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Eden Valley SDA Church

Eric Walsh

The Prayer Shift For 2026

It's always wonderful to be in the house of God on this, his holy Sabbath day.

It's a life is chaotic and if you just watch the news your blood pressure will go up.

So it is always good to pull away and turn off the world and focus on eternity.

And that is 1 of the things I love about the Sabbath.

There is no relationship that grows without time.

A mother will never know her child if she does not spend time nurturing her child.

The father will not know his children if he does not spend time with his children.

Husband and wife will never get along or never know each other if they don't spend time together.

So God before sin ever entered the world, set aside time for us to spend with him.

It is a statement of relationship with God.

And so I was going to preach something else, but after this week, you know, as I've been wrestling with things this week, God brought this to me.

Our scripture reading as was just read so wonderfully by our president here, 2 Timothy 1, 7 says, for god has not given us the spirit of fear But of power and of love and of a sound mind Our message today is entitled the prayer shift for 2026 the prayer shift for 26 let's pray father God we thank you for this opportunity to study your word and I asked once again Lord that you just make me a nail on the wall a rusty nail Lord But upon that nail I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ Let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard today Lord We need to hear a word from You.

And Lord, we ask this in the precious and holy name of Jesus.

We start after 10 plagues have hit the great ancient kingdom and empire of Egypt.

There was really nothing like Egypt and probably never will be again.

Even today they cannot figure out how the pyramids were built with such incredible precision aligned perfectly with certain stars and on certain sides so that when the sun would strike certain points in the year, things would happen.

The Egyptians were a superior civilization in architecture, in mathematics, and science, even medicine.

We often quote Hippocrates, but you fail if you do not go further back to a man named Imhotep, who long before Hippocrates actually was coming up with many of the things that we use even today in natural remedies.

The Egyptians did not serve the God of heaven.

They enslaved the people of God for hundreds of years.

And when God finally decided that he was going to set his people free, he sent a man named Moses.

At 40 years old Moses was in line to either be a Pharaoh in the future of Egypt, or at least a great general in Egypt, but instead he knew by his upbringing by his mother, a miraculous upbringing, that he was going to liberate the children of Israel.

And so instead of waiting for God to show him how to do it, Moses was a gangster.

He took a man straight out, killed a man, and had to flee and run after 40 years of training in Egypt.

He spent the next 40 years watching sheep.

And I want to submit to you that the education he got with the sheep was more important than the education he got in Egypt.

He unlearned a lot of what he learned and learned to rely on God so that he becomes a Bible hero at the ripe young age of 80 years old.

Don't tell me it's too late for you to start doing something for God.

But Moses had the struggle of dealing with the children of Israel, the people of God.

And when Moses goes to set the people free, there are trials and problems.

Finally, even Pharaoh's own son is taken out and he tells them, get out of Egypt.

So powerful is this exodus that when they are leaving, the Egyptians hand over their riches.

As the children of Israel begin to walk, they celebrate, but it doesn't last long.

The children of Israel cannot learn the lesson of the miracles God has already done for them.

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

And they were sore afraid, And the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord.

God had already smote Egypt with 10 plagues.

Each plague represented 1 of the Egyptians gods so that you could see that the God of heaven was the superior 1 God.

But when they are on their way out, they look back and they can see the Pharaoh and his armies coming after them.

The Bible says that they are not afraid, they are sore afraid.

I would ask somebody today, have you ever felt like Pharaoh's coming after you?

In verse 11, and then said Moses, because, and then they said to Moses, these are the children of Israel now, because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness?

Wherefore have you dealt with us to carry us forth out of Egypt?" The people turn on their liberator and they get angry with Moses and say, listen, Why did you even bother taking us out of Egypt?

The answer is actually quite simple, because you were slaves in Egypt, because they beat you in Egypt, because you worked from can't see morning to can't see night in Egypt.

But when they were afraid, you gotta get this to get the whole message, when they were afraid, they began to forget how bad they used to be.

Verse 12, It's not this, the children of Israel still speaking, is not this the word we did tell you 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.

They put the blood on the lamb blood on the post of their doors.

They saw and heard the cries of the Egyptians as their firstborn died and the children of Israel their firstborn lived and now at the first sign of trouble they begin to doubt God and question him.

There's something physiologic about doubt.

If 1 person starts to doubt, it spreads like a virus.

If you've ever been, I don't know if you've ever played team sports, I played high school football and we won a state championship my freshman year.

And 1 of the things you learn is if you're going to play a team and on the bus on the way there if 1 man on the bus says I heard about this team.

I'm not sure we can beat them that thing spreads like a virus.

They start telling you how big their linebackers are how fast their cornerbacks are how smart their quarterback is And why are you going over there?

You ain't even seen them yet Doubt is contagious watch this and that is in frivolous meaningless high school football Imagine what happens when doubt enters the house of God.

But the second thing doubt is, is that doubt is addictive.

There is a certain amount of comfort that comes from beginning to believe the worst.

By not having to have the motivation, the dopaminergic stimulation to remain motivated, it becomes addictive.

You begin to fall back into doubt as your safe place And so now you don't just doubt regularly you allow doubt to feed you and you become more of a warrior than a warrior The third thing doubt is It's amnestic Watch this it erases truth from your memory.

I'm gonna go a little bit deeper in this.

If you begin to doubt, it changes how you remember.

1 of the reasons Satan wants you doubting is because he wants you to forget how good God has been to you in the past Watch this The immediate brain response when you have doubt and negative thoughts is that it activates the brain's threat system.

This is the fight or flight system, the sympathetic nervous system.

Now we say fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

We've got all these words for it but what it basically means is that the sympathetic nervous system takes over and the part of your brain where logic and Reasoning is supposed to happen is shut off 1 of the reasons that happened Is because the amygdala the part of your brain where emotions are stored as it turns this thing on it begins to throw gas into the emotional Engine of your brain and you begin to speed off and the next 1 the next bullet is the prefrontal cortex right here where reasoning is supposed to happen.

If the amygdala is the gas pedal, the prefrontal cortex is supposed to be the brakes.

How important is reasoning for the Christian?

Isaiah 1, 18 says, "'Come, let us reason together, ' says the Lord.

"'Though your sins be as scarlet, "'they shall be as white as snow.

Though they were like crimson, they shall be as wool.

And so the devil wants to make you unreasonable.

He wants you to start doubting so you remember all that went wrong and forget all that went right.

Survival mode replaces clarity and thoughtfulness.

So there's a whole cascade of things that begin to happen.

Remember this the whole a big chunk of the People of Israel they were a mixed multitude It wasn't just the children of Israel many of the Egyptians said well listen if their God could whoop our gods I'm following them So now you got this mixed 1, the cortisol levels all go up, stress hormone goes up, which look at that first bullet there, it says memory impairment.

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The Prayer Shift For 2026

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