May 5th 2019 Sermon Notes:

OPERATING UNDER THE EMPOWERMENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD

Speaker: Apostle Chris Baird
Theme: The Power of Prayer
Text: Matthew 6:5-15
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Jesus did not ask his disciples, if you prayer! Or where they pray? Or ,why they pray? He simply said to them, when you pray! Or why pray, they had already spent serious quality time with Him.

What is prayer
Jesus’ Teaching on Prayer
11 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

God demands that we pray.
Spirit has connections with Spirit so we must worship God in Spirit.
Prayer in the Hebrew Bible is an evolving means of interacting with God, most frequently through a spontaneous, individual, unorganized form of petitioning and/or thanking. ... In these instances, such as with Isaac, Moses, Samuel, and Job, the act of praying is a method of changing a situation for the better.
Prayer then is a verbal or non-verbal conversation with principally a Diety in which request for some form of help or assistance is made.
Prayer is an essential part of worship
Prayer is an essential part of a healthy relationship of a human being with a diety.
Prayer connects you and brings you into fellowship with God.

Why should we pray?
Compared to all other mammals, human beings are the only members of the animal kingdom that re wired in what we classify as three dimensional , that is body, soul and spirit ‘
Our Creator, God created mankind, with the amazing ability to interact, and communicate with spiritual beings. That means that within every human being, there is that urge, that prompting, that awareness and pull to communicate with our Maker God.

Genesis 3: 8
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Mankind is in constant need of divine help to be able to resist the constant bombardment of sin.
Even in a fallen state they knew they needed to connect with God. God made us spirit beings and we are compelled to follow how we were created.
We need God almighty to empower us if we will ever win the battles of life.
Why then should we pray? Simply because we are not in control.
We face tremendous challenges on a daily basis, far more than we can handle on our own.
We as humans just need divine help. He has already done everything possible for mankind to be saved.

Our adversary, the devil, is far too cunning, too powerful, and evil for any of us to defeat in our own strength.

When we pray to God for help, he sends his angels to assist us, to deliver us, to strengthen us, to equip us with the tools we need to resist the evil and the evil one. That is awesome the angels encamp around those who fear Him. But we must call in them and call for their help. This is done through prayer

Who should we prayer to?
There are two (2) main powers all human beings will face, meet up with, or encounter, during our passage on earth:
1. Almighty God the good the source of all life, the Universe and all in it,

2. Satan also called the devil the source of all evil.

The devil was the one introducing evil into our earthly experience. All the bad thing we endure on earth came because we chose to listen to him instead of obeying God.
We must decide what we do with our life. We have the power of choice, we have free will. We must not fall below the standard that God intended for us.

1 Timothy 2:1-8
1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
7 Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity.
8 I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting

HOW SHOULD WE PRAY?
When your words are not enough:
There are, and there will always be times in our lives when our words are not enough, it is comforting to know that the Bible is full of similar scenes from which we could draw to help us get the word of prayer that we need to present to God.

Jonah’s Prayer for Salvation
Jonah 2:2-9
We may never be swallowed by a great fish, but we can still experience the shame and regret that Jonah felt after he ran from God.
The prophet’s plea to the Father provides a poignant scaffolding for our own prayers of repentance. And remember that God heard and answered this humble, honest prayer.
God is not interested in our fluent speech, come to Him honestly and humbly. He hears our cries.

Jonah 2:1-3
1. “In my distress I called to the Lord,
and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
2. You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
3. I said, ‘I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.’

David’s Prayer for Deliverance
This one was a tough choice because the Psalms are stuffed full of cries and petitions. If you ever want a primer for prayer, you can’t go wrong with this wisdom book. But we chose Psalm 3: 1-5 because it provides a concise portrait of crying out to God in the midst of great stress. David’s words are no less relevant to our modern workplace and lifestyle as they were to his battle.

Psalm 3:1-5
1.Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
2.Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.”
3 But you, Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high.
4I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain.
5I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.

Call on God, He will hear you. You cannot hide from the God of Heaven.
It is His desire to answer you. Your personal prayer time is vital for growth.

Hannah’s Prayer of Praise
When Hannah received the child she begged God for, her first instinct is to praise the One who provided. She wanted to thank Him for His greatness and His deliverance. Too often we pray before receiving, but then forget to pray after God answers. Let this prayer guide you in thanks:

1 Samuel 2:1-10
1. “My heart exults in the Lord;
my horn is exalted in the Lord.
My mouth derides my enemies,
 because I rejoice in your salvation.
2.“There is none holy like the Lord:
 for there is none besides you;
 there is no rock like our God.
3 Talk no more so very proudly,
 let not arrogance come from your mouth;
 for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
 and by him actions are weighed.

When you cannot pray turn to the Bible.

How to pray in difficult time.
When desperate is enough to help you push through

This is when you are desperate and no is not good enough. We do not let bad news hinder you from pushing through

A Gentile Shows Her Faith
Mark 7 :24-30
24 From there He arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden. 25 For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw itto the little dog.”
28 And she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then He said to her, “For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter.”
30 And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed.

The Syrophoenician woman
Jesus was travelling in Gentile territory when a woman approached and begged him to cure her little daughter, who was troubled in her mind.
How did Jesus respond? He seemed reluctant, arguing that he had come to save Jewish people, not Gentiles.
Desperate, the woman argued back. Wouldn’t he pity her, despite her nationality? If he were eating, wouldn’t he throw scraps to the dogs?
Jesus, taken aback by her persistence, rewarded her faith by curing her daughter.

It’s a great story of a mother’s love. The Syrophoenician woman was willing to do whatever it took, even if it meant rejection and humiliation, to save her suffering child.
Just as Jesus, a short time later, would suffer rejection and humiliation to save us.
You have to leave the power of prayer, be persistent in prayer.

A woman prays for help
• Jesus reaches out to everyone. The women who prayed, and the child who was healed, were both females. Not only that, they were foreigners. Jesus looked past this and and saw their intrinsic worth.
• Persistence pays. The woman in this story would not take ‘no’ for an answer. She humiliated herself in a desperate effort to save her daughter, refusing to give up even when Jesus rebuffed her. Her quick and nimble repartee turned what seemed like rejection on Jesus’ part to her advantage. Jesus lost the argument — albeit willingly. It is the only time we know of where Jesus was out-argued.
• It doesn’t matter if we are separated in time from Jesus. We can still know him.Three times (this story is one of them) Jesus healed someone at a distance (the Centurion’s servant, the nobleman’s son, and this woman’s child).
God must get better than what the Muslim give their god or the Hindus give to their gods.
Acts 12:5
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

Make prayer a priority