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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

Prayer Shift

Eric Walsh and I'm glad to be with you all again.

Sister Grace has invited me and I appreciate the invitation.

We are just pleased to be able to share this time with you.

We are going to get right into God's Word.

We have a special message on prayer tonight that we want to share.

We're going to go to the book of Psalms, the 77th chapter, verse 11 and 12.

And the Bible says, I will remember the works of the Lord.

Surely I will remember thy wonders of old.

I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled, The Prayer Shift.

Father God, we thank you for bringing us together in this place, virtually, digitally, across continents, Lord.

Ask Lord that you speak through me tonight.

Instead, Father, Let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

It's our prayer in Jesus' precious and holy name.

We're going to start by reminding you of the departure from Egypt the children of Israel had to do.

10 powerful plagues fell on Egypt, the last taking the firstborn child of any who had not put blood on the post of their door.

The children of Israel triumphantly marched out, but they did not march out alone.

There were Egyptians who saw the hand of God and its victory, and they decided to march with the children of Israel.

This created what we call a mixed multitude.

And so there was this mixed multitude, and as they reached to the Red Sea, there was panic and fear, as we're going to see, as Pharaoh, even after 10 plagues and the complete destruction of Egypt, as his advisors describe it in the scripture, decides to follow the children of Israel to try and destroy them.

Exodus chapter 14 and verse 10 says, And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them.

The children of Israel cried out unto the Lord.

Here now, they had seen all these miracles.

They had, God had shown up for them so many times.

And now they were free from under Pharaoh's thumb, but when they look back and they see Pharaoh come and they panic.

You see, they were trapped because in front of them was the Red Sea.

They couldn't just run into that deep sea.

And flanked on either side were steep mountains where they could not quickly, especially with that volume of tens of thousands of people, run up the sides of a mountain.

And so as they looked back, the fear of the Egyptians took over them.

And they cried unto the Lord, and they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?

Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt.

They do not cry unto the Lord the prayers of faith, they cry unto the Lord the prayer of complaint.

And as they are in this situation, and as things are getting difficult, They say to Moses, weren't there enough graves for us to be buried back in Egypt?

Have you taken us out here in the wilderness to die?

You know, it's funny when God delivers us sometimes and we reach a place of discomfort, how quickly we question God's movements.

But verse 12 says, is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians.

For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.

A spirit, church listen, a spirit of great doubt consumes the children of Israel.

They are more worried about the Egyptians and reminding Moses that they said we should have just stayed where we were, we could have just served the Egyptians.

But there are 3 things that happen when you begin to doubt.

Number 1, doubt is in and of itself addictive.

The more you doubt, the more you like to rest on doubt.

The more you like to verbalize your doubt, because by doing this you feel better.

You feel a sense of control if you doubt.

Didn't we tell you you should have left us in Egypt so we could have served the Egyptians?

The addictive nature of it is to feed self through fear.

So you get the fight or flight, the rush of adrenaline.

You get that feeling, but at the same time, you don't channel it into faith.

You channel it into fear and doubt, and it becomes addictive.

You keep going back to the doubt rather than trusting God.

The second thing that doubt is, is that doubt is contagious.

If you are in a church body or in a group and people begin to doubt and they begin to whisper doubt to others, doubt becomes contagious.

Where 1 Christian may have been firm in their belief.

In a church where people begin to doubt, they may begin to question God.

But the third and maybe the most frightening aspect of doubt is that doubt, because of its fight or flight response, because of the rush of adrenaline, it messes with the mind, And doubt is an amnestic agent, meaning it causes you to forget.

In fact, it disproportionately causes you to forget the good that God has done for you.

Doubt is a dangerous thing, and the children of Israel soon begin to get overrun with doubt.

In fact, Exodus 14, 13, and 14 says this, And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show you today.

For the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them again no more forever.

He says, the Lord shall fight for you and ye shall hold your peace.

The Lord will fight for you and ye shall hold your peace.

Here in the United States, we are seeing more division in America than ever before.

Wade and some of the other Supreme Court decisions has caused America to go into an ideologic civil war.

It's interesting because there are many who are celebrating some of these Supreme Court decisions but we also understand that there is a move now to legislate morality in such a way that can also be prophetically frightening in a sense, in that we are moving to a place where the government is going to try and move where we know a Sunday law is possible.

There are those in this country who are afraid that their rights are being taken.

There are those in this country who are afraid that immorality is too rampant.

There are those in this country who are afraid, and even around the globe, as war right now, as troops are being sent to Europe.

Biden just announced that Poland would have permanent US troops in the face of Russian aggression.

We are looking at a time when many are afraid, but I want to warn you, church, as Moses says to the children of Israel here, fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.

He's gonna show it to you today, Moses says.

The Egyptians who you see today, you will never see them again.

I wanna submit to you at early in this message that there are Egyptians in your life that God wants to vanquish so you never see them again.

There are trials, difficulties, even some folk in your life that God wants to remove and you'll never deal with them again.

But you've got to trust that God is fighting the battle for you.

1 of the things that happens Is that when you go through trial, trials often bring out the worst in us.

Without faith it is impossible to please God.

He that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

What the devil wants to do is remove your ability to go to God by giving you so much doubt that you stop believing God.

And that's what we're going to talk about.

We're going to go through some stages of doubt and then we're going to go through some stages of prayer to reverse it.

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Prayer Shift

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