You guys are beautiful. All right, Let me start by reading the scripture that I have to open my message today, and you tell me how you feel about what God’s up to now, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with our perseverance and supplication for all the saints.

And for me, that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel. Hallelujah. We’ve been diving into a subject called Spiritual warfare, and the key word there is spiritual. God is moving in his church and establishing the spiritual context of His church in us, every day is just another opportunity for us to learn how to live this out.

This last week I’ve been able to connect with several people, and I’ve been so encouraged by the testimonies that I’m receiving from them. Testimonies about them recognizing that the thoughts going on in their mind are not theirs, and they’re recognizing that the hardships they’re in their life that’s coming from how they feel about things, how they think or perceive relationships or circumstances that are not them.

This discernment of thoughts grew by last week or the week before, did a phenomenal job of opening up this subject of spiritual warfare. Amen. Yes. And like my sister said last week, if you’ve only listened to it once, listen to it several more times, because there is something God is doing in his church that involves us connecting in this spiritual dimension, which can no longer be a place of fear for the church.

It has to be a place of function, a place of order, a place of wholeness. This is the call that God has on us. My sister last week did another amazing job just bringing the Word of God. So clear and so crisp. And her her message ended with the hammer dropping. If you’re not reading your Bible, you’re screwed now.

If you look that up in the Greek, it doesn’t exist. But what that basically means is you’re in a hopeless situation. You’re in a place where there doesn’t seem like there’s opportunity out of this. So raise up the sword and change that circumstance and there’s some context. Okay? With my involvement with her kids and letting them watch a movie, okay, That was not appropriate.

Okay. So, you know, I also want to let you know if you want to have that conversation. I wasn’t totally ignorant when my kids were were young. Disney wasn’t that difficult. But now it is. Just ten years later, a cartoon has to be verified by its app, I think plugged in, not unplugged. And so she misguided you guys on that Jerusha All right.

So we know that there’s no question about why God has been giving up his church to be spiritually capable after what he just displayed with Thad and Stephanie. They have no idea what I’m preaching today. Shell And I put this order of messages together a few weeks ago. He’s building his church, and that’s a perfect display of how that happens.

Everybody’s following God, Everybody’s listening to Holy Spirit. Everybody is joining in in this walk with God. And it brings this harmony and this oneness that you couldn’t plan. So we have to get this. We have to get to this place of faith where we don’t doubt God, the thoughts of hopelessness, the thoughts of fear, the thoughts of intimidation and deception right here by mention some about insinuation.

The devil works to insinuate things to create deception. That is so important for us to grab hold of in this time and in this hour that we are in. We are supposed to be strong and courageous in this time, Right? The Almighty God has a plan for you. And that plan is not for you to look weak, maybe to the world, but for you it is to be strong.

It is to be powerful. It is to be a conqueror more than able to face any challenge that comes your way. God wants us prepared and equipped for the task at hand, which, as Paul states in Ephesians three eight through ten, God’s purpose for the church is to put on display the wisdom of God. Listen to this to the unseen rulers and authorities, the unseen rulers and authorities.

Now that requires a spiritual perspective. The next instruction that we’re tapping into as we move forward here is this understanding of prayer and then note it says, Pray in the spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. So in this section of Scripture and Ephesians 618 through 20, we see two important points in this prayer challenge.

It Paul gives us pray with Holy Spirit in all your requests, watch out for one another in prayer. We’re wrapping up a few months of preaching geared toward this understanding of spiritual conflicts that we’ve been dealing with in our homes, in our communities and our marriages, whatever the situations. And we are concluding it with this instruction about our prayer lives.

There’s a couple important words that we got to recognize in this section of Scripture. Obviously, prayer is simply bringing our petitions to God. Supplications. Those are our pleas, our requests that we’re communicating with God. Perseverance is is that persistence? But there’s two words that stood out to me in this section, the words always and the word in right, Right.

He says, Pray always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit. That word always is a reference to all total, complete. That word in means among with. So really, though, the statement here is not that we are always praying. The statement is that when we pray, let all of our prayer be totally and completely united with Holy Spirit.

We do this with Him. And so all of our requests, they should come to the table with him, not us presenting just wish lists to Christ. He wants us to partner with him. This is the challenge that is in front of us, especially as we are taking on this understanding of the spiritual context of our lives. Countless people are not satisfied with their prayer life.

If you’ve ever heard of the book The Power of Simple Prayer by Joyce Meyers, she she touches on this and she brings up a survey that was done and this survey was given to pastors House satisfied Are you with your prayer life? 16% said they were satisfied. That means 84% of pastors are not satisfied with their prayer life.

When I first answered this question, I said I was not satisfied with my prayer life. I expect more from God. I expect to be able to hear him clearly. I expect to be able to encounter his presence. I expect a response to every prayer I make to God. And there’s been a lot of disappointment. But what I do know is that when I gather in prayer, God has strengthened my life.

God has done things for me that I couldn’t have imagined. And so when I think back, I’m disappointed in some of my prayer life or maybe the results of my prayer life.

But I have encountered God so many times because of that prayer life. It’s just got to be where we walk with him. Yeah. So what what God is pushing us towards today is an embrace of this understanding like never before. We must be a church that knows how to step into this relationship with God. Relationships are determined by what you think

about them, and those relationships can vary, right?

You can have a close friend that means the world to you, and you can have close, healthy family relationships that bring you incredible reward and fulfillment. Those relationships, they’re filled with trust. Yes, they’re filled with meaningful interaction. And this is what Paul’s talking about when he says, pray in the Spirit, a partnership with Holy Spirit in this. Think about your strongest relationship right now.

Why is it different from other relationships? Those differences likely are what you have to consider when you start understanding what God wants with you. Prayer is a must for a Christian embracing spiritual warfare. So if your prayer life is not fulfilling, then your spiritual warfare will be ineffective. Again, this is because prayer is a partnership that can only occur through relationship in God’s eyes, that relationship is with Holy Spirit.

So some of the things that start changing in your prayer life, when you start uniting with Holy Spirit. Joyce Meyers gives testimony for herself, you know, in this book, and she talks about how you prayer life moves from panic. And so prayers to spirit led spirit filled prayers. She talked about how the focus on her outer life circumstances changed to inner self transformation.

I remember my first meaningful prayer moment where it was just me. Me and God occurred when I was a high schooler. I was a senior in high school and I was sitting at the fellowship hall one day and I had a moment where God sort of started to reveal himself, and it was in this simple scenario where it’s just my mom and I sitting at the table, nobody else with us.

And she said, Hey, why don’t you go hang out and talk with your friends? And I looked down and said, Mom, you know, it’s great and all, but none of my friends are here. And then bam, in that instant I had this flashback two years prior, and I’m sitting at the same table with my mom and my older sister.

Nobody else around, just the three of us. And my mom asked the same question to my sister, Hey, why don’t you go, you know, hang out with some of your friends? And she gives verbatim the same response. And I’m just like, No way, no way. That just that just happened. Like, I’m thinking about that in my mind. And so I go home that night and, you know, I was born and raised in this church and I prayed at family altar with my parents.

You know, we, you know, always had that kind of interaction. But there’s something about when you step into your walk with God that it becomes different in those moments of obedience going along, taking, you know, the flow with your parents. It’s not got the meaning, but that night I was in my room thinking about this interaction, and I just started talking to God for for the first time where it was like meaningful.

I said, Lord, this is not true. I know I’m loved. That was such a lie, right? Talking about spiritual warfare. Right? That was such a lie. I Know that people loved me and it was sort of quick like that, maybe a 32nd, you know, 62nd prayer. I went to church the next week and literally three different people that would not normally ever engage with me.

Jonathan, hey, we love you. So good to see you. okay. God, thank you. You know, and and I realized in that moment that we’re in a battle, right? That everything I’d been taught all my life was true. And from that point forward, my life has never been the same. And it has been in God’s path along that is prayer where your inner self is transformed.

Simple. You just start recognizing what is true and what is not true, and you start talking to God about it. Joyce talks about how we go from laboring and striving to get 5 minutes of prayer accomplished, to not being able to live without it. Like without prayer, you don’t survive your week, right? It becomes so important to you, to spend that time with God and to draw on him for that strength and that wisdom and to get the help you need.

She talked about how her prayer moved from sporadic and inconsistent to consistent and disciplined. It moved from where she thought she was fulfilling an obligation to God, to understanding that it’s her life with him. She moved from approaching God in fear and boldly declaring what and how to pray with Him. Prayer is a privilege as she states. So today it is my hope that we as a church take a step forward with the same heart that maybe the disciples had in Luke 11 when they said, Lord, teach us to pray that we would embrace this challenge in front of us.

So sincerely that our prayer life will never be the same. Our prayer life must start to look like a relationship. When we are praying with Holy Spirit, when there is that relationship and we are in Holy Spirit, a partnering quality begins to form. A partnership is concerned with the people that come together to accomplish a task, and it’s concerned with the whole, not the individual.

So your partnership with Christ changes because you’re talking about what the whole wants. Your partnership starts to understand the expectations and the authority that is in this relationship. Romans eight is an awesome section of Scripture that the Lord brought me to in this journey here. And I want to just read a section of Scripture for us to to connect some dots.

He says There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ. Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. The law of the spirit of life. This is a spiritual challenge God is bringing to us, and it is a spiritual understanding that the church must be equipped for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh God did, by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin.

He condemned the sin in the flesh that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, the righteous law might be fulfilled. This is what the armor of God was all about. The juror she talked about last week putting on that breastplate of righteousness, putting on that helmet of salvation, having your feet shod, meaning you’re ready, you’re ready to go into this this walk that occurs because of Christ, not because of us.

For those who are, let’s see that the righteous, a righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in For those who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, for those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh, the things we see, the things we experience, the things we recognize we touch.

That’s a carnal mindset for those who live according to the flesh, set their mind on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit, the things of the spirit, for to be carnal in mind, it is death, but to be spiritually minded is life in peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Our embrace of this call to prayer, this spiritual awakening of our souls unto the potentials that God has for us, is based on this desire to please God, this desire to walk with him, this desire to be in relationship with him. We have talked about this, you know, for some of us, all of our lives.

But along the way, we get disheartened, we get disenfranchized, we get confused, we come up against situations and challenges that are extremely difficult for anyone to walk through. But the call to us is to walk through difficult challenges to suffer as Christ suffered, but to understand that He is with us in it because he wants to glorify himself, His glory is the goal.

His glory is being manifest through us, and His glory will not be revealed if there is not a report of trouble, if there is not a report of something that is going to hurt, if there is not a report of pain and sorrow in your life, then how will he be glorified? How will you be tested to put your in him and to know that you are walking with the spirit and saying, I see this challenge? How do you want me to face this Holy Spirit? How should I pray into this? Are you wanting healing now, or do you want me to pray for the grace to walk through this? Are you wanting this situation to go away or do you want to teach me wisdom? Are you trying to get me to see your church with the love of God? Or do you want me to just walk away from the people I’m intimidated by. Who are the challenges? I don’t think I have the strength to face. This is the call of God to us, to walk with Him in the Spirit and to take on the fullness of this call. We are one. We are one with him. Jesus prays and John, 17, Father may be one, as you and I are one, so that the world may see that I was sent by you.

The Oneness we’ve been. We’ve been recognizing that Satan speaks constantly. He has a whole host of angels deployed against us, and he will say whatever he can say to change the way you think, to change what you think about this truth, whether this word is true or not. And we all have to walk through that journey of faith, but we got to be able to see the little things like how he orchestrates this service today.

The little things show that his hand is at work in our lives. The second part of this challenge from Paul is that we would pray for one another being watchful to this end, with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, when we start praying for each other, we stop hurting each other. So even when we are concerned with the well-being of those around us, we stop worrying about the gossip.

We stop worrying about the looks, the insinuations, right? We can’t jump to conclusions. We have to protect one another from a misstatement, a miscommunication, maybe a accurately interpreted response. But we’re letting Satan drive the scenario now you were forgiven. Now you must forgive. It is a walk with one another that changes when we’re for one another. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about whether I should preach today or not, and I, at the start of the week, a lot was going on and and I almost just said, Pastor Pat, will you handle it?

I know you’ve been in Kenya and doing all that, but you know what you preach this week. But I felt like the Lord was. Jonathan, you’re the the lead pastor of this church and you haven’t preached yet. And it’s cool.

And so I just I said, Lord, I need you to help me not stress out about this. Make this easy. All right? Make this something where your thoughts just come together and I don’t have to worry because I do got a lot on my plate and I want to give this attention to it, Lord. But I value you guys.

I value that when I get up here. I don’t just give you words to, entertain or to think about. I want you guys to walk away from this. This house today, empowered to walk in the call how is before us you know Paul states and Ephesians three eight through 11 he says I am the least deserving of all God’s people.

But he has graciously given me the privilege to tell the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the creator of all things, had kept hidden from the beginning. God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display His wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This his eternal plan that He accomplished through Jesus Christ, our Lord. I want to be a part of a church that recognizes that God is calling us to display His power, to the unseen rulers and authorities of this world. We recognize who we are and we willingly embrace this and say, Yes, God put me in this place. Lord, you know, I’m to handle this challenge.

You wouldn’t be asking this of me if you weren’t going to walk with me. And that is the call of God on all of us to face our fears and intimidations and to fall in love with him. This relationship of being with him, partnering with the Holy Spirit to understand the craziness of life and to walk through it all unafraid.

Now, that does not mean you’re not going to face fear this week that you haven’t been walking through crazy already. It just means that you’re going to start talking to Holy Spirit about how to face those challenges and you’re going to bring him into the equation about how to deal with a brother sandpaper kind of scenario. Right? It’s not going to be through hate, though, right?

It’s not going to be through walking away. It’s going to be to inner transformation of our lives. The worship team would come up here. What God put on my heart is for us to go into worship with a purpose. Today. And that purpose is to understand that we got things to contend for. We have we have a result that depends on our obedience to the Lord, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

There’s an obedience that we do have to embrace to walking with Him. It is your faith that will direct your supplications. So what you think about God right now, what you think about yourself right now is going to affect how you request things before him. So have you lost hold of your prayer life?

Are you struggling to even believe that God?

Are you finding it tough to have any worth in your mind? Are your thoughts constantly comparing yourself to the person next to you? Do you see yourself in a place of hopelessness? Are you angry? God wants to change it all. God wants to break off of us the fear to pray and to believe for impossible things. God wants us to reconcile with Him.

This situation of the impossible in your life with the work of the cross that has been all along, intended to restore mankind to the fullness of life in him. It is the love, the spirit of life, the message of life that God has given us to take, to take into our homes, to allow transformation of our souls, to use the gifts that have been given to us, to bless the body, to bring hope to the world.

We won’t bless a community if we can’t embrace this love in our lives. Our first priority is let your kingdom be established right here, God, that your will be done right here. God but God, that he opportunity in front of us is to establish that kingdom everywhere we go. And you can’t be afraid. You can’t be afraid in that in that world.

You got to stand where you look like a fool. You got to declare when you want to just be silent. You got to love when you’re being hated upon. You got to know who your partner is. The first prayer we ever prayed was that prayer of salvation. You are the Lord Jesus, and I believe that you died on that cross for my sins, Lord, that you were buried and that you rose again so that I could have a life.

Forgive me, Lord, I am a sinner. God, But I receive you. I receive you in my heart. Holy Spirit, teach me. So this is breaking your heart. And you want the hindrances in your prayer life to be dealt with. Do not hold back today. Come before God. Let go of the afflictions. Let go of the torment. Let go of the pain of the suffering.

Your God is able, Your God is able, Your God is able. Your God is able. So glorify His name, let to the work of God come forth in your life and let his goodness and mercy change everything about your situation.