knowing false worship was going on. And so he couldn't help but to talk about the gospel of the kingdom of God so that it helped move people to worship and to understand the one true God. He did this in the synagogues and in the marketplaces daily with those who would listen. And some of the philosophers overheard him and took him to the Areopagus, where others wanted to hear of this new doctrine, and that's what the scriptures call it.

New doctrine is what it refers to, of which he spoke. And part of what he shared, which I find encouraging with today's topic, is found in verses 26 through 28. So this is Acts 17, verse 26. Breaking into the thought of the passage and the teaching he was doing here. He says, And he, speaking of God, has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, saying that God has been instrumental in the creation of man and continues to look after our lives.

He goes on, So that they should seek the Lord, and in the hope that one might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. So regardless of the way life goes on for us, our God in His mercy and His love and His greatness does not withdraw Himself from us. He's not far from us, and He encourages us to grope after Him, to seek after Him, to seek the Lord, as Paul said here at the beginning of verse 27. Verse 28 goes on to say, For in Him we live and move, and have our being, as some of your own poets have said, for we are His offspring.

This is that way that our Heavenly Father looks at us consistently and constantly as we go through our lives. And so when we have these feelings that God doesn't want my presence with Him, that God doesn't want me to talk to Him, these types of things just do not fit what we see in Scripture. When we neglect our prayer time with God and naturally feel distant, we may think that God is distant from us as well. But the truth is that God is always near. He's just waiting for us to, again, desire to come near to Him.

Jeremiah 23 in verse 23. It's one short passage you can put in your notes. But the prophet Jeremiah was inspired to wrote, I am a God near at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off. What an amazing promise that we have. Here's the Creator of the universe, the Almighty. There is the one and only. He is... Pales in comparison isn't even the right word. His majesty is so great.

Yet He says, I'm not far off from you. He's not like these philosophers that Paul was interacting with that had all their Greek gods, that wanted just to keep their thumb on us measly human beings. That just wanted to see us suffer.

That's Greek theology in a lot of ways. Yet, this is a God that we serve that says, I am a God near at hand, not a God afar off. God wants that intimate relationship. He wants us to draw near to Him. But when we neglect something and know we should be doing something different, often, then guilt is associated.

Have you ever felt guilt when you've neglected something? Maybe it was that car that, again, that you own, that you really knew you should be doing something, but then you don't do it. Maybe it was an old barn. I see a lot of barns when we drive over the countryside that have been neglected.

They should have been painted. The roof is lifting off. You know, water's coming in. At some point, that barn begins to lean, and pretty soon there is no barn left. It's collapsed within itself. The barn was neglected. There's probably guilt from that farmer, because maybe that was something that could have been profitable. Or maybe that would have kept the value of the property higher. Or maybe it was a relationship that you have struggled with with another person.

And because of neglecting that relationship, there's guilt on your part that is associated with it. Often, when we recognize our involvement with something we've neglected, often guilt is associated. And this guilt can drive a deeper wedge between us and God, because, like the car, the barn, or that relationship, it can all begin to feel hopeless.

And that all's lost. But because of God's love for us and the value he sees in us, we are not viewed as something that has become lost due to negligence. In my time spent working my summers on my uncle's farm, there would come time to time where we would jump in the car or the truck and go visit a neighbor's farm. And we would pull into their property, go down the gravel road, and at a notice, maybe an old car or an old truck that would be parked off to the side, maybe by the barn, that you could tell has been there for a really long time.

The rust is apparent. The shine on the car has been worn off. The windows are hazed over from the dirt that has developed over the years. I remember seeing some of the tractors that way that had been sitting out there for years, no longer used, because they broke down, left there, and then they bought a new one, and that tractor is still just sitting there. To me, it just seemed like a worthless piece of junk, right?

What value is in this car that's been set in and the weeds are in the grass that's growing up tall around it? But to a careful eye, and one with imagination, they often see these old hunk of junks as something valuable. If placed in the right hands of someone who knows what to do with it, you may have seen the shows where they'll restore an old car like that.

They'll bring it into a shop, and they start taking the pieces off, and maybe it's missing a fender, and so they figure out where can we acquire a new fender for this car. The headlights are busted out, so we've got to replace the headlights. By the end of the show, and of course they speed it fast through time, they roll out the car in this big reveal, and it's shiny.

New paint. Windows are all in place. It's drivable. You can hear it run. It's amazing to see. Or maybe you've gone to a car show, or to a museum, a car museum, where you can see some of these antique cars that look as good as the day they rolled off the line and they were bought in the showroom.

Something that was a complete pile of junk in most people's eyes, but was later restored back to what originally it was intended to be. This is how God continually looks at you and me today.

He sees the value. He sees the worth. The fact that we were made in His own image. He does not lose sight of that, and He has the hands to mold, to shape, and to rework the lives of those who will give their lives back to Him. The book of Hebrews speaks to the supremacy of Jesus Christ and the role that He plays in the Christian life. As the Son of God, Jesus created the world we live in, and He created human life itself.

And then, while we were dead in our own trespasses, He gave of His own life that our sins could be fully forgiven and we could be reconciled to our Heavenly Father. When our prayer life has been neglected and our relationship with God feels damaged, let us consider the One who is to restore of all things. Let's look at Hebrews 2, chapter 2, verse 9. God understands the physical nature of our lives, as we'll see here in a moment. He understands we're weak in the flesh. The mind says, I want to follow God.

I want this relationship because I know it will lead to peace and happiness. But He understands that many times neglect can seep in and create a problem between us and God. But yet, we're not cast aside. Yet, we're not just that hunk of junk that no longer has any value. Hebrews 2, verse 9.

And those who are being sanctified are all of one. This oneness that we can have with God the Father and that oneness that we can have with our elder brother. He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He's not ashamed to call them brethren. In verse 14, And as much then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. That release that you and I have sought for in our life, that release that we received at baptism, when God forgave us of our sins and imparted His spirit within our lives, and that release we can receive at any time when sin comes back into our life, and we go back to Him in prayer and in repentance, and recognizing how far we have fallen short. Any time we can receive that release when we go back to God. Verse 16, it says, For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things He had to be made, like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest, in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. I know we should read through this passage every single day 20 times and remind ourselves that this is the Lord that we serve. This is the one that gave His whole life, gave up His glory to come down as Me and you. As the Father and Him decided, He endured temptation unlike anything that we've probably endured. He battled through a horrific death like none of us have endured, and He did it because of love, and He did it because of a plan, and He did it because He wants us to be part of God's family. We could read through this day after day and still not read it enough times to understand that this is our Lord and Savior, and the one who wants to help us and to bring us back anytime that we feel we are far from God. Going on to chapters 4, Hebrews 4 and verse 12.

This Hebrews 4 verse 12 continues and adds, Our sins, as we know, are not hidden from God. Our neglect is not hidden from God. Our chronic neglect in prayer life is not hidden from God. God knows us inside and out better than we can even know ourselves. And so when we have these feelings that I can't approach God with this, I'm ashamed or I feel embarrassed, that guilt piling on. We have to remember that those feelings come from Satan.

Satan wants us to feel divided and separate from God because then we might not come back. We may not overcome those feelings of guilt and of being weak because we are ashamed of our sins. But as Hebrews 4 verse 13 says, God already knows we have nothing between us and God that He can't see what's going on. And it's to Him up to whom we must give account.

Verse 14, Seeing that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin. And then we get an action statement here in verse 16. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.

Neglect is not a pretty thing. And it's not something we should ever take lightly or to just say, well, it's just part of life. Neglect is a serious matter. But if neglect has occurred in your prayer life with God, don't let that keep you from coming back. Because we have a high priest that understands the weakness of our flesh and the temptations that we go through. And we're given this admonition to come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.

That action were to come. That we can come before God. And we can open our lives back up to Him in a prayerful way that He already knows. But He wants that relationship. He wants that two-way relationship with us. I've come back with me to Acts chapter 3 and verse 19 for another encouraging passage. I'm sorry, Acts 3 and verse 19. I might have said Acts 13. Acts 3 and verse 19. Peter, prior to Acts chapter 3, had just given that powerful sermon on the day of Pentecost when they said, What shall we do?

They were cut to the heart. What shall we do? And he said, Repent and be baptized. He then, after that sermon, went out and He shared these words to others who were at Solomon's porch in chapter 3 and verse 19. Giving them the similar admonition, saying, Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. I can't help but read that and then consider sometimes when we physically have neglected something, a car, a house, a garden. And then what do we have to do?

We have to restore. We have to refresh whatever has suffered from that times of neglect. And Peter here says, So that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. God, in His abundant mercy, continually wants to restore His relationship with us when we have neglected God. But we must go back to God, acknowledge our shortcomings, which He already knows about anyways, repent of our sins, and then ask for His help to then go forward again on a new path.

And in doing so, neglect and guilt can become a thing of the past as we continue a prayerful relationship with our Father. Another second challenge I'd like us to consider for the second half of the sermon is a challenge with unanswered prayers.

Here's a question for you. I'd like to see a show of hands. How many prayers have you prayed that God has answered 100% exactly the timing and the way that you wanted it done without delay and has never failed you in your mind in that way?

Not a single hand goes up. I'm not surprised, right? Because I can't raise my hand either. And if that's the case, then each one of us probably have had a challenge with prayer at times. God wants us to have a close and intimate relationship with us. God wants to have one with us and invites us to share the thoughts, the desires, the concerns that rest on our hearts. For those who have the blessing of a good, earthly father, then you know that your father was there for you when you needed him to be. Our fathers wanted to give us things that we both needed and wanted in life. So many of our needs are covered, but so many times the wants would be covered as well. A good earthly father wants us to feel comfortable to come before him and to be able to talk with him. And our heavenly father is the same and so much greater. We know this to be true because we have scriptures like, and we're going to rapid-fire through these. Don't need to turn. 1 Peter 5, verses 6 and 7, Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you with due time, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. 1 Peter 5, verses 6 and 7. 2 John 3, verses 22, 3 Philippians 4, verse 6, 4 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. We have these passages that are promises from God, these passages that say, Come to me. Let's talk. Bring your requests. Let me know what's going on in your life and what you need. These passages are great. I'm going to be able to go to God and tell him everything I need, and he's going to give me everything that I ask for. Awesome!

And many times, God does answer our prayers and deliver us from the problems we present to him or the things that we do need. But then comes that time that, in our mind, he doesn't answer our prayer. Bummer.

How do we process what we feel is an unanswered prayer? How do we go forward in a positive way, continuing to build our relationship with God, when in our mind, our prayer hasn't been answered?

The Apostle Paul, and this is a passage that's very familiar, we go to, and I think it's one of the cores to understanding, sometimes when prayers are not answered, is in 2 Corinthians 12 and verse 8. Because Paul didn't get every single one of his prayers answered in his timing and in his way, either. And we don't doubt that Paul somehow lacked faith, do we? We read through the passages. We don't let that thought in our mind, because the things that Paul did in faith of God, in obedience, the things that he was able to do, the spreading of the gospel, the challenges that he encountered, the persecutions, all the way leading to the end of his life, being willing to be arrested for the sake of spreading the gospel message and not being ashamed of it. You can't do all those things and not be someone with faith, with strong faith in God. So, we take that off the page. That's not even in consideration, was he too weak in the faith, that for God to answer his prayer. But what you do see is that Paul pleaded with God in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 8.

His response was different than Paul had desired. Paul shares in verse 8, concerning this thing, this ailment, this struggle that he was dealing with, he says, Considering this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, and my strength is made perfect in weakness. There's very few times that I'm battling a personal trial or something that's not going the way that I think, that I'm not thankful that God inspired this to be captured for you and me today. My grace is sufficient, and sometimes in the grand scheme of life, that's the best thing we could ever receive. God's grace, his kindness, his favor, the way that he dotes after us, the way he looks after us, the way he's involved. And knowing that when we wake up in the morning and put our head on the pillow at the night, that his grace is always with us, because everything he does for us is just encapsulated in his grace. My grace is sufficient for you. My daily support is enough. My comfort, when you're struggling, will be what you need in that moment. My encouragement, when you feel you can't go in any further, will be there. My grace is sufficient for you. For my strength is made perfect in weakness. Paul goes on to say, therefore, most gladly, I would rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. It's an amazing example that we have here, and one that we go to on a regular basis when we're battling a challenge, when we've prayed about something and we feel in our own minds that we're not getting the answer that we wanted.

One could ask, why didn't God heal Paul? Simply, God didn't do it. God just did not heal Paul. It's that simple. But you may think that's not fair. Oh, it's fair because what did Paul and what do you and I deserve in life? We deserve death. Eternal death. Not just like short-term death until our Lord and Savior returns. That's what we deserve.

But God, in His mercy, sent His Son so that we could have our sins forgiven.

And thankfully, God does not give us what we deserve. If God was just to simply answer every one of our prayers exactly the way we prayed it, He'd be no different than a genie in a bottle that is just there for you and me to just grant every one of our wishes. But He's not a genie. He is the perfect, loving Father that cares deeply for us and looks over our lives.

In Matthew 6, and let's go ahead and turn there next, we're not going to look at the entirety of the model prayer. This has been sermons that I think we've all heard from time to time, and my intent today is not to go through the entirety of the model prayer that Jesus gave us here in Matthew 6. But at this point in the message, I'd like us to look at verse 10 of Matthew 6, breaking into the middle of this model prayer that Jesus gave us that we can pray and work through as we go to our Father. And then Matthew 6 and verse 10, we're encouraged to pray, Your kingdom come, and this is the part for today, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Your will be done. That's what we have to trust and rely that when we go to God and we have challenges and we open up our hearts sincerely and intimately with God with prayer and asking, Can you help? We have to remember it's all done according to His will for our life. What we have to understand is that the answers to the things we pray about are directly related to what God's will for our lives is. And we're challenged, though, when we feel that God's will is flying directly in the face of what we need right now.

And we have to work through these feelings. There's a common belief held in some Christian circles, and I've even seen it at times in the Church of God, that if you name one of God's promises recorded in Scripture, then you can claim that promise from God. It's sometimes referred to as name it, claim it. You might have heard of this teaching in some Christian circles. And this false belief has led many people into a challenged relationship with God.

I've found a couple resources to describe this in general details. This is from wikipedia.com. It's called, some places, the Prosperity Theology, also known as the Word of Faith, or the Prosperity Gospel, or the Health and Wealth Gospel, or the Gospel of Success. And a definition for it from Wikipedia is, A religious belief that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for them, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes will increase one's material wealth.

Prosperity Theology views the Bible as a contract between God and humans. If humans have faith in God, He will deliver security and prosperity. The next definition is from rationalwiki.org. It's defined, name it, claim it, it's defined as, The Bible contains numerous promises from God to Christian believers that believers have to claim the promise before it can become effective. One of the passages that some use to support this is Romans 10, verse 13, where it says, Barbara Enrinreich, E-H-R-E-N-R-E-I-C-H, who's an American author, has a book entitled, This Land is Their Land, reports from a divided nation, and in it, she touches the subject of, name it, claim it, or prosperity gospel.

This is a quote from her book. It says, Our critical facilities were dimmed by the habit and endemic of the two thousands of magical thinking. One of the biggest self-help bestsellers of the era tells you how you can have anything you want simply by willing it. That is this prosperity gospel that was a self-help book on one side of the bookstore. And then it says, let me find where I was at. And then she says, And then the fiction side of the bookstore was ruled by a young magician in training.

The fastest-growing brand of religion is of the magical, name it, and claim it, variety, in which the deity exists only to meet one's immediate self-identified needs. As I hope we know, and as is our teaching, this belief is plain wrong, and it is not scriptural. Not only that, it's actually dangerous, as it can lead to doubt, disappointment, loss of faith, all these tools that Satan uses against us. So we must be very careful with beliefs that are similar to this teaching. I have seen, again, at times within the Church of God, where someone will post something on social media of a challenge or an urgent need for prayers, and then down in the text, sometimes in the comments that people will make, someone will actually say, I am naming and claiming this healing for this person.

And I've seen the tragedy when that healing never comes. And then doubt starts to creep in, and the person that named it and claimed it, or doubt creeps into the person that put out the request and said, wow, somebody of that much faith has gone before God on my behalf and prayed.

God didn't answer. This is another trick and tool of Satan that can damage our prayer time and our prayer life with God. It can create a challenge when we believe that God has to answer our prayers because He said these are His promises, and now He's bound to do it. Ultimately, it gets down to this premise. What you think or believe will happen is ultimately what controls what will happen. That's that false premise. That what you believe or think ultimately is what controls what will happen. By having a belief that we can get what we want rather than having full and complete faith and trust in God, even during these times of severe trials and challenges, we are playing as if we are God Himself. And to counter this belief, though, let's look at Christ's own words from Matthew 16. Matthew 16 and in verse 24, we have Jesus Christ making the statement that we must be willing to lay aside everything that we desire, even lay aside our own lives. Matthew 16 and verse 24. This is what we're asked of God to do. Matthew 16 verse 24. Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life, those prayers, God extend my life. God do this for me. God make me powerful. God make me rich. God make everything perfect in my life so that I can continue to live this great physical life.

And that is the only motivation that we have. He says, For whoever desires to save his life, we'll lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, we'll find it. That self-sacrifice. Whoever will give up our own will for the things that we want today or those selfish motivations that we have at times, will give up our life and our walk that our human nature wants us to go. If we will sacrifice ourselves, God says, we'll find eternal life. Verse 26. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he will reward each according to his works.

Christ's message here is one of self-denial. But the name-it-claim-it belief, and at times when our own prayers are only about ourselves and our own self-satisfaction, can lead us to have a challenge in our prayer life. This name-it-claim-it belief avoids becoming more Christ-like because it falls into the idea that we can avoid enduring through the challenges of life if we just claim it. If we just claim it, then we can avoid challenge. We can avoid disruption. We can avoid something that's uncomfortable. But we know that faith is a complete trust in a holy and sovereign God despite our circumstances, and is not a way to control God and force him to give us what we want. Receiving a no or a not right now from God provides an opportunity for spiritual growth that a yes from God would never provide. We all want to grow in Godly character because we know that God's character living in us will bring us more peace, joy, comforts, and self-satisfaction of this life we're living with ebbs and flows of challenges and days where things seem to be going well. If we have God's character in us, we know we'll need a physical, and happier, and spiritually fulfilling life today. We want God's character. We want that fruit to develop. But often, it comes through the challenges that we face. Let's look at Romans 5 and verse 1, where again Paul outlines some of these challenges that come from living life.

So many times we've seen parents, and maybe we've done that ourselves, or we've been involved with nieces and nephews and other children that we love and are involved in our life. They come and they ask for something that we know we shouldn't give them.

It's breakfast time, and they ask for a piece of chocolate cake.

Oh, we gotta say no.

Even though maybe I would have that piece of chocolate cake myself. But for them, we have to say no, right? Our Heavenly Father knows that He can't always say yes to every one of our requests. And that's okay. Romans 5 tells us in a way that's okay. Here in Romans 5 and verse 1, Paul says, Notice that he's saying, because we've been justif- we can have peace. True. Perfect. Everlasting peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In hope of the glory of God. In hope of that changing of body from physical to spiritual to be eternal sons and daughters with God forever. And he says in verse 3, I can only imagine the crowd at this point, or those hearing and reading this letter at this point, was like, Won't, won't, won't. First, God is saying about how we can glory in this new life we're going to have. This eternal life, this spiritual life. And how great is that? And then he turns a corner and says, not only that, but we glory in tribulation.

What? Knowing that tribulation produces perseverance. Okay. And perseverance, character. Yeah. And character, hope.

Can't read through this passage without realizing that, again, we want these character traits that God is outlining here. We want perseverance. We want to become where we can endure more to develop endurance in our life. That when we battle to challenges and when we feel the weight, that we can rise up above, that we can dig deep through God's grace and through His strength to continue on, to fight the fight. We want that ability because it's an amazing ability. But if God then, before bringing us through certain times of life, said, do you want more endurance? Do you want more perseverance? Sign me up. Okay, this is how it comes. Hold. Let's put on the brakes here. Let's pump the brakes a little bit, God. You're saying to learn how to endure, how to persevere through life. It's going to come with challenge, trial, difficulty, persecution.

I don't know. It's a nice idea, but I don't know. Or if God said, Mike, would you like to have more of my character? Absolutely. Sign me up. That sounds awesome. Well, this is how it's going to come. Let's pump the brakes a little bit again, God. Right now, at this point in my life, things are going pretty good. Things are flowing. I'm happy with where everything's at. I'm happy with my little life. I don't need a trial right now. Thankfully, God doesn't normally talk to us ahead of time before these things come upon us, but we can all praise and thank Him that He is with us in these moments. That's why Paul was able to say, but we glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulations produce these characters of God, His traits, that come no other way than through the hard times of life. It ultimately leads to this hope that does not disappoint, as he says in verse 5, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which was given to us. Through all of this, we must remember that God remains sovereign. God does not answer to you or to me. He doesn't answer to the physical powers or forces of nature around us. He is not limited on what He can or can't do. God alone possesses supreme and ultimate power over everything. But this doesn't remove the fact that it is hard and very challenging when God's sovereign will does not meet the desire that you and I have in our heart when we go to Him in prayer. Let's go back to Philippians 4. I reference Philippians 4 just quickly working through those three passages, because I referenced verse 6 earlier. But I purposefully left out verse 7, because verse 7 actually holds the key when we feel unsettled about God's answer to our prayers. Philippians 4 and again in verse 6 and 7. Here again, Paul says, Philippians 4 verse 6, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, being thankful for the many blessings and the way that we are blessed beyond measure just because we have a Savior that lived and died and God has drawn us near to Him. He says, Let your requests be made known to God, and then verse 7 holds the key, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. This peace of God that comes from no other source than from God. This peace that is unlike any peace we could ever encounter in this life. Peace between nations or peace between people. It pales in comparison. This peace of God is that inward peace that only comes through God's Spirit living in us and comes through Jesus Christ. As we know from other passages and what we read in Romans, God has given us His Holy Spirit, which provides us the peace we can have when we make our requests known to God and then we wait for His answer. And as verse 7 here said, it surpasses all understanding. It doesn't make sense in the normal lives and the normal minds of human beings that we can make our requests known, even if it's a very challenging and very sometimes as an understatement. It's the worst thing we could ever imagine going through in our life, but yet God's Spirit in our life can grant us peace in that moment. It's beyond understanding.

It doesn't make sense how the Holy Spirit will guard our hearts and our minds. But if we truly are given ourselves to God and we have submitted ourselves, and we're as much as we can in this life, dead to ourselves, this peace comes in and replaces the overwhelming pressure that that trial has. It doesn't mean it just goes away and that it doesn't continue to be with us. It doesn't mean it goes away and we don't think about it anymore. But we can be at peace in that moment because we know God is bigger than the things we're going through. And ultimately, God's plan provides a day when we will be at peace, when whatever trial, whatever challenge we're going through, will be completely dissolved. That's what we look forward to, and that's how we can have the peace of God, and that's how we can have that unbreakable hope in God and in His plan. Sometimes overcoming the obstacles or challenge in our lives is realizing that not everything we request will lead to spiritual growth that God is looking for in our life. More times than not, we have to let go and let God. God sees bigger and He sees farther. God knows our thoughts, our hopes and desires, and He takes all of this into consideration when helping, supporting and guiding our lives on a daily basis.

Again, these are just a couple of the challenges that we can face in our prayer life with God. There's many more challenges that we may explore at a future time. As we wind down to the conclusion of the message, let's look at... I passed a handout through... asked that a handout be passed through the room. For those online, locally, that get my emails on a regular basis, for Ann Arbor, I shared it with... via email this morning, so if you haven't received it, you can check your email later. We'll work through these. For those online that may not have got what I shared, please send me an email, and I'm more than happy to share this handout with you. I have to acknowledge, I'm not sure where this list originated from. You know how sometimes you acquire things over the years, put them in a folder, and then go back to it, and then realize there's nuggets of gold, or you want to study it further. So I'm sorry, I can't source how this was shared.

But this list contains an opportunity for us to pivot here a bit, near the end of the sermon. I've talked about our challenges with prayer, or a couple of the different challenges we may encounter with prayer. Notice that the title on this one is called, Prayer Challenges, in quotes. These are things that if you're struggling in your prayer life with God, if you're in a rut, you feel like you don't know how to get back on the horse, you don't know how to go back to God, these points may help you refocus a little bit of your prayer life.

These points might be something that you could take one at a time, one each day, and work through, and then go back at the beginning and think through it and consider. This is a tool that might be helpful. But prayer challenges. Try to make a habit of praying about what you recently read in the Bible.

It will help you remember and put into action your Bible study. Those things that you could be thankful that God has revealed and opened your mind to understand, and those nuggets that we can be so thankful that we have recorded for us to give us that encouragement when we're feeling like the weight of the world.

It says, pray for wisdom, knowing that God will bless you. It then cites and references James 1, verse 5, It says, we can pray each week about developing a different fruit of the Holy Spirit or aspect of Godly character, and then look for the opportunities to show it. My only caveat on this one is, don't pray for trials to make you become stronger in certain areas. That might be a prayer that gets answered. I've known of some people that have prayed for a specific trial, so they grow in certain Godly characters, and sometimes those trials have been weighty.

But we don't have to just say, God, give us this trial to develop certain aspects. We can ask that God will soften our hearts to be relevant and to be able to think more actively on His fruit of the Spirit that we see in Galatians 5, or aspects of His character, His mercy, His long-suffering towards others, and just say, God, help me to keep that on the forefront of my mind.

Help me to start today with this on the front of my mind, and let me go to sleep tonight with it still on the forefront of my mind. These are those ways that we can pray about these different fruit of the Spirit that we'd like God to develop in a gentle and kind way in our lives. You can pray that God would give you an opportunity to help other people, and then be on the lookout for that change.

I think that so many times we've seen that here. If we wake up on a Sabbath morning and ask God to use us as a tool in His hand, He wants to answer that prayer, because that's a prayer that isn't focused on us. It's a prayer that's focused on each other and on others, and that's one that I've seen Him answer many times. Pray for things you know would make God happy, that we would lean on Him and not on ourselves, that we would walk in His truth, that our thoughts and actions would be pleasing in His sight.

Pray for God to help you become who He wants you to become, or similarly, pray that He would help you fulfill His purpose for your life. We're all in a growth schedule. We're going forward, and God knows what He wants us to become. We can pray that God will continue to help us become that person. It says, make time for intercessory prayer. That's praying for others, not praying for yourself, praying for others specifically. Make time for intercessory prayer, and make it a habit. Pray for the spiritual health of those you ask God to heal physically. As we know, so much of the physical trials that we go through and that we see in the prayer requests, there's a spiritual side to it, that also we need God's help in healing and working through and being at peace with and going forward in faith with.

Often, we do pray that not only God heal them physically, but God will be there to encourage, to comfort, to provide what they need as they go forward. It says, try to pray as much or more about spiritual matters than the physical things. That is hard because we live in a physical world. We live in so much of a physical world, it is often hard to separate out the physical and just consider the spiritual.

But we can try to focus our prayers on just those spiritual matters. And then lastly, and this is just, again, a tool. There's many tools out there. Pray entire prayers of only praise and thanksgiving. We don't need to ask God for anything at times. The Psalms are filled with these prayers and God called David a man after his own heart. We know the importance of just praise and thanking God. And so many times, we may start off our prayers that way and then quickly divert into our to-do list. That's a challenge for a pastor, let me just tell you. Because there's always something that is going on with your lives, or something going on in our congregations, or things going on in the church. There's things I'm focusing on to be able to serve better. And often, I can quickly get down to my work to-do list with God that I need his help because Jesus Christ is the head of the church. He's going to be the one leading it. I need your help and here's my list. It just can be simple to divert into our list and forget that the importance of praise and thanksgiving, or to give it the abundant time that God deserves in our prayer life. From time to time, you and I may encounter some challenges in our prayer life with God. And if this happens, I encourage you to take your challenge to God and open your heart to him about how you feel. Talk and express your thoughts with God because he wants a relationship with both you and with me, intimately. And our Lord and Savior understands completely the challenges that come with living a physical life. And he is there to share support and provide guidance on our walk with him when we open our lives to God.

So what can we do? Pray. It really is that simple. Go to God and pray. But pray with a heart desiring a closer relationship with the one true God of the entire universe. And again, as we read in Philippians 4, verses 6 and 7, Let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.