Step 11 To Recovery | Pray For Power

Speaker 2 00:00:03 Well, hey everyone. Welcome to the Pursue God podcast. I’m Pastor Brian, joined in the studio by Pastor Eric, pastor Mark. Guys, we’re on step 11 on our Road to Recovery, 11 outta 12. So we’re almost there. Mark, why don’t we start by reading Step
Speaker 3 00:00:18 Step 11 says, uh, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for us, and the power to carry that out.
Speaker 1 00:00:31 So this one’s obviously about prayer, right? And so we’re waiting till we’ve talked about prayer all throughout the steps, asking God to remove our character defects, like coming to God with humility, asking him with, with help in our inventory. You know, we, in step three, we prayed a sinner’s prayer, you know, to, uh, ask God to forgive us and to tell him that we believe in him, to surrender to him. And so we’ve talked about prayer all throughout this, but this is really, um, as we’re coming to the close of the 12 steps for, for the person who is got some clean time now in recovery, and this is like, like we talked about last week, part of the maintenance routines. This, we like to call ’em the spiritual disciplines to help you stay in contact with God because God is ultimately the power that’s gonna help us through
Speaker 2 00:01:26 This. I can imagine some people are listening to this saying, you know, I don’t know if I’m qualified to pray a lot of times when, I dunno if this happens to you guys, pastors, but a lot of times when I’m at a, at a, at a meal, at a dinner with a bunch of other people, and it’s time to pray over the meal, everybody looks, looks at me and expects me to pray. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and I used to be like, come on, somebody else pray. But now I don’t. Now I just say, I am a professional <laugh>. Please don’t try this on your own. You know, this is very dangerous. No, obviously I’m joking and everybody laughs. But that is what some people think about with prayer is they’re, they think, I don’t, I don’t think I’m qualified to pray. And I don’t know. Mark, what would you say to that, to the person who’s new to this, or maybe, maybe they’ve gone to church for a while, maybe they’re new to church even, but they’re coming o they’re coming into recovery and they feel almost disqualified to pray. And and I think we should probably maybe address that first and foremost.
Speaker 3 00:02:25 Yeah. I think that’s probably undermining exactly what the gospel is all about, <laugh>. It’s, none of us are qualified for much of anything. Yeah. It’s, it’s Jesus that qualifies us, right? It’s, it’s his qualifications. And so, yeah, I think sometimes, you know, there’s, there’s a difference between praying and public, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and then praying in, in private a lot of times. And, and hopefully as we grow in our prayer life, that’s kind of what’s happened with me, is that my private prayers have have grown closer to my public prayers. They have grown together, uh, because of doing it over and over and over again. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so there really isn’t the, I think sometimes we’re thinking too much when it comes to prayer, right? When, when prayer is really just, I want to, there’s, there’s things that I want to say to God, and there’s things that I want to, uh, you know, align my, my thoughts and my will with him. And, you know, sometimes we just overcomplicate it.
Speaker 1 00:03:26 Yeah. And prayer takes faith, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because we’re talking to someone that we can’t see or touch or feel, you know? And so, um, we’re doing this out of faith, uh, believing, right? Believing that this is good, believing that it’s going to do something, um, that, that God will actually answer our prayers, that’ll he’ll hear us. And, and my experiences is that, you know, God answers my prayers now, not all the time and not all the time in the ways that I want him to mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but man has it been amazing to pray and to consistently pray or persistently pray about a certain thing and, and get answers. Right? Not an audible voice, but like God lines things up and just answers these prayers where, you know, it’s him doing that. Right? And so you do have to experience it is an experiential thing. It’s a faith thing, and you just do it.
Speaker 1 00:04:24 And it, you know, it does take some brain and some logic to, to think about it, but you also just have to start experiencing it. That’s part of having a higher power. And, and God, the God of the Bible is just having faith to do what he said to do. And, you know, at the end of this lesson, we’ll talk about how Jesus told his disciples how to pray. Um, it’s interesting. If you think about prayer, there are all kinds of religions all over the world that have some kind of form of prayer. Because I believe that humans were, were built, you know, with the eternity in mind, with a, a spiritual aspect to them. Everybody wants to pray. There’s a d there’s a desire to do it. Um, and we’re just following that desire along with the truth that we have.
Speaker 2 00:05:09 Yeah. In fact, the disciples, like you mentioned, and again, we’ll get to this at the end, so make sure to listen all the way through to the end, we’re gonna talk about the Lord’s prayer. Jesus gave his disciples the Lord’s prayer because they said, teach us how to pray. We don’t know how to pray. Jesus didn’t say to them, too bad, guys, you’re not spiritual enough. I guess I picked the wrong people, that that almost qualifies them to pray. Because prayer is about coming to God and recognizing he’s God, and you’re not recognizing you have a need that he can fill. So really, the only disqualification for prayer is the person who’s arrogant, the person who thinks they have it all together, and they don’t need any help. Well, that person’s not gonna pray anyway. Jesus said, let the little children come to me for, for of these is the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 2 00:05:51 So what, that doesn’t mean we need to be naive coming to him. That means, that means the most basic thing about kids is that they’re dependent. They come to their parents saying, I can’t do this. I need you to help me to do this. And so that’s what qualifies us to pray. And prayer is just not, you know, there’s no form, no major formula. We’re not gonna give you any of that today. There’s not a right or a wrong way to do it. It’s just conversation with God. So if you know how to have a conversation with somebody, then you can pray because you’re having a conversation with God. That’s what it is.
Speaker 1 00:06:20 Yeah. And he, he talks to us through his word, through the Bible, and we’ve talked about that and how important God’s word is. He talks to us through that, and we get to know him through reading about him and stuff. But, but we communicate to him through prayer, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and then he does answer back through our spirit and faith and everything. But it’s just one other way to be in contact with God. And that’s really the first point, is staying in contact with God is the best way to grow in your recovery. Um, Jesus himself, he used this analogy, I love it, uh, about vines and branches and fruit, um, talking about, you know, taking, taking like maybe cultivation or agriculture, uh, which would’ve been a huge part of the culture back then. And, and, and using it as an analogy, if you think about a, a branch, um, a branch really doesn’t do anything.
Speaker 1 00:07:20 It’s just nutrients pass through it to, to have fruit hang off of it. Where do those nutrients come from? They come from the root, right? The, the, the, the base of the plant, right? And so all the water and the nutrients flow through the roots up through the base of the tree and to these branches, and then the branches bear fruit, okay? And so, in the same way Jesus is teaching his disciples and people a lesson, he wants us to remain in contact with him. That’s the only way we’re gonna, we’re gonna bear fruit. We’re gonna grow in recovery. So in, in John 15, four, he says, remain in me and I will remain in you for a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the bine. And you cannot pro, you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. So let’s talk about that. What does that mean to remain in Christ or abide in him?
Speaker 3 00:08:14 Well, yeah. That’s what this whole step is about. I think we, we began this step clear back, uh, in step number three, right? Where we, we decided we were gonna, you know, give our will in our lives over to God. This step is about living that out and growing in that, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And as we, you know, you talk about this analogy that Jesus uses, I think it’s really, it’s powerful. I, you know, I think about, I, I was just, actually just the last couple weeks I’ve been out pruning all of my bushes and trees and everything, right? And, and snipping all these branches off and pile ’em up, and, and within a week they’re dead. They’re completely dead. They’re dry. And, and I actually used them for firewood. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> that, I think that really is a really good analogy, because that’s exactly how this works.
Speaker 3 00:09:04 And I think you and I have probably seen time and time again, the attic that comes to faith gives their life to Christ, but doesn’t practice this step that, that their recovery, um, their relationship with God, it just fizzles. And they get caught back up in their addiction, and they don’t understand why. It’s like they, they can’t even see anymore. It’s like they, they’ve been blinded once again. And so that’s where the, it’s so important to stay connected, because that’s where our recovery came from, right. From the start, was from him. And we need to keep that connection and grow that connection.
Speaker 2 00:09:44 Yeah. You guys, we, we need to remember at the end of our podcast, I want to ask you guys this question. How do you actually pray? Let’s make sure to give people real specific examples. How long do you do it for? Where do you do it? Are you on your knees? Are you standing up? Are you holding hands with your spouse? Like, I want to talk about the real details. Cuz again, I, I always think about the person who’s new to this. They probably have a picture in their head of what prayer is. Maybe they see a monk in their head, and you’re chanting in a, in a big, in a big cavernous, you know, chapel. Hmm. So I want, I want to make sure that we get really practical by the end of this, but we’re not gonna do it just yet. We need, we’ve got some other things to talk about with prayer, but let’s make sure to do that. And, and on that note, I, I was looking back at the way this step is worded, it said, sought to through prayer and meditation. So let’s, before we continue on in prayer, let’s just make a comment here about meditation. What is meditation? And is, yeah. Is that a biblical thing? Is this something that Christians should do? Because when we think about meditation, you might be thinking about Buddhism or something like that.
Speaker 3 00:10:52 Well, yeah. It says in the word to meditate on his word. Right? So meditation, I, I simply think it’s, it’s thinking about that’s what meditation is. Yeah. It’s spending time thinking about these things. Yeah. Thinking about the things that we’ve read, thinking about the things that, that we, we know about God, or even just thinking about the things that he’s done in our lives. Yeah. You know, that I think is meditation. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:11:15 It’s
Speaker 1 00:11:15 Good. Yeah. And I think that there are always counterfeits to the real thing in, in just about every kind of practice, religious practice or, um, you know, kind of discipline that people do. I think there’s always, there, there’s these counterfeits to the things that are real. And so there’s a lot of different ideas of meditation out there and what it is. Um, and some of it might have some, some semblance of maybe what that might look like. You know? Now I’m not talking about, you know, humming or buzzing or anything like I did earlier. That was just a joke. I, but, but what you’re saying is right there is, is a sense in which, where we focus on something mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we think about the words of God or, or whatever it is that we feel like God is saying, you should be praying deeply over.
Speaker 1 00:12:05 And sometimes there’s so many distractions in life, you know, uh, that we need to get to a place of solitude. We need to get to a place where nobody is, we don’t have any sound. We can be alone. We can actually focus, get away from all of our electronics and even the voices and, and just try to shut out even even the thoughts in our head. And just focus on one thought. You know, God says, think on, on the good things, those things that are lovely and pure and honorable. You know, like, think on good things and the good things are the things of God. And so we’re, we’re just practicing focusing at a deeper level. I think that’s what meditation is. Christian meditation.
Speaker 2 00:12:48 Okay. Now, I didn’t, I didn’t prep you for this question, but I believe you guys are gonna have a biblical answer to this. Cuz the question then is, what’s the difference between, say, say eastern meditation, Buddhist meditation? Cuz you know, Jesus was Middle Eastern, right? So I guess you could say, is he talking about Eastern meditation? Right? What’s the difference between Buddhist meditation and Christian meditation? Let me ask the question another way. What is, from what you guys know, I know you’re not students of this, but what is Buddhist meditation about at the root of it? What’s, what’s nirvana about? What is that all about?
Speaker 3 00:13:24 Well, from what I’ve learned and understood, it’s about emptying your mind. Yeah. Right? Like, and when we empty our minds, <laugh>, that’s a dangerous place.
Speaker 2 00:13:32 Amen. Brother. I knew you’d have the good answer to this. Yeah. Yeah. Christian meditation isn’t about emptying your mind. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> Christian meditation is about what?
Speaker 1 00:13:41 It’s about renewing your mind, renewing your mind, getting it focused. Yeah. Filling it with God’s, God’s way and God’s word, not your own ideas and other That’s
Speaker 2 00:13:49 Right. World’s ideas. And so that’s the, you know, I, growing up, I used to think meditation was a bad thing, but then you’d read it in scripture, it said, meditate, I meditate on your word every day, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I delight in your law. But every time the, the biblical authors talk about meditation, they’re talking about meditating, thinking, like you said, mark thinking deeply on God and his truth and his way in his will, which is completely different than just trying to clear your, clear your mind. Right. And, and not think about anything. And that’s, that’s the main difference. So mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I’m with it. This step eleven’s great, as long as you understand what we’re talking about when we say meditation. So we saw it through prayer and meditation. Anyway, thank you guys for going on that little excursion with me. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, let’s get back to talking about prayer in particular. So, prayer should be about asking God to make us better people by knowing and doing his will. Um, it’s not about getting God to do our bidding. Right. It’s not about, it’s not about putting ourselves on the throne and having God serve our every need. That’s what I think what a lot of people think about when they think about prayer. They think about demanding this and that and the other thing from God. But that’s not what Christian prayer is either.
Speaker 1 00:15:02 Yeah. He wants us to align our wills and hearts with his will and his heart. That’s, that’s what I think a lot of people miss about what, what prayer is, is we’re asking God what he wants from us, and we’re asking him for power to carry that out, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we’re asking f from him the things that we can’t do on our own. Right. That’s the whole reason that we need him. He’s a higher power, greater than us. Right. The only God, and he’s our only hope, as we’ve talked about, he’s taken care of our sin problem. And so in prayer, we’re going to God and saying, okay, you can do this. I can’t do it. God, I trust you. You’re reaffirming your faith to him over and over again. You’re, you know, and, and, and you do ask for things sometimes also in prayer.
Speaker 1 00:15:50 I mean, and we’re gonna see that that’s modeled. But, um, Jesus also modeled this submission in prayer. This, you know, I, I have all these ideas and feelings and, and beliefs about what I want to do or where I, where I want to go. But I just want to stop for a moment and say, you know what, Lord, I’ve gotten ahead of myself too much. I’ve gone my own way too much. What do you want me to do? And it’s interesting, even Jesus himself, God in the flesh, while he was walking on earth before he was going to be crucified, he was in the garden of Gethsemane and he was going through all this anguish and pain, knowing he was about to be crucified, knowing he was gonna have to go through just the heaviest trial of his entire life. And he probably in his humanity, wanted to get out of that.
Speaker 1 00:16:44 He probably thought, you know, there could have been some thoughts, like, I could, I could zap this guy and I could, I could, you know, fly away somewhere far away, <laugh> and I could get away with this. Right? Like, like what we do, we think in our minds, well we could, we plan all these plans out and, but here’s what Jesus says. And I I have it in the King James version cuz it just, I’m sure even non-believing people probably have heard this before. That’s why I like, I love the wording of it. It has so much flavor to it. It’s in Luke 2242, Jesus says, he says saying, father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. He’s saying, God, if, if I don’t want to have to go through this, they called it a cup of suffering, remove it from me. But if it’s your will that I have to go do it, go through this, then I want, I want your will. Like show me your will. I’m willing to follow you. I am willing to go your way instead of my way. I think that’s just such a strong example about, you know, kind of what
Speaker 2 00:17:50 Prayer
Speaker 3 00:17:51 Should be about. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what our model is. Jesus modeled it for us right here. Like you said, that that’s powerful. That is powerful because we all feel that way. I I, I have my own ideas and I don’t, and he had to, he had to suffer more than any of us could, can ever really understand. Mm. Right. Taking on the wrath of God that, so that we wouldn’t, but, but he finishes that. It’s, it’s kind of this, it’s this moment of him being really genuine and vulnerable where he says that, you know, if this could be removed from me, I I would really like that. But at the end of the day, your will be done. It’s the, and he modeled that for us because we all, like you said, Eric, we all have our ideas of the life we wanna lead the things that we want to do. But we’ve made a commitment going through these steps, accepting this new way of life that now we’re going to accept God’s will for us. And this is about that. This is about that ultimate submission to this new life that’s going to gonna lead us away from death, away from darkness.
Speaker 2 00:19:05 Yeah. This is a, a tweetable quote. So everybody get ready to write this down and tweet this out. Here it is. Remember, God will only do what his will is for your life. So aligning your will with his is the best bet to get him to come through. I don’t know which one of you guys wrote this, but this is so good. I I’m gonna read it again. It’s that good. Remember, God will only do what his will is for your life. So aligning your will with his is your best bet to get him to come through. This is so good to realize cuz a lot of people think that, okay, I’m trying to get him to cha align his will with mine. I want to get God to, I want get, I wanna get God to see it, see things my way. God, this is what I want.
Speaker 2 00:19:51 This is what I want you, won’t you give me what I want. That’s actually not what prayer is about at root. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> prayer is just like you read in, in that, that King James verse that you read, which by the way makes you sound so much smarter <laugh> when you read the King James, that was so good. That was, that was wise of you. But Jesus himself, who is God, Jesus himself said, I wanna do your will not mine. Your will be done. Not mine. That’s such a great example for us to say in my prayer time, my daily prayer time, I’m tr what I’m trying to do is align my will with gods. And then, then what’s gonna happen, you can take it to the bank that your prayers are gonna be answered. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right? Because you’re aligning your will with Gods. A lot of times when your prayers aren’t answered, it’s cuz you’re not praying according to God’s will, but you might not realize it.
Speaker 2 00:20:36 So that’s really what this is about. It’s about aligning your will with God’s will. And remember, power to follow God comes from God. And so prayer is asking for just that. It’s, you’re just asking for God to give you the strength and the power and the ability to continue to follow him. And you better believe that is, that’s God’s will for your life. God wants you to follow him. He wants you to honor him. He wants you to make better decisions. God wants you to have victory over addiction. Right. God wants you to continue to every single day to have one more day under your belt of being clean. And so you’d better believe that that’s God’s will. Whenever you’re praying that you, you can take it to the bank that you’re praying God’s will. Well that power to follow him, it, it comes from him. You can’t, you can’t, um, generate, you’re not a power generating mechanism in yourself. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, God’s the one who gives you the power. And that’s why you need to learn how to pray.
Speaker 1 00:21:36 Yeah. We’re only, you know, we’re only conduits. Right. Vessels. If you think about, back to the branch analogy, right. We’re the, the conduit of of the power and the nutrients that actually goes to bear the fruit. Right. And so, so yeah. We’ve talked about prayer should be, um, asking what God’s will is. And prayer should be about asking him for power to do God’s will basically. Right. We need, cuz we’ve never been able to do it before, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> like even in our addiction, you know, we had a conscience. I mean, it was seared, but we would do all kinds of things and, but we had, we had thoughts of wanting to be better, wanting to be healthy, wanting our families to be functional and everything to go well. But we could never do it on our own. We needed God and his power. We needed him to step in and supernaturally change us from the inside out.
Speaker 1 00:22:34 And, you know, it reminds me of where I think it’s, it’s in Ezekiel and Jeremiah talks about this new heart and new spirit that I’m gonna put in you so that you can follow my decrees and obey my commands. Like we need God’s spirit in order to actually follow God. It’s such a, an interesting thing. I don’t think a lot of people understand it. I think a lot of people think that, you know, religion religiosity is with Christianity and other religions in general. But that it’s just something where you follow a bunch of rules and, and eventually you make it to some nice place in the afterlife. But really a relationship with God is something that he actually empowers you to have. He empowers you to do the things he wants you to do. It’s not left to your own willpower. It’s, it’s his power.
Speaker 3 00:23:27 Yeah. I mean, we were lost before we came to this faith. Right. We tried doing it our own way and we were, and it failed time and time and time again. And so that’s where we came to this place where we recognized in step one, our powerlessness mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right? And so we know we don’t have the power to do it. Now, this step here that we’re coming to after we’ve gone through all the steps that we’ve gone through, uh, now we want this. It’s like, it’s clarity. It’s clarity of his will for us and his strength. And that’s what prayer is all about. It’s, it’s leaning into that, that clarity, um, and that strength that we need because we have to live this new life, like I said before, this new life that, that we have, you know, stepped onto this new path. We can’t walk it on our own. We need him to light the way and we need his strength to push us through.
Speaker 2 00:24:26 Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about how Jesus answered the disciples when they said, Jesus, teach us how to pray because we don’t know how to do it. We don’t know how to pray. Remember they were fishermen, they were tax collectors. They weren’t the, the smartest people in Jesus’s culture. They weren’t the leaders, they weren’t the politicians, they weren’t the business the big time business owners. They weren’t the tycoons of industry. They were just regular guys. Fishermen, tax collectors. Okay? They were, they were what? Blue c blue collar workers, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. They weren’t even white collar workers. I think, I guess you could say Jesus was colorblind
Speaker 3 00:25:01 <laugh>. Okay. Dad joke in the ear right there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:06 I’ve been waiting to, I have not heard that one. I’ve been waiting for that joke for a long, long time. Okay. So they came to Jesus. They said, Jesus, we’re not the, we’re not the sharpest tools in the shed. Teach us how to pray. And Jesus said this, Matthew five, starting in verse nine. He says, pray like this. This is called the Lord’s Prayer. And I know that in a lot of groups you guys use this, right? A lot of recovery groups talk about, so this is familiar to most people. We’re gonna break it down as kind of a pattern for prayer. He said, here’s how to pray our father in heaven, Hollywood, be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our deaths as we forgiven our debtors.
Speaker 2 00:25:42 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. What a great prayer for someone who is trying to have sustained recovery in their life. We’re gonna break it down with a simple little acronym that I learned what y years and years and years ago. I still use this to this day in my prayer time. I use the Pray ACR acronym, P R A y. Remember, prayer isn’t just about asking, that’s the A. We’ll get to it. There are other things in that too. The P stands for praise. And that’s what Jesus is talking about here when he says, our father in heaven Hall would be your name. He’s saying, I praise you, I worship you. So it’s kind of like with your, with your wife. If you’re gonna have a conversation with her, you better you. I hope your relationship with your wife isn’t just all about asking, asking, asking you the dishes.
Speaker 2 00:26:33 Did you, did you, can you, can you do my laundry? Can you, can you scratch my back? Can you get my, you know, it’s, could you imagine a marriage where the only kind of communication you had with your spouse was just asking for stuff? No. You better husbands, you better praise your wife as well. You better tell her how good she looks. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I, I don’t mean to demean what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the God of the universe. Yeah. And starting with praising him before we even ask him for a thing. Cuz it’s not about what he can give us. It’s about who he is. He’s worthy about praise.
Speaker 1 00:27:08 Yeah. And that word halloid, it, it really, it means let his name be famous. Like make him famous over all the earth. Like by your actions, by your words. Tell tell his name to everyone. Let him be known how for how great the works he’s done. This is what we should want to do. Right. This is what, what he is teaching us to tell God like, you should be famous for who you are. You’re the father of heaven. Like, we, we love you, we praise you. And I, I do the same thing as Brian does. I use the same acronym. He’s the one who taught it to me many years ago. And it just, it’s, it just keeps me organized. I’m not the most organized person in my own life, but I think our natural reaction is to go to God with asking and demanding.
Speaker 1 00:28:00 You know, I remember again, back in, in my recovery or in my active addiction days, you know, the, my my go-to I would pray when I was like, you know, struggling. But it would always sound like, dear Lord, please don’t let this cop that’s pulling me over. Take me to jail this time. I’ll do whatever you want, <laugh>. I’ll do whatever you want. <laugh>. And it was always like, I’m trying to bargain with God. You know, I’m trying to make a deal. God, if you get me out of this one, um, Lord, I will, I’ll do something for you. You know, and I, and I never kept my promise either, you know, which is a bad thing. I think we’re doing a sermon on that soon vows, you know, or whatever. But I would always try to, I would, uh, anyways, I would always try to like, he was like my get outta jail free card. It was like, bail me out father, you know, heavenly Father, come, come bail me out of whatever situation I’m in. And and sometimes people only go to God, um, when things are bad or when they need something. And this prayer kind of teaches us, no, there should be like a, a regular discipline, you know, a regular discipline mm-hmm. <affirmative> instead of just reaction.
Speaker 3 00:29:12 Yeah. And I think the praise part comes out of, you know, when we, when we see what God has done in our lives, that becomes an automatic thing to want to praise him. Right? So thi this is something that will come naturally, but sometimes we, we skip over it, right? Like, like my, my wife for example, you talk about we need to praise our wives. Well, I know how amazing my wife is so I can praise her now, am I praising her <laugh>, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, am I doing that? So I think it’s just consciously doing it because it’s not hard to do this. It really isn’t right. When we know who God is, it’s not hard to praise in, right?
Speaker 2 00:29:50 Yeah. So some practical ways to do that. I, I think one of the ways that I like to do that is to read the Psalms during my prayer time. You know, the psalms are, a lot of those psalms are psalms of praise. So that’s literally what I’m doing. And, and so I’ll read them aloud in my prayer time. Let’s get practical here as we go through this. So for me, I have my, I every mor my prayer time every morning I go into my office, close the door, put on some work, good worship tunes, and I just spend some time in prayer. And so, again, the praising part is I’ll just, I’ll just sing along with, with the song. I’ll just praise God along with the recording. I’ll open up the psalms, I’ll read some psalms out loud to God that that’s great. For new people who are new to this that maybe don’t know how to do it, just, just read aloud the way that David did it, you know, 2,800 years ago. That’s a great start. And you, and pretty soon you’ll learn how to do it yourself. The way to do it is just to tell him what you’re thankful for. Tell him that’s praise, is thanking him for stuff. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:30:53 <affirmative>.
Speaker 2 00:30:53 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Tell him what you’re thankful. Be specific name it, name the things that you’re thankful for. These are all great ways to praise. How are some ways that you guys like to do the pee? The praise?
Speaker 1 00:31:05 Yeah. I, uh, how I start my prayer off is, I, I like d I like to be in the dark. And so I’ll, I go by the fireplace and I’ll get a little grandma blanket on me and, and praise God, praise God. I’m gonna praise him right now for the invention of a cell phone so that I can actually read in the dark with, I can use my Bible app because I, I use my Bible app. I have it on dark mode on the Bible app, so it doesn’t blind my eyes. And, and I, I start, I start by reading his word, um, and ingesting it. You know, just really trying to, what is, what is this passage saying to me? And it’s just, it’s amazing when I read God’s word, even though it’s a story I’ve read or heard time and time again, it’s just, it’s, it’s like living and active and it speaks, you know?
Speaker 1 00:31:54 And every time I read God’s word, like the major theme of his word is God’s glory. You know, he is doing something that is amazing, miraculous. And, and, and he is the one who should just get the glory out of every amazing story of salvation. And so I let the word kind of speak to my mind and then I’ll start by saying thank you. Like recently it was, you know, Jesus said that he had revealed, he had, he said, Jesus prayed this prayer. And he says, thank you Father, that you’ve re revealed these, or you’ve hidden these things from the wise and intelligent. And you’ve, you’ve, uh, revealed them to infants. You know, you’ve revealed them to basically the unwise people. And, and so I, I’ll start off saying, God, thank you that man, you’ve taken a person who was foolish to the world. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> an unwise person who’s made a lot of mistakes and bad decisions. Thank you. That, that you’re using me now. It’s just amazing that, how, how could it be that you, you love me out of all the people out there in the world like you, you cleaned me up and you changed me. So I like to praise him first and foremost for the work that he’s done in my life.
Speaker 2 00:33:07 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. That’s good.
Speaker 3 00:33:09 Yeah. I would say I, I’m probably pretty similar too, because, you know, we have <laugh>, we’ve both come from places that were really, really bad places. And, and so that’s, that’s where I, I am with it too. I, I have so much to praise him for. Um, and I just want to say y you know, a lot of people who are listening right now might feel this intimidation about prayer like we were talking about earlier. Um, and I felt that too when I first began. The first thing that, that, uh, when my addiction came out, you know, I, all these things were revealed to my wife and we, she stuck with me and we were trying to work through it. One of the, one of the biggest things was that we made a commitment that we were gonna start praying together every night before we went to bed.
Speaker 3 00:33:59 What we did is I would pray one night and she would pray the next night. And, you know, right at the start, it was really awkward cuz I hadn’t really prayed in front of anybody before. Never. But man, it became so powerful and this praise that would come out from just, just him gifting me with the fact that my wife wanted to work through this mm-hmm. <affirmative> that she wanted to stick around the fact that he was rescuing me from this life that I’d been living. Uh, it, and then, and then being able to pray for my wife. It just, I, it just began to transform our whole relationship. Our relationship became focused on and centered on, on God instead of just, you know, on ourselves or each other. It, it just changed everything. So, um, yeah, that’s just something, it, it was really awkward at first, but man, it became one of the most powerful things in my life.
Speaker 2 00:34:55 Yeah. That’s a, I think that’s a good reminder for people who are listening to this saying, I’m not sure how I’m gonna apply this. And I hope, I hope that you do apply this in your, in your lives and in your marriage. Like you’re saying, mark, it could be powerful and you might have to, you might have to sort of push through some of the awkward, like you said. And, and on the other side of it, there’s a real, a real, uh, blessing, a real gift that that is in store for you. So that’s the p the praise in the Prey acronym. The next one is the R and that one stands for repent. So you praise and then you repent. Jesus said to pray like this, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. So to me, this is, this, this seems to be a just a great one.
Speaker 2 00:35:39 We’ve been talking a essentially we’ve been talking about repentance a lot throughout the, the, these steps, right? That this is something you have to acknowledge, you have to speak it, you have to, you have to repent to others. And we’ve talked about also repenting to God, telling him, I’m sorry I did this, forgive me. And then repentance then really is about making up your mind to go the other way mm-hmm. <affirmative> and to do something else. I always like to say this about repentance. If you can learn to repent to God, if you can learn to say in your prayer time, God, you need to show me what I need to repent of, which is what I do at this point. This is where I’ll journal. I have a little prayer journal and I’ll actually write down some of the things I feel like God is saying to me.
Speaker 2 00:36:21 Cuz I might not even be necessarily fully aware of what I need to repent of. But as I’m spending some time in prayer, maybe an incident comes up in the day or the day before, and all of a sudden I feel this sense of, oh, I messed up there. And what I like to say to men especially is, if you can learn to be open and vulnerable and honest with God and repent to God, man, is that gonna make your other relationship so much better? Because it’s not gonna be, it’s not gonna be an your spouse’s problem anymore to try to get you to realize it. If you can have this tender, humble heart before God and learn to repent on a regular basis, then you’re, then you’re gonna be a lot easier to live with. And it’s not gonna take your wife telling you what you need to repent of, let God tell you. And then in your, in your marriage, you can just get to the fun stuff. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:37:14 <affirmative>. Yeah. And again, you know, for me how that usually comes out again is God’s, God’s word convicts me, you know, through the, the spirit takes the words that I’m reading in the morning and I’m, I’m saying, okay, how do I measure up to your word? Like in this story, who am I? You know, who am I? Am I the sinner? Am I, am I the person that would be prideful? Am I the, the the one who told a lie or the adulterer? You know, there’s always this comparison game that I think I can do with God’s word. It’s like a mirror we talked about in se several lessons ago. It’s like a mirror. You hold up to yourself to see who you truly are, you know, when you’re taking an inventory of yourself. And so I use God’s word to, to help, help dig out those deep rooted, uh, sins that I haven’t repented about yet or ask for forgiveness for.
Speaker 1 00:38:10 And I name ’em, like you said, like, like naming the praises. I’ll name it out loud, like, Lord, forgive me for, and I know God. And, and here’s the interesting thing about repentance and asking for forgiveness. It’s like we go back to one John nine, right? It says, if you confess, he will forgive and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And so that’s what I, I believe in my prayer, in that repentance time is I’m gonna actually confess it then to God. I’m not gonna just say, God, forgive me for being lustful and then move on. I’m going to say, what was the, the instance where I had that thought in my mind, right? Where I actually played something out in my mind that was sinful and I’m gonna name it. I’m gonna name, if I know the person’s name, name that right? If I, if I was mean to one of my sons, or, you know, exacerbated or caused them to, to, to be angry with me because I lashed out in anger or something like that. I’ve gotta say those things so that I can get it up and out again. We talked about our secrets keep us sick, but if we confess them, we can have that confidence knowing he’s gonna forgive. And I do that every single day. Every morning I get to have this time of praising and then repenting. And when I get to do that, I can start the day feeling so much better that I’m not hiding anything from God.
Speaker 3 00:39:38 Yeah. I, this is where we are doing our daily inventory. I think that’s, yeah. This is where we’re letting him, because I’ll have a bunch of things in my mind too. Like, so it’s funny when you’re talking about this, I’ll have all these things in my mind of, oh, I gotta, I definitely need to repent for this and pemp for this. But then as I’m doing that, it’s almost like he, like, God’s like, whoa, what about that? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what about, you know, <laugh> like, he, he starts to reveal more things and you’re just like, oh yeah. Like, and it’s just funny how that works. It’s, but yeah, this is the daily inventory and it has to be done through prayer. It really does because there’s, otherwise it’s just things are gonna get missed. And we, we might not even end up taking him to God. You know, this is, this is the time for that. And he’ll reveal what needs to be revealed if we’re really, um, repentant in a repentant state of mind.
Speaker 2 00:40:32 Okay. So you’ve, you’ve done the first thing, you’ve spent some time praising God, then you’ve spent a little time repenting, letting God reveal your heart, letting God kind of convict you of your sin, your repenting of it. And finally, now I like to say you’ve kind of earned the right now to ask for some stuff. Hmm. Right? So remember this is the, the a is what most people think prayer is all about. It’s, it’s not really all about this. It’s, it’s just one component of it. But it is, it is part of it. God does say to us, yeah, ask, he says, you know, he says, ask for your daily bread. Right? Give us this day our daily bread. That’s a really practical thing that he’s giving us permission to ask for. It’s, it’s not selfish to ask God for daily, for our daily bread.
Speaker 2 00:41:24 Um, and so what are the, what are some of the things that you have on? This is where I like to get to my prayer list. Literally keep like a bunch of lists that I go through and pray. Honestly, most of the things on the list are names. Most of what I ask for are names. I’m asking for God to move in this person’s life or in that person’s life. I’m asking for God, I, I pray for you guys as pastors on at our church. Um, this is what I, this is what fills my list up as people. I’m asking God to, to do a work in people, to continue to use you guys in ministry to, uh, you know, as, as we meet people at our campuses, at our churches, you know, I, I write those names down and I pray for those people. I pray for those needs. There’s this an addiction here. There’s this, this wayward child over here. So these are the things that are on my list. What are the, what are some other things that people might find on their prayer list to be asking for?
Speaker 1 00:42:19 Well, I mean, you know, going back to praying for God’s will, um, you know, but I have my, when I align my will with his will, there are things that I want to do that I think he wants me to do. You know, and a lot of my prayers have to do with future vision type stuff. You know, like, what do you want me to do? And God, will you do this? Is this the way that you want me to go? And as I said earlier, you know, one thing that’s on my mind right now, as I said earlier, God answers my prayers. Um, again, not all the time, not as if I’m something special, but just the fact that I know that he answers his children’s parish, because I get to see it all the time. You know, just recently, um, one of our churches, um, I was building a relationship with another church, you know, five years ago.
Speaker 1 00:43:11 And I’d been praying and praying and praying, Lord, would you, cuz the church that we were at, um, that I used to be the pastor of, uh, we had like a smaller building and it was like we were all, I was always looking for future. What are we gonna do down the road? What are we doing? And I was thinking of building relationships here and there, whatever. And there was a lot of kind of dying churches in the area where we were at, but we were a thriving church. And I thought to myself, well man, one of these churches, you, you’d think they’ve got these paid off buildings, you’d think that they’d just, you don’t want to give us one or something. You know, my wife’s like, you’re crazy. You know, <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:43:47 <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:43:48 That wasn’t the first time she said that. <laugh>. Yeah. And I’m like, and I would just be, you know, a building relationships, yes. But then going and praying on it. So doing work towards vision and then coming back and praying, okay, God, like you’ve, you’ve opened some doors. I’m trying to seek your will. I’m trying to, to be aligned with you. I’m following you. Um, so is this something that you would want to do? Because it’s on my heart. There’s this desire on my heart and I can’t get rid of it. So Lord, I can’t do anything else. You’ve gotta make this happen. And it’s just so amazing. Recently, you know, as you guys know, um, the, the church now recently just like really quickly handed us over the deed to the whole property and everything. It’s like a miracle. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 00:44:37 And I, and it’s just those things. And I have bigger things than that, that God has answered prayer for. I mean, we recently had a baby, all right, this is really practical. And there were little complications throughout the pregnancy where it was like, God, we need you right now. You know, like we, we, we, he was, he was two weeks late and, and, and it was gonna come to the time where either major surgery was gonna happen to happen. If he wasn’t, if, if he wasn’t gonna come out. And like, you know, not too long after we prayed, she started going into labor and then there were little complications along the way. And every time we prayed, God would just answer the prayer and help us out every single time. And, and, and it’s just so amazing. God does want to give us things. Yeah. He does want to bless us. He does want to show us that he’s there and that he’s, that he’s the owner of this whole thing. He owns the whole universe. And, and so we can ask for a little bit of it.
Speaker 2 00:45:35 <laugh> Luke Levin. Luke Levin says, what father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father, who’s not evil give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So this is God’s heart toward us. God wants, he wants a relationship with us. And some people listening might not know that God, they might not realize that that’s how God is. And maybe that’s hindered your prayers. I want you to know you can go to God and you can ask him, and you can build this relationship with God through prayer, praising, repenting, asking. And then finally coming to this last thing, which for me is my favorite part of prayer every day is yielding.
Speaker 2 00:46:22 The why stands for yielding. Remember, Jesus said, pray like this. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So that’s about yielding to his kingdom, not trying to get him to yield to you. And we’re gonna stop and listen and yield. And that’s what we have to remember to do. So I, for me practically, guys, I, I wanna hear what, how you guys do this. But for me, practically this means again, I, I’ll have some worship music on. And now this is just me trying my hardest just to be quiet and not to talk and not to bring all my idea. Cuz for me, I always have all these ideas. A lot of times I have to write ’em down to get ’em on a sheet of paper so I can get em out of my head. So I can just really do this last little bit, which is just a practice listening to God and list listening for his still small voice, listening for his prompting.
Speaker 2 00:47:13 For me, a lot of times for me, this ends up in, he, a name will come to my mind that I need to call someone I need to call reach out to someone. I didn’t pray for that day, but as I’m yielding to God, he, this is where, not all the time, but every once in a while I feel like, I feel like, like God speaks to me and gives me some marching orders. And sometimes it’s just a matter of just, just stopping quieting myself and, and listening instead of talking. What does yielding for you guys look like?
Speaker 3 00:47:40 Well, I think yielding for me, it’s, um, <laugh>, like I’m in the opposite situation is, is Eric, right? Like we, you know, our, our campus, we’re renting a building right now, we don’t have a, a permanent location. And so, you know, that’s part of my ask a lot of times. But the yielding is understanding, you know, trying to, trying to pray to God that, you know, I know that you’ve got a plan here. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And my plan isn’t always your plan, so I’m trusting you. Um, just give me, you know, kind of the, the clarity, the peace to know that you’re at work here. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I think that’s a big part of yielding and I yielding is what this step is really all about. You know, praying for knowledge of his will for us. Like you’re talking about the listening, trying to, trying to, you know, try to figure out what is his will, you know, really listening to that and then the power to carry that out. That’s, that’s what it’s all about. So that’s kind of, that’s where my asking and yielding is right now.
Speaker 1 00:48:43 <laugh>. Yeah. I, I keep thinking about the traffic signs that say yield on him, and nobody knows what that means. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:48:50 <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:48:52 I think it just means wait for a second until you get assigned to go ahead. Right. <laugh> basically, right, like in a roundabout or something, right? Yeah. They’re, you, you got these yield signs in the person who comes up. They’re supposed to wait until they have a, a safe, uh, time to actually venture out. And I think, so for me, that’s how I do it. A lot of my prayers are, I’m praying when I feel like God is pressed upon my heart, the passions that I have. Maybe it’s visions that maybe through, I’m not saying like vision as far as looking into the future and, and how God wants me to do my work or, you know, love my family or disciple someone or build relationships or whatever, make connections. I’m looking at that. Um, and then I’ll say, okay, but I’m going to wait until you give me a sign.
Speaker 1 00:49:42 You know, I’m gonna wait until something happens to where it’s beyond the shadow of a doubt that you’re saying. Yes. And so many times in my life I’ve done that, especially like moving, you know, moving my family, moving, um, houses and big life events and stuff like that where it’s like, I’m not gonna just up and make, you know, change my job and move and do all these things without first praying for, you know, months before I ever became a pastor. I, I remember praying for months, we went on a, a retreat. Me and my wife went to, you know, park City, stayed in the hotel and we, we, we sang worship together. We read God’s word together, we prayed together and it was so amazing. Um, we were praying together and we were asking God and, and we were just waiting. And there was this time where all of a sudden my wife goes, what does James four 14 say?
Speaker 1 00:50:40 And I’m all, I don’t know why, you know what, why are you saying that? Like, we didn’t read that Nothing came out. She’s like, I just feel like this verse is being, God’s putting it on me right now with James four 14. And we go and read it, you know, and it’s, it’s talking about what is your life? It’s but a mist. It’s but a vapor, you know? And, and, and he’s like, don’t ma basically the gist of it is don’t make all these plans without the Lord being involved, you know, without waiting on him. If the Lord wills it, then you can go right. If, if not, it’s a sin, basically. So if we don’t wait on him, and we, we venture out, um, and do do the things without it being clear, oftentimes we can make the wrong decision. And that’s really what I think, you know, prayer is all about, especially this la last part, you know, yielding to the Lord. We wanna listen and humility and patience. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:51:33 Yeah. And listen how Jesus said it, somebody pointed this out to me years ago. He says, your kingdom come here will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the question is, how is God’s will done in heaven? Hmm. And it’s done perfectly in heaven, right? His, he, he speaks and everybody listens. No, there’s no sin in heaven. There’s no rebellion in heaven. So his will is done perfectly in heaven. And that’s what Jesus is telling us to do. He’s saying, that’s how I want you to pray. He, he says, I want you to pray, God, I want your will to be done in my life, in my marriage and my family, and my ad, in my addiction, in my recovery. I want it to be done the way that it will be done. When I’m, when I’m done with this earth, I want it to be done like it’s done in heaven.
Speaker 2 00:52:18 I want it to be done perfectly. Now, it might not be done perfectly, but that’s your heart. That’s, that’s what you’re doing. You’re saying, God, I want to yield to you and your will and your way. And I think the biggest question people will probably ask is, well, how do you know? How do you know if it’s God’s will? How do you, cuz a lot of people have, uh, paralysis by analysis. They, they just, they stop. They, they just won’t take any steps. They won’t step out in faith ever because they’re waiting for just the perfect sign. So maybe Eric, how does, how did your story end? You had this perfect weekend away without the kids. I think nine months later you had added another child. <laugh>, do I have the math right? I
Speaker 1 00:52:56 Don’t know. I don’t
Speaker 2 00:52:56 Know. Yeah, it’s gotta be close. I
Speaker 1 00:52:57 Dunno, that’s what’s
Speaker 2 00:52:58 Happened. But <laugh>, but, but tell
Speaker 1 00:52:59 Me, me
Speaker 2 00:53:00 <laugh> tell me, Eric, how did you know, how did you make the decision to, you did end up well eventually going to the next campus.
Speaker 1 00:53:09 Well, yeah, and it’s, it’s because God speaks to us in multiple ways. I mean, not just a, I mean, it’s the still small voice. It’s through his word and it’s through his people again, you know, the Christian trifecta, God’s spirit, God’s word, God’s people. And I had, you know, an overwhelming number of people, everybody actually saying, you should, you should do this. You know, you should go. I, it was undeniable through prayer, through reading of the word, and through even the guy who’s the new pastor now, I remember him and I was telling him about my, my fears with it. And it was the weirdest thing. I had just read the story about, um, Peter stepping out of the boat in faith to, to, to grab Jesus’ hand. And Mike wouldn’t have known about that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But then that day he says, maybe you just need to step out of the boat. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is, yep. That’s God. You know, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:54:08 Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:54:09 Yeah. And sometimes you do, sometimes you, you know, for us, when Tracy and I were praying about whether to move out to Utah, to go to plan a church, which is a, you know, 1400 mile move, and just a scary thing, honestly, we didn’t have this great vision from God. We didn’t, we just, we felt like after we prayed about it and thought about it and talked about it, we just felt like, let’s do it. Who says the default is to stay? Who says the default answer is to do nothing? I think the default answer is to go, Jesus said, go make disciples. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So the default answer is to go, is to go do something. And so, so for some people listening, they have to, again, we’re not, when we’re talking about yielding to God, we’re not always talking about big decisions. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, making big decisions in your life.
Speaker 2 00:54:55 That’s the examples we’re talking about now. But for a lot of people, it’s just a matter of God, I want to yield to you. I want to yield to your way. I want your will to be done in my recovery. I want, I want one more. I want one more good day. I want to be able to trust you one more day. And then tomorrow I’m gonna yield to you again. I’m gonna yield to your way instead of trying to get my way and try and trying to fulfill my needs with this addiction the way I would’ve done it before. So for a lot of people listening, that’s really what we’re talking about. Yielding to God can be in the big stuff. And it can be in the little stuff. It can be in the day-to-day choices. And it can be in this, these big huge decisions that, that change the course of our families and our lives. It can
Speaker 1 00:55:37 Be both. Yeah. And there’s a lot of decisions that a person in recovery’s gonna have to make. I mean, there may be relationships that have to be cut off. There may be you may need to move out of a situation or out of a city even, or change jobs. So many different things that, that you’re gonna have to yield to. And so yeah, what we’re really talking about is, is prayer, um, staying in contact with God. Right? That’s, that’s the whole point of all of this is we’re gonna grow in our recovery. The more we stay in contact, constant contact with God. And as we do that, we’re gonna seek his will and not our own. And then we’re gonna start to have his power to carry that out. And when we’re doing God’s will, we’re recovering from our sinful nature.
Speaker 2 00:56:29 Mark, you wanna read that step one more time? Eric did a pretty good job. Me, uh, reciting that one, but read it one more time and let’s close out this episode. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:56:37 It’s sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for us, and the power to carry that out.
Speaker 2 00:56:47 All right. Well this was step number 11. If you wanna find these resources for your family, your small group, or your mentor or sponsoring relationship, you can find all of it at pursue god.org/recovery. And guys, we got one more. Next week we’ll talk about step number 12.