Prayer Warriors, Part 9

Calvary Temple

Prayer Warriors, Part 9

April 17, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott

Let's turn to Mark 11 tonight, a passage that we're all very familiar with. Mark 11:22, Jesus is speaking to His disciples, and He said unto them, "Have faith in God." "Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses."

I'm not going to spend a lot of time teaching on this aspect tonight, but I can't let the teaching on prayer go by without at least addressing this one point. Your prayer life is in vain if you have unforgiveness. You might as well not bother. "…And when ye stand praying, forgive…" Amen? So we realize, then, that one of the aspects of prayer is practicing the presence of God, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (John 15:7). We realize that it is all relational. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (James 5:16). So we understand redemption and our right standing with God, all of these things that are necessary if we're going to effectively have communion with Father in all of His holiness.

So one of the first things I would suggest to anybody whose prayer life seems ineffectual is to check your heart for unforgiveness and find out whether or not there are any areas in there that would represent anything other than the heart of Jesus. The heart of Jesus always prays this way: when they are mocking you, when they are crucifying you, when they are spitting upon you, our prayer is, "Father, forgive them." Amen? If we can't pray that prayer then none of our other prayers are worth very much. Because we have to pray, as the Scripture says, (and we've spend a lot of time going over it) we have to pray, for our prayers to be effectual, according to the will of God. It is the will of God that we forgive, because if we don't forgive, we can't be forgiven...

Prayer Warriors, Part 1

March 24, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott

Hallelujah! Amen. Let's turn to Ephesians this morning, Chapter 6, verse 10. "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. As we are coming into this hour, we don't want to be trusting in our own strength, do we? Yet it is so natural. It's in all of us. We have that tendency to trust in ourselves. We want to be in control. We do not only want to be able to understand all the "whys" and the reasons, but it's a very difficult thing for us to trust God. Most of us don't like to admit that. It is a very difficult thing to trust God, isn't it? Do you find it hard? Do you find it hard to make every decision based upon His promises, to make every decision and to live every day by faith? That's what it means to trust God. Do we trust our own wisdom? Do we trust our own accomplishments of the past? Do we trust our education? Do we trust our physical abilities? Do we trust our networking systems that we set up, or do we trust God? Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. As this hour is coming on us in a day that men have never known, iniquity shall abound. Guess what? That means tomorrow is going to be worse than it was today. How many of you think it's bad today? It is going to be worse tomorrow. Iniquity will continue to abound. As we war against principalities and against powers, we are not going to be able to trust in ourselves. You remember that David went into the camp of Israel as a young man. All of Israel was cowering down, and David was astonished at the hearts of the people that had melted before their enemies. He said, "What's wrong with everybody? Have you forgotten who our God is?" That spirit that's in men like Joshua, Caleb, and David there's another spirit in those kind of people, isn't there? "What's wrong with all of you people?" It's not our ability. It's God in the camp. Amen? If God is for us, who can be against us? But if we don't live our lives in that way, if we begin to trust in ourselves, we'll begin to be fearful just like everybody else around us. We're fearful. We're dismayed by the corruption and the vileness of this crooked and perverse generation that we live in...

Prayer Warriors, Part 2

March 24, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott

Amen! Hallelujah! Let's turn to James. I don't know about you, but I love studying and reading and teaching about prayer. And I hate it. It always reveals how much more I need to improve; and so often, we seem to think that some of these men that have done these great exploits for God were somehow supermen, different than you and me; but, of course, the Scriptures reveals another truth about that, doesn't it? And as we read here in James, Chapter 5, the Scripture speaks. Says in verse 13, "Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. [Elijah] was a man subject to like passions as we are" These were not supermen. Subject to like passions as we are, "and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by a space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, "now, he had prayed in between these two events, but he prayed again, "and the heavens gave rain, the earth brought forth her fruit. Brethren, if any of you do ere from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which [has converted] the sinner from the errors of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." As James is speaking here and he's encouraging us in some of these covenant promises, the passages that we're very familiar with out of James that speaks of the effectual fervent praying, and in the context of that, he talks about Elijah. Elijah, a man subject to like passions as we are. The one thing that's obvious about a great prayer life and a great life of power and faith is you're not on a hundred percent of the time; amen?...

Prayer Warriors, Part 3

March 24, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott

Hallelujah! Amen. Let's turn to James and see if we can continue along where we were Sunday and just listen to what the Holy Spirit has to say to us. Father, we do come and we just ask that You would speak clearly to us this evening. Give each of us, Father, hearts to hear. Father, I ask that even now each one of us would just consciously bring our minds into subjection from the busy day that we've had and put it all aside because You deserve our attention. Cause us to focus upon You and Your greatness at this moment and rejoice in the love that You've shown us. Prepare us for the task that's ahead, Father, for that that You've called us to, that we'd look not with weariness or in any way fearful of what might lie ahead, but with an expectation and a joy for the privilege of Your call. For You have called us and You have ordained us to go and to bring fruit forth and You said that fruit would remain. For that we give You all the praise and all of the glory, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. As we were looking Sunday, of course, at that very familiar passage in James, Chapter 5, we took a little bit of time and talked about the great prophet Elijah. We saw that he was a man subject to like passions as we are. We can identify with that aspect of his life, but the Lord doesn't want us to just identify with his defeat and his depression, but with his victory on the mountain. Amen? He's declared that these signs shall follow them that believe in His name; they shall? When the Lord speaks that "they shall" it doesn't leave any room for questioning, does it? In our minds or in the enemy's. I want you to know something. There is nothing that Satan wants to war against more than a good prayer life. I can't remember who it was, but he said, "If you want to humble a man, just ask him about his prayer life." And that goes primarily for a lot of preachers. But the Scripture says, "http://...men ought always to pray [Amen?], and not to faint" (Luke 18:1)...