Greetings my friends. It is Sunday July 23RD 2023, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us celebrate this great new day of believing, following, trusting, loving, and being more like our Lord + Savior Jesus Christ. Let us love our neighbor as ourself.
I’m going to do something a bit different starting with this edition of #SundayScripture – and continuing for the next few months. I’m going to take one of my sermons from a few years ago – and update it. It’ll be a refresh and renew of something old. You see my God – your God if you believe and follow – is doing a new thing, and it springs forth.
Once I’m done updating it in its entirety – I plan to preach it to my brothers and sisters of my church family. But this time – you’ll get it first – as it’s being recreated a week at a time here on #SundayScripture.
And now – Part 1 of my updated sermon on “Pray & Believe” – originally preached on Sunday June 16TH 2019:
You know 17 years into this fantastic journey of believing and following our God – I still struggle with prayer. And I think that – if we’re being honest – we all struggle with prayer – no matter how long we’ve been saved.
Prayer is difficult. I know I just prayed before you. It was spontaneous. It was from the heart. It was what the Holy Spirit placed on my heart at that precise moment in time. It sounded like a lot of my prayers. My prayers out loud – standing up here – at the pulpit – they sound very much like my prayers in private – at home – or in my car.
I know that God heard me. I know that God heard all of us – as we prayed together. See – whenever a brother or a sister is up here – or down there – or at the restaurant – or at the dinner table – leading us in prayer – God hears not just the vocal one. God hears each and every one of us – in unison – as one church body. When one leads a prayer, and we’re all bowing our heads together in reverence (or in awe) to God – that means we’re all praying. God hears all of us praying together.
But I struggle with prayer. Sometimes the right words are not there at the right time. Sometimes we just try too hard in praying. We just need to talk to God in our normal everyday talk. Don’t need fancy words. I don’t use fancy words. I don’t know many fancy words. I didn’t do very good (or is it very well ?) in English 9, and 10, and 11, and 12 in high school. But yet I’m a blogger and I’m a preacher, so I must’ve learned something good from those high school classes all of those years ago.
So we just need to plain talk to God. Whatever comes out of our mouth in the spur of the moment. And we all have that capability – as children of God. And God already knows who each and every one of us is, so we don’t need to impress Him with fancy talk. He hears us when we speak. He hears us when we think.
Praying is relatively new for me. I’ve been saved for going on 17 years now. It’ll be 17 years this August. I was not born and raised here, but I was saved and born again here – in Homestead.
You know for the first year or so of this journey for me – I didn’t pray. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to pray. It was because I didn’t know how to pray. I even asked God to teach me how to pray during that first year. I later realized that I was already praying to Him when I asked Him to do that. You see – talking to God – is praying to God.
And really – as I look back upon those early couple of years of salvation – I almost felt unqualified to pray. Back then I thought to myself – who am I to pray to a God I just met ? I relied on other people around me – my brothers and sisters of my church family – who had been saved much longer than me – to pray, and I agreed with everything they prayed, and I AMENed their prayers.
[TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK]
If you wish to learn more about the God I know then stay tuned to #SundayScripture. The best is yet to come !
Thank you for reading my blog for this day, and may:
The LORD bless you, and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
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