AOY 2014: Now Is the Time

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Army Of Youth

Lord, Teach Us to Pray: The Science of Prayer

Jason Sliger

1. What’s Hindering You?

So we're looking at the subject of prayer in our time together in our workshop.

Today what we're going to be primarily doing is kind of laying the groundwork.

Tomorrow we're going to get into some more of the nuts and bolts of things that we can do to make our prayer life more practical.

We're going to look at some biblical principles on how we can actually do that.

Before we begin, our subject this morning is hindrances in prayer or what's hindering you.

Before we begin, I think it would be appropriate for us to bow our heads and before we pray I'm getting, sorry?

Why don't we bow our heads and we'll start with a word of prayer.

Loving Father in heaven, we thank you that we can assemble ourselves together here this morning at AOY to learn from you the beauty of prayer.

Might be a little warm and uncomfortable being so close together, but I pray that you would give us focus as we hear your word, as we Listen to the practical advice that it gives to us.

Father, we want our prayer life to grow exponentially.

We want to be known as sons and daughters of prayer that move the hand of God in our prayer closet.

So Father, I pray that you would come and that you would speak to us, that you would open my mouth and speak through it the words that need to be heard this morning.

Great Adventist missionary by the name of Eric B.

He was a great missionary back in the middle of the 1900s time, somewhere around in there.

But he tells this wonderful story about a man by the name of Rangoso who was a convert to Christianity during the time of mission work in the Solomon Islands.

Eric Behar wasn't the missionary, he just heard the story.

It was during the time of World War II, Rangoso was 1 of the few Adventist locals who had been converted to Christianity.

The missionaries were chased off of the islands because of the enemy and various things that were going on.

And so the responsibility of taking care of the small church there on the Solomon Islands was given to Rangoso.

Rangoso worked very closely with the allies to keep the enemies away from taking over the islands.

And 1 day, 1 of the generals that he was working with came to him and another young man and said, listen, there's a shipment of supplies that are coming in this coming Saturday, and I need your help and your help to unload the ship and get all of the supplies onto the island." Well, Rangoso was a Seventh-day Adventist.

And as you know, Seventh-day Adventists don't work on the Sabbath.

And so Rangoso said to the general, we would be happy to help you after sunset, but before sunset this is our day of rest and we do not work on the Sabbath.

The general, as you can only imagine, got a little upset and started threatening Rangoso and his friend, but they were unmoved.

They had moral courage, as we talked about yesterday morning.

And they insisted, we would be happy to help you after sunset on Saturday night.

He took his revolver out of its holster and turned it around and held the barrel and hit Rangoso right in the face.

Hit him again, hit him again, broke his nose, knocked him out.

And when Rangoso came back, when he woke up from this mistreatment or this abuse, the general commanded for him to be bound and taken off into prison that they were going to execute him by a firing squad.

Both of them were bound and they were taken to the prison camp.

The firing squad assembled themselves together.

They got their rifles and they pointed them at Rangoso and his friend.

The general said, When I count to 3, fire.

So you could feel the tension in the air.

These 2 men of God who stood for the truth were there.

The firing squad was looking down the barrels of their shotguns waiting for the sound of number 3 to pull the trigger.

He was a little flustered and he kind of regained himself and he said, okay, on the count of 3, pull the trigger.

He was frustrated and he told them to take them off to prison.

In fact, the story goes that the general lost the ability to speak for 2 weeks.

God can give donkeys the ability to speak and he can take away from humans the ability to speak.

And so Rangoso and his friend, they were taken off to prison.

Now all the Adventists on the island, there are about 300 of them, They heard about their trusted leader that they loved so much and he's there in prison.

And so they decided in the simplicity of their mind that they would pray that God would deliver Rangoso and his friend.

And so they had this sophisticated way of communication through these big drums.

And they would get up on the top of the mountain and they would beat out some type of Morse code on the drum passing along the message from mountain top to mountain top.

And the Adventists got on their drums and they started beating out this message that on a specific day, at a specific time, that all the Adventists were to pray for Rangoso and his friend.

And so the day came, and the 300 Adventists on the island, They assembled themselves in their little huts in various places across the Solomon Islands.

And they began to pour out their hearts in unity that God would release their trusted leader, Rangoso, and his friend.

And they poured their hearts out to God in prayer.

That night, at 10 o'clock, the prison gates were opened, and a tall man walked into the prison camp.

He pointed at Rangoso and his friend and he said, Come with me.

Rangoso and his friend got up and they followed the man out of the prison, through the gates, down to the water's edge where there was a canoe with 2 paddles sitting in the water.

The man turned to Rangoso and his friend and he said, get into the boat and paddle to your home.

They looked at the canoe and they looked back at the man and he was gone.

Rangoso and his friend got into their little canoe, paddled away from the island, and they went back to continue their work and their labor for God in the Solomon Islands.

Eric Behar, who tells the story, asked Rangoso a question.

And the question he asked him was this, Who let you out of prison that night?

Without hesitation, Rangoso replies and he says, an angel.

The same angel that took Peter out of his prison.

I read that for the first time and my stomach was just kind of queasy with excitement that things like this are happening in different parts of the world.

That God is using simple people with simple understandings of God's Word to pray powerful prayers that move the arm of omnipotence.

But as I read this story and as I thought about it, I couldn't help but ask myself the question, why don't we see this type of answers to our prayers?

We read about these stories all the time.

You get, Incredible Answers to Prayer by Roger Morneau.

And there's a book by Glenn Kuhn about foolish prayers and fabulous answers.

And there's all of these great books that you can read about people who prayed and God does miraculous things for them, but we read about these experiences, but we don't experience them ourselves.

So this got me asking myself the question, why don't we experience these types of answers to prayer ourself?

Well, before I actually get into answering that question, let me first emphatically state, as we've already seen in the story, that God does answer prayer, amen?

Let me give you a couple of promises just to kind of start this off here so we know where we're all at on the same page.

Matthew 7, 7, these are promises we know.

What did the people on the Solomon Islands ask for?

2. Where Prayer Begins

This 1 I've entitled, Where Prayer Begins.

And this is a really important presentation.

It's not overtly about prayer, but it's an important component that if we don't have an experience in this, in our spiritual journey, it's going to greatly hinder our prayer life.

So before we begin, let's start yet again with another word of prayer.

Father in heaven, I thank you again for your goodness in our lives.

I thank you Lord for giving to us the gift of prayer and that you as this mighty God who controls all of the universe and speaks things into existence, wants to hear from us this speck of dust in your vast creation.

What an awesome privilege it is for us to be able to come into your presence through prayer.

And Father, I pray that now as we look at this subject, that you would speak to our hearts yet again and help us to be more like Jesus.

I forgot to put this in in our last study.

This is our theme Bible passage for the whole 6 presentations.

Jeremiah 33, 3, I quoted it a couple of times yesterday.

And what I would like to see happen is I would like to see you have this Bible passage memorized by tomorrow.

Bible says, thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.

So as we hide God's word in our hearts, It helps us remove that sin that we talked about a little while ago out of our lives.

Jeremiah 33, 3, call upon me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.

It is a fantastic promise that I've claimed many times in my prayer life.

You know, when I have my prayer time in the morning, prayer is as much a part of my devotions as studying the Bible is.

And this Bible passage just really blends the 2 of them together, that as I come to God in prayer, He will show me great things out of His word.

And so I claim this promise in my devotional time, and I ask God in my prayer time, show me great and mighty things, which I could never understand if it weren't for you and your word.

So I would hope that we can have this passage memorized by tomorrow.

You write it out on a little card, keep it in your pocket, put it on your phone, whatever it is, tonight before you go to bed, spend a little bit of time working on retaining this passage and focus on having it word perfect in the King James Version.

And we're gonna work on this in our workshop so that we have it retained in our minds.

So, to start with, there's a story told about a communist prison in Jeliva, Romania.

And This particular communist prison camp was especially harsh on its prisoners.

It was in a cold environment, the windows were broken, the wind would blow in, and even the snow would build up inside of the prison.

The prisoners became accustomed to the frequent special treatment from the prison guards, known as beatings.

It was a difficult place to live as a prisoner.

And 1 day there was a pastor, a Christian pastor, who had been in this prison camp for 8 years, suffering the harsh treatment day after day after day.

Some of his joints in his body would never recuperate from the treatment that he had suffered.

Parts of his body would never work the way they used to when he first went into the prison camp, and he was always cold.

And as he sat in the middle of the prison camp outside, perhaps on a log or a chair or something like that, dismally watching what was going on, Frequently there would be new prisoners that would be escorted into the prison.

And this Christian pastor, as he sat there in this prison camp, looking at these faces, plump from good food, bodies that were not tired and wasted away, he could only think about what was going to happen to them over the next couple of years.

Then as he studied and examined each face, somebody came in that he recognized.

It was a colleague of his in his time before he went off into prison, a fellow pastor who is now coming into, I've got it over here, but can you hear me all right back there?

All right, let me use the mic just in case.

I hate holding microphones, so that's why I was trying to do it without them.

So as he's watching these prisoners come in, he sees this familiar face.

And he walks up to his colleague and he gives him a big hug and he's so happy to see this friend of his that he had spent many years ministering with when he was on the outside.

They sat down and for a little while they got reacquainted and caught up with some of the things that were going on on the outside.

And as they sat and talked with 1 another, this pastor who had been in the prison camp for 8 years, he began to think about all the harsh treatment that he had gone through.

And he looked at his dear friend, and he began to think, he's gonna have to go through all of this.

He's gonna go through the special treatment.

He's gonna go through the lack of nutrition.

And his heart began to go out to his friend in sorrow that he was going to have to suffer the way he had the past 8 years.

Well, it all came in the conversation and kind of stopped for a little bit.

And his friend, the friend that had been there for 8 years, he asked his new friend, he asked him, are you sad?

Are you sad that you're in this prison camp?

And his friend said back to him something that I find to be the most profound thing under the circumstances.

He said to him, I know only 1 sadness and that is not being fully given to Jesus.

I know only 1 sadness And that is not being given fully to Jesus.

I call this being given fully to Jesus, I call it absolute surrender.

And the servant of the Lord says this in Evangelism, page 317.

Satan, our enemy, does not want anyone to see the what?

The necessity of an entire surrender to God.

When the soul fails to make this surrender, sin is not forsaken.

So she's saying if an absolute surrender is not experienced in our life, and this is something that Satan does not want us to see the necessity of, she says that sin is not forsaken as a result of that.

The appetites and the passions are striving for the mastery.

So what does Satan not want you to see the necessity of?

Prayer begins with an absolute surrender.

And Satan, we are told, does not want us to see the necessity of an absolute surrender.

And when we don't experience an absolute surrender, then we begin to harbor sin in our lives.

And she tells us that the result is that true conversion does not what?

This is such an important component in our prayer life to experience an absolute surrender.

Well go with me if you would to the book of 1 Kings chapter 20.

3. Prayer, What’s the Point, Anyway?

We've felt conviction, and we're seeing, Lord, the importance of true conversion in having an effective and meaningful prayer life.

And Father, as we look at some of the purposes of prayer, what the point of it is, I pray, Dear God, that you would speak to our hearts this afternoon and that you would continue to drive home the importance of prayer in our lives and in the lives of those that we know.

So Father, I pray now that you would speak to us, and I thank you in Jesus' name.

I checked my email when I got back to the hotel to go over my notes for this, and I got an email from my wife with this quote, and I thought it just was great, and I wanted to share it with you.

She sent it to me as an encouragement, but I thought it kind of dovetailed really well with our last presentation on surrender.

She says this, God desires us to trust implicitly in Him.

And if it is for our good and His name's glory to do the work, it will be done.

The work of surrender will be done because it is in accordance with his honor and glory.

Ellen White goes on and she says, we are to wait.

We poor mortals need to purify our souls that when the Lord works for us, it will not ruin us.

You know, oftentimes when we experience the power of God in our lives, it can be a means of leading us astray.

And that's why she's saying that it might not ruin us when the power of God is manifested in our life.

But I really like that 1 little line right there, the power of the Lord is limitless.

When it comes to surrender in our lives, when it comes to answer prayers, the power of the Lord is limitless.

Alright so tomorrow we'll maybe take a couple of you to come up here and share it but let's go ahead and read it together now.

Call upon me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.

Wonderful text, spend a little time memorizing it this afternoon.

I think there's some free time between the Q&A session this afternoon and dinner.

Get together in groups, sit in a corner, work on it, quiz yourself.

Another good way to do Bible memorization is instead of writing the whole verse out, you can take the first letter of each word and write that first letter of each word.

So it'll help jog in your memory what that word is without actually looking at the full word itself.

This is a method of memorization that I use personally.

So both ways, you can write it all the way out, or just on the backside of the card, or backside of the paper, write the first letter of each word for your revision, and that will help you retain it in your mind even better.

So we're gonna do a little quizzing on that tomorrow.

There's a story told about a man who had the name of Krishna, who was named Krishna.

He had little to no interest in religious things or in Christianity.

He had no interest in anything other than his religion.

And he went over to go spend some time with his family, his brother I believe it was, and his sister-in-law and their kids, for a couple of days.

And each day, Krishna, he had the opportunity to sit through morning and evening worship each day.

He didn't really care too much about this.

He didn't care about Christianity and it was a little bit of a burden to have to sit through this morning and evening devotions, but he did it because he was there visiting his family.

The end of his visit came and Krishna was going to go back to wherever he lived.

So the whole family went down to the bus stop with him.

And there in the busyness of the bus station, people bustling around and rubbing shoulders with each other and the anticipation of getting on the right train and getting there at the right time.

They got to the spots, they got to the train.

And as everybody was saying their goodbyes, Krishna's little niece, who was raised in a Christian home, she, before her uncle stepped on the train, she grabbed his hand, and she said, Uncle Krishna, can I pray for you?

He didn't want to offend his little niece, so he said, sure, go ahead.

And so she prayed a simple little prayer.

The simple little prayer was this, Dear Lord, In the name of Jesus, please keep my Uncle Krishna safe.

You know, he didn't like this whole Christian thing, and so he just, you know, said goodbye, got on the bus and, you know, went home.

On the way home, the bus went over some of the more mountainous parts of the region where he lived, and before he knew it, just out of the sudden, out of nowhere, he heard the sound of screeching brakes, blaring horns.

The bus, I think I said it was a train, but it was a bus, the bus jerking to the side and before he knew it, the bus was tumbling end over end down the side of a cliff.

Things were flying everywhere, people were screaming, It was chaos as they were going down this mountainside, end over end.

There was a tremendous impact at the bottom of the valley and then Everything went still.

Krishna looked around at the carnage all around him.

The mangled bodies, the collapsed bus, bags everywhere blown apart from the impact.

And in the eerie quietness at the bottom of the valley, Krishna heard a voice in his mind, the voice of his ten-year-old niece.

Dear Lord, in the name of Jesus, please keep my uncle Krishna safe.

He heard that in his mind as he was down there at the bottom of the valley, and he began to ask himself the question, who is this Jesus?

Well, needless to say, Christian evidently or inevitably embraced Christianity because of the prayer of his 10-year-old little niece.

I love listening to my little girl pray in the morning.

Powerful, powerful listening to the prayer of a little child.

My little girl, oftentimes after our prayer, she will say, I want Jesus to come down.

Beautiful story of the power of God in the life of this man and the prayer of this little girl as she prayed for protection for her uncle, Krishna.

In the book Great Controversy, Ellen White says this, it is a part of God's plan to grant us an answer to the prayer of faith that which He would not bestow did we not thus ask.

She's simply saying that there are things that God does in our life when we pray that He wouldn't do if we didn't pray.

If we didn't ask, and 1 wonders, what if Krishna's 10-year-old niece had not prayed that little prayer, what would have happened?

What would have happened in your life today if you hadn't spent that little time with the Lord this morning in prayer?

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Series

Lord, Teach Us to Pray: The Science of Prayer

3. Prayer, What’s the Point, Anyway?

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

1. What’s Hindering You?

47m

2. Where Prayer Begins

1h

3. Prayer, What’s the Point, Anyway?

1h 10m

4. Lord, Teach Us to Pray: Part 1

1h

5. Lord, Teach Us to Pray: Part 2

56m

6. A Deeper Prayer Life

47m

Sound Doctrine