View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 a.m. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, find [email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: I remember as a kid being a very popular thing to debate on the playground was this, whether or not professional wrestling was real or fake. Now, I don't want to spoil anything for anybody in this room because I do know, in fact, that we have some people that absolutely love professional wrestling. So I'll just say this. The building where they wrestle is real, the arena is real. They wear costumes, and the people are actors. But I'll let you decide what you want to decide about that. But part of the reason professional wrestling got to be so popular, in my opinion, was because of this guy, Hulk Hogan. And I was glad to know earlier that one of our high schoolers, when he saw the PowerPoint ahead of time, he's all Hulk Hogan. Like. I didn't know that the generation before knew who this was, but evidently, he's part of the reason why professional wrestling got so popular. He's like six foot six, if you remember, around 300 and something pounds.
And I think part of what made him so popular is not just because he was a good wrestler, but also because he kind of endeared himself to people. And what I mean by that, he would say a phrase like brother. And then he had the people that followed him. He called them Hulkomaniacs. And it was amazing that there would be this guy that was so strong, that was so buff, yet he would hold up a kid in an advertisement for vitamins. And by the way, I was thinking about those vitamins I remember as a kid, like, those were the ones I wanted mom to buy because I thought there would be a direct connection between the amount of vitamins I took into my body that were chalk and that would make me strong. And so I had a lot of upset stomachs, I guess, is what I'm saying, when I was a kid. And so because he was so popular, you all might remember this. There was a time where professional wrestling seemed to invade everything. Everybody loved to wrestle, no matter what it was. And I think part of that, obviously being a guy, that would happen. But I remember growing up two times in particular that wrestling seemed to stand out. One of those times was every single Thanksgiving. Our tradition as a family was to go down to Florida to visit my family down there. And whenever we did that, we had two traditions. One of those traditions was to watch the Florida Florida state game together. The other tradition was for my cousins, who were all older than me, and because they had no other younger male nephew, was to treat me basically like this, a wrestling buddy. And I don't know if y'all remember these things, but these were given to kids, so they didn't put their sisters in a headlock. And so I remember they would wrestle me. And I knew going in that I'm basically going to be treated like a wrestling dummy. In fact, there's a few traumatic experiences I remember. One of those was my uncle, their dad. And keep in mind, these four guys, they were all like, big rip guys. They were all firemen. And they would get on the top of the flowers bread truck and say, hey, we're going to throw and catch. Like, that's how they treated me. Some of y'all think, well, that's what's wrong with. But, like, that's what happened a lot growing up. So whenever I knew we were going to Florida, I was like, I know what's coming. I'm going to be that wrestling buddy. They're going to wrestle me on the ground. They're going to put me in a headlock. And so what I would do, knowing that I was about to go, thought, you know, if I do a bunch of push ups, like the week of, I'm going to get really strong and I'm going to be able to wrestle them. So I would do all these pushups, I would do all these curls and do these sit ups, all in preparation for that wrestling. And I do remember at times each year I got older, whenever I would wrestle them in a very patronizing way, they would say something like this, oh, little Andy thinks he's getting stronger.
And truthfully, maybe Andy did. But Andy wasn't strong enough to actually beat them. And yet I would still try to prep myself ahead of time for that wrestling match. Now, fast forward. We have three kids, and I don't know if you guys are like this with your kids, but our kids love to turn our living room floor into a wrestling arena.
And when you picture the wrestling, I know, you're probably picturing, yes, Cruz and yes, Cam. And it usually ends with somebody crying and everybody sweaty. But you would be surprised that one of our most intense wrestlers in the family is Dawson Tiana. I mean, this girl, she loves to.
So we do what a lot of people know. You get the blankets and the pillows and you put them around the fireplace so the kids don't hit their head on it. And so we do all that, clear the furniture. And every time we wrestle. And the boys can probably finish this sentence for me, but Dawson loves to say this phrase, see, I'm getting stronger. See, I'm getting stronger. See, I'm getting stronger. And see, I think therein lies part of the reason why people like to wrestle. And whether it was me with my cousins or whether it's me wrestling in the living room floor with my daughter, that one of the values of wrestling is as you wrestle sometimes you realize, man, I'm a little bit stronger than I realized.
But on the flip side, when you wrestle sometimes, maybe it's like with my cousins, you realize, man, I'm a little bit weaker than I thought.
And the reason why I say that is today we're going to open up our bibles to colossians four. And when we do, we're going to read about a man in the bible named Epaphras that had one of the most interesting compliments ever given to anybody. And it was this.
He was a guy that was wrestling together with people in prayer.
And as we think about this idea of wrestling together in prayer, what I want to encourage you to think about is that every single person in this room, I don't care what you brought into here. We're all wrestling with something. You're wrestling with a difficult job. You're wrestling with something going on in your family. You might have a sick family member. You might be struggling physically. You might be struggling spiritually. Your job situation, it might be tough. We all wrestle with things. We all struggle through things. But what I want us to see as Apaphras gives this amazing connection with the people of wrestling together in prayer, exactly like that physical wrestling with my cousins or that wrestling with my daughter. What you'll realize with the physical wrestling is the exact same thing we'll realize with spiritual wrestling. And it's this.
That when we wrestle with all of those tough things that every person in this room deals with, what we find out is that we're either stronger than we thought, but sometimes as we wrestle through things, we realize, you know what? I'm not as strong as I thought I was.
But here's what's neat about those moments where we don't feel like we're strong enough. We're going to look at a man in a second in the Bible named Jacob who wrestled with God.
And at first he starts to win. But then you start to notice, little by little, he starts to realize, oh, no, I'm not as strong as I thought I was.
And what happens is as we wrestle through those difficult things, even realizing we aren't maybe strong enough, that we end up being stronger on the other side because it generates within us a surrender, a dependence on someone greater than us. Us. And so what I want to invite you to do is to turn with me to Colossians four. And by the way, just to kind of give you full approval of this. Hulk Hogan, this is a real quote I found in preparation for this. He said to all my hulkomaniacs, say your prayers, take your vitamins, and you'll never go wrong. And I do agree with that. But in all seriousness, what we're going to look at today in the book of Colossians from Apaphras is part of God's plan for the church, is for us not to have to walk through life alone. It's not for us to have to handle our struggles alone.
But as was mentioned in the scripture reading this morning, I love when you talked about arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, because what you're reading in just a second in the book of Colossians was not written to one person. It was written to a community, the church. And so let's give a little context to this wrestling and prayer. Why were they wrestling? And what were they wrestling with? What were they struggling with? So this text comes from the book of Colossians. The letter to the Colossians was written to the church in Colossae. And the person that wrote this letter was a guy named Paul. And here's what's interesting about the person that wrote it, paul, at this time, he's writing this very letter. He's in prison. And not only is Paul in prison when he's writing this letter, but he has never visited the church in Colossae. So you might be thinking, well, how in the world is he getting a letter to them? And how does he know what's going on in the church in Colosse and what they're wrestling with? What they're struggling with? Well, if you look in Colossians, chapter one, verse seven, it says there's this man named Epaphras. And what a lot of people believe that Epaphras did. He was kind of like the messenger. He was that guy that was taking the struggles of the people and taking them to Paul. Listen, this is what they're struggling with. This is what they're dealing with. And many of their struggles had to do with a very skewed view of Jesus. The roman empire was the ones that were kind of over them. And so if you know anything about your history in the Roman Empire, that was a very difficult group of people to have to be under. But here's part of the reason why Paul reminds them that there's somebody wrestling with them in prayer.
Colosse, for a long time, was like the hub city.
They were the place everybody went. They were the group of people that everyone kind of looked up to. That's where the trade happened. That's where the commerce happened. If you were a who's who in society, you went to colosse. But then here's what happened. Laodicea, another city in that area, started to grow. And y'all have seen this take place in different regions in the United States, that when a new area comes out, what starts to happen? People start moving to that area. Well, that's what happened. People were leaving Colosse and all going to Laodicea. And so these families that had businesses for one, two, three, and four generations, they're starting to look at, like, where's our people?
No one's here. We don't have the money we're bringing in, like we did before.
And so in the middle of what is also poverty, here's what Colosse also experienced.
They experienced not one, but two earthquakes.
And then on top of that, right before this letter was written, you know who their emperor was? A guy named Nero. Do you know anything about him? I mean, some of the most cruel things done by any king, ruler, emperor of all time. So you see what's happening. They feel like a bunch of has beens of people that people don't think of, they don't care about. People have all left our town. And then on top of that, we look around, not as they're just financial trouble, there's physical trouble. And now our leader is this guy Nero. Like, that's their situation.
And so that's why it's so important that we read this in the text. And so now we know the context. I hope it means a little bit more, because this is what the text says that we're going to focus on today.
Epaphras, who is one of you he's a servant of Christ Jesus. He greets you. He's always wrestling on your behalf in prayers. And notice what it says here so you can stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. And then he goes on to say, I'm bearing witness to this, that he is working hard for you right now and for those in Laodicea and Hieropolis. Now, there's certain phrases in the Bible. When you read through it, it may not mean a lot to us, but if you're in their shoes, please understand certain phrases mean the world to them. And one of the phrases that means the world to them is the one I put in red here. When it says that Apaphras was one of them, keep in mind, what did they go through?
They're dealing with Nero, earthquakes.
They've had all these false teachers come into town. I mean, they're dealing with a lot of stuff. People are leaving town.
And so when they hear that Apaphras is one of them, he's saying, you know, the struggles you feel, the way that no one seems to care about you, you're overlooked. I'm letting you know Apaphras is not like that. Apaphras has you in mind. You were on his heart.
And the reason why I want to highlight that is because if you go back to colossians one and you break down even some of the greek terms here, one of the things that's mentioned about Apaphras is that he's got a lot going on. He's serving the Lord. He's sharing the gospel with other people, teaching them one of the other epistles shares the fact that Apaphras was also in prison at another time, sharing the gospel with somebody else. And the reason I'm sharing with you that Epaphras had a whole lot going on in his life is even though he was busy, he was still not too busy for the people.
And the reason why I want to highlight that is one of the things that I love that our shepherd shared with us two weeks ago is that over the past few years, God has blessed us with growth. And the growth that we are experiencing has nothing to do with us. We're the hands and feet, but it's what God is giving.
But with that growth also comes a responsibility for us as a church that is growing, to still have that small fill and how we have that small fill is by what was mentioned there is to kind of be like a paphras, to be one of the people that this guy that was going in all these different directions that had a lot going on is basically saying, hey, I know you feel neglected, but there's a guy that's still one of you. We always need to be one of us, right? One of you to look after those that feel at times that they're left out, forgotten. But then this is where this all connects. And y'all, this is so cool.
It goes on to say this, and you're going to see a neat connection here in just a second. It said epaphras. This one of you, he's always wrestling on your behalf in prayers.
Now, there's sometimes when I go through the Bible and I'll read something, I'll be like, wait, what? This is one of those that, when I read he's wrestling on your behalf in prayer, I'm like, what does that look like? And do I do that? And how do I do that? And by the way, we're going to answer those questions, but when we read this, we may not think it's a big deal, but to the audience, when they hear that apaphras is wrestling in prayer, that word wrestle means something completely different to them. The word wrestle in the Greek is this one. And if you'll notice what that word looks like, doesn't that look very close to our word agonize or agonizing?
And that's the point, that when they hear the word wrestling, that he's wrestling in prayer, this is what they picture.
So today, one of our most popular things to be a part of is a sporting event where we go watch our favorite team. And whenever we go watch our favorite team, you all know, we put our team colors on and we stand in the stands and we're cheering for them, and we're working as hard as we can from the stands and doing all we can to cheer them on in the right direction. But what's happening on the field, they're doing all the work. Okay, so the word wrestle here in the Greek, when they read it, they picture this because the word wrestle in wrestling, the ring where they wrestled during this time was called an agon, which comes back to this word wrestle. And the people that wrestled were called agonzes. And so what would happen is each town would have somebody that was one of them, somebody that was raised there, somebody that was a part of them. And what they would do is they would see this guy training in the street, they would see him running around, and he was kind of like their representative. And so what they would do is they would go to these wrestling arenas. They would have on their shirts, their clothes, as if it were to cheer on their guy who was one of them. But during this day, when they wrestled in that ring, they weren't doing what we do know, wrestling for tv ratings. They were wrestling to the death.
And the reason I want to highlight that for you is when they hear Epaphras is one of them and he's wrestling, this is the picture that they have in mind, that this is a guy that's not just giving me, hey, we're here for you, and then where is he? No, he is literally there with them, wrestling in prayer to the utmost part that he can do. You see what Apaphras is? Apaphras is that guy. He's wrestling. He's fighting on behalf of his brothers and sisters and his friends in prayer. And by the way, a neat thing about Apaphras, there's actually a statue of him up until this day. And one of the things that you'll see at the foot of his statue a lot are palm leaves. And the reason they put palm leaves is after he died, he received what is called the palm of martyrdom.
And that day, whenever you gave somebody a palm, it was a sign that as they were dying, they were still protecting the people.
Isn't that amazing? Like, that's who this guy was. So when he says, apaphras, he's one of you guys, and not just one of you, he's in the ring going to this depth for you.
They haven't felt that. They haven't thought that in such a long time.
And so the first question I think of is, well, has anyone wrestled with me in prayer?
Have I experienced that? And there's two moments that really stick out to me.
And you all know, one of these, or part of it, I've shared with you before. In 2004, when I went to faultner my freshman year, dad got diagnosed with cancer. And his diagnosis he got at that time was six months to a year to live.
And a few weeks after, I guess that got public, there was a girl at faultner named Jesse.
And she came up to me right after chapel, and she said, hey, andrew, I can't right now. I'm about to go to class. But I was wanting to see if you wouldn't mind meeting me somewhere this afternoon. I just want to chat with you for a little bit. I was like, yeah, sure, that's fine. And I said, where do you want to meet? And so there's a park bench at school, and we met there, and we picked the time when we were going to meet, and I'll go ahead and tell you. At first I thought, oh, no, what did I do wrong? I don't know if you are that way. If you know there's a meeting in 4 hours, you're like, oh, no. You're starting to play through all your mistakes. Anyway, so I show up there, and I end up sitting down on this park bench with her. And she said, hey, I know this is random and kind of out of nowhere. And she said, I was debating whether or not to do this, but I heard about your dad's diagnosis, and the first thing I want to tell you is, I'm sorry, but the other thing that I want to tell you is, I don't know if you know this, but my mom's going through a very similar thing.
And she began to tell me about the struggle that she's had, which was so intense. And she said, I guess why I reached out to you is I wanted you to know that you're not alone.
But the other thing I thought maybe we could do, since we're at this school together is maybe we can meet together and we can pray about it but also encourage each other. I was like, whoa.
Because it's one thing, yes, for you to hear about people praying, but then for somebody to enter into something like that in proximity and pray with you.
The other time that I think about is one of our shepherds and elders at the Robertsdale church of Christ. When we were there, his name is Johnny. And Johnny at this, he's 80 something years old. Awesome, man. And I'll never forget, I was up at the office one day, and this is right after Dawson had had her first two seizures. And so that, of course, shook us and rocked our world. And we're trying to process through all of that, and he shows up at the church building. He knocks on the door and he says, hey, andrew, I'm sorry. I don't want to keep you long, but you got a second? I was like, yes, sir, I got some time. And he said, first, I just want to tell you I am so sorry to hear about what she's been dealing with. And I just want you to know I love you. I was like, well, thanks, man. I appreciate that. And then he said, how about this? I'm going to just come by if that's okay, and we're going to pray till God gets this whole thing and we get this whole thing figured out. I was like, yeah, that would be awesome.
And so what he says is, well, can we pray right now. And I'm like, well, absolutely, man.
And so then Johnny walks around, and I was just expecting him. I was sitting in my swivel chair, so I was expecting him just to sit in the chair across from me. He walks in, walks around my desk while I'm still sitting on that swivel chair, gets down on both of his knees and puts his arm like this on me, and he's starting to pray. And by the way, at that moment, I feel really guilty. I'm sitting on a swivel chair because this man that I look up to so much, and all of a sudden, I go from swivel to on my knees too. And I'm like, all right, yeah, let's do this. And it wasn't just that day. I can't tell you all how many times he just came into my office, walked in, didn't say anything, got around the desk, put his arm around me, hit his knees, and just started praying for my daughter.
Has anyone ever wrestled with you in prayer over something? A family member, a friend, a child, someone going through a difficult time?
But to me, there's two follow up questions that we have to ask, and they're this.
Right now, in your life, do you have people that will go into the ring for you that you know you can call on and that they will do that?
But on the flip side, are you going into the ring for others?
You might think, well, why is it so important to wrestle in prayer over stuff? Well, we can mention a few reasons. One of those, I think, is this.
The community of people that you wrestle in prayer with is usually the community you also grow with.
I think back to my senior year at Faulkner, one of my budies was going through a difficult time, and we were all getting married. And so we had no clue what we were doing. We were all getting jobs, and we also had no clue what we're doing with that either. And so we got together every Wednesday night after bible class, and all we did was just get together and pray.
And y'all have seen these guys. They come here to Madison once a year to come visit us, to hang out with us.
And I'll go ahead and tell you, there's a lot of people in this room that are some of the people I look up to. The absolute most are the ones that have wrestled with me in prayer over stuff. So there's that part of it. But you also might think, well, why do we have to wrestle? Like, why can't it just be easy? Why does prayer always have to sometimes be like this struggle at times. Well, I'll say it from this perspective, too, that one of the reasons I believe we wrestle in prayer through difficult things sometimes is so we can be more attuned to our need for blessing.
If everything always came easy, every time I think we would struggle to learn to depend upon God.
Like, if everything always came easy, here's what I think can happen, because it's happened with me.
When things have come easy for me at times, sometimes I have started to think that I'm the source of the blessings, that it's what I worked hard for, what I created. See, wrestling in prayer helps you put things in a proper perspective. I'll give you this example. This is one of the most bizarre examples to me in all the bible of anything.
But it's a moment when Jacob wrestled with God. Now, I want to give you a little bit of context. Jacob and Esau, his twin brother, they were twins. And I feel like I connect with this story and like it a lot because my dad's a twin, Lorianne's dad's a twin. And one thing I know about twins is twins sometimes can have the most amazing connection. That's hard to explain, but yet they couldn't be any more different.
That's what we've experienced. And if you have twins or no twins, that's usually the case. That was Jacob and Esau. Esau was like, this manly man. Jacob was not. And here's the problem with Jacob. Jacob had this pattern in his life of manipulation and deception. And a lot of times, Jacob actually got away with it. If you remember, early on, Jacob had manipulated and deceived his brother Esau out of his birthright.
And then we fast forward.
Jacob puts hair on his arms to feel like his brother Esau, who's a hairy, manly man, deceives his dad, and his dad gives him the blessing instead of giving that, of course, to him. And so Esau finds out the fact that he deceived him again. And so Esau is furious. He's on his way to find Jacob. Jacob runs away. And Jacob runs away and starts working with his uncle Laban just to try to get away.
And so while Jacob's working with his uncle Laban, here's what I think. I think Jacob, for a little bit, thinks he got away with it, but then he finds out that Esau is on his way with 400 servants.
So Jacob's like, oh, boy, he's about to throw down on me in just a second. He said, you know what? I know what we can do. I'm going to send him some gifts. I'm going to send him some presents, and maybe that'll kind of win his affection. Do you see this pattern? He's manipulating. He's deceiving over and over and over again. And I know this is not what this is about, but also the prayer, in just a second that he has in this time with God, he has, in just a second, helps him to stop this pattern of manipulation and deception.
And I just want to say for a second, no matter what has happened in our life and how difficult it may be, no amount of manipulation and deception will ever get us out of a mess.
We teach that right to our kids. But we also got to remind ourselves, too, that every single one of us are only going to be as good as we are honest.
That once we come to the front and say, no, I did wrong. See, he was struggling with that. And so what happened is those 400, and they started head their way, and he realized, oh, no, that didn't win them over. And so that night, he lays down, and there's different interpretations. Some people believe he could have been asleep. The ESV points to the fact that it just happened at night. And that night, he's praying to God, asking God to deliver him. And in this prayer, he starts wrestling, and he's wrestling with who we find out later is God. And in the middle of this wrestling match, notice what happens at the very beginning, Jacob's actually winning the wrestling match.
And part of me thinks that that is him thinking, hey, you know what? I got away with it before. I'm getting away with it again. Then all of a sudden, he realizes it's God. God barely touches his hip, and what happens? It goes limp.
You know what he realizes in that prayer, in that time with God?
Oh, I'm not as strong as I thought I was.
See, again, that's what wrestling in prayer will sometimes produce. It will help us to realize we're stronger than we thought we were. But in Jacob's instance, it made him realize, oh, no, I'm weaker than I thought.
But here's what that wrestling did that it created for him, a surrender that he starts to understand, no, I can't manipulate anymore. I can't deceive anymore. And by the way, his name ends up being changed to Israel. You know what that means? God who fights.
The reason he became more dependent, the reason he grew, is because he wrestled with something very difficult.
When we think of the spiritual disciplines, of course we think of prayer, we think of fasting. We might think of, of course, worship and Bible study and all of those things have their place in our spiritual growth. But one of the things I want us to consider and to add to our list of spiritual disciplines is the spiritual discipline of wrestling together in prayer. And here's why we have to have this.
You've heard the statement like I have all growing up, people are either in a trial, they're going into a trial, they've left one, or they're about to be one. Like, that's the pattern of life. You're leaving one, you're going into one, or you're in one. And when those moments of pressure come, what's going to rise to the surface? What's going to be your inclination? For Jacob, for years, it was manipulation, it was deception. But what my prayer is, and I know our shepherd's prayer for us as a congregation, is that our impulse in the good moments and in the bad moments as a group of people, we will hit our knees together and praise God for the good moments, but we'll hit our knees together and pray to God and plead to him in the difficult moments. How can we make that our impulse reaction?
Well, I think a lot of it starts with what Brandon talked about last week. It's you creating that discipline and that desire in the unseen moments to reach out to that person, to reach out to this person and to join them in prayer. I'll give you the example of Daniel. Do y'all remember when those men didn't like Daniel in the Bible and they tried to sign that law to say, hey, listen, hey, king, will you sign a law that anytime someone prays to or reaches out to another God or any other being other than you, they'll be thrown into the lions then. Oh, yeah, I love that. And so he signs that law. And what happened to Daniel?
Well, he kept praying. But did he start doing that after the law had been signed?
No. If you look back in your Bible, Daniel was praying three times a day for that group of people. He was wrestling in prayer on their behalf before that law was signed, before he heard about the lion's den. What I'm saying is this, for Daniel, the crisis did not create the discipline.
It revealed the discipline that was with him and that he had established from the very beginning.
I'll explain it kind of like in sports terms. So one of the things that I remember back to when I coached basketball at Prattville Christian, our head basketball coach, Jason Robertson, one of the things he loved to do, and he's still there by the way to this day, and they've won so many state championships. One of the things that he loves to do in practice is he loves to put. And we would put our players in difficult spot all throughout the game, like, a lot of pressure, make them make some very difficult decisions in practice. And part of the other thing he did is at least once a week we scrimmaged. Prattville High School. All right? We are Prattville Christian Academy. We were like a two a or a three a school. We're scrimmaged in them. We're getting ran out of the gym, okay, is what I'm telling you. But the reason why he did that and the reason why he tried to create all these difficult moments in practice is that when the game time came, what was the impulse? Those things that we had established from the very beginning? That's the thing about discipline. And I tell my kids this, and it's a truth of life when it comes to discipline. We're choosing between two pains. We're either choosing between the pain of regret or the pain of discipline.
Like, you're going to either live in the pain of, you know what? I should have worked hard in school, and because I didn't, now I don't have this outcome.
Or you can choose the pain that you're going to have to choose either way, a pain of discipline and actually maybe get what you want most. That's what discipline is. It's the choice between what you want right now and what you need the most.
We're choosing between one thing or the other. What I'm saying is there's always a choice of pain, either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Choose the pain of this discipline. So when crisis does come, this is our impulse to hit our knees together in prayer. And we don't have time to go through all of this today. But why do we struggle to pray? I think part of it is we are people that are fixers by nature, and prayer puts things out of our hands sometimes. We maybe have never learned to pray, that we see prayer more as a ritual than a relationship.
Maybe it's because prayerlessness can be hidden. I love what Brandon mentioned about this because it's true that you think about that check engine light that's on your car. To me, prayerlessness is the check engine light that your heart's gone proud. It's the idea, like, I've got this. No, I don't got this.
I need someone smarter than me, more powerful than me in this moment. But I also think sometimes it's our sin. We think, man, God wouldn't want to hear from me. If you want to hear something encouraging, go through all of David's prayers in the book of psalms. Do you know what they're usually in response to? His failures as a dad, his failures with his family, his failures as a king. But do you know what he keeps saying in all of those prayers? You're my king. You're my God. You're my lord. That's a personal pronoun for him, saying, you still want to hear from me?
Don't let your sin cause you to think that God doesn't want to hear from you. But the other part is this. I think sometimes we don't believe prayer works.
Or maybe we read the Bible in a one sided way. And what I mean by that is, it's just something I read. It's not something that transforms me and that God is a part of with me.
So here's why I want to encourage you.
Whatever struggle it is that you have with prayer, because we all do, is I want you to encourage you to know that the victory is worth that struggle. Now, when you read that, you might think, wait, did he mean to say that? He probably said that wrong. He meant to say, the struggle is worth the victory. No, I didn't. I meant to say the victory is worth the struggle. Because you go to ephesians six, and I love what Brandon shared last week, that one of the things that that text lets us know is that the war has been won.
When Jesus went to the cross, he defeated sin and the power it has over our lives and gives us hope of heaven and gives us hope here on this earth. The war is won, but there's still a battle, right?
This two can be true. The war can be won, but there can still be a battle. But here's the neat thing about the battle. The whole book of Ephesians is to let us know we're on the side of victory.
So here's what I want to encourage you to think about with your prayers, even though you're struggling that we are praying right now from victory, not for victory.
Does it encourage you to know that even as you pray and you may get the answer you want, sometimes you don't.
Sometimes God gives yeses. Sometimes he gives, in our eyes, what seem to be no's.
But at the same time, please understand that we're praying from a place of victory. When we understand where we're praying from, it creates this confidence that's within us.
I told our prayer class this past summer, when we were going through all the different books, I shared with them, how I kept getting put on this one baseball team every year that was much better than all the other teams. And I was not a good batter, and I was okay in the field. But what was interesting, my only job, really, was to be like, the dugout dad. I was the guy trying to get everybody fired up, get everybody encouraged. If things were going bad, that was my role. But what was cool is I didn't really contribute that much to the team. But at the end of the year, I kept getting to hold up the trophy.
And that's what Paul's getting at here. He's like, that's you. Like, he won it. And so now, as the people, you get to hold up this, that we get to hold up the fact that God has won victory. And the cool part is, when we think about this text, if you're like me, I think about the armor of God, that one soldier, but a more accurate description, because he's writing this to the whole church, this is a better picture, that it's not just you alone in a battlefield. It's us, arm in arm, marching forward. So let's close with this. We said in the very beginning, this is a part of God's unique plan. How can we do that here at Madison? Well, on vision Sunday, our shepherd shared with us one of our main goals as a congregation that was to create a culture of prayer. Here's how we came about with that. What we did is we took every aspect in the bible of what God has called the church to be, and we ranked ourselves.
We said, all right, what are we really doing? And we ranked ourselves in every little area. And what we found as a church that we have got to step up our game on and get better at is not just saying, hey, buddy, I'm going to pray for you, but to actually pray with people then and there. Because as we dug into the scriptures, what we started to see is people in the Bible, they didn't just say, hey, I'm praying for you. You know what they did? They stopped and they prayed when they were in the presence of other people.
And so how can we do this? Well, one of the things that needs to happen is the location must change. What I mean by that is we need to rethink the location. Prayer doesn't just have to happen here. It doesn't have to just happen before bed. It doesn't have to just happen at the table. But when you're with those people in that moment to have those what we call on the spot prayers.
In fact, I guess just as I shared with you earlier, those two moments that stick out to me, why do those stick out?
Because they were with me. In fact, I was talking with someone just last week, and they know Brandon talked about the power of prayer. And I got to tell you, I was getting ready to have a surgery, and one of the ministers and one of the elders, they saw me in the foyer. They said, hey, come here.
And he said, you know, in my life, I have never experienced that. I've had a lot of people say, hey, I'm praying for you, budy. I'm praying for you. But to have somebody pull me aside and put their arm around me and pray, he said that was a whole nother experience, and it really is. And that's what we're talking about. That outside of epistles, all the moments of prayer is when they said they had a struggle. You know what they did? They stopped everything in that moment and they prayed. Number two, the list must change. We might think, well, that's not worthy of praying about. No one wants to hear about that. Have y'all heard a kid pray? They are awesome. They pray about, know, Dawson prays about things she likes and the things she dislikes about me, like all the things get prayed about in those prayers. But that's what I love. It's the honesty. And so if you have something to praise God about and you tell that person, pray with them. If they have something that's difficult that they're going through, take that time, pray with them.
When we think about the list, let's redefine the list. If it's something that's big enough for you to worry about, I'm telling you, it's big enough for us to pray about. And if it's on your heart, I can promise you it's also on God's heart and it's on his mind, let's praise God for the good moments and let's hit our knees together for those difficult moments. And here's the final thing. In order for this to happen, it takes leadership from everybody.
The beauty of this, as you go throughout the scriptures, it was ordinary men and women that were helping create this culture.
And when we think of leadership, we think, well, it's got to be this. Leadership is not about a title. You and I know people that are called boss and manager, but that doesn't make them a leader. Right. Leadership is about your ability to influence somebody for good.
That for all of us, it's going to take that initiative, to maybe try it as something new, to pray in those moments for those people. So that's the action step for this week. I want to encourage you to wrestle with someone in prayer. If someone says, hey, I got this happen to me, but, hey, let's go. Thank God for that. If they're going through something difficult in that moment, go to this. Let's pray with them right then and there and bring it before God. Here's why this is so important.
If you look in Ephesians six, after all that armor is mentioned, it says so in everything. Here's what we want you to do. Pray in everything. You know what the context of Ephesians six is, is a battle with Satan.
It's about the spiritual realm.
And in this picture, I'll kind of explain to you the power of prayer through this, and then the lesson's yours. That's a sea eagle picking up a banded sea snake. A banded sea snake has in its body enough poison to kill ten human beings with one bite. But do you know what? The sea eagle loves to eat banded sea snakes. So what the eagle will do is he will hover above the waters and the land, and when the sea snake's not paying attention, he'll swoop down, pick up that snake, and shoot into the sky. He doesn't stay on the ground. He shoots in the sky. And in the sky, he kills that snake.
Why? Well, here's why. Because the snake he knows down on the ground might have some leverage.
But when he moves that snake out of its comfort zone and puts him in his comfort zone, he no longer has power.
I'm telling y'all, the one thing Satan wants for us as a church is to not pray.
Because he knows that when we pray, it takes things from the realm of what is his comfort zone and puts them in God's.
So when you think about the battles that you're going through, we want to encourage you to know you're not alone in those. Every single Sunday, we offer the opportunity for you to go to one of these doors. If you want to find one of our elders and shepherds to pray with them, they'll take you to the side somewhere and pray with whatever you got going on. We also have the opportunity for you to walk down front.
But maybe what you need to do is just the person on your pew that you're a good friend with, or maybe you don't know that much and you've got a family member that had a difficult diagnosis, or whatever it might be, pull them to the side and take that moment to pray with them.
I guess what I'm saying is God is trying to show us, through this text and throughout the Bible as an example of paphras, that every single one of us wrestles with something.
But the value of wrestling in prayer is we either find out we're stronger than we thought or we're weaker than we thought. But if we find out we're weaker, what it actually produces within us is exactly what happens with Jacob. You might have a limp, but it will also produce for you a surrender.
Maybe you need to confess sin today. Maybe you need to put on Christ in baptism. Maybe you need prayers. We want you to know we love you, God loves you, and you're not alone. So whatever you have a need of, please come while we stand and sing the song.
