Collegedale Camp Meeting 2023: Expanding His Kingdom

Georgia-Cumberland Conference

Power of Prayer

Dave Smith

Why Pray?

If you don't know Pastor Melody, she is a delight.

She can help you with anything you need help with, and feel free to ask her for that, except technology.

She and I both are a little short on that end, but we do the best that we can.

But she serves us here in Collegedale, my home church, and we are just delighted.

I am not a morning person, I've already confessed that to people, but I do a good job of faking it, don't I?

I think God is going to be helpful to us, myself included, in the time we spend.

There's no more important topic in my mind than the 1 we're going to spend time on.

Is there anyone who did not get a handout?

If you look at the handout, you kind of have an idea of how this will go.

It's a seminar, not just a sermon or a presentation, which means there's some interaction.

So there will be at least 1 time in each of the presentations where you'll have a chance to interact with others if you want to.

And if you don't want to, just smile and say.

There are people who are really uncomfortable sharing, or especially with people they don't know well.

I have found that people who are a little quieter, a little less quick to say something, are often deeper thinkers and better communicators.

So if we're doing a sharing time, but you don't want to share, go ahead, smile, be friendly, you know, love those who are in the room, but you don't have to.

I want you to be very comfortable to be yourself.

But if you're okay to share, there is so much we can learn.

I'm gonna be sharing quite a bit, and I have the advantage of the microphone.

So I'll be sharing quite a bit of slices of my life or my family's life or the lives of others, but I don't know yours, and you have as much or more to share.

So I want to encourage you to do that when it's time to do that.

This morning we're gonna spend our time on an interesting subject.

It's 1 we probably skip by when we pray and don't think about because prayer is 1 of those things we just kind of do.

We don't quiz ourselves, why am I doing this?

But there are some questions I'm going to ask that I think you'll find interesting about prayer and hopefully by the time we're to the end, we'll have a better understanding of why we do this very kind of strange but so important thing.

This afternoon at 02:00 back in this room, I'm going to be presenting on persistence in prayer.

And given what I'm going to unwrap today about prayer, that may seem a strange thing.

I mean, why would God expect us to be persistent when he's so eager, seemingly, to answer our prayers?

That's a very important topic and if you're a parent or a grandparent it is a critical topic.

And I'm not going to be speaking directly on the subject of praying for our children and our grandchildren this afternoon, but I will be touching on it because there's no way to get around that if you're talking about persistence.

So that will be this afternoon and tomorrow morning will be the last 1 and to be honest with you, tomorrow morning will be the most challenging 1.

And that is when God doesn't answer your prayers.

Now I'm not trying to suggest by the question or the title that God really doesn't answer your prayers, but I'm trying to suggest that that's how people feel.

And if you feel that way, how do you deal with it?

And how can we understand that and respond to those very, very difficult situations?

That's a topic that couldn't possibly be covered in a prayer seminar, single prayer seminar on a Friday morning, but we will at least introduce ourselves to it tomorrow because I think that if we're gonna talk about prayer, we need to be real and not just pretend.

And we'll be looking at some very real things tomorrow morning.

So the outline has in it a list of Bible text and sources that I will be referring to as I go through the talk.

That's in case you want to look something up later on.

They are in the order that I will be mentioning them if I'm able to follow my own notes.

So, Hopefully that will be helpful to you.

You can decide that, but at least that information is made available to you.

The last disclaimer I will make before I begin is that I'm not standing here because I'm a better prayer than you are.

I'm not standing here because I know more about prayer than you do.

Some of you could outpray me any day, I'm absolutely confident.

Some of you know a lot more about prayer than I do, and you've studied it more than I have.

I'm here because I gave a series of presentations recently and was asked to do this, and I have a deal with God that when he asks me to do something, I do it.

So I don't stand before you as an expert, but I stand before you as 1 who believes that prayer is perhaps the most important thing in the Christian life.

And I respect you for your prayer life and hope to learn from it.

I'll be sharing a little bit about my journey as well.

And I'm going to begin by sharing 3 prayer experiences involving my youngest daughter.

And of course now I'm retired, so when I say my youngest daughter, we're not talking about a child at the moment, but she did have a childhood.

And that was quite a childhood, and prayer was central to it, as 1 would expect.

I can remember 1 day we were traveling quite a distance to a place that we had to go to, kind of an intermediary stop on a journey that we were on.

Because it was a long trip, we left early in the morning.

And again, I'm not a morning person, but I do what I have to do and when I have to do it.

So we got in the car, my wife and I got in the front, my 2 girls piled in the back.

Kim, the youngest, was about 3 years of age.

She was over in the corner And I began to drive down the freeway.

And I don't know what a family trip for you is like, but for me, a family trip is I drive, they sleep.

And so almost immediately, they were asleep.

The car was quiet, I had nobody to talk to.

I just was thinking thoughts to myself and trying to stay awake, when all of a sudden I heard a sound, a sound I'd never heard before.

I won't try to duplicate it, but it was an unsettling sound.

I turned around and looked, and there was Kim, my youngest daughter.

I can't describe to you the position she was in, but her legs were kind of up on the seat.

She was lying backwards down with her head down on the floor, and she was convulsing.

She was having a seizure, which she had never had, and which there was no history of in our family.

So I yelled to my wife, quickly woke her up and said, Kim needs you, Kim needs you, get her.

My wife turned around, grabbed her, held her in the front seat, and we were going down the freeway.

This was in the state of Nebraska at the time.

I don't know where there was medical help available.

I didn't know anything except we had to find that.

So at the very next freeway exit I got off.

It was early enough in the morning that most people were not out of bed yet, but we pulled into this little Nebraska town and there was a lady getting out of her car who apparently was walking to her business to open it up for the day.

My wife rolled the window down and I yelled at this lady, a doctor, a nurse, a hospital, an ambulance, something, help, please, now.

And of course, this was not how the lady expected to start her day.

And she turned around and she saw my daughter and immediately knew how serious it was.

And she said, oh my, I don't know what to do.

Never Give Up Praying

She is a delight as a pastor at the Collegedale Church, and we appreciate her very much.

And I was so excited to find out she was the host for this seminar.

And as I mentioned this morning, we're both technologically challenged.

You can write notes to yourself in the margin, down at the bottom, on the back.

But this gives you, let me take care of this before I embarrass myself.

I remember 1 time I got a call from 1 of my daughters and I was speaking to a group of teachers and pastors in Oregon.

And I didn't know what to do because I had forgotten to turn my phone off.

So I held the phone up to the speaker and said, here, say hi to them.

She said hi, and said, everybody say hi back.

So hopefully I won't have to do something like that today.

On the handout, you have an outline, very simple outline of what we're going to do.

It's a seminar, so I'm not just going to lecture, although I will be talking quite a bit.

But I'm going to give you an opportunity to talk, and I want to be very clear about that opportunity, that when we go into what we might call a sharing time, You are welcome to share with each other and hopefully you're comfortable to do that.

But if you're not comfortable doing it, don't do it.

Just smile and look friendly and nice and refuse to talk.

But when we have that opportunity, on the other hand, if you're comfortable doing it, I've been praying that God would use that sharing time to really do something special for some of you as you learn from each other.

It's so much richer than if you're just listening to me.

And so, and I think that has happened actually.

I've heard a few of the stories already from this morning.

I was very touched by them and pretty amazed.

You get a group together like this, you look around and we look, you know, relatively normal, right?

There's a lot going on and prayer is right at the center of it.

So I'm glad you're here and that outline will kind of help you keep from getting lost, not that you would.

And what we're gonna do is I'm gonna start by sharing some things, then I'll give you a chance to share some things, then I'm gonna go into a presentation and at the end of the presentation, I'll do better than I did this morning.

I'll give you a chance for questions, and then we'll have a little prayer activity to finish our time on this subject.

I'll just mention tomorrow morning at 10.30, I think it is, Back in this room, I'll be giving the last prayer seminar, which will be the most difficult for me to give, because it's the most difficult subject by far, and yet I think it's so important, it would be wrong to ignore it.

And that subject is, what do you do with unanswered prayer?

Not that prayer is unanswered, but if you feel it is, then it is for you.

And I already know from talking to some of you that some of you are already dealing with that.

So if you know somebody wrestling with that, encourage them to come tomorrow morning.

Not that what I have to share is going to solve everybody's problem or help them, but I think there's some encouragement, some understanding, some perspective that would be useful, and I would encourage that.

Below the little outline in the handout that you have, you have a list of the resources and Bible texts that I will use in the presentation that I make.

And if I'm faithful to my notes, it's in the order that I will make them.

And then you again have some room for notes.

So without any further comment, I'll begin our seminar by sharing a little bit, starting from a book written by Morris Vendon.

He was for a generation of Adventists a key figure theologically to help us understand grace and things that we struggled a little to understand.

And personally, I always enjoyed listening to him, enjoyed reading his books, and thought that they were pretty biblically sound.

I'm going to start with something from 1 of his books.

I do want to just share with you Morris Vennon, if you never heard him or didn't know him, had a real gift for subtle humor and irony.

He loved to set up a group of people, so you could never trust him if you were in the audience, because while you thought everything was great, he was probably setting you up for something.

And I remember a classic example of that 1 time, where I was in a meeting and it was a Friday night, and he was giving a talk on it's hard to be lost.

And he had flipped a coin theologically for 2 talks he gave in a row.

1 was, it's hard to be lost, and then he flipped that on you, it's hard to be saved, and you were left with, okay, just hard, that much you figured out.

So in this talk, he'd be, there was a special music, a solo by a young lady with a beautiful voice just before he spoke.

And you've probably all been in a setting where music has just set the stage and you're just like there.

So he got up to speak and the congregation, there was, I don't know, 800, 1000 people or something, but no noise.

Everybody was, they were in heaven, because Islam is about heaven, and it was like, wow.

We're like, yeah, you know, streets of gold, yeah.

Well, wait, wait, who's that coming down the, oh, it's Peter, give Peter a hug, yay, Peter, go Peter.

And you know, sitting there, I heard about 800 mental explosions.

I don't know if you ever heard mental explosions before, but people's brains just blowing up.

And it was like, nobody ever thought Adolf Hitler was going to be in heaven, but he was like, okay, how do you know?

That was the way he was, every time, every presentation.

So this is from a book he wrote on prayer called The Answer is Prayer.

He has 1 chapter in that book on persistent prayer.

And at the beginning of that chapter, he shares this illustration.

And because it's his illustration, I'm just gonna kind of read it to you.

It's not very long and it's pretty simple.

He said, perhaps you heard the story of Andy.

Andy wanted to share his faith, so he began going around the block once a week, leaving literature at each home.

The first week, when he came to 1 house, he walked up the steps, he knocked on the door.

The man said, no thanks, I'm not interested.

Andy stuck the literature in the door handle and went on his way.

When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayers

This is the third prayer seminar in the little series that I'm helping with.

I'll make a disclaimer that I made on the first 1, since some of you weren't here to enjoy that.

And that is that I'm presenting on prayer not because I'm an expert, but because I'm not, but because I made some presentations and I was asked following that if I would do this.

And I felt God was asking me to do it and I've made a practice in my life to do what God asked me to do.

There are people in this room, and some of you I know very well, who are more powerful prayers than I am, including my wife.

And they might even be more of an expert, but I'll share what God has given me.

You will have an opportunity, since it's a seminar, not a lecture, to share with each other, and that may end up being the most powerful part of the session that we have.

And hopefully you'll feel free to do that, although every time I've said the same thing, hope I've been consistent.

If you're 1 of those people who's just a little uncomfortable in public or around people you don't know and you don't want to share, in this room you don't have to share.

All you have to do is smile and say nothing, and that will be acceptable.

So I'll leave that up to you, what you want to do.

But when there's opportunity to share, there'll be at least 1 today, possibly 2 times we can do that.

If you're comfortable, I think you'll get even more out of the seminar by sharing and learning from each other.

I have the advantage of sharing some personal experiences, personal observations, and that's all good and well, but you've got some great things to share, too.

And hopefully you'll be willing to do that.

I know in the sharing time in the previous 2 sessions, some of you have shared with me what was shared, and there's some really powerful stuff represented in this room, some very challenging things represented in this room, including what we're gonna talk about today.

And what we're gonna talk about today is an extremely difficult topic.

I don't wanna minimize it, and I don't want to pretend that I am gonna come and give you the answer that when you walk out the door, you will know what to do with 1 unanswered prayer, except for 1 thought that I will leave you with that I hope will help you if it's a thought that's not yet part of your prayer practice.

But today we will at least have a lot of empathy because probably all of us have had the experience of feeling like a prayer didn't get answered.

On the handout, if this is your first session, there's a little outline of what we'll do, so there aren't a lot of surprises in it.

So I'm giving the introduction right now.

I'm going to share a little bit about mountaintop prayer experiences.

Then you're going to share with each other a little bit about that.

Then I'm going to give a presentation on when God doesn't answer your prayer.

We might or we might not share during that time.

We'll track the time and see how it goes.

And there will be a concluding prayer activity which will be totally private and up to you.

However, at the end of the session, if any of you would like to remain for more general prayer or focus prayer for your own prayer needs, you are welcome to stay afterwards.

We can meet over in this side of the room and there are some pastors willing to join us and we can all join together and have a session of prayer if you would like that.

So that will follow immediately after the presentation and our own private prayer activity.

So do you have any questions about any of that?

In my mind, a mountaintop prayer experience is a prayer experience you have that is so pronounced, so incredible, so unbelievable, so unimaginable, that when it happens, you have only 1 choice, which is to conclude God is here.

If God is for us, who could possibly be against us?

It is a moment of absolute, pure, 100% conviction that God is real.

Not only real, but real in your life, on your side, working for you.

To me, that's a mountaintop prayer experience.

And thankfully we have those as well as unanswered prayer.

And there's some things between them we wanna think about a little bit this morning.

Now, my wife is going to be giving a sermon, I think, in just another week.

And that sermon is going to have something to do with the promises of God and how we can stand on the promises of God and what God's Word says to us and that draws us closer to Him.

And the promises of God on answering prayer are very clear.

They're very encouraging until they don't work.

And I'd like to read a few with you, and you have those again in your outline.

The text and sources in your outline are listed in the order that if I'm faithful to my outline, I will present them.

And so that'll hopefully make it easier for you.

You may ask for anything in my name, anything, ask for anything in my name and what?

I mean, you know, if you're a theologian you could play with it for a while, but you're gonna hit a dead-end road.

I think some of you would know these verses, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.

Matthew 21, verse 22, If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.

And Isaiah 58 9, then you will call and the Lord will answer, you'll cry for help, and he will say, here am I.

So there are texts that teach us through God's word that answers prayer.

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Series

Power of Prayer

When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayers

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

Why Pray?

56m

Never Give Up Praying

1h 9m

When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayers

57m

Sound Doctrine