Category: 2024 Sermons

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Sermon Audio: Pray Receptively
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: Acts 13:1-2, Acts 16:6-10, Romans 8:26-27
Duration: 31:22
Size: 17.4 MB

Prayer That Works
Pray Receptively
Acts 13:1-2, Acts 16:6-10, Romans 8:26-27

We need to understand that prayer isn’t just us talking to God.
It’s God talking to us as well

They were worshiping and fasting when the Holy Spirit gave them instructions, and then they fasted and prayed some more.

Fasting is the discipline of going without something, usually food, although people talk about fasting from TV or social media, or something else, in order to focus on spiritual things.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if the Holy Spirit spoke to us in an audible voice?

Hide God’s Word in your heart.
Because that is the primary channel through which God speaks to us today. Receptive prayer lets the Holy Spirit speak.

Are you willing to open your hands to God in prayer, and receive what He so wants to give you?

It’s all good because the Holy Spirit, who knows you perfectly, who knows the mind of God perfectly, is praying for you according to the perfect will of God.

If we limit our prayers to only what we ask for, what we think we need, and how we think things need to be accomplished, how much are you limiting God?

When we pray with open hands, it gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to go above and beyond what we pray.

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Sermon Audio: Pray Persuasively
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: Exodus 32:9-14, Exodus 32:30-33
Duration: 31:35
Size: 18.4 MB

Prayer That Works
Pray Persuasively
Exodus 32:9-14, Exodus 32:30-33

If God has foreordained every detail of history, and if it all unfolds according to his plan and in accordance with his will, then what difference do our prayers make?

Can we, through our prayers, make God do something he wouldn’t otherwise do?

So, we’re going to use the Bible to interpret the Bible and dig deeper into what’s happening.

Isn’t that amazing? These people had seen God inflict ten plagues on the Egyptians so they (Israel) could be delivered from bondage.

Moses knew God wasn’t playing. And so, if he was going to plead for the people, he needed to pray persuasively.

If you want to pray persuasively, pray that God be glorified.

The third factor that made Moses’ prayer so persuasive is that he believed God’s promises were eternal.

Moses got on the same page with God.

You see, they were God’s people, but they were Moses’ responsibility. He took ownership for their standing with God.

Because in making that offer, Moses points to the one who will come centuries after Moses, Jesus Christ.

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Sermon Audio: Pray with Persistence
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: Luke 11:5-13, Luke 18:1-7
Duration: 26:43
Size: 15.5 MB

Prayer That Works
Pray with Persistence
Luke 11:5-13, Luke 18:1-7

I suspect there are people who do the same thing with prayer…they use prayer’s power sparingly.

Did you know this is the only time in the entire Gospels when the disciples explicitly asked the greatest teacher who ever lived to teach them something?

Jesus was the greatest teacher that ever lived, and He knew that a fundamental principle of teaching is that you never learn anything without being a little disturbed.

But the scripture goes on to say that even though your neighbor won’t give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your “shameless audacity” he will give you what you need.

Are we really supposed to be the little old lady who is so persistent with her requests that an unrighteous judge is afraid she’s going to beat him up?

We don’t just ask once. In both of these stories, the emphasis is that the asker kept asking.

A ASK and it will be given to you: when you are in need of something, you ask for it.

S SEEK and you will find; when you are looking for something, you seek it (wisdom, peace, answers, something you’ve lost).

K KNOCK and the door will be opened: when you want to see someone, or when you want access to somewhere, you knock on the door.

Would anyone ever accuse you of shameless audacity in your prayers? Or do you come to God timidly, afraid you are going to bother him? Afraid you are going to make him mad?

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Sermon Audio: Pray with Expectancy
Speaker: Pastor Val Watkins
Scripture Text: James 5:13-18, I Kings 18:41-45
Duration: 31:10
Size: 17.3 MB

Prayer That Works
Pray with Expectancy
James 5:13-18, I Kings 18:41-45

And I think that if we actually believed what we said we believed about prayer, we would be doing a whole lot more of it.

In James 4:2, he says that one of the reasons we don’t receive what we desire is we don’t pray.

It is common for many of us to feel we don’t know how to pray or what to say–and James understood that so he gave us an example of how we can pray.

Then Elijah, after pouring water all over his sacrifice, prays a very simple prayer:

FIRST, Prayer that works takes work!

SECOND, prayer that works takes persistence.
Because when we work at our prayers–it shows the answer “matters” to us.

THIRD, Prayer that works takes risks.
Her petite frame held power, simply because she was intimately connected with and invested in God’s name.

FOURTH, Prayer that works takes understanding God’s will.
It is asking for those things that will honor Him. That are in accordance with his will.

FIFTH, Prayer that works takes righteousness with God.
The only thing that made Elijah anything is the same thing that we have access to: God’s imputed righteousness.