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Episode 2 - Prayer
59 Plays18 days ago
Join us as we discus one of the most important aspects of the Christian life..
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Transcript
Enhancing Spiritual Journey through Prayer
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome back to the Grove Hill podcast. Excited to be back with you today. Having a lot of fun having these conversations with these guys as we talk about life and what really matters in life and Most importantly, what Jesus does to bring us life.
00:00:23
Speaker
Today, we thought ah we'd turn our attention towards prayer and how to grow in your prayer life. um You got three guys sitting in front of you who are dads, one granddad.
00:00:34
Speaker
Talking about the importance of being a priest in your home is really, really important. We want to bring all those aspects in here. But if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, prayer is not an option. It's a necessity for you to continue to grow, to mature.
00:00:48
Speaker
Jesus modeled it in his own life with his disciples. And um man, we we need to we need to get better at it. and I'm gonna lean on you two guys a lot because I'll tell you that's one of the weakest areas of my personal journey with Christ is because my prayer consistency is good. But sometimes um i I guess it's me questioning my own quality of my prayer.
00:01:11
Speaker
You know you get in those seasons where you kind of go, yeah. I don't know, you know, and I don't know.
How to Begin and Personalize Your Prayer Life
00:01:18
Speaker
So I'm going to trust you guys to kind of help fill in some of the gaps here for especially in your special areas where you guys work and minister.
00:01:26
Speaker
So there it is prayer. Where do we start? Somebody jump in and tell me, how do you, how do you start a prayer life? I think the the best thing you can do, just like if you're trying to figure out where you where you're at in your health journey, take an evaluation.
00:01:42
Speaker
Sometimes we just jump in and we have these ambitions and i think it's great. I don't ever want to stop anyone, ah but I want want to just tell them, hey, evaluate where you're at so you can have a better trajectory and see where you want to go.
00:01:59
Speaker
ah because just as much as we are dwelt within you know by the Spirit, There are some things that we need to look at and see what does scripture say about this. So I look at things like ah evaluating how frequently you pray, ah where you pray at, ah what is the direction of your prayer.
00:02:18
Speaker
All those things, those measures, I think really tell a picture of how you live in relationship with God. And so I think if you look at those things, those are good baseline starters that can kind of give you a little bit to go off of.
00:02:32
Speaker
I think prayer can be intimidating for some people because when they see prayer, they see people praying. And so when someone prays and they pray in the King James version and they're these and those they're eloquent with their speech, someone looks at that and goes, I could never do that. yeah Prayer is simply having a conversation with God.
00:02:48
Speaker
And so for a lot of my students, when i when we have prayer time and I say, if you don't know how to pray, just say, God, I don't know how to pray, but I want to talk to you. Right. That's a prayer. And so me personally, the pray without ceasing, I take it into my everyday life. And even in this conversation, I'm including God in on this conversation.
00:03:07
Speaker
It keeps my language in check. It keeps my thoughts in check and because I'm constantly engaging in it I'm not the guy that has the prayer list and I pray through the things every single day. My brain just doesn't work that way.
00:03:21
Speaker
But if I drive by your house, I'm praying for you. If I think of you during the day, I'm praying for you. And so it's different for all people, but you just have to be willing to just get into it. And then if you are called to pray in public, just keep it simple. we're not You're not trying to impress anybody.
00:03:37
Speaker
You're just ah acknowledging the Father in heaven. So both of you have brought up some really cool aspects of discussion around prayer. Number one, the Bible tells us pray without ceasing. What does that look like?
00:03:50
Speaker
A whole lot of praying. And I love what you said, Kyle. It doesn't have to be crazy. in And i I think there are a lot of well-intentioned people that sometimes prayers are patterned because you may hear in a big assembly at a church service or this church way that my family prayed. And sometimes we almost almost pattern our prayers like, Hey, I prayed like grandpa did.
00:04:13
Speaker
And you don't, God didn't intend you to be like grandpa. God intend you intended you to be you. So the simple conversation like we're having now, God desires that. God desires just a ah conversation of, God, I don't understand why I'm going through this. ah God, I know that you have some of these things ah figured out.
00:04:36
Speaker
That's the kind of conversation that I believe God wants. And it's the simple going down the highway. Please do not close your eyes when you're going the highway, by the way. But some of you drive like that. Yeah. Those, those simple aspects of praying and how to's I think are other good places to
Overcoming Obstacles in Prayer
00:04:53
Speaker
start. So the evaluating those things that you mentioned, Kyle, but I also think just starting sometimes people get crippled by it so they don't start at all. Right.
00:05:02
Speaker
Paralyzed by fear. yeah So something else you brought up just as important, the uniqueness of each person's prayer personality, if you will. I don't need to model my prayer life after you. So talk to that a little bit. How do you how do you find your prayer personality?
00:05:17
Speaker
I would honestly think it has to do with your relationship with God. and When someone's been a Christian for 30 years and you ask them to pray and they hesitate to do so, you've got to figure out why. Like maybe you're not communicating with God constantly. And so um figuring that out, I don't know why I'm not a list prayer person. There's people in our church that can sit down as a couple and pray for three hours straight.
00:05:39
Speaker
yeah i can't I can't do that sitting still. um But I could continue on with my day and pray. And so I think it's totally up to how you and your relationship with God is built. Some people work, uh, an insane amount of hours. Some people have downtime.
00:05:55
Speaker
Um, we all have different lifestyles, different upbringings. Um, but we're still called to pray all the time. And so, um, that's gonna, that's kind of going to be up to you on, on how you figure that out in your personal walk.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah. I think one of the things I noticed in my walk, I've talked about how I have my own struggles in my prayer life. One area where I was, or one time in my life where I was much stronger in my prayer life, I had a 20 minute commute back and forth to the office.
00:06:21
Speaker
And that 20 minute commute was a great time for me just to go through my day and think about people that I was praying for in my church and things that were going on in our family. And man, I felt really good and really close that point. I think that's one of the things I think about when we talk about finding your niche with your prayer life.
00:06:38
Speaker
um and I know some very good friends, people in this church, you get up at four o'clock in the morning, have no problem with that. Some of you didn't even know four o'clock came twice a day, but you know, he gets up at four o'clock in the morning, he prays and he's into it. And you know, before he even hits work, he's already spent a great deal of time in prayer.
00:06:56
Speaker
So i think you got to know who you are. talk Going back to what you're talking about, your self-investigation. um What's the biggest obstacles to prayer? ah Busyness.
00:07:07
Speaker
Busyness is a huge obstacle and we think, oh, I don't have time to do this because I've got this. I think maybe cutting something out of your life, maybe that's consuming you.
00:07:18
Speaker
yeah People look that as look at that as taboo, like, oh, I can't cut this out. Okay, well, what are your priorities? because eventually you keep placing this where God should have priority and this in God's priority.
00:07:33
Speaker
Then you start to realize, oh wow, I'm not as close to God as I thought I was. And those things become revealed. But I will say, ah and I drew back on what you were saying, two seasons of my life where my prayer life was kind of like built up and strengthened. One was in college when I went through some health stuff.
00:07:53
Speaker
But the long drive from Chapel Hill to Laverne, Tennessee, almost an hour in the car, yeah an hour and a half sometimes, it was very ah just refreshing because it was just me and God. The kids were asleep at the time.
00:08:07
Speaker
But it was very sweet how the the conversation of just talking to God was cultivated. But some of those obstacles removed the busyness.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's OK. You'll be all right. In fact, I think you'll even find yourself better ah suited in this life that we live. Less anxiety, less worry if you're placing some of those in the situation where you have now busy schedules. So so
Tips to Enhance Prayer Life
00:08:34
Speaker
tip number one for our prayer life is increase the length of your commute. That's right. yeah Get a new job. yeah Get a new job. OK.
00:08:41
Speaker
What else? What's another obstacle? Obstacles, I think, would be just priorities. Back to the pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing means it's our first thing, not our last resort. And so anytime we're encountering anything, our priorities usually get mixed up.
00:08:55
Speaker
We try to figure it out on our own. I'll go talk to Pastor Ridley and he can try to help me figure it out. I'll go talk to a friend, bring them in on it. And yet I haven't stopped to say, God, what's your yeah thought on this? And so just getting the priority straight of saying, hey, I'm going to go him first.
00:09:10
Speaker
And then with his direction, going to bring others in to help me with the situation. Yeah. Where's some others? Some other obstacles. I think you mentioned it earlier, the language deal. Like, oh, um am I using enough these, enough dials?
00:09:25
Speaker
No. ah Here's another thing. Write down your prayer. Maybe go through the Psalms and and look at ah one of those Psalms that acknowledges God and just pray a prayer of thanksgiving.
00:09:38
Speaker
If you don't know where to start, those are really good places to start. And I would say, there is nothing spiritual about these and those because you're looking at the King James. Praying scripture is a great tip for anybody. Just praying straight from scripture is a really good thing. Personalizing it for
Defining Success in Prayer
00:09:54
Speaker
yourself.
00:09:54
Speaker
I think one of the biggest obstacles that we we seldom really think about is unconfessed in our life. um Not only does that impede God from listening and responding to us, but many times because of our recognized guilt, we don't feel worthy to go and have those conversations with God.
00:10:11
Speaker
It takes me back to the story of Adam and Eve the garden. When they sinned, it says that they heard God walk into the garden. The first thing they did is they hid from him. when In reality, the first thing they should have done is turned to him. And we still replicate that kind of behavior in our lives today because we get this unconfessed sin of whatever's going in our life, you know whether it's jealousy or anger, bitterness, lust, whatever it may be.
00:10:32
Speaker
And when we feel that way, instead of going to God, which he implores us to do, we instead kind of bury ourselves and hide away and become less frequent in our conversation with him. So talk to me a little bit how about the subject really is how do you grow in your prayer life?
00:10:49
Speaker
You know, I think most of us, especially if we grew up in a Christian home, we have the now I lay me down to sleep prayers. We have the God blesses food prayers. Hopefully we grow a little bit beyond that. But as adults and true mature followers of Jesus Christ, our prayer life should be growing in its um its depth, its coverage, those kinds of things. So how do you stretch yourself to be a better prayer?
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think it again comes down to communication. um I didn't grow up in a family that communicated very well. And so when I got married, I had to actually learn how to communicate. And so it actually took sitting down and listening and then speaking and listening and speaking.
00:11:24
Speaker
And so the same thing, if we're going to grow in our relationship or we're going to grow our prayer life, it's like anything in this world, you have to practice it. And so you actually have to do it. um That means it could look the worst at the beginning. You could say, ah God, ah how do I? It doesn't matter.
00:11:40
Speaker
start out speaking to the the king of the universe, and he's just going to be happy to hear from you. um If you're a parent, you're happy to hear from your kids, right? And so it doesn't matter what they're saying. They could be saying some dumb stuff.
00:11:52
Speaker
But the fact that they're communicating with you, if your teenager came home and just started spewing out their day and talking to you, you'd be so thrilled. So God sees us the same way. Regardless of what we have to bring to him, he wants to hear from us.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I would say the same thing. um If I don't set specific rhythms for myself, a lot of times I don't follow it. If I don't go ahead and lay the groundwork, like, hey, I'm going to hit this time with my kids every night.
00:12:20
Speaker
And there have been times that I've missed. But if I will set a time to say, hey, babe, let's come in here and let's pray with the kids. And then not just going right into a prayer, but teaching my kids in that moment.
00:12:33
Speaker
Hey guys, the best thing that we can do in talking to God is first of all, acknowledge who he is, not just going to the requests because most of the time in that conversation, the best way to start our prayers off yeah is,
00:12:48
Speaker
man, thank you, God, for who you are. Your character doesn't change all those elements. But first off, let's start a time. Let's put a, a specific place that that prayer is going to go to and when it's going to happen. So I'm going to add something I think is really practical.
00:13:06
Speaker
Um, I think it was anyway. Um, being very careful what you allow into your home.
00:13:14
Speaker
I mean, if you were trying to purify the water in your pool, for instance, it would be stupid to be purifying the water at one end and pouring in trash at the other. um But we do that. And trying to get your mind at a place where it's ready to have a conversation with God is really hard to do after you just turned off R-rated movie or right after your kids put up the battle game or whatever. I mean, there's so many things that we allow in. it And I get it. It's hard to filter all of it.
00:13:41
Speaker
But whatever you can filter... put you in a better mindset. Lisa and I have started this practice on Saturday night of just making sure that we are thinking towards Sunday morning on Saturday night. Making sure that we're not watching things, listening to things, those kinds of things. But but for me, worship is just another form of prayer.
00:14:03
Speaker
When you go to worship, it's it's it's entering into a dialogue with God and listening to His voice and putting out your your prayers, your requests, those kinds of things. So I think in our personal prayer lives at home, the more we can relegate and regulate the things that are being put into our our brain that compete for his attention is very, very helpful.
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah, it takes us back to where you said that unconfessed sin kind of puts that blockade up. ah God hears the prayers of the righteous man. ah It just means that the righteous man is already aligned with God's heart. And so the the words are, you have more in common with God when you're speaking that way. Whereas if you're dwelling in the world and doing all the worldly things, you feel you almost feel ashamed to even approach the throne. It'd be like doing wrong and coming home to your parents. You're like, I don't want to talk. I want to sink away into my bedroom.
00:14:53
Speaker
So same thing. You're, you're muddy in the water over here. You feel disgraced even step before the throne over here. And so to be able to to walk a ah righteous life and and do the best you can with what he's given you.
00:15:05
Speaker
Then when you approach the throne, you're you're on a different common level with them. So how do you measure success in your prayer life?
00:15:15
Speaker
think first off is frequency of, man, if I can go back and evaluate. And I think the believer has to do this. It's not just at the beginning. I think the mature believer that you said is 30 years into this journey, because there's seasons. there You look at any character throughout Scripture that they walked into a relationship with Christ, whether it was from the Old Testament to the new, they had to evaluate in seasons of, man, am I kind of hungering and thirsting for what God's wanting?
00:15:45
Speaker
And so i think when you do that, the biggest thing is frequency for me. Because at the end of the day, conversation with God is not bad at all. Yeah, never a bad time for that.
00:15:57
Speaker
I would say the fellowship with God, because if you kind of if you kind of like gauge it, like, oh, I've been praying for this and it didn't happen, then you can doubt your... your and your success, right? Um, Hey, I prayed for this and it didn't come true, or I've been praying for this and I wasn't healed.
00:16:12
Speaker
Um, but have you drawn near to the Lord? Um, are you in fellowship with him? Are you walking closely with him? Then I would say your prayer life is doing really well. Yeah. I like that you added that because I think that's important that we don't measure success in prayer by the number of answered prayers we see.
00:16:28
Speaker
um Because the the indication in Scripture is that many very godly men prayed great prayers and had them answered, but sometimes it wasn't even in their lifetime. Sure. Sometimes it was many years. God has a time frame that he works because he sees and knows everything that's going on.
00:16:44
Speaker
And so he knows this is going to best fit here in my plan rather than here in my plan. And then, of course, sometimes, as the great philosopher said in country music, some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers, right? Professor Garth Brooks got that one going.
00:16:59
Speaker
And it's true. I mean, many times we catch ourselves praying for things that we don't need, don't deserve, that would probably be disastrous to our faith. And so I think we have to be very cautious about all that. i'm I'm turning to Luke here and Jesus even prayed his heart.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yes. But also requested the will of the father. Yes. And when he was in the garden, he was going towards the cross and he was heavily burdened and he was praying, father, if it's possible, let this cut pass from me.
00:17:24
Speaker
But in the end of each time he prayed that three times, he said, but not my will, your will be done. Right. And so he He prayed for the requests. He prayed for the things. But in the end, he wanted what God wanted. And so it was kind of like that fellowship, right? I would say that's a successful prayer life to be saying, but your will be done. Yeah, to start there. yeah And I think you mentioned it, judging our prayer life based on the request that got the, hey, you're going I think that's a horrible way to judge your prayer life.
00:17:54
Speaker
I think when we get aligned with God's will, yeah if our prayer request gets answered, great, that's cool. That's like the little side, like, awesome, God, thank you for you know hearing me out.
00:18:07
Speaker
But at the end of the day, it's all God's. It is all God's. So looking at and looking at it from that direction, His will be done first.
Encouragement and Upcoming Prayer Event
00:18:16
Speaker
That's the best direction.
00:18:18
Speaker
So let me encourage you, if you are one of those who tries to pray and finds it hit and miss or that it's a struggle, ah you're not alone. Two things I would say to you is, first of all, the disciples had trouble with praying, even though they walked day by day with Jesus and they went to Jesus said, can you teach us how to pray? Yeah.
00:18:38
Speaker
And Jesus, that's where we get that famous Lord's Prayer, which says, Father, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins. That's a great model prayer that Jesus gave us. So don't don't give up on praying. Read the scriptures. Learn from the scriptures.
00:18:54
Speaker
Take notes on what people pray, those kinds of things. The second thing I would tell you is if you're a human adult, you're probably walking today, but you didn't do it the first time you tried. You fell, you got a couple bruises along the way, you got up, you kept on going. Why? Because you were determined that you wanted to walk. There was something you wanted to get to.
00:19:12
Speaker
I think this goes back to kind of our our word for the day, presence, you know, hunger for the presence of God in our lives. um Man, that's so critically important. When you have that hunger, then you have a desire to fight through whatever it takes to get that fellowship that we've been talking about. And so I think it's an important lesson for all of us.
00:19:31
Speaker
You don't give up because you stumble. You just keep on moving. Yep. So that leads to something really important going in the life of our church coming up this Friday night, beginning at 7 p.m. here at our church property. We're doing something called Waiting in the Watching.
00:19:48
Speaker
Worship in the Waiting. Yeah, something like that. He he had the W in the W. Just the pastor, right? It's all good. Worship in the worship and the waiting. It is in conjunction with our 40 days of prayer.
00:19:59
Speaker
And I love how God lines stuff up. We had all this in planning months ago. And all this stuff with you know Charlie Kirk came about. And I think the big divisive nature of what it put our country in. are you on this side, that side?
00:20:18
Speaker
but it put people in the stance of, hey, my life, it needs to go some direction. And we saw people flood into the church. yeah And what better way for the church to respond than to first name in pray.
00:20:32
Speaker
And so our church is walking through this. We're going to be every day having a prayer focus as well as a scripture that aligns. And really our prayers aligning with the scripture and prayers aligning with where God is wanting to take us.
00:20:45
Speaker
But this 24-hour window of time Same thing. We're going to have prayer focuses at each hour, 24 hours. So we're going to have spots for night owls if they want to come out here and pray. yeah But just to be intentional with this relationship ah that God's given us. And and there's going to people that can help you. There's going to be little prayer cards that you'll have to kind of guide you in some of those prayer focuses.
00:21:08
Speaker
But really, really just a good opportunity for the church and for the community to come out and begin to start this conversation with God ah because God wants to hear from us. So this Friday the 26th beginning at 7 p.m. through 7 p.m. on Saturday the 27th.
00:21:24
Speaker
If you've not signed up, it's not too late. Give a call to the church office. We can get you plugged in there. i think it's okay to say just show up even. Yeah, yeah. More than welcome to just show If you time or maybe you had an event that got canceled, just come and show up here at the church property.
00:21:37
Speaker
Take a few minutes to pray. um Man, our our country really needs it. Desperately needs it right now in this season. I don't know many families in our church who don't need it for different reasons.
00:21:48
Speaker
and And just one quick reminder, prayer's not about you trying to change the heart of God. It's about you letting God change your heart. It's about aligning yourself with his will, as Kyle was talking about just a little bit ago. So come join us. Be a part of it. If you can't be there, come join us on Sunday morning, Grove Hill Church. We'd love to have you come worship with us, 8, 9, 30, and 11. If you can't do that, follow us, click like, be a part of what's going on in the conversations here on the podcast, and we will see you next week.