Mind Body Spirit – Walking In Power with Nate Ortiz

Hi, this is Nadoor Tees and this is Walking in Power.

And I want to talk to you today about prayer.

For those of us who remember that there was an old song, you used to say, living on a prayer.

And prayer is such an important part of our lives.

Now, depending on how you grew up or what your experience was with church, sometimes

you think of prayer as this very, you know, your in church, you're sitting in a pew and

you're praying, or maybe you have a picture of you sitting at your bedside with your

hands clasped when you're praying.

But let me encourage you, when I talk about living on a prayer, when I talk about this

idea of a lifestyle of praying, this is something that you can pray wherever you are.

You could pray the gym, you could pray in the car, you could pray cutting the grass.

It's this understanding that, right, God is always listening to us as we begin to pray.

There's things where maybe just doing something you'd go about in your everyday life and

you kind of got something you want to pray about.

Or maybe some that's worrying you that you take it to prayer.

I want to encourage you that as we kind of grow through this teaching today that you

would have this idea that says, you know, I want to just grow my prayer life.

I don't want to just have it just be in the morning and I don't think about it.

Maybe you pray different parts of the day, whether it's, you know, at lunch or wherever

it might be, just to kind of get in this myself saying, you know, I could pray, I have

this big meetica, but I have a big decision that I have to make.

Or you could pray for the same thing multiple times throughout the day.

But to make it more of a priority or a lifestyle, something that integrates in, right, you

don't have to have all the fancy words, right, but you could be in this place just to say,

Lord, you know my heart, you know what I'm going through?

Help me.

Give me the wisdom, right?

It could be just something simple to speak your heart when you're praying.

But prayer changes everything.

I truly pray.

Prayer changes everything.

And most times, it begins in you.

I know for me when I pray, when I used to think just like Lord, if you just do what

I need you to do, this would be great.

But God wants to do things inside your heart.

He wants to do things inside my heart.

And when we open ourselves up in prayer consistently, we begin to really have a different perspective

of how we hold things in our heart and how we view them.

And so, you know, many of you guys are familiar with Matthew chapter six, the Lord's Prayer.

I'm not going to read it on this podcast, but the Lord's Prayer, you can read it Matthew

chapter six verses five through fifteen.

But this is the Lord, how he mod, he tells us how to pray.

This is how he models prayer for us that you can read.

Some of you might even have it memorized.

You are our father who out in heaven, how would be that name?

Right?

That kingdom come.

That will be done.

Right?

You might even say, oh yeah, I remember that prayer, right?

But I want to talk about, right?

Not just saying the words of that, but to understand the depth of the prayer.

So this is why prayer is important.

Prayer brings perspective.

Our perspective and God's perspective doesn't always line up.

That happens, right?

There's things that we say, God, I was praying, I wanted this to happen and it didn't

happen that way.

When we begin to pray, it helps line our perspective and saying, God, what are you seeing?

I always say like this, you are wanting to get a heavenly perspective on an earthly situation,

right?

The old analogy that, right, you can look at a stand next to a building in downtown Pittsburgh

and you can see how big it is.

You say, wow, that's massive, right?

But if you get into a plane and you look down at Pittsburgh, right, everything looks small.

That's tiny as that perspective is that when you elevate yourself, the things and you

get that heavenly perspective, the things you're looking at, maybe just have a different viewpoint

to you that they maybe don't intimidate you as they once did.

So it changed your perspective.

Prayer is important because it reveals what is in your heart.

Remember, God can't bless you, pretend to be and you can't heal what you refuse to let

go.

So, right, we can come into work, we go to church, we could be this type of person that

we put on the facade and we just feel smile and we're shaking hands and we're making

jokes, but maybe inside we're not really doing well.

God can't bless you, pretend to be, right?

If you're not the type of person that is operating in integrity when no one's around an operating

character, God can't bless that.

And you have to understand that you might say, well, I'm not operating integrity, but God

still blesses me, or I'm doing things that are contrary to God's word and I don't have

any issues.

Here's the thing you have to realize that you could be operating in that, at the end,

right?

At the end of your life or at the end of a season, things catch up to you, right?

Things get revealed.

And you want to be a person that says, hey, everything I'm doing is bringing glory to

God.

Everything I'm doing is honoring.

I'm trying to live to his word.

I'm trying to live to that standard.

So, and also in your heart and in your life as you pray, it's important because there's

some of you that hold onto bitterness or unforgiveness or different things in your

heart.

And you have to let go of that as well.

And prayer helps with that.

When you begin to meditate and say, Lord, help me with this area of my life, this maybe

it's this depression, anxiety, whatever it might be, right?

Unforgiveness, bitterness.

You have to let it go to begin to let God heal that inside your heart.

And why it's prayer important?

The last thing is Jesus prayed.

Jesus prayed often.

So if Jesus, the Son of God is praying, how much more do you and I need to pray?

Some of you say, I need to pray just to make it through the day, through this next moment,

we need to pray.

So, Jesus taught us how to pray.

And when you begin to understand how prayer changed you from the inside, I believe that

you will see these three things in prayer.

Prayer is personal.

Prayer is obedience.

And prayer is forgiveness.

Prayer is personal.

I always say it like this.

I believe nothing calls you to personal prayer like family.

Sometimes we could pray for different things.

I need this to happen.

I need this.

But in your family, I feel like, man, nothing calls you personal prayer like that.

Maybe someone is sick or maybe someone's going on, someone near to you is going through

a difficult time.

You begin to pray because it's personal to you.

You're saying, hey, this isn't just anybody.

This is my family member.

This is what I love and I care about.

And your family members right there can also push your buttons like no one else can.

You think you have patience, but then, man, this is going on in the area.

Your kids are asking for this or spouses are asking for this.

And it could be overwhelming sometimes.

But where I think I push those buttons, you can be stressed out.

But when you begin to pray, you got to say, Lord, help me be the best version of who I am,

who you've called me to be.

And so I remember being married, I used to think, you know, when I first got married, that

if my wife could just see things the way that I see it, this would go so much smoother.

The guy was much interested in about changing my heart and changing everything else around

me.

Isn't that how we think about it?

We say, God, if you could change everything else around me, that would be great.

And because I know I'm right.

But really God saying, well, where can we move in your heart and we'll be going to see

things around you shift and change?

And so we get more interested in saying, God, move heaven and earth to accomplish what I need

when God is really more interested in saying, hey, how can I move you closer to my will?

I like to say when you pray, private prayers produce righteous results, private prayers

produce righteous results.

Jesus tells us, you know, in that passage of scripture, in Matthew 6, that Jesus tells

people that who pray openly for attention will have the reward.

But when they pray in private, He will reward us openly.

So when you pray in private, there's things are going to have them publicly, not because

you're just doing it publicly because you're praying in private, you're operating in

that intake, that character, that growing your faith in your prayer life.

And so, you know, if you were with someone, you know, maybe have a reward, I use this example,

maybe you're going to Starbucks and you're, you have your reward and you got a free drink

coming up and you're with a friend and that friend just steps in front of you and says,

hey, I'm going to take your coffee, right?

I'm sure you love that friend, but they're trying to step it and take your reward.

Sometimes people do that in their faith and with their Christian walk, they'll say, man,

God's blessing everyone else.

He's not blessing me and how come that person seems to get this and seems to get that?

And we lose focus is saying, you don't know what their prayer life looks like.

You don't know what they've done in private, you know, that no one has seen that they're

saying, God, I'm laying everything down so God can begin to bless them and move in their

life.

And so, you want to understand that in your life, maybe not seeing things publicly where

you want to see them to be, but where is your prayer life?

Prayer aligns us to God's will.

So prayer time brings alignment to your life.

In verse 10, it says in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus prayed, your kingdom come, your will

be done on earth as it is in heaven, all right?

That we are saying, God, we want your kingdom here on earth.

I want in my life, owner of my family, I want in my business, may you be the center of

what's going on.

In Luke 9, 25, he says, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take

up his cross daily and follow me.

The thing I love about the Christian faith that Jesus has never asked us to do something

that he hasn't done himself.

I say it so many times because when we read the scriptures and we read these teachings,

we have to understand that Jesus lived this.

He walked out, he prayed, he was in difficult situations, but I'm telling you, there's

times that we can pray things that we don't necessarily believe.

Where we could say, like, Lord, I'll do it, but in our hearts, we don't really believe

it.

And for Jesus, he taught about prayer in Matthew chapter 6, but there was coming a time

where he prayed and what he believed was going to intersect.

So this leads me to my next point is that prayer is obedience.

Prayer is framed by obedience, not convenience.

In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus is teaching about prayer, but in Matthew 26, he is modeling

what he taught in the middle of a difficult moment.

In Matthew 26, this is Jesus.

When, right, he's in the garden and he is about to be betrayed, taken by the guards and

about to be crucified on the cross.

And Jesus in his difficult situation, the disciples who he's poured into, these were his boys,

these were people that he did everything with.

They are like, these are the ones, like, tip of the spear.

These are his aces.

All right.

They, he says, I need to stay awake and pray with me.

You know, my time is coming.

And whether do they fall asleep and Jesus goes and he starts praying more, he's praying

so hard, by the way, that drops of blood are coming from his forehead.

He's praying so hard.

And in this moment, right, the by way, that he was feeling exceedingly sorrowful, imagining

Jesus, right, we think about Jesus being happy or maybe other images come to your mind.

But in this passage, it says that Jesus was feeling exceedingly sorrowful.

That's a tough picture to look at.

In Matthew chapter 26, when he goes down and he's laying down and praying, he says,

God, not my will, but your will be done.

And I think that's the kind of mentality that we need to have in the most difficult moments

of our lives where things aren't making sense.

Where could be a challenge to say, Lord, I wasn't expecting that to go that way.

But we say, Lord, let it be your will and not my will.

Jesus prayed for the obedience to do the Father's will and not his own just as he told us

in Matthew chapter 6, I remember there was a time where I was at a church working and

God really challenged me because I felt so called to that community.

I felt so called serving there.

And there was a time coming where there was some financial situation that they might have

to let some people go.

And I remember just feeling like, man, I know what I'm going to do.

And God really challenged me.

Is that you called the people or the paychecks.

And in that moment, I really checked my heart because I knew what God called me to.

And because things were rockier, things were shaking.

I was putting my will, my thoughts, before what God wants to accomplish.

And God was faithful and we got through that difficult season.

But I want to encourage you to always, to always listen, always say, God, let your will

be done, not my will.

Say Augustine had this quote, he said, pray as though everything dependent on God and

work as though everything dependent on you.

It's both and it's not just praying.

It's saying, God, if you're going to do it, you're going to do it.

We're saying, I'm praying and I'm believing, but I'm also working towards it.

I'm moving towards what I believe that God has.

And if it doesn't turn out the way that you thought it would, still trust God.

Know that he has a greater plan that he's working out for you, but just to trust and obey

him.

But the last thing I'd like to say is prayers forgiveness.

We said prayer is personal prayer is obedience and prayer is forgiveness.

Going back to Matthew chapter six, after Jesus says, Amen, he continues and says, you

must have forgiveness.

Right?

He mentions it in his prayer.

He says, Amen.

And he goes back to it.

Verse 14 15 says, for if you forgive men that trust passes, your heavenly Father will

also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive men that trust passes, neither will your Father forgive your

trespasses.

I love this quote.

It says, unforgiveness is choosing to stay trapped in a jail cell of bitterness, serving

time for someone else's crime.

Having unforgiveness in your heart is no way to live.

It's hard and difficult.

I'm not being lieling anyone who's gone through some difficult.

Some of you might have experienced terrible things in your life, deplorable things in

your life.

Things that have caused deep wounds and scars in your heart.

I would never for a moment minimize that at all.

And for some, right?

You're just angry towards something that someone has done to you.

When you care is unforgiveness in your heart, that's no way to live.

Ephesians chapter 4 verse 26 says, Be angry and do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down in your wrath nor give place to the devil.

Our emotions, right?

It's okay.

If we're not talking about, never feel angry, never feel betrayed, never feel these things.

Jesus felt those things, but our emotions can't govern us in defining our faith.

But when we pray with, say, Lord, help me to forgive people.

It might take you a very long time.

But there is this process to forgiveness, right?

That you say, Lord, I want to release that person.

I don't want to carry bitterness, unforgiveness in my heart towards them.

Because forgiveness is the heart of the Father.

When Judas came to the garden, one of the disciples who was going to betray Jesus in

Matthew chapter 26, he sells them out.

One of his close disciples actually sells him out literally.

Jesus in that passage scripture calls him friend.

What a powerful moment.

I can tell you in that moment, if someone is betraying me, I don't think I'd be calling

someone friend.

I'd probably have some other words to be calling them.

But Jesus calls Judas friend because Jesus knew that even in the midst of Judas's crookedness,

that he was serving a greater purpose and a greater will and that God had him.

So if we are living a life of prayer, we have to commit these things.

And we understand that prayer is personal.

Make it about yourself.

What has God speaking to you?

What has God revealing in your heart?

And when you begin to reveal those things to you.

How are you then being obedient to it that just don't pray and what God

You gives you a direction or nudges you a certain way you say, oh, I'm not gonna do that

Right are you obedient to what God wants to do and then lastly forgiveness maybe someone need to forgive today

maybe someone you need to

To call

Maybe we're someone you need to just

In your own heart just continue to pray for as you ask for forgiveness in your own heart

So I encourage you today in closing make prayer part of your life

Find a place to pray maybe to place your house

Maybe it's a you go for a walk whatever it is find a place to pray make it a priority today that you will just have this

Understanding that when you pray God is listing and God is always speaking

Let's have the ears to hear what he is saying and apply it to our lives

Thank you, and we'll see you next time on walking in power