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Newington Three Angels Church

Prayer

Eric Walsh

New Year’s Day Season of Prayer Part 1

All right, so open those up and we're gonna go into God's Word Philippians 4 6 and 7 says be careful for nothing But in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving let your requests be known unto God And the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Our talk tonight is Praying with Power in 2025.

This is the key to our church growth and our spiritual development.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity, Lord, to study a word and to learn a bit more about prayer for this new year.

Some of us, Lord, we barely got through last year.

We took a lot of punches, we took a lot of hits.

Lord, there were times we wanted to give up, but Lord, you saw fit to get us to 2025.

And with that, Father God, We now don't wanna just get through 2025.

We wanna thrive, not just survive, but thrive in 2025.

And with that, Lord, now we're asking for an extra outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

As we study your word now, Lord, I pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would lead us into truth.

All right, so before we go into the story, let me just speak on this verse.

It is what makes it so that the Christian in America, when I do talks on how Christianity is good for you, especially for your mental health, this is 1 of the reasons why.

The Christian has the opportunity to pray and leave burdens at the foot of the cross.

We just sang the song, Burdens are Lifted at Calvary.

When we pray, in the sermon last Sabbath, last 2 sermons I did, I quoted from Hebrews chapter 4, Verse 16, that we are to go boldly to the throne of grace.

As Christians, we have an opportunity to employ the great God of the universe in our struggles.

Now, the story I wanna go to, and the reason this is important is verse 7 says, and the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

If you don't have Christ Jesus, you will lose your mind.

The last few weeks, even before we get into this, the last few weeks, I've watched in the news some very troubling things.

The first was the car that drove into the crowd at the Christmas market in Germany.

Last night, New Year's Eve, a car, a terrorist attack is what they're saying it was now, drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street.

I've been in that packed place like this on Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras and at New Year's before, and there's nowhere to run if a car comes in.

1 of them was a student at University of Georgia, which was supposed to play a bowl game tonight, and they had to push it over to tomorrow night because of this tragedy.

And I could go on and on, people being set on fire on the subway.

There's another, somebody got pushed in front of a train on the subway in the last few days.

It is as if we are watching a declination of all sensibility in society.

We are watching morality erode right in front of our eyes.

And when the CEO of 1 of the insurance companies was gunned down in broad daylight, people cheered.

I know how frustrating the insurance companies are.

But if we become a country and a society where murder is the solution to problems, we will go back to the worst in the wild, wild West.

But the Christian has got to stay steadfast.

If you're going to keep your mind, prayer is key.

Which means you can't just pray a superficial prayer.

You must get to a point where your prayers are deep and engaged.

You've got to get to where when you pray, it's as if you are speaking with a friend, but not just any friend, a friend with the resources to deal with what you're going through.

A friend with the resources to reach the folk you want to come to know Christ.

So great example of that is found in 2nd Kings chapter 18.

I mentioned that we would go through Hezekiah's prayers and I mean we may not get to the second 1 tonight because the first 1 is so juicy, but we'll at least mention it.

2 Kings chapter 18, there's a lot of background I wanna lay because I want you to understand the condition and the circumstance that King Hezekiah found himself in.

I've said this before here, the Northern Kingdom of Israel never had a righteous king.

Not 1 king in the Northern Kingdom of Israel was ever righteous.

But Judah, the Southern Kingdom, did have some righteous kings.

Now, these are the enemies of Israel speaking in 2 Kings 18.

Then Rabshakeh, who was asked not to speak in the Jews' language, stood up and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language, and spake, saying, Hear the word of the great king, the great king of the Assyrians, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria.

Thus said the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you out of his hand.

He goes to the people of God, and he begins to plant doubt in 1 of the few righteous kings either kingdom has ever seen.

1 of the reasons prayer is so important is because the devil is going to come to you in 2025 and try and convince you that God cannot do what he says he can do.

Thus said the king, let not Hezekiah deceive you.

Verse 30, neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord.

Everything in our society is designed now.

Almost every TV show, most of the music we listen to that is secular.

All of it is designed to make you not trust in the Lord.

They are literally, we literally on our Spotify playlists and on Netflix viewing, we are listening to Rabshakeh of today, trying to convince you that God cannot be trusted.

The Lord, he says, saying, don't listen to Hezekiah, he says, saying, the Lord will surely deliver us and this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

Hearken not to Hezekiah, for thus said the king of Assyria, make an agreement with me by a present and come out to me and then eat ye every man of his own vine and every 1 of his fig tree and drink ye everyone the waters of his cistern.

When the devil tries to get you, he wants to barter with you that if you follow him, you'll get what you want.

Jesus says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.

You cannot be a Christian and hold on to everything you used to do.

Verse 32, he says, until I come and take you away.

Now, so the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, was going to take them away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil, of oil, olive, olive oil, and of honey, that you may live and not die and hearken not unto Hezekiah when he persuades you saying, the Lord will deliver us.

He, and the devil, this Rabshakeh is still around, still trying to convince you that your plight is so bad God cannot show up Then he starts to give facts Look at what rap checker says has any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

What history describes is the way that they oppressed and beat down people.

It's 1 of the reasons why Nebuchadnezzar is chosen to punish Judah and not Assyria.

What comes to mind after all of my studies on World War II is that these were the Nazis of their day.

If any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria, what they want the Jews to believe here, or the people of Judea to believe is that just like those other gods couldn't deliver, your God won't be able to deliver either.

And let me tell you what the devil will do.

He will always make you forget what good God did for you and constantly remind you of when you feel like it didn't work out well.

And when I did addiction medicine, they talk about the fact that people run tapes in their minds.

What the devil will do is run the tapes of all the times everything went wrong.

He says, we are the gods of Hamath and Arpah?

He starts to make the point, look, these were great kingdoms.

Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Henna, and Iva?

Have they delivered Samaria out of mine hand?

Who are they among all the gods of the countries that have delivered their country out of mine hand that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand But the people held their peace of it when the when the people of Judah the children of Israel heard this these are the last couple tribes left down in the south in the kingdom of Judah and Answered him not a word for the king's command was saying answer him not I have learned 1 of the ways you defeat the devil is to not debate with him And sometimes we want to argue with the devil We want to argue in our situation.

We want to engage the person that hurt us.

Praying with Power for the New Year Part 2

We are going to do the second part of our Praying with Power for the New Year messages.

And in order to encourage people to continue to pray in the New Year, we are releasing the second component of the messages from 2 weeks ago, in a kind of updated and expanded form.

For those of you who have followed New Year's resolutions, you know that by January 8th, 90% of all New Year's resolutions have failed.

And so it's really important in January, as you go through the month, to kind of restart.

You don't need a January to start on a resolution.

You just need the desire to do something different, do something better.

And obviously, going to the gym is important, and eating better is important, but nothing is more important than prayer and having the kind of prayer life that will change your 2025.

So our scripture for this is found in 1 Thessalonians 5.

It says, rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing and everything.

Give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

And so we're going to do Praying with Power for the New Year, part 2, and we're gonna be coming from the effective prayer model, the prayer through praise that we talked about before, and we're gonna go back through that in detail.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word, and I ask, Lord, that now you just make me a nail on the wall.

Upon that nail Lord, hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

As we discuss prayer and its power tonight, Lord, we are asking that you speak, that you reach us, Lord, as we learn this technique.

This is our prayer in Jesus' precious and holy name, amen.

All right, so to go back through it and an overview of what we're gonna go through tonight, these are the steps.

And what you do is you walk through the sanctuary.

You enter into the sanctuary through the court, into the courtyard with praise.

Then his repentance affirmations, intercession, supplication.

And then the last 1, which I didn't go over a couple weeks ago, is enter and be still.

And of course, as I said, it is reminiscent of the sanctuary.

And so you can see from the picture here of the sanctuary, the gates here where people came in.

And of course we're told to enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.

I'll read that again in a minute and give the text.

The first thing when you go to pray is that you start with praise, thanksgiving, gratitude to God.

And the reason you start there in your prayer is, no matter how bad things are, it is wise to be reminded of how good God is.

By doing this, you put a backdrop against your trial, your grief, that in fact God's goodness is consistent and even in your darkest hour you realize it could be worse.

And so we start our prayers off with praise.

And here's the first 1 I just mentioned, Psalm 100 verse 4, enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.

Name is a representative of character, bless his character.

By emulating his character, by wanting to be like Christ.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise.

The next 1, Psalm 22, 3 says, but you are holy enthroned in the praises of Israel.

Why is it so important that when you start your prayer, you start with praise because by praising God, he visits you.

He inhabits the praises of his children and so when you start in even when terrible things are happening when they're about to cut off your light and foreclose on your home and you praise God first he comes close to you.

Another verse that shows this, Philippians 4, 4 through 7, says this, rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice.

That means you rejoice in prayer no matter what's going on.

Then Paul says in verse 6, be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." How do you do it?

Then you give your prayer and your supplication.

And in this process of recognizing who God is before you ask him for anything, peace is the byproduct.

Steps to Christ, page 102 in the section, the privilege of prayer, Sister White says this, we need to praise God more for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men.

Our devotional exercises should not consist wholly in asking and receiving.

Let us not be always thinking of our wants and never of the benefits we receive.

We do not pray any too much, but we are too sparing to give thanks." Powerful.

We don't pray enough as it is, and we're too sparing in giving thanks.

She says we are the constant recipients of God's mercies, and yet how little gratitude we express, how little we praise him for what he has done for us.

Thank him that you almost got into an accident but you didn't.

When you're praying, thank him that he's provided your needs that you have a roof over your head that your boss Although your boss treats you bad.

Your boss has not made you lose your mind when you pray Thank him for the little things for your children for your spouse.

Thank him He goes on to say this the soul may ascend near heaven on the wings of praise.

God is worshiped with song and music in the courts above and as we express our gratitude we are approximating to the worship of the heavenly host.

Let us, that's Psalm 50, 23, let us with reverent joy come before our creator with thanksgiving and the voice of melody Isaiah 51 and verse 3 that's from steps to Christ page 104 this is powerful what we are being told in the spirit of prophecy here is that when we give express gratitude we are approximating to the worship of the heavenly hosts.

Because when they go before God, they just say, holy, holy, worthy, worthy.

And I don't mean just praise in praise and worship service in church.

I mean praise in your prayer closet when you're all alone.

When the pains of life are upon you, call out praises to God.

The next step in this method of prayer is repentance.

And so, the first is praise, the second is repentance.

And as you move through the sanctuary, the next thing you would see is the brazen altar and the brazen laver, and these are both designed for the washing away of sin.

And so in the outer court is where repentance takes place.

The altar of burnt offering represents Christ's atonement, the laver, Christ's cleansing truth, the washing.

I think of it like being washed in the blood of the Lamb.

And here we wash our spiritual hands and feet in the act of repentance like the priest had to do before he could go into the tabernacle, into the holy place.

So before we go deeper into prayer, we wash ourselves.

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New Year’s Day Season of Prayer Part 1

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New Year’s Day Season of Prayer Part 1

33m

Praying with Power for the New Year Part 2

40m

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