Real People Real Talk

Prayer: The Foundation of Faith (Encore)

• Paul Calcote • Episode 199

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Prayer forms the foundation of our relationship with God as we explore three powerful truths: prayer is a priority, a privilege, and powerful. Jesus demonstrated that prayer should be our first response, not our last resort.

• Prayer is talking to God - our vehicle for communion with our Creator
• Jesus prioritized prayer even during his busiest ministry days
• Having direct access to God through prayer is a privilege we often take for granted
• Prayer demonstrates power throughout Scripture - while we pray, God works
• Five aspects of effective prayer: adoration, confession, intercession, petition, silence
• God always answers prayer - with yes, no, or not yet
• Nothing should take precedence over your time with God

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Speaker 1:

Free audio post production by Alphoniccom. Welcome and thanks for tuning in. To Real People, real Talk, relevant conversations that take you from surviving to thriving. This is the podcast that goes there. My name is Paul Calcoat and I'm your host. Now let's talk. Well, good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever time this podcast finds you. I want to say welcome to Real People, real Talk, and thank you so much for tuning in.

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At the time of this recording, we are 24 hours away from stepping over into the month of May and, more specifically, the first Thursday in May, which is recognized as the National Day of Prayer here in the United States of America. It was created back in 1952 as a joint resolution of the United States Congress and signed into law by President Harry S Truman, and based on that, I wanted to bring back an episode and a sermon that I did a couple of years ago where it's all about prayer. So this is an encore episode that I hope that you will enjoy and I hope that you will share. So God speaks to us through his word Amen, and we respond and we speak back to God through this thing called prayer. So in today's episode, I just want to remind you of three powerful truths. I want to remind you that prayer is a priority, that prayer is a privilege and, thirdly, that prayer is powerful. And this is not an episode or sermon or message to make you feel bad for not praying, but rather I want to use it as an encouragement to whet your appetite for a more vibrant prayer life. So, prayer, let's get a working definition for prayer. In its most simplest terms, it means talking to God. It is our vehicle for communion with our creator, but all too often, if we're honest, it goes underutilized and God forbid, sometimes it may go unused. Just like breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I really believe that prayer is the most important meal of the day. I really believe that prayer is the most important conversation of the day.

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Now I want you to imagine this. Imagine going two weeks without talking to your significant other, or two weeks without talking to your child, or two weeks without talking to your parents, or two weeks without talking to your parents, or two weeks without talking to your favorite person. Now, would that help the relationship? Would that hurt the relationship? As with any relationship, a lack of communication has a huge impact, my friend. Or put it another way, I want you to think about it this way If your prayers from this week were transcribed, would it produce a single page? Would it produce a booklet or pamphlet? Would it produce a research paper or would it produce a book? In other words, how much time have you put into prayer this week? Because prayer is about building your relationship with your heavenly father that loves you, oh so much. So, of course, let's go to scripture, let's go to mark.

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Chapter 1, verses 35 through 39, now the previous verses in this chapter. It shows that jesus has been engaged in a full day, in a full evening of ministry. He was teaching in the synagogue, he was casting out demons, he was healing the sick, as the entire city came to him for help. So you could say that Jesus was busy, all right Verse 35. And rising very early in the morning and while it was still dark, he departed and went to a desolate place and there he prayed and Simon and those who were with him searched for him and they found him and said to him everyone is looking for you. And he said to them let us go on to the next town that I may preach there also. But that is why I came out and he went throughout all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. Emphasis on verse 35. Rising early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed, went to a desolate place and he prayed. Although he was busy doing so many good things, godly things, things for the kingdom, he wasn't too busy to spend time with the Father.

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We see that Jesus demonstrates that we should do whatever it takes to attain, maintain and sustain an active life of prayer. Listen my sister, listen my brother. Please don't get too busy for the Lord. Jesus had too much to do to not pray. In other words, jesus didn't have time to pray. He made time to pray, and that may be a word for you. It's not about having time to pray, it's about making time to pray Because we got to realize who is this person that we're praying to.

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We got to remember and recognize that it's God, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, our protector, our provider, our way maker, the person that has given you breath in your body. I mean, this is our father, this is our friend, who is trustworthy, who is faithful, who is sovereign, wise and perfect, and so it's a privilege, it's an honor to commune with the king. So, first of all, prayer must be a priority. First of all, prayer must be a priority. First of all, prayer must be a priority. We see that in matthew 6, 33 says to seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. It doesn't say hey, whenever you have time, I want you to seek god now, when you get through with with work and you get through with all your other responsibilities, if you have a little bit of time. Once you seek after the lord, it says to seek God first. I've heard it said like this is prayer the steering wheel in your life, or is it the spare tire? In other words, it may be the spare tire if it's your last resort, but it could be your steering wheel. That anything comes up, you take it to the Lord in prayer.

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And as we're talking about business, I want to tell you this that, no matter how many things you have on your to do list, you always have time for the thing that's first. In other words, prayer and our time with the Lord should never be an afterthought. End up doing a lot of nothing Busy but not productive, active but not really accomplishing anything. I want to encourage you to fight for time with Jesus. If you got to wake up earlier, then set your alarm so you can spend time with the Lord. All right, if you got to go to bed earlier so you can get up early, then so be it. Do whatever it takes in your schedule to make time and to fight for time with the Lord.

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And, just like Jesus, we must send the multitudes away. We see that all throughout the gospel, that Jesus will send the multitudes away so he can spend time with the father. And you may not have a multitude of people following you, but you still have a quote unquote multitude, and your multitude could look like distractions. Your multitude could be your laptop, your phone, social media or even laziness, apathy, tiktok, instagram, etc. I don't know what's distracting you from spending time with the Lord, but deal with it, my friend.

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So, first, prayer must be a priority and secondly, prayer is a privilege. We have this divine invitation to speak with the Lord. The hymn says it best what a privilege it is to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. God wants to hear from you. You may say well, I haven't prayed in so long, I haven't gone to church in a while, I'm far from the Lord. But let me tell you this that God is a father and he wants to hear from you. Please don't allow the enemy and his lies to cause you to stay away from God just because you feel distant. Just because you feel distant Because of the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus did on the cross, we have direct access into the presence of God. Take advantage of it. And even though all of us have sinned and fallen short, isn't it a wonderful thing to consider that Jesus still wants to spend time with you and I? Please don't allow the cares of this world, please don't allow burdens, please don't allow the busyness and the vicissitudes of life to just burden us down to the point that we fail to embrace this grand, awesome, awesome, majestic invitation to be in the presence of King Jesus himself. So, yes, prayer must be a priority in our lives. Prayer, indeed, is a privilege.

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And thirdly, prayer is powerful. You can ask Paul and Silas when they were in jail, at the midnight hour, they began to pray and sing praises to their God. And if you don't know the story, let me go and tell you right now that God showed up, and God showed out and he delivered them from their situation. Or you can ask Peter Now. The church was praying for Peter while Peter was in prison, all right. And so the Lord sends an angel and Peter makes it out of prison and he goes to the house where the church was praying. And I say that to say this that while the church was praying, god was working, that even when you don't feel God moving, you may not even think that he's moving, but I guarantee you, while you're praying, god is working. We just have to trust him. And you may have heard it said like this, and it still rings true that no prayer means no power. Little prayer means little power, but much prayer means much power.

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Back to scripture Luke, chapter 11, starting at verse 1. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him Lord, teach us how to pray, as John taught his disciples. The request was to teach them how to pray. He didn't ask to teach them how to preach. He didn't ask hey, hey, lord, can you teach me how to turn that water into wine? Can you teach me how to walk on water? Can you teach me how to feed the 5,000? Can you teach me how to be rich? No, they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray because prayer is, I want to remind you, is, a priority. Prayer is a privilege and my friend. Prayer is powerful. It's our opportunity to dialogue with the divine, it's our opportunity to hear from heaven, it's our opportunity to fellowship with the Father. Now I just want to break down prayer just a little bit more, right here, and before I do, let me also say this that in Matthew 6, as I talked about last week, where it says and when you fast, in other words, that fasting is expected, and it says the same thing about prayer. And when you pray, in other words, prayer is expected.

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I want to give you five points of prayer to give you a starting point, to give you a foundation, to give you a launching pad of what are some things that you can pray about. One of the aspects of prayer is adoration. In other words, this is when you just worship the Lord. You can sing to him, even if you're not on key. The Bible says to make a joy for those things. They got to be on key. Now you know, when it's between you and the Lord, you can sing to him. That's your time to praise him, that's your time of thanksgiving, and I'm not saying you got to. You know, use the exact words that I use. Was you know what this can look like in my prayer life? Lord, I want to thank you that you are my rock, you're my shield, you're my buckler, you're my provider, you are my protector, lord, thank you for waking me up this morning. Lord, thank you for your blessings, thank you for your protection and just giving God the honor, the adoration and the thanksgiving that's due unto him.

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So the first aspect is adoration. Now the second aspect is confession. In other words, we need to take some time that we confess our sins and we repent of our sins. The Bible tells us in 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he is faith and will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. As in prayer and we're confessing our sins to the Lord, it's's like a detox, a spiritual detox for the soul, to get things off your chest and to clear your conscience. So ask the lord to forgive you for what I like to call the sins of commission, the things that you commit, in other words, the things that you do that god told you not to do. And then the sins of omission, the things that you omit to do, the things that that God has asked you to do but you haven't done. All right, for example, the sense of omission, not praying enough, not fasting enough, not sharing the gospel enough, the sense of commission Lord forgive me for my pride, lord forgive me for overeating, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

All right, the third aspect of prayer is intercession, and that's just a fancy word. That means praying for others. The bible tells us in first timothy, 2 1 first of all, our urge, as supplication prayers and intercession, thanksgiving be made for all people. In other words, we are to pray beyond ourselves, pray, pray for others. What this could look like? You can pray for the people in your life that don't know Jesus. You can pray that they come to know him. You can pray for the people in your life that are sick. Pray for others. If God answered all of your prayers with a yes, would you and your family be impacted, or would the world be impacted? In other words, we must pray beyond just ourselves. All right.

Speaker 1:

So there's adoration, confession and intercession. And, number four, we have petition. This may be one of your favorites, all right. This is where you talk to God about your needs. You talk to him about your wants, both big and small, because he is our father and he cares for us. The Bible tells us in Philippians 4, 6, let your requests be made known to God, let the Lord know what you want, let him know what you need and then trust him to answer according to his will.

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And the last aspect of prayer is silence. Sit in his presence and allow God to speak to you. We live in a noisy world constant notifications, whether it's email, whether it's social media, text or calls or everything in between, and there are just so many distractions, so much noise, so much noise. That's why it's imperative that we have times of silence where we can listen and be refreshed and be reinvigorated by the spirit of our God. Right. So, adoration, confession, intercession, petition and silence.

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And now I want to answer the question why should we pray? Now I want to answer the question why should we pray? We should pray because Jesus prayed and because he tells us to pray, and that's more than enough of a reason. We see in John, chapter 17, jesus praying. The entire chapter, all 26 verses is devoted to praying Now.

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Prayer doesn't get God to do what we want. He's not our butler, he's not our genie, he's not our vending machine, but rather prayer will prepare your heart and mold your heart to do what God wants you to do. Pray because it will align your heart with the heart of God. Pray because it will align your will with the will of God. It's in prayer that we surrender our will and not impose it. In other words, prayer is transformational. It's more about God doing a work in you instead of trying to get God to work for you. There's a preacher right there. You can go tweet that, all right. So prayer is transformational. It's not merely a transaction. All right Now. Because of this fallen word that we live in and the enemy that we must fight, we simply cannot afford to miss a day of prayer. We cannot afford to miss a day of prayer. Prayer was so important in the life of Daniel that he chose to spend a night in the lion's den instead of missing a day of prayer.

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How committed are you to prayer? Now? I want you to pray because God answers prayer. I remember once I was preaching a sermon, and this is what I would normally do interact with the audience. I'll ask somebody in the audience and say, hey, can you give me a million dollars? And of course the answer is you know, so far 100 percent has been no, and I would share that with the people so they can understand this point right here that God answers all prayer. So when I ask the person to give me a million dollars and they say no, they answered my request, they answered my question, but I didn't get what I want.

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In other words, just because you don't get what you want doesn't mean that god didn't hear you. It doesn't mean that god didn't ask you, because god will ask in one or three ways. God will say yes if what you're asking him is according to his will. Sometimes god will say no. He could say no. He could say no because maybe there's some unrepentant sin in your life. He could say no because there's some unforgiveness in your heart, or because it's not according to his will, or because God has something better for you.

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And think about it like this what if you got everything that you prayed for? Because I can remember some time in my younger days you know just immature prayers and I'm just so glad that god didn't tell me yes to everything. Or I said like this that god loves you enough, just like a loving father, to say no. And even when god says no to you, his no has goodness written all over it. So so God would answer yes, or God would answer no. Or sometimes God would answer not now and maybe it's because the thing that you're praying for you're not ready for it. Or maybe he's saying wait so he can grow you and he can prepare you, because a blessing too soon isn't a blessing at all.

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So in this message today, in this sermon today, I just want to point you to our best and brightest example of prayer in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived praying, he died praying, literally his last words on the cross Father, I commit my spirit to you, always talking to the Father. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do Now. Jesus, he understood and demonstrated the priority, the privilege and the power of prayer. He spent the night in prayer before selecting the 12th. In other words, sometimes, if we have a major decision coming up, we need to slow down and pray to God and seek his wisdom and his guidance. Before feeding the 5,000, jesus prayed Before raising Lazarus from the dead. He prayed, just to name a few, at the Garden of Get and to me that prayer is one of the most mature prayers that you can pray is when you can end the prayer with nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done.

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Prayer is our lifeline. It is an opportunity to pour out our hearts of God, to bring our burdens to him, to cast our cares on him. The Bible tells us in Colossians 4 to devote yourselves to prayer. Time spent in prayer is never time wasted, but rather time invested. Romans 12, 12 says be faithful in prayer. Through prayer we connect ourselves with the will of God and through prayer we are changed forever.

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I want to give you this quote by Samuel Chadwick about prayer, and here it goes. The concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from our prayerless studies, nothing from our prayerless work. He fears nothing from our prayerless religion. He laughs at our toll, he mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray. That's powerful. And listen, my friend, if you don't know where to start when it comes to prayer, start with scripture.

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I believe that the best form of prayer is scripture. I'm repeating back to God what God has already said to me. For example, I like to pray Matthew 633. Lord, help me to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, and I thank you that all these things shall be added unto me. So I will take the scripture and I will personalize it as a prayer unto the Lord. I will use Psalms 51 and 10 and ask the Lord to create in me a clean heart and to renew a right spirit within me, and I will go to the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, chapter 28, and ask the Lord. Lord, give me wisdom and give me the boldness and help me to make disciples to be intentional in sharing the gospel and teaching others to obey you. Oh, I pray about the great commandments which is found at the end of Matthew 22. Lord, help me to love you and help me to love others. So start with scripture.

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When it comes to prayer, now I'll leave you with this Nothing to take precedence over your time alone with God. I have to say that one more time, nothing and no one should take precedence over your time alone with the Lord. The most important thing in life isn't your job, it isn't your spouse, it isn't your family, it's not even your ministry. It isn't your family, it's not even your ministry, but rather your personal and intimate relationship with jesus christ, because everything else flows from that one thing, or rather from that one person. You can be as close to god as you want to be. You and only you are responsible for your level of intimacy with Jesus, and there's no neutrality in our walk with the Lord. Either you are drawing closer to him or you are drifting away from him, and that my friend would do it for today, prayer must be a priority. Prayer is indeed a privilege. Be a priority, prayer is indeed a privilege. And prayer is powerful. It will change your life.

Speaker 1:

So much more can be said about prayer, but I just wanted to give you the basics for today. And the Bible tells us in the book of James that we are called to be doers and not just hearers of the word. So I want you to take some time today to just be with Jesus, to talk to him, to worship him and just enjoy him. Amen and amen. I just want to say I really appreciate you for listening and I want to ask that you just take one minute right now to share this podcast on your social media. You can hit the share button on the app that you may be listening to right now, or you can take a screenshot and post it, and I just want to say thank you in advance, as you help me to get the word out about this podcast ministry. Now go, be all that God has called you to be free audio post production.