This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar driving directions and more audio recordings. Well good morning before we actually start the sermon time this morning. I wanted to take a moment. We're going to hear a couple stories here in just a second too. But to bring out and highlight this yellow sheet that's in your bulletin, hopefully you got one on the way in. It looks very similar to the blue sheet that you saw last week except a different color. But if you are a member at Christ Kingdom Church then you are aware that we had an impact Sunday last Sunday which is a chance for us to encourage everybody as a start of a new ministry year to sign up and make intentional choices. One side is about where you're going to be impacted, how you can put yourself in position to really grow in your relationship with God this year. And the other side is how you can make an impact where you can step up and serve and use your gifts and talents or abilities or just time and resources to be used of God here in the church. So we want to encourage you to do both. But one of the things I wanted to particularly highlight especially and by the way if you are a church member or a regular here you call Christ Kingdom Church home we want one of these from every single person. So if I don't get one back from you today and I've only got about half so far turned in here you will be getting an email or a phone call from me. And you've probably got enough comments over about political decisions, enough political emails and stuff in your email box. You don't want another one from me about just the logistical detail but it's more than that. This is about us being involved in intentional and making a conscious decision that started the ministry year to make an impact and to be impacted. So I need one from everybody. Some of us, well I'm already kind of volunteer, I'm already working in certain areas, nothing's changing. I fill one out anyway. The answer is yes. It'll be a way for us to be confirmed that you're in a spot that you want to be in or there's. And by the way, if checking a box just means you're going to get followed up and given more information. It doesn't commit you to that. It's a chance for us to know where your interest are so we can follow up with you. So please drop that in the offering basket. But one of the ones that's extremely important there if you look on the side that says be impacted it will mention community groups. And as again, talking to here primarily if this is your church home already here at Christchurch, I want everybody in our church to be a part of a community group. It's absolutely essential. I would be a terrible literal shepherd if I never led the sheep to where they could find good pasture or they could find fresh water. And although hopefully you get that every week here at church on Sunday mornings, it's not enough. You have to be in relationship with others. You have to be connecting in lives. Doing this with a group of 100 to 150 people each week is not the same as sitting in a group with maybe five or 10 people that you develop close friendships with over the months. That you know what's going on each other's lives. So it's absolutely essential that you're involved in a small group somewhere in the church. So I want to encourage each of you to sign up with that. Some of you already been involved and want you to be involved in again. We've got four brand new ones starting up for anyone studying the person of Jesus which is a fantastic study looking and studying just the person in the life of Jesus Christ. It will change you. I promise you I've already studied some of it at my own right now. I just want to do here from some of some of your people just like yourself. I'm going to ask Lewis to start to come up first. So I'll lose there is just to share a little bit about what small groups have had impact on him. I mean Karen Best is going to come up right after him. Good morning. As I look out over the this group I see different faces and people that I've connected with Jeremy and I'm going to forget names. I'm not going to go on with names but there's different ones of you that I've connected with in small groups. And sometimes I come to church on Sunday morning and I walk in I go gosh I feel kind of lonely or I'm not really connecting with people here. But then as I think about church and what does it really mean? It means being a part of each other's lives. And really that happens in the context of small groups. God has designed us for community. And community is not just thoughtless and laughter. Community is spending time in people's lives. It's part of being a part of their life and coming alongside them when they're hurting. It's allowing people to see inside you when you're hurting to take that step to be vulnerable. I think of the Friday morning men's group. That's had a phenomenal impact on me going through that material. It's had impact on my marriage and impact on some of my friendships. And it's a rich time. I think about the leadership group I did with Scott and some of the men we had some great time. We had some great times there. We had some tears. We had some laughter. I got to know some of the men at a deeper level. I can come in this morning and go and ask some of them. How's that going now? And they asked me how I'm doing too. I think if you haven't gotten involved in the church in a small group you're really missing out. You're missing out on what God wants for you. Because it's an opportunity to really get involved in other people's lives and to let God use you. And really more importantly, it's an opportunity to be a part of iron sharpening iron and taking that step of being vulnerable and letting other people see you. I'm not going to say every small group you go to is going to be, wow, this one just is hitting on all cylinders. Because sometimes they're going to go and they're just not going to really click. But give it a chance. Go four or five times before you say, gosh, this doesn't really work out. Go and give a small group a chance and see what God can do. There's lots of opportunities to do that and just encourage you to do it. It's rich and your life will be changed because of it. And if you're in a really good small group with some people that you really share some deep fellowship with, it's like a little slice of heaven here on earth. Thanks, Lewis. Karen, best to come up to you and cheer as well briefly. Good morning. I'm pretty nervous, so don't like talking in front of a big crowd. But anyways, I'm Karen. And first, I was thinking about the group, the women's group that we meet every month, I mean Thursday, one in the 10 o'clock. I work at night and I was thinking if I would be able to do it. But eventually, when I started and, you know, the fellowship that we were having at that group, we have used to have like maybe 14 women. I used to come to every Thursday. And I think the least we had was eight. But it was still a great, great, we had a great time. We were able to fellowship with one another. And what I was looking forward to most than anything else is the support that they gave me during the times that we meet because I don't know if you guys are weird that, I mean, I have a family, two kids and a husband. But most of the time it's just me, myself and the two kids that come to church. And the women there, they made me feel really, really welcome. And they were so very supportive to me. Many times they had when I was going through situations, they were there for me. They prayed with me to give me the strength. And to let me know that, you know, I can do it and there are people there out for me. They would ask, you know, if it's not they can do, call me, if they want me to call me and stuff like that. And not only that, but the topics that we usually went over, into the words, we were able to share how God was influencing us and the things that He wanted from us. And everyone was able to get a chance to speak about what's going on in their life, what they did the week before and how God had, you know, was moving in their lives. And it was great. I thought I was just alone out there. But I realized with the support from these ladies, women, that I was not alone. And the words that we preached, you know, we listened to a couple of tapes by, forget the latest name, but a couple of them. And it was very richly for me. And as I said, I was working nights. And I make it an effort. I look forward to it. And I would come from work, get home, you know, take a shower, have a breakfast and rush over. And when it was finished, like after 11, 30, I mean, 12, 31 o'clock, I went home, tried to get some sleep, pick up the kids from school, and prepared dinner and went back to work. And I mean, I never felt tired those days that I was going because I felt that I had people carrying me. And that's how wonderful it was to me. Appreciate you guys sharing. It's just the difference and the impact it can make. So if you're not already committed and a part of a small group, even if you are, go ahead and check the one that you're going to be a part of. But again, there's some brand new ones here. I want everybody. I don't know how to say this even stronger. As the pastor of your church, unless you have a very providential hindrance of doing one of these things, you need to sign up. You absolutely need to sign up. If I, if you were one of my kids, you know, we'd be having one of those talks, you know, when you sit your kid down, say, you know, like I just sent one off to college, we had a few talks about things that were important and things that were not so important. So I just want to encourage you to do that. Be intentional to make this year the best year of your life in your relationship with your God and growing with him. Put yourself in a position to grow in him. So please fill that out. Drop that in the offering basket a little bit later in the service. That'd be great. Now if you do have your Bibles, do open those up. Turn to Acts chapter four. We're actually finishing our series called Visionizing this morning with part two of what we let off last week. But let me start off by real quickly just reviewing the game with. We talked several weeks ago now about who we are as a church. And we started off and we said, we are as a church or distinguished from other churches by four specific values that we have. One was gospel sinterness. Two was authentic community. Three, boldness and belief. And four, kingdom focused. And again, those are all, these are all audio recorded on the web page. You can go back and listen to them. You missed one of these weeks. But it's, if you did miss, we could really encourage you to do it just so you can hear more of our further explanation that I have time for right now this Sunday. But these remarks that we have, just like you have marks as a family, you know, if you were to talk about your family or you as a person individually might say, yeah, this is important to me exercise. That's important to me as individuals. One of your values. You know, you can maybe list four or five things that kind of make you kind of who you are. Well, these are the ones that they are for us as a church. And then very important for us to be reminded of. Number two was our purpose statement. What we're about. We're about bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to our hearts, our church and the world around us. And just to clarify, it wasn't just brought to our hearts the day we came to trust Jesus Christ. And we're done. We understand the scripture's teats. It is a daily basis of bringing the reality of that to our hearts every single day, moment by moment in a fresh way to constantly be doing that. Colossians 26, just as you receive Christ so walk in him. The way you receive Christ is the way you're supposed to live each day in him. And to see that happen, not just in our hearts, but in our church. It's why the Sunday morning worship service is not enough because you're not going to connect and see the gospel coming the reality of your hearts in a church setting until you get involved in a small group. And not just for us to be a church and to be a safe place for ourselves, but for the world around us. We're called to be concerned about the community that's around us because that's what is on the concern and the heart of God is those who don't know him yet. Those who are lost, those that need to know the good news and the hope that there isn't Christ. Then we spent last week we talked about how we're going to get there. Part one was this whole be impacted, make an impact. And again, we're just following up with a yellow sheet there. And I told you last week that was talking about the tools that God chooses to use, but it didn't really touch on so much the power, which is what we're going to look at this week. How we're getting there part two, the power behind it all is prayer. And prayer really is not an adequate way to describe it because prayer itself is not it because it's what is reflected in the heart of prayer, the dependence, the reliance on God. And by the way, it's not just any God, it's the God of the Bible. It's the God who's revealed Himself through creation, the God who's revealed Himself through sending His Son to Jesus Christ here on earth because every religion has some form or expression of prayer. And just about everybody, over 90% of you were to poll just Americans alone would say, do you pray on a regular basis, they would say, oh, you bet I do. And as kids have already started school last week, they're starting to pray even with more fervency than they have over the summer with school and so on. We pray for sure, but the question is, are we praying to the God of the Bible and we are praying in the way that honors God and really reveals and releases the power of God in our hearts and our lives. A lot of times we think of prayer more like with this analogy points out. Now the analogy that if you're out in a fishing boat away from the shore and you take your fishing pole and you cast your hook over and you catch something on shore, and if you start reeling the fishing rod, you might have the idea or the sensation that you're actually pulling. You're actually pulling land to you, but the reality is just the opposite, right? What you're really doing is just pulling you and your boat from the water to the land. Prayer is not about making God do what you want to do, bending God's arm, putting in the formula or rubbing the genie bottle enough to get God to materialize and grant you your three wishes. Prayer is about aligning yourself and your heart with your creator, with the Son of God who came to earth to die for your sins, with his Holy Spirit who's here to empower you. That is what we're talking about when we talk about the idea of prayer. So if you look at here this morning, let me turn to our text here now, let's read together, if you have in your Bible, turn there Acts chapter 4 verses 23 to 31. It's printed in your outline in the bulletin. I think I'll be on the screen behind me as well too, but here God's word and here how prayer for us was first practiced after the Holy Spirit was poured out. This is God's word. On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all of the chief priests and elders had said to them, when they heard this they raised their voices together in prayer to God. Sovereign Lord they said, you made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them, you spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our Father David. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your Holy servant Jesus whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now Lord consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness, stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your Holy servant Jesus. And they prayed the place where they were meeting was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. This is God's holy and inspired word. Well, three things I want you to take home and I want you to take home each of them in order as we flow through this very specifically. The first one is this, if you're following along in your outline, is that prayer is helplessness. Prayer is helplessness. Now I didn't give you the full context of what was happening here in chapter 4, I actually preached on a few weeks back as well too. But Peter had been just imprisoned and had just been, Peter and John had both been just told not to be preaching anymore of a good news and the church had been praying for them and they had just been released. But if you go back even further to Acts chapter 1, you get more the bigger picture of what had just happened days or weeks before this. Let me just read a section from that, Acts chapter 1 verses 12 through 14. Here's the context, because everything sounds really good and going and they're like going like gangbusters in chapter 4. Well, it wasn't quite like that in chapter 1 and it's important for you to realize that. Chapter 1, verse 12 through 14, it says this, and they returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives a Sabbath stay walk from the city. By the way, Jesus had just ascended and gone to heaven. Verse 13, when they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present, were Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the Son of Alphius and Simon and Zillett and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. What are they doing before the Holy Spirit has poured out, before they're equipped and empowered? They're gathered to pray, but look beyond just what they were doing specifically to what the context, what was going on and think about this a little bit. These disciples had just been through a very extremely traumatic few weeks. They had gone from the very up of their ministry, things were going well. Here they had they knew the Messiah, the one who was making, the maker and the shaker at things, the one who was going to bring freedom and restoration of the nation of Israel, get them out of the oppression of the Roman Empire, take Israel back to its place of power and dominance, rebuild the temple and so on or re-empower the temple and so on from this point. They were all pumped up and then what happened? He gets killed. He dies on a cross and everything goes to waste at this point. They watch him betray, they watch him killed, they watch him rise again, but not rise again to come back and restore himself the power to rise again and appear here and there to a few and others here to encourage them and here to tell them he's about to go back to heaven and then he does. And you've got to understand they're scratching their head here, they're trying to figure out what's going on. And now Jesus, they just watched him ascend, go back to heaven. And yeah, as much preferred to seeing him dying across and leave him, but now he's still gone and they're left going, what just happened? And you've got to think that the disciples themselves are thinking, excuse me, do we just spend three years with this guy? And we saw a lot of cool stuff, but we didn't quite figure out how this death and resurrection was fitting in but now he's just left us and he's told us to wait. And to gather together, you've got to be thinking that they're asking questions or having some concerns here with what's going on. They've given up their livelihood as fishermen. They've actually know they've got a mark on their head because there are many people who didn't like Jesus who don't like them as well. That's part of the reason why they've been in hiding. They're at a place of great despair in the midst of this and they're told simply to hold on and to wait for this Holy Spirit that's going to be poured out. It was complete helplessness is where they were at at this point. No where else to turn, no where else to go, nothing to claim to accept. All right, he did miracles like we never saw before. He spoke truth like we never heard before. Like goodness, we saw him rise from the dead. We got nothing to offer here, but you know what, we're going to wait. We're going to helplessly wait and that is what the birth of prayer came from in this context. Acts 1, 435, Jesus that told them do not leave Jerusalem but wait for the gift of my father promised which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And what is the Holy Spirit representing the presence of God? Not just in dwelling you but empowering you, in leading you and guiding you. It was helplessness and it was helpless obedience. All right, we're going to wait. We're going to be still and wait for him. Here's the important thing to realize. Listen to this. The place we dread most is the very place faith in God is born which is complete helplessness and looking to him. Let me say that again, very important. The place we dread most is the very place where faith in God is born which is complete helplessness and looking to him. You've got to understand that. You're never going to naturally want to go to a place like that. If the disciples could have written a script for themselves about what their life would look like and how they would have send it to the place of leadership and empowerment and ready to leave the church and the name of Jesus, this would not have been the script. They never would have thought, oh it means me getting to a place of brokenness and helplessness when I've got nothing to hang on to except for a promise of a guy who's gone back and disappeared in the clouds. But that is the very place that faith is born in this context and is what is God is looking for even today in our lives is to get to a place like that. Oswald Chambers says, we do not pray at all until we are at wit's end. Now what if you thought about prayer like that? You don't really pray at all until you got nothing left to hope in. That would kind of revolutionize what you think about prayer in it or what your prayers really are. I think there's a lot of truth to that. Jesus tells us that we should become like little children. In fact, Matthew 183 says this, and he said, I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Now the context tells us that he had just pulled up a little child that was with them and started talking about him. Now I'm not sure if the little child looks like this, but this is first century, you know, Israel under Roman oppression, and it was probably just as dirty as this. Snotty knows, distracted, not very polite, very self-fent-centered and thinking, and probably needing a bath. But Jesus says you've got to become like a little child if you're going to plan on entering the kingdom of heaven. What is it about children? One of the key things about children is that they understand helplessness. They live it. It is their experience. It's helplessness. Whether it's needing help from whatever lurks underneath their bed at bedtime, whether it's needing help from the height of a jungle gem when they're stuck at the top, whether it's needing help from the hunger cravings before dinner, from their tired legs after a long day at the amusement park, from the tumble they take after riding their bike, from a bathroom crisis. I had one of those yesterday. Of course, Laura is out of town. And all I hear across the room, the house says, Dad! So, and as I come in there, Davis is in the bathroom, and Davis is frozen. In a quick second or two, I realize why Davis is frozen. Because there is stuff everywhere, where it's not supposed to be in the bathroom. By the way, the bathroom I had just cleaned thoroughly. And what did he do? He froze. You know, which actually was a good thing. And he called out. And he said, Dad, and I walked in, he looked at me like, what do I do now? And I was like, what did you do? It's helplessness. It's what children do best because it comes natural. You know what my goal is? And I'm realizing this more and more as I have kids that are not going off the college and other things. My goal as a parent is to transfer my child's helpless dependence on me, to their helpless dependence on God their father, and nothing else. If I can do that, it's been a success. If I mistakenly think it's all about them becoming independent and mature and being responsible in and of themselves, I have done them the greatest disservice on the planet. They don't get me wrong. They do need to learn to do things for themselves. And if Davis is still crying out, Dad, at age 18, cross house, we have a bigger problem. But if Davis doesn't understand that he needs his heavenly father as much or infinitely more than he needs an earthly father in those moments, if he doesn't understand that by age 18, I failed. And I failed him. It is about helplessness. It's about dependence. And Jesus knows that. He tells us that. Davis called in desperation from that and every child of God calls to Jesus Christ in need of desperation of needing to be cleansed ultimately by him too. And every child needs in helplessness to hear truth from their parents, truth from a father as well. I remember a few years back to a whole lot of years now. I remember Michael was one of his first babysitting experiences was he was babysitting the younger kids. And we got this frantic phone call from him out of blue. And he was saying, Mom, Dad, Reese was chewing on a glow stick and it popped and broken. I think he swallowed it. And so we're like going, well, yeah, what happened? And what happened is that Reese was chewing on it. And Reese got freaked out because it popped in his mouth. And he had that glow juice, whatever it was coming all over him. And he came in yelling at Michael and had dripped all over his shirt. Michael thought he had swallowed it and that was glowing from the inside of his stomach, coming through. So we quickly told him that, Hey, it's nontoxic. Okay, which it is. In case you're ever wondering, it's going to be okay, but calm down. You know, what they needed at that moment, they needed truth to come and intercede and prevail. It was helplessness that desperately needed truth. And God knows that we are best when we are helpless knowing that we need truth. The problem is we think we've got the truth. We think we've got to figure it out. We think we really don't need the Bible all so much. This is a helpful tool when you get stuck. The truth is you don't know that you're stuck all the time. You don't know how to get out of the mess you're in. You don't know how to realize you have blind spots right now. But that kind of helplessness is what births prayer. And this is what the point is. In fact, one of the books that we're recommending, by the way, during our 40 days of prayer and fasting, this book is over here. We're just offering for the cost of us, just $10. One of the things, his definition of prayer, his actual definition of prayer, one word, helplessness. That's it. And I think he's right on the money in realizing that is the core of what prayer is. Jesus, we don't hear the story in Mark chapter 10 that people were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them. But the disciples rebuked them. Verse 14 of that chapter says, when Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. God loves helplessness. And by the way, if you ever thought about it, Jesus was the most helpless man to ever walk the planet. And I kind of blessed our paradigm, sometimes we think. We mean the most helpless. He was the son of God. He was the most powerful. He was the most truthful. He was fully righteous. He was fully God. Yes, he was. And he was fully helpless. What does Jesus say? He says, I can only say what I hear the father say. That's a quote, quote, I do what I see my father do. I've come to give glory to the father and to him alone. What was Jesus all about? He was all about an intimate relationship with his father and mimicking his father and modeling his father. Jesus who had no problem praying was in constant fellowship with God all the time. What did he need constantly to do? He needed time to get away and spend the evening in prayer. The text tells us multiple times or that he got up early and went off to pray. Or that he said the disciples ahead so he could stay back and pray. Or he went up and he faster for 40 days to be with God. The one who had perfect fellowship with God constantly needed no distraction time with his father. He was dependent, completely dependent on his father. And he still is, by the way, he was helpless totally needing his father. And we're called to be Christians, Christians, Christ followers to be just like Jesus, that interdependent, that needful. So let me ask you this right now. Are you aligning yourself with helplessness with God? Where is God speaking to you specifically this morning to tell you to stop, be helpless and trust in me? Where is he saying that? Because I bet he has already brought things to your heart and mind specifically this morning by his Holy Spirit. Or if you don't know Christ this morning, maybe just in general, I bet he's pulling on your heart saying, are you trusting me completely? Have you given up control of your life? Have you chosen to put yourself in what is true that you're really helpless? But I'm there to meet you. Is he telling you to stop an impure relationship and be helpless before him? Is he telling you to stop feeding an addiction and be helpless before him? Is he telling you to stop filling your life with busyness and be helpless before him? Is he telling you to stop choosing hate and bitterness and be helpless? Is he telling you to stop trying to control your life and be helpless? Is he telling you to stop needing other people's approval and be helpless? Is he telling you to stop a specific area of sin this morning and be helpless? God doesn't always rescue you in the way that we always want, the way we picture it should be, but he does. He always does. And I've seen this well illustrated over the summer. As many of you know that Laura, my wife, teaches swim lessons, and so we've had over 100 kids through the course of the summer in different times in our backyard swimming. And it's very interesting what happens in that context there. You'll have kids, the ones that are learning for the first time, they're absolutely frantic and terrified of the water. And they have no understanding that what they're about to go through and why they're there is for their own good. They're mad at their mom and dad for bringing them there. You know, the water is terrifying and cold and creepy and here's this lady that don't really know very well. Most of them don't know Laura very well at that point. And they get in the water and a lot of times they're mad. I can hear them inside the house screaming, okay, mad. I mean, Laura's actually had one shot that came and just actually took both hands and popped her on both sides of the face and the middle of the swim lessons. They're mad because they think that you're putting through hell and they're putting them through mere torment for no other, for no good reason. And I'm telling you, the other people that are really having a difficult time or the mom and dad on the side who are there going, they want to jump in, they want to stop, they want to do something. And nothing is happening for that child the way they think it should be happening or the way they think is best at that moment or at that time. They think it's the worst thing in the world that's happening to them. But I tell you, after two weeks, when they're laughing and splashing around, when that parent has the comfort of knowing that if my child slipped in a pool or a lake or somewhere, they would be able to survive that piece far outweighs any trauma that happened two weeks earlier. And when you see the smile on the kids' faces and the joy that they're experiencing at that time, they've forgotten how they felt day one. You're going to feel like that sometimes. I'm not trying to tell you something different. When you put yourself in a place of helplessness, you're going to feel that sometimes like, what is going on? This seems like pure hell. The idea of stopping trusting myself to be helpless and resting God sounds like, sounds like craziness. But two weeks later, two months later, two years later, I'm not sure. You'll look back and understand that God met you in a way that was very powerful. And you know it will lead you to, it will lead you to number two. It will lead you to understand that prayer is worship or prayer worships, I should say. Helpless prayer leads to worship. And notice it did here in this text, look at verses 24 through 30. After Peter and John are released, because they've been praying for them to be released, what happens, the group, the church, the gathering of the Christians, they raise their voices to get in prayer. Spontaneously it says this. And they said, sovereign Lord, they said, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David, part of the nation's rage and the people's plot and vain. The kings of the earth take their stand, the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel and the city to inspire against your Holy servant Jesus, who you may anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now Lord consider their threats and enable your servants to speak, your word with great boldness, stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your Holy Servant Jesus. They prayed in worship, prayer worships is what prayer does when it comes from healthlessness. Notice some of the things they said there, we'll look at here in more detail here. But there's four parts to this worship prayer that you see here. The first part here is acknowledging a sovereign Lord. In fact, that's how their prayer starts off. How many times did your prayer start off? Sovereign Lord. And they go through and they reminded of how God is working through all those situations. They saw God in the sovereignty. The second part of their worship is they saw God's power and were reminded it was demonstrated in creation. Third, they reminded of his faithfulness in the past and fourth, they were reminded about Jesus Christ and what God's faithfulness had been revealed through that. So I want to look real quick as each of those four areas under this prayer part that worships. One of the stories that came to mind here recently is I was thinking about worshipful prayer and how that happens is looking at the story of John Piper. John Piper is a pastor. One of the greatest pastors I think living in our day and age here, an author as well to a very powerful speaker and author. Anyway, four years ago, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. And listen to it. This was his first public address I think at his church after getting that news. And here's a quote. He said, the news has of course been good for me. The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness. The news of cancer has wonderfully, has a wonderfully blasting effect on both. I thank God for that. The times of Christ in these days have been unusually sweet. That's a very radical different perspective. That's a perspective of someone who understands their helplessness and who has seen the gift of cancer. He wanted to refresh their understanding of their helplessness. And what did it do? It led him to worship, to thank God, to call cancer something that was sweet. Because of how God was going to use it in his life. In fact, he went on and he wrote an article that you can read online, just do a search for it. Call, don't waste your cancer. One here's some of his reasons why he says, number one, you will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God. That's understanding a sovereign God. Number two, you will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift. How could you believe it's a gift? Well if you believe there's a sovereign God behind it all. Number three, you will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God. Number four, you will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death. Number five, you will waste your cancer if you think that beating cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ. Number six, you will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God. Number seven, you will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection. Number eight, you will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope. Number nine, you will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as you did before. And number ten, you will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ. I want you to see what is behind his understanding, his view of cancer. Number one, the rock sovereignty of God. Number two, the reminder of God's power in the midst of that. Number three, the reminder of God's faithfulness in the past. And four, the reminder of His faithfulness for the present and for the future in Christ. It's the very same four principles that are there in the book of Acts here. So let me ask you, are you praying to a sovereign God this morning? When you pray, are you praying to a God who is sovereignly in control, there's not a single microorganism in this universe that's not within His control and power in hand to willing to do. Isaiah 46 says this, I am God and there's no other. I am God and there's none like me. I make known to the end from the beginning from ancient times what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please. God's not playing the odds. God is completely in control. Romans 828, which most of us have heard. And we know that all and all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. That means cancer. That means bad job situation. That means a hard class of school. That means marital problems. That means parenting problems. Emotional social problems. I don't know what it is, but it means God's sovereignly in control of all that. Prayer worships. They also remember God's power as well in the midst of this. Remember they said, sovereign lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. That sounds like just a salutation to say at the beginning, but it's more than that. It's saying, wait a minute. God created everything. He had all power and He has all power. We're not going to question or worry about this. God have the power to fix my circumstance or my situation. Look at creation. He does look at a little baby's fingertip on the pinky finger and what will you see a little baby pinky finger toenail or I mean fingernail perfectly formed. That's God's power at work. Look in the news the past week and see how they're still discovering new planets within close range of our solar system. And we're just beginning to understand the magnitude of the universe. God created all of that. You think he's really got your one area who he slipped up on or he's forgotten about. His power is so important to know because prayer worships. Let me ask you this. They remembered his faithfulness in the past. What do they do next in the prayer? They brought up David. Hello, where's David? David's 100 years before them. Why are they thinking about David? Because they're remembering how David cried out to God. They're remembering how David and his desperation found God meeting his needs and providing for him. They remembered God's faithfulness from the past. And it's so important for you not to do that. And your prayer will worship if you do. Whether it's keeping a journal, whether it's talking with family members and bringing up stories about God's faithfulness. Hey, remember when we thought we were in such a bind and remember what God did. Telling stories like that. Remembering each other. What we do is a church. That's why you should be in a small group. So over the course of a year, you can go back and go, hey, remember, remember the fall we were praying for so and so. Remember how God was faithful there. It's what I'm constantly doing with my finances. I don't know if you're like me, but my finances. Some kind of big bill comes up always. And I'm always thinking, gosh, how are we going to get through that one? You know, braces, right? How many kids we have again? You know, you're thinking through whatever it is. And then all of a sudden I go back and think, all right, we've been married about 20 years. What sin, what real need do we ever have that God hasn't met? And Lord, I have to look at and go none. And as always, providing the past and we have to look at and go, well, yeah, have we ever known and we always kind of wondered how he was going to provide the past and he still did. Well, yeah, that's remembering his faithfulness from the past. You know what they go on to do? They go on to remember his faithfulness through Christ. They bring up about looking at how Jesus had just been betrayed and how Jesus had just gone through persecution and suffering and how God had brought the most wonderful thing through his resurrection, eternal life and salvation. Their money that Christ is their hope and the hope for the future is well too for them. Robert Murray McShane says, if I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me. What does Hebrews say? Hebrews says that Jesus right now lives to make intercession for his people. Jesus is not playing a harp in heaven. All right. Jesus is not playing checkers with the angels. Jesus is making intercession for his church, for his people, for you, for me. Do you know you have that kind of power, that kind of support, that kind of love behind you on a regular basis? Prayer worships when it understands that. Well, lastly, not only is prayer helpless, prayer worships, but prayer presses into Christ. Prayer presses into Christ. You see that in verses 29 to 31. What is their response in this? Now Lord, consider their threats and make them stop and don't let us go through any hard times and keep us safe. We don't want to suffer and and make everything work out sweet and nice. Is that what it says? Notice the helplessness which had led to worship. Notice what the response is. Truthfully, verse 29, now Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your Holy Servant Jesus. That is why verse 30 happened, in verse 31. That is why after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken and they were all filled with Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. That is why God answered that prayer because that was perfectly in tune with the heart of God. And when you and I begin to pray more and more in tune with the heart of God, you will think, wow, prayers are just being answered everywhere because you're lining yourself with God. But prayer presses into Christ. They came back and they were asking for more boldness from God that. We see that happening with Christ when Jesus was walking on earth. They remember the sick Jewish woman. They had the hemorrhage who was just like, gosh, if I can just touch his cloak. You know, she was working through the crowd. She was going to kind of go incognito. Remember, she was crawling around the ground just trying to reach up and grab his cloak. Taylor took some serious pressing into but she was helpless. She knew who Jesus was and she worshipped him in her heart and she just had to touch his robe. And it paid off. Remember the Roman centurion who came up to Jesus. He's Roman. He's not Jewish. He's like, Jesus has no reason to do anything gracious to me. I'm the enemy. I'm the one that's oppressing his people and him. But you know what he says, hey, I have people under my authority. You have the ultimate authority. Just say the word. In my level and be healed. That was pressing into Jesus. Remember the Gentile woman who was a Canaanite woman who was also part of the enemies of Israel and those that were lower class and whatsoever comes up and asked for the healing of her demon, the zest daughter. And Jesus said, hey, is it right for me to give bread to the away from the children to give it the dogs. And she says, hey, even the dogs must feed from the crumbs that fall from their master's table. Jesus said, bless is your faith because of that your daughter we healed. She was. She was pressing in to the graciousness and the mercy of God helplessness leads to worship, which leads to pressing into Christ. We get more bold, more desperate and more excited. But you know the ironic thing that this is not the common practice today and unfortunately not even in the church. We press into things, but it's usually not God. We press more and more into ourselves, into our own mechanisms for saving ourselves into self-help books, into finding friends that just kind of pass them back and tell us what we want to hear versus finding people that will tell us the truth. And I was looking at some statistics this week about antidepressants. Here are some facts, the use of antidepressants has doubled in the last 10 years in the US, doubled. Preschoolers are the fastest growing market for antidepressants. Can you believe that? Preschoolers. The rate of increase of depression among children is an astounding 23%. 15% of the population of most developed countries suffers severe depression, 30% of women are depressed. 15% of depressed people will commit suicide. Depression will be the second largest killer of heart disease after heart disease by the year 2020. Depression. It should be different as followers of Christ. The New Testament says there was daily dependence and trust in following on the Holy Spirit to lead to guide to get respected, to give truth. We read in Acts chapter 8, Philip is led by the Spirit to go into evangelize of the Ethiopian Unic. We read in Acts chapter 16 that Paul and his companions were moving in different cities and one place the Spirit told him to stop and another place they got a vision in the Spirit told him to go this place. They are living day in and day out trusting and following the work and the power of the Holy Spirit. They are pressing into Christ and following his leading on a daily basis. John Wesley says, I have so much to do that I spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it. Martin Luther said, if I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer. This is a very different view of helplessness in your need for Christ that you are too busy not to pray but that is how your understanding changes. When you understand your helplessness you understand God's power and grace and mercy and you begin to press into it. That is why Wesley and Luther made such an impact on the church because the power of God was working moving through them. Paul Miller writing from that book of prayer life says this, Jesus was the first person who didn't seek independence. He wanted to be in constant contact with this heavenly Father. In fact he humbled himself to death on the cross becoming anxious so that we could be free from anxiety. Now the Spirit brings the humility of Jesus into our hearts no longer do we have to be little gods controlling everything. Instead we cling to our father in the face of chaos by continuously praying because we know we don't have control we cry out for grace. That's the heart of prayer is a heart that cries out to God in desperation and helplessness. And that's the kind of heart that God kind of prayer that God responds and works and moves through. Are you pressing into Christ or are you pressing really into yourself this morning? What about when it comes to your personal worth and your hope? What about when it comes to your calling and career? When it comes to your relationships, to your school, to your marriage, to your health, to your dreams? Are you pressing into Christ and seeking His kingdom or you're pressing into yourself? There's only a few reasons why you wouldn't not be experiencing the kind of prayer that we'd be experiencing there. Neither one you're not helpless enough or you don't realize your helplessness or two you don't realize God's power in His love and mercy. Or three, both. And I want to propose it's usually three because the two go hand in hand. But we will press into Christ in prayer and we realize how desperate our situation is and how gracious and willing God is to respond. So as I close in prayer here this morning, let me just ask you to make this true one on your heart level, just your own personal life. What is the Holy Spirit spoken to you here this morning and will you press into Christ? Will you lean into Him, will you understand and brace your helplessness in His mercy and grace? What about we as a church? Will we do that as a church? My prayer and hope is that we will, especially this year coming up ahead of us. Will we do that in this community? Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would come and you would just remind us God that we are in desperate need of your mercy and your grace every morning. God thank you for the model of Christ Himself who was so helpless and who was so dependent on His Father moment by moment, day by day, who continues to be in heaven. While we pray that your Holy Spirit, your Spirit that leads us in the same path and the purpose of Christ will come and prevail and will reign in our hearts and will reign in our church here and will impact us and change us and change this community as a result. So God thank you for the helplessness that we are in that you meet and provide for through a personal intimate relationship with you. God draw our hearts to you and I pray that we would relinquish control of all the areas that we want to have control that we never really ever do, but we would relinquish those to you, we would yield to you, we would experience your life changing power in our hearts and your lives. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.