When People Ask For Prayer And You Can't Pray

Pastor Stan Mons | Lessons From Nineveh PT.1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkWfebY1-xU

---

Sermon Transcription:

We're going into a series. I'm not about series. And you may laugh at that because recently that seems to be what is happening time after time. But the Lord gave me a number of words. They all had to do with the city of Nineveh. So, we are going into a series titled Lessons from Nineveh. And at this point, there's at least four in the series that are coming today. Part one titled, “When people ask for prayer and you cannot pray.” When people ask for prayer and you can't pray. Church, there is things as followers of Jesus that you have to do. Now, we've gotten a little allergic to that as Christians because ever since the Protestant church, which is really virtually everybody except, the Catholic Church, when the Protestant Christians broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, slowly but surely, a spiritual allergy began to develop that anything that says I have to do something is wrong and is works. Now, that is true. The question, however, is are these works to contribute to your salvation, or are these part of what Jesus says is the good works that were prepared ahead of you that you may walk in them? Because as a Christian, there are things you have to do.

You don't have to do them because you're not a Christian. When you're not a Christian, or when you're not forgiven, when you're not saved, when you do not belong to Christ yet, there is nothing you need to do. There's something you need to hear. It's called the gospel. And when you believe on Jesus and turn away from everything else you have believed in your life, and you wholeheartedly turn to Jesus and say, I now believe that God has sent his son, that he is the only way to the father, and I believe that because this son, Jesus Christ, has died on the cross, my sins are paid for. I have become accepted in the sight of the father. I can now come to the father and not experience rejection because the son has come. In doing this, you automatically begin to turn away from any sinful lifestyle or behavior you had because you can never grow closer to Jesus and stay in the same place, if you will, in the world. You are always either growing closer to the world, and not in a sense that everything in this world is bad, but in an attitude of the heart, in a love attitude, a sinful love attitude. You always either are growing closer to the world or to Jesus. If you're growing closer to Jesus, things of the world will begin to fall off of you. Desires will begin to dissipate. God will make you, he says, into a whole new creation from glory to glory as you trust him.

Now, there's many things we don't get right in the beginning, and later on, as we grow up, as we grow spiritually up, these things seem to become easy. That is because you have grown closer to Jesus. And the closer you are to Jesus, the more distant you are from sins that used to occupy your life, belief systems that used to occupy your mind, and the powers of this world. The world is powerful. God is way more powerful. But the world has a power of attraction. The world has a power of demanding your attention. All these things simply begin to dissipate the more you trust Jesus and the more you cling on to him. You experience that God actually washes you clean up from stuff. Amen? Now, that don't all happen the first day. Sometimes I want that. And I think at times the Lord, using the picture of calling the righteous, somebody made righteous in the blood of Christ, the word says is like a tree. And I like trees a lot, but they grow awful slow. But when they have properly grown, they're not easily moved. Their root systems run deep, and they can grow really, really old without ever falling over. Amen. Amen. The word tells us that the righteous is like a tree. And so there is that slow growth process that ends up causing a long-term stability eventually. But there are things, because you are forgiven, because you are saved, that you have to do.

Now, in our generation, I think we've also gotten allergic to that a little bit because of our fleshly rebellion. We don't want to be told that we have to do things. Who are you to tell me, God? What do you mean? I'm saved by faith through grace. I can quote you scriptures on this. What do you mean I also have to do? There's things I want to do, and there's things that in my opinion I have to do. I tell the Lord all the time, I can't do that because I have to do this. You may have an opinion daily on what you should be allowed to do or have to do, but the word actually tells us that there are things that God will place before you individually. They may not be things he's asking me to do, but that the Lord is going to place things before you that he has prepared for you to do. And you have to do them because God put them before you. You have to do them because God said so. So we got those two allergies to deal with in our bodies, in our flesh. A little bit allergic to anything doing because we try to stay away from work so much because it's all wrong. And then the second one, where we also just really like to do what we want to do when we want to do it. And we don't want anybody to intrude and tell us what we have to do when we have to do it. Now, as long as we are self-aware of those two things, you're already far ahead of the game. Amen.

Because when you're ignorant to these things, what you end up with is a Christian that's really not doing anything. You end up with a follower of Jesus or so they identify, and they go to church and they pray for their food and they pray before going to bed, and they may believe a whole lot of things. But when you look into their life and you wonder if God made you personally, you out of all people, all of these promises that in Jesus, the word says they are yes and amen, they're going to come to pass. You have been given the Holy Spirit to accompany you, to encourage you, to counsel you, to strengthen you, to enable you, to do things that you could have never brought to pass in your own strength. What are you doing with your life since you have received so much from heaven? There there is there is an easy bridge for the modern nowadays believer to end up doing absolutely nothing other than going to church, feeding my faith, eating, eating, eating, and then I just do nothing with all of that, if I can call it that for a moment, all of that divine nourishment that is coming in and that is supposed to give us energy, strength, that is supposed to cause us to become overflowing with joy and the goodness of God and even the truth of God. And we eat and we eat and we eat, and then we don't do anything.

When people ask for prayer and you cannot pray, I want to read uh a number of things from the word that show you how important it is that you are doing what you have to be doing. Amen. I want to talk to you about the scripture. You've heard it possibly before about your first love. Let me read to you Revelations 2:4 and 5. Now about that first love, that is a heart's attitude, that that that that love, that adoration, that trust towards the Lord. And that may sound like what does that have to do with works, but watch what the word says. Verse four: Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Now, if the word would have stopped right there, we would have had an altar call moment and adjusted our hearts and give the Lord the adoration of our heart back, and and the story would be over. But it doesn't stop there. Let's read verse five. Remember, where do you do that? Point at your head. That's a choice. You can choose to remember stuff. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Where did you used to be? Repent, turn, and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

The word says, when you leave your first love, you stop doing the works you were doing when you first came to Jesus. Let me read in Matthew 12. We'll start in verse 46. While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brother stood outside wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside. They want to talk to you. They wanted to speak to you." And he replied to him, "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?"

Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother, my sister, and mother." He says, "Whoever is doing what God showed he would like to see done that day, that is the person that has become my spiritual family." James 1:22 reads this: "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourself." How do you get deceived? You listen to the word. That's how you get deceived. What's the deception? You're not doing what it says.

Here's what the word says. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. If you listen to the word, if you go to church, if you listen to message after message online, whatever you may do, but you are not doing what the word told you, you will end up deceived while you're sitting under the word. That's what James warns for. Says, don't only, don't merely, don't only listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

I think at this point in my walk that one of the very first signs of backsliding, which simply means you were further ahead at one point in your journey with Jesus and now you're backsliding. You may not be gone yet. You may not be in gross sin, but you are not quite where you once were, and you're definitely not moving forward in your spiritual growth, growing closer to Jesus and away from the world. I think the very first or one of the very first signs of backsliding is a dying off of the prayer life. That's that's what you begin to see in my experience. One of the first places that you see a spiritual change affected by practical decisions is when the prayer life begins to die off a little.

Still praying for food, still praying for bed, but those times where you didn't need to, but you wanted to get along with Jesus and you did. You had decided in your heart you were not going to leave that place until he would speak to your heart. And sometimes you stormed heaven for 10 minutes and ended up touched by the Holy Spirit, and and the Lord spoke to your heart and made known what he wanted for your life. And sometimes it was a half an hour before the Lord came, but you always found him. That real prayer life where it's not a mechanical, well I pray cuz I'm a Christian, so obviously I pray for my food. I wouldn't want anybody to see me not pray for my food. Or I pray before bed because that's what a Christian does, but to actually seek Jesus in prayer and to find Him—that that real prayer life is one of the first things, I believe, that starts to die and die off when a person is backsliding. It’s that prayer life, that prayer lifestyle. I, I, I like to think of it as a prayer reflex. Anything happens in life, I—my first reflex is to just pray, to just talk to the Lord about it, to call out to Him, or to to to bring thoughts or things before Him.

It’s a reflex. It’s the first thing that almost automatically happens, cuz I have a prayer life, and that’s how I cope with life. My, my, my prayer life is how I cope. I don’t need to run to anything else. I don’t need anything else to comfort me. I don’t need quick answers from any area because prayer works so well that it’s easy to just cope with anything and run to prayer.

Prayer, prayer thinking—you know, the the the first response to calamity or the unexpected or something that would try to bring up a worry in my heart—to logically think, oh, prayer, because God answers. So, I can go to prayer, and that all of this is actually not a problem, because I can just run to prayer. But you can lose your prayer logic—that prayer logic, that prayer common sense within the kingdom—where anything comes up, I can run to prayer because I get to come into the throne room. I get to approach the King of Kings. He’s going to treat me fully like family. He promises that since I pray in the name of His only begotten Son, that my prayers are heard. What problem am I going to face in life that actually needs to bring up a worry in my heart, since I can pray?

You can lose that prayer logic. And I believe with all my heart that when you love Jesus, you love His Word. You may have many mistakes in your life. You may not be in the Word as much as you think you’re going to be next year. Growth is awesome. That’s okay. But you love the Word and the little bit you get from it every day. You love to talk to Jesus. When you are loving Jesus and you’re moving away from the world, I believe this with all my heart. I believe that the main Christian reflex to calamity, to problems, and the unexpected—anything outside of our control—is prayer. And it’s not a strange thing, and it’s not a religious thing, because when the people of God pray, He hears. When we pray, things change. When we pray, God answers. So, it’s not a religious thing. It’s not a “I’m storming heaven even though heaven is closed because I got to build up enough prayers to persuade God to maybe listen because I pray so much.”

No. The cross has washed me clean. I now get to pray in the name of Jesus Christ, and I come to the Father all the time because He hears me when I pray. There’s, there’s no no easier way to overcome every obstacle in life and obstacle in my own heart. I get to go straight to the King.

Matthew 21:13 says, “And He said to them, it is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” You see, Jesus Himself quotes this, and He says, “My house.” My Father has said that My house shall be called a house of prayer. Now the Word tells you as well that when the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you, that that your body is actually called the tent of the Holy Spirit—the temple, the dwelling place of the Spirit of God.

And then we have this incredible promise that God says, “My house, My temple, will be called a house of prayer.” He promises that whoever comes to Jesus for deliverance and forgiveness and receives the Spirit of Almighty God, something so dramatic is going to happen to this temple and to this house that this house is going to be known for prayer.

This person is going to be known for their prayer life. This person is going to live on their prayer life. This person is going to be recognized as somebody that talks to Jesus all the time. And when he or she does, Jesus actually responds. They pray, and God hears. And this is unfortunately what begins to slowly but surely go away when you change who—whoever is the boss of the house. See, this is the promise God says over My house. So when I give myself—my heart, my soul, my strength—when I give myself time and time again wholeheartedly to Jesus, to the best of my ability, time and again, we have this incredible promise that God is going to do something inside of us that is going to make us known for prayer. You don’t have to build your own prayer life. You don’t have to work it up. God is going to gift you the intimacy that will provoke relationship. And He will make sure that His house will be known as a house of prayer.

But when you want somebody else to be the boss of your house—whether that is you yourself, the demands of this world, or even the enemy—or maybe you want no boss at all, you don’t want anybody to tell you what you have to do. All of a sudden, people can begin to lose this incredibly miraculous process that God has promised for those that wholeheartedly come to Him. When people ask for prayer and you cannot pray, let me take you to the story of Jonah. We’re going to start in verse one. I’m reading today from the NIV, if you’re with me. Jonah 1, verse 1. The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me.” Now, here we are in a series, Lessons from Nineveh. Now, Nineveh, right here in this portion of the story, represents God’s direction for Jonah’s life. The Lord very clearly, at one point in Jonah’s life, shows him that Nineveh was where Jonah had to go next.

He didn’t—the Lord didn’t show him what he needed to do ten years from now. The Lord didn’t show him what he should have done different in the past. He put before him, gave him direction of, “This is what I want you to do next with your time.” It’s going to affect your finances too. It’s going to affect what you’re leaving behind. It’s going to affect everything. But Nineveh is where I am sending you to do something. Verse 3: “But Jonah ran away from the Lord.” That’s a funny one. Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, and he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. So here we have Jonah. He has clear direction for what God wants him to do with his life—clear direction of what God wants him to do. Maybe for a season, maybe for a short assignment, maybe for a long term.

He doesn’t quite know the details, but he has a direction from the Lord. And he says, “I’m not ready. I, acknowledge You are real, Lord. I acknowledge that You speak. I acknowledge that You have direction, but I am not ready to leave behind what I’m leaving behind. I’m not ready to go and do what You have told me to do. I don’t need to do this. I don’t want You to tell me what I have to do. I am fleeing away from the very thing, small or big, of what You have placed before me.” And the Lord allows a storm to arise that threatens to break up the ship. Church, there’s very few things as clear in the life of a person that shifts from Nineveh—that shifts from the direction of the Lord for whatever area of their life—you can always trace it back to disorder. Disorder will always come in. Order will start to slip through your hands like sand, and it will always slip through.

A storm, so to speak, will arise in one or multiple—and sometimes in a grand way—over your life, where you cannot, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you pull the oar, no matter how hard you work to keep that ship of your life on track, it becomes so impossible to get that ship to achieve and to get it to where you want it to go. And you can fight that storm your entire life and never get where you wanted to go. And you also miss out on doing and going where God wanted you to go. Verse 5: “All the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god, and they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he laid down and fell into a deep sleep." Here we have people that don’t know the Lord, and they are willing to cry out and to call out and to call a prayer meeting on this ship and to begin to seek after some higher power—somebody that can make a difference. And there’s a prayer meeting that is taking place, and Jonah is asleep.

Church, when you begin to divert from the direction that God has for any area of your life—when you do it consciously, when you say, “Lord, no. I’m not ready. I don’t want to. I’m not going to make the adjustment yet. I am not ready to do it. I just don’t want to do it. I am not going to go. I don’t. You don’t get to tell me that I have to do this. I need to be allowed to have an option. I need to be allowed to say no. I don’t want You to be Lord.” When you deviate from the Lord’s direction for your life, you will be asleep when people are ready to start praying. You will be spiritually asleep while the people closest to you that are in need of getting to know the Lord, in need of getting to know deliverance that is only possible through Christ—and they don’t have Him yet—you’ll be asleep to it. And you’ll be sailing through your life, going to church, doing what you’re doing, being about what you’re being about. And people are afraid, and you don’t even notice it. They’ve got a spirit of fear battering them. They’re struggling. They’re even willing to try all kinds of other religions or things, whatever may help. They’re willing to run everywhere.

And you can be in a deep sleep, not a clue of what is going on. Even though those people are so close to you, you can become so cold-hearted. There can be people asking everybody, “Let’s pray. Let’s cry out,” and you can’t pray, cuz you’re asleep. You’ve gone the wrong direction, and now you can’t pray. You’re not awake to pray. You’re not spiritually there. You’re not spiritually discerning what is actually needed. You’re not focused. It’s passing you by.

Verse 6: the captain didn’t serve the Lord—an unbeliever, if you want to call him that. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God. Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.” Now, if you know the story, Jonah didn’t say, “Oh yes, let me fall on my knees and call on my God, cuz I know the real God.” No. Jonah realizes, “I cannot pray,” and he starts to confess that his God is the God who made the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and that he is running away from his God. And the men are greatly concerned.

Now, the rest of that story we’re going into in the next part next week, but here’s what we learn so far about this story. When you move away from God’s direction—Nineveh represents God’s direction for Jonah’s life—when you move away from God’s direction, you fall asleep to the spiritual needs of those closest to you. Do you understand that when you do not wholeheartedly, without conditions and reservations, say yes to giving this life on earth to God completely—He’s promised you an eternal life. It gets to be all about you and your joy. No more pain. No more tears. He promises you an eternal life. And there’s Christians that say, “That’s not enough for me. I want the life here on earth as well. God, I’m not ready. I don’t want to. I want this life.” When you move away from God’s direction, you fall asleep to the spiritual needs of those closest to you. And I mentioned it already—disorder is the number one fruit that you see when the Holy Spirit pulls back a little and says, “Okay, you want to go that direction? Good luck.” You’ll see disorder in your kids. Your kids—those closest to you—will begin to pay the price for you not saying yes to the Lord who has purchased you and loved you and has the best plan for your life.

A plan that will bless and and and and provide and make a way for your children. And you’ll see that your children begin to miss out on what God had in store because of your stubborn heart. Disorder will come into the kids, and you won’t know how to fix it. You won’t know how to compensate for it. They will be struggling. Your relationships—disorder will come into it. You’ll have friends for two years, and then all of a sudden they disappear, and new friends again, and and a couple of years later, again gone, and new friends again. And there’s disorder. There’s no consistency. There’s no stability. And at some point, people don’t even want to be your friends anymore because the inconsistency, the storms, the difficulty, the disorder is not attractive. People don’t want to wholeheartedly be a part of all of your life when there’s disorder in it. Disorder in finances—fighting to get out of debt, to not have payments on stuff, to not be entangled in just slavery, to always have to go and and work to make enough money to pay off everything I bought before I even had the money because I said, “God, You’re not good enough provider for me. I need more than You’ve provided. So I’m going to borrow from other people that may not even serve the Lord, and I’ll just work to pay interest to them. They provide quicker and more than You do.” And a disorder comes in.

Even now, if you are willing to hear from God to have direction for your life—and He had designed for you, He had prepared for you to go to another state or to another nation—He was going to use you mightily to call to Himself those that are brokenhearted and ready to start a prayer meeting. They’re willing to call on any god cuz they’re afraid and they’re worried and concerned and they’re looking for the one true God, and God would have sent you. But you’re asleep, and you can’t be at that prayer meeting. You can’t be the one that begins to lead people to the living God because there’s disorder—because you decided in your heart, “Lord, there are certain things You’re not going to get from me. There are certain things I’m going to be allowed to keep. You are not God. I am. And when I say things do not happen, they will not happen. You get to have as much as I give You. You get to have as much of my heart as I give You. You get to have as much of my life as I give You. But I will be in control about how much gets given out and how much is kept for this life and for myself.”

Disorder will come to the mind. You’ll be struggling to know who you really are. You won’t know who you really are. You’ll try to grab onto the things in this world to try and figure out your identity and how people look at you and what people think of you and and and and how God even thinks of you. So you still also have to go to church because it matters how God thinks of me—but there’s a disorder. There’s not a peace and a clarity. There’s not a soundness touched by God—a new mind. Church, the Word tells us that you can grieve the Spirit of God. You can be forgiven, saved, touched by God, yet you can make the Spirit of God sad, mournful. Ephesians 4:30. “And do not”—so there’s a whole bunch of stuff you have to do—this is one thing you have to not do—“and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Do not grieve the Spirit of God. Don’t make the Spirit sad. Don’t say to the Spirit, “I don’t want to hear what heaven has to say about this area of my life, or this area of my life, or this area of my life. I don’t want to take my time and give it to prayer, where the Spirit is going to teach me to pray.”

I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I just don’t want to. The Word says, don’t say no to the Spirit. Don’t grieve Him. The Word tells us to do the opposite. Psalm 95, verse 7 and 8: “For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.”

We’ve been given the historical account of what ended up happening—the earth swallowing thousands, the people of God not being able, for their generation, to enter into the promises of God. Still loved by God, still cared for by God, but greatly missing out. Their children greatly missing out, having to make it work in the desert where nothing grows. Disorder for forty years. Missing the mark for forty years. If you have a hard time hearing God’s voice, you say, “When I go to prayer, I don’t hear from Him.” You have a hard time hearing His voice—start with your Bible. Start with the Word of God that you can read and you can write down and you can make a note for yourself. Start there.

Are you doing His Word? Are you loving your enemies, or are you tolerating them—blocking them on Instagram and making sure that you don’t have to deal with them? “I won’t be hating them, but I also don’t want to deal with them.” Are you loving your enemies? Are you going out of your way to bless them? Are you showing love to them, or do you only know how to show love to people you want to have in your life? Are you doing the work? Are you doing what you have to do because you were purchased with a price, because you were filled with the Spirit, because you were given incredible promises that by them you may be partakers of the divine nature, that you may become more and more like the Father? Are you loving your enemies? Are you doing it? Or have you said, “Lord, I don’t want that direction for my life. I don’t want to go to Nineveh”? Are you placing God higher than anything in your life? Are you allowing God—are you allowing His Word—to define your priority system? How you’re going to live, how you’re going to make decisions in life, how you’re going to treat people. Are you giving of your first fruits unto the Lord, or does He get whatever’s left over?

Are you doing the Word of God? Are you making disciples? That’s not for pastors. That is for every born-again believer that starts following Jesus Christ. Are you making disciples? I’m not asking you how many. Are you making disciples? Are you helping people to learn how to follow Jesus? Is that why you are still on this earth? Is that what you are doing? Are you doing the Word of God, or have you said, “Not Nineveh, not for me. I don’t have to do this. I don’t want to”? Are you letting God’s voice, His Word, and His Spirit—are you letting Him lead you? Or do you have plans already? Because if you don’t let Him lead you, church, you won’t be able to pray when people ask for prayer. When you move away from God’s direction, you fall asleep to the spiritual needs of those closest to you. So, how do I set my heart on God’s direction? How do I do it? What do I do to get a wholehearted prayer life back? How do I get my prayer logic back—where it’s not real hard work for me? It’s—it’s like a reflex. I just respond by praying to anything and everything happening in my life. I just respond by praying. Sometimes seven seconds, sometimes seven minutes. Sometimes I have to really get away from people because I need to actually—I feel, I know—the Spirit is making it clear to my heart: I really need to pray. How do I get that back?

It’s so—thank You, Jesus—it’s so simple, church. If you humble yourself, you can just start praying again. Do you understand that because of the cross, because you are forgiven, because you recognize in your heart that you may have not wholeheartedly been focusing on going to Nineveh—whatever that represents in your life—the things of the Word, maybe things the Lord has specifically asked of you, maybe a calling that He placed before you—because of the cross, you can just start again today. Now that you’re aware, now that you realize it, you say, “God, I acknowledge that’s me. I’m making a choice. I’m going to start praying again today.” You don’t have to do any more than adjust your heart to God and to start praying again.

You say, “I’m waking up. I was definitely asleep in that boat. I have not been finding myself praying with people left and right like I once did. I don’t seek Jesus and find Him in a way that just sets my heart on fire like I once did. But I’m—I’m waking up. I’m seeing it now. I’m realizing it. I—I realize I’ve been going in the wrong direction. I haven’t been sailing towards Nineveh. I’ve been going in the wrong direction. But—but I see it now. I acknowledge it. And I’m going to start praying again.”

Psalm 25:4 and 5—an incredible prayer: “Show me Your ways, O Lord. Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation. On You I wait all the day.” It is a prayer of love, but it’s also a prayer of trust. God, not my ways. I want You always—and not my way to get there. I want Your paths and not my opinion. It don’t matter, God, but show me Your truth—the only truth. Show me Your perspective, Your vision. Because I am saved, because You are the God of my salvation. That’s why I have to come to You, humbling myself and saying, “God, teach me where You want me to go. Teach me how You want me to go there, and teach me the truth.” Psalm 25:12: “Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses.” Church, when you fear the Lord, it means that you have more reverence for what God wants, God says, and God’s timing than for your own or anybody else’s. That is how simple, in this context, I can break that down. If you fear the Lord, you care more about what He thinks, He says, and when He wants you to do it than about anyone else—yourself included.

You fear the Lord. And what does the Word say? The man who fears the Lord, him—he that is God—him shall He teach in the way He chooses. He’s going to teach that man how God chooses. You’re going to know how God chooses. You’re going to know exactly the best of all possible choices in this situation would be this—to do this next. That is what God would choose. I agree with Him. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m going towards the direction that God places before me. Church, you have this incredible promise: you’ll know what God would choose. He’ll show it to you. If you would stand with me for just a moment, here’s the altar call. And this is for you online as well. We want to include you in our time of prayer here. If you say, “Lord, there’s things You have called me to do, and Lord, there’s things You’ve called me away from, and I haven’t followed all those directions. There’s things You’ve called me to do in the Word, and maybe even personally as well, and I have not wholeheartedly said yes to the direction. And then there’s things, Lord, You’ve called me away from, and I know I’m going to, but I haven’t yet. I’ve been sailing my own direction. I’ve gone my own way. But Jesus, I see it now. And today I choose to come back. Today I choose Jesus. I’m coming back.”

Psalm 25:4 and 5 again: “Show me Your ways, O Lord. Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation. On You I wait all the day.” Now, if you want to say that to Him this morning, I want to ask you to come and join me right here at the altar. If you want to tell Him, “Lord, show me Your ways. Teach me Your paths and lead me into Your truth and teach me, because You are the God of my salvation. On You I wait all the day.” Would you come and join me here at the altar? If you say, “God, I’m hearing You, and I’m choosing to wholeheartedly say yes today to the direction of Your Word. And Lord, I’m gonna stop doing what You already showed me I shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.” I want to ask every person online—if you are with someone watching, would you tell them, “This is what the Lord is showing me. This is what I should have been doing.” There’s so much power in bringing into the light, acknowledging that God is speaking to you, acknowledging what He has spoken to you in the past, humbling yourself and saying, “I have not been letting God be God in my life, but I’m choosing that today. I’m going to let Him be God.”

If you would do that online, I promise you, as we pray, you’re going to experience a shift in your heart, a shift in your understanding. The disorder will begin to lift off of your life virtually instantly. The clarity of what to do next will be so on your heart, so on your mind. Peace—to be able to sail that sea, whatever that means—to get back into the direction that you are called to be going. You’ll have peace to do it. You’ll be able to see your spiritual discernment wake up, and you’ll be able to know people need prayer again before they even ask. You’ll be praying quietly in your heart. You’ll get your prayer reflex back when you humble yourself and you say, “Lord, would You teach me how to live Your ways, Your paths, Your truth?” “I’m going to place You higher. I’m going to make You Lord. I’m going to serve You—not others, not anything else in my life. You are worthy of my praise. My Jesus told me that I am family when I do the will of the Father. Lord, I don’t want to snatch salvation out of Your hands and run with it, reliving my own life, to then grow callous in heart and possibly even start struggling with unbelief and fall away later in my life, cuz I set the step for my life. Lord, I choose to fear You—to place Your Word, Your opinion, Your presence, Your priorities higher than my own or anyone else’s. I serve You, Lord. I trust You. I want to grow closer to You. You are the One I wait on all the day. I love You, Lord.” Let’s pray, church.

-Pastor Stan Mons