Receiving Answers to Prayer

Well, I want to invite you to grab the message notes that look like this. We are in a series of messages concluding them today called pray, and along with these message notes, also grab this green sheet of paper out of your notes that looks like this. I want you to kind of balance the message notes and this little sheet of paper, which you will get to in just a few minutes. This morning, I want to wrap up this series by talking about how to pray with confidence that God will answer your prayers.

Now, you might be saying, how can you do that? How can you pray with confidence? Is God going to teach us some kind of a weird formula here? Some kind of magic words to say? That's not what I'm going to do at all. But biblically, there are some ways to pray with absolute confidence that God hears you and will answer your prayers, and we're going to talk about that today.

But first, I want to start with a little story. Years ago, my wife Lori and I hosted a newcomers coffee at our house, and it's one that we will never forget because we were both a little bit distracted emotionally. We had just discovered the day before that Lori was expecting our third child. Now, this was something of a miracle in our family because our first two pregnancies had to be... why do husbands always say that? By the way, they were really her first two pregnancies. They weren't ours. But her first two pregnancies were only possible by medical intervention. We had to go to infertility specialists, and we didn't think it was possible for us to conceive without that. But God proved us wrong because, much to our surprise, Lori expected our third child, who's been such a blessing to us.

But at the time, I mean, we were still in a little bit of shell shock, and we hadn't told a single soul, not one other person. And so there we are, all our guests are in a circle in our living room, going clockwise around the room introducing themselves, saying their name. Our little girl Elizabeth, our second born, is there. She's about five and a half at the time, and she's perched on a stool in the living room, which she had gotten from the kitchen just so she could meet everybody. She's listening to everybody introduce themselves, and when it gets to her turn, she says, "Well, hi everybody. My name is Elizabeth. I'm five, and God is going to give me a baby brother and a kitten." Our jaws just dropped.

After we just kind of laughed nervously, I said, "Elizabeth, how do you know? Why do you think that? How do you know that God's going to give you that?" She said, "Well, Daddy, it's because every night when I say my prayers, I say, 'Dear Lord, please give me a baby brother and a kitten,' and so I know he will." And needless to say, she got that baby brother, who is now 15 years old, David, and she got her kitten also because, you know, the pound was having a special, and we just couldn't resist knowing that she'd been praying for it. But absolutely no regrets about that baby brother; he's been a blessing. Big regrets about the cat, but that's another story.

I have a question. My question is this: where does that kind of confidence in prayer go? Right? That childlike trust. In fact, I read a story about another little girl who writes a letter to a missionary. It was missions week at their church, and they had all the little kids write letters to the missionaries. Apparently, the kids had been told, "Now, the missionaries are very busy, so do not ask for a response. They can't possibly take time out to respond to all of you." And so she wrote her letter, and the missionary got a big kick out of it and read it to the church the next weekend because she wrote, "Dear Mr. Missionary, we are praying for you, but we are not expecting an answer."

I think that little girl summarizes the prayer lives of most of us, right? We do a lot of praying; we don't really expect an answer. And so let's look at four attitudes for praying with confidence that God will answer. Many years ago, I read something on this by a young pastor not too many people had heard about at the time named Rick Warren. His four points I have never forgotten, and I really hope that God kind of brands them into your memory today too because they can change your prayer life.

He said I must be willing to, number one, let God answer in his own time. His time, his schedule, his timetable, whenever God thinks is best. Now this morning, I'm going to illustrate each point with a case study from the Bible. First case study: Zechariah, Luke 1. He is a priest in the temple in Jerusalem. He and his wife are childless, even though they're well advanced in years. One day, he's doing his service in the temple, and the Bible says an angel appeared to him and said, "Don't be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard." He says they're going to have a son, and the next verse tells us Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this?" He says, "Because I'm an old man, and my wife is..." You could kind of hear the hesitation. "I'm an old man, and my wife is well along in years." You know, that's diplomacy right there, right? But in other words, he's saying, "We stopped praying that prayer long ago."

I think most of us here in this room can relate to this because the fact is in your life and in my life, often God seems to delay his answer to our prayers beyond anything that seems reasonable, if I'm honest. And so if I want to pray with confidence, I have got to let God answer in his own time. Now, let me ask you this: Why would God ever delay? Why wouldn't he just instantaneously answer your requests when you ask them? Could one of the reasons be that he wants us to mature, to grow up a little bit before we receive them? I'm not saying that's the case in every situation, but I think sometimes that's what it is.

Give you an example: One time when I was four years old, it was a stage in my life that I really wanted to drive so badly, like any four-and-a-half-year-old does. We were visiting my Uncle Carl and Aunt Pia at their house over in Lascatus, and I noticed that Uncle Carl had left his keys to his Volvo in his car as it was running. He apparently had been going to work, realized he'd forgotten something, jumped out of the car, and it seemed like a golden opportunity to me. So, true story, at four and a half, I jumped into Uncle Carl's Volvo. I managed to put it into gear; all I could manage was reverse, but that's a gear. I had a great time for the next few moments driving Uncle Carl's Volvo in reverse down Rosswood Drive in Lascatus when I was four. My dreams were coming true until I heard screaming and adults sprinting down the street and my Uncle Carl yanking open the door, reaching in, and turning off the car.

It became made clear to me through, shall I say, memorable nonverbal communication that I was never ever to do that again. It was very effective communication. In fact, to this day, whenever I put my car in reverse, I flinch. To this day. And you know, you want to know what? For the next 12 years, whenever I wanted to drive, the answer was always no. No, not yet. Can you believe that? Twelve long years! I prayed, and my parents told me no. Unfair? Not at all. My idea of perfect timing wasn't right. In fact, when I listened, when I acted on the timing that was so clear to me was right, I narrowly avoided a tragedy. A lot of times, God says not yet because you need to grow up first, right? Mature first.

Now, delayed gratification is one of the hardest concepts for a little kid to learn, right? So a mark of your Christian maturity is this: Are you able to be patient? You know, some people say, "God doesn't answer my prayers. I pray, and he never answers my prayers." God always answers prayer; it's just that sometimes God says not yet. And sometimes God just flat-out says no. Sometimes God delays, but sometimes God denies. God hasn't answered yes to all of my prayers. I mean heartfelt prayers. The Apostle Paul prayed and prayed and prayed to God. He says three times, and that wasn't just like a little prayer; that was probably an extended time of going away and praying and fasting. Three times he begs God to take away from him what he called his thorn in the flesh, some kind of physical or perhaps spiritual disability, and each time God says no. Trusting that God is good means accepting when he says yes and not yet and no.

Which brings me to number two: let God answer in his own way, not only whenever he thinks best but however he thinks best. In fact, would you agree with me on this? Sometimes the worst thing is for us to get our prayer requests answered our way, our time. I want you to just think about this for a second. How many of you are actually super glad that God did not give you what you asked for when you asked for it? Can I see a show of hands? You're actually glad you didn't get something you prayed for. How many of you just raised your hands? It has to do with your spouse that you married, right? God says in Isaiah 55:8, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways," declares the Lord. That means God is not my servant who's supposed to respond to my bidding and make me comfortable. God's ways are better, and often God's ways are bigger.

I mean, what would have happened if Elizabeth and Zachariah would have gotten their prayer answered how they wanted it answered when they wanted it? They would have gotten a baby when they were maybe in their 20s, and it would have been great, and they would have loved him or her. It would have been absolutely wonderful. But God delayed for years, and then he gave them John the Baptist, cousin of Jesus Christ, the last Old Testament prophet really because he was the last prophet to see the prophecies of Jesus fulfilled before his eyes, the forerunner of the Messiah. The angel said this boy is going to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. God delayed, but then he doesn't just give them a baby; he gives them a world changer.

Another similar case study: Abraham and Sarah. You know, Abraham is told by God, "You're going to be the father of a great nation." In fact, he changes his name from Abram to Abraham. The name Abraham means father of a great nation, father of many, daddy to tons and tons and tons of kids. So that's now his name given to him by God, and so he's going around at the Chamber of Commerce mixers, you know, and his name is daddy of tons of kids. And so what's the first question everybody's going to ask? That's an unusual name, kind of a nickname. "How many kids do you have?" A nun. "Well, why is that your name?" "Well, God promised me I was going to have kids." "How old are you?" "Ninety-nine." "Oh, great. Nice to meet you, Abraham." You know, I mean, how embarrassing!

In fact, Abraham at one point, I think, has had enough of all of this, and he decides he's going to help God out, and he has a child by another woman who's not his wife because he's like, "Well, I mean, God did promise this, so I guess this is okay." And God says, "Not my plan. Let me do it my time, my way." And Romans 4 says, "Without weakening in his faith, Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he didn't waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God." Now, you might say, "Well, but René, you just said that he had a child by a woman he wasn't married to, and it looked sounded to me like he wavered." He did not waver. It doesn't mean he was perfect. Nobody's perfect, not even Abraham, nobody. But it says he never wavered regarding his belief that somehow God is going to work through this.

In fact, at age 99, his wife is 90. An angel comes to him one day and says, "Abraham, now you're going to be a father." And the point of the story is this: let God work in his way because ultimately his ways are way better. I want you to look at this verse, Ephesians 3:20, one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. And I'd like you to read it out loud like you mean it with me. Let's say this verse together: "God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine according to his power that is at work within us." Do you believe that verse? That was pretty tepid. Do you believe that verse?

Let me give you an example of this right here at Twin Lakes Church. A few months ago, a man who attends church here—in fact, he may be here this morning; he's here every weekend—YM Choo. That's his name, YM Choo. He comes up to me and he says, "René, I got kind of a dream." It was between services one Sunday morning, like in June, just a few months ago. And now, YM is a Chinese American, and he tells me, "As an Asian American, I see how young Asian American people, especially teenagers and college-age kids, are just like magnetically attracted to Jeremy Lin, the famous NBA basketball player for the Knicks." And he says, "I'm not even a big basketball fan, but I see Jeremy Lin all over the news, and he's a Christian, I understand. So YM says, 'Here's my dream: What if I rented out some big venue up in San Francisco, like the Cow Palace or the Oakland Arena? And what if we sold it out, packed in a bunch of teenagers in there, and we got Jeremy Lin, like around the time that school starts this year, to share his testimony, and we got a pastor who's Asian American in there, and all these people would respond and come to Christ? That'd be awesome.' And so what do you think of that idea? Thinking big.

And so I look at him and I say, well, kind of put my arm around him, you know, beautiful dreamer, you know, that's a wonderful idea. But you know, you're never going to get Jeremy Lin. You know, I mean, a lot of people probably get millions of requests. That's just probably impossible. And San Francisco is such a notoriously hard place to do ministry. You're never going to know if somebody's going to show up to some Christian thing or not. If I did it, I wouldn't do it up in the city, and I wouldn't do it with Jeremy Lin because you're not... I'd recommend going smaller. Now, this is his pastor talking to him, you know, not so fast, Mr. Big Faith Man. You know, back in the boat, we'll have no walking on water here, you know. But I did say, you know, it all kind of patronizingly, I will pray with you about this. I figured that's always a spiritual thing to end a conversation with when you think somebody's nuts. I'll pray about that.

So YM calls me a few days later, you know, "Have you been praying about it?" And I had been, and I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been praying, and I don't know, it still seems kind of crazy." He goes, "Well, I'm going to go for it." You know, and on his own dime, rents out the Cow Palace. We had—I told him this much: I said, "You know, we will put posters for this event all over the place and tell our youth groups about it and so on." You might have seen the posters up here. So it happened last Saturday night, a week ago. Check this out: 10,000 teens packed out the Cow Palace, and they listened to Jeremy Lin giving his live Christian testimony, and they heard from Francis Chan, and tons of them came to Christ. And it was all just a dream at the beginning of this summer from a Twin Lakes Church attender, and it happened. Is that not an awesome example of praying big?

Now you see why YM actually believes this verse, that God is able to do immeasurably beyond what we can ask or even imagine. And that challenged me because I realized, you know what? I don't always believe this verse. I have moments of clarity when I'm like, yeah, that's true. And so I have begun to pray, "God, let me dream big about what you want to do here and outside the walls of this church." Now, you might be thinking, "René, why did you just tell us about something that happened a week ago that I would have loved to go to?" Well, let me tell you why. First, it was sold out months in advance. But secondly, there's something you can be involved with. Yesterday morning, some folks gathered here at Twin Lakes Church, prayed for the church. We broke up into small groups, and tons of these groups walked the campus together. We met ministry leaders. We stood on the vacant spots where we hope to build, for example, our children's building by 2015. We sat on the vacant lots where we hope to build a future chapel building. We stood on the side of our new school and Sunday school building, and we prayed that God would work in this church to bless our whole community for Christ far beyond what we can ask or even imagine.

Now again, you're going, "Why are you telling us about something that happened yesterday, again, René? What if I miss this opportunity?" Well, it's too late to pray for the church. The chance is gone. It's over. Too bad for you. No, just kidding. We put together prayer books like this that summarized the requests of all our ministry leaders, put a campus map in here. I would love it if everybody in this room grabbed one of these. They're at the info desk after church, and pray big about this church. Can you imagine this church with twice as many teenagers as we have right now? With twice as many, four times as many college students as we have right now? Don't you think that would be in the will of God? Well, we have to start praying for that because if you don't pray for that, you will never plan for that. Let me just reiterate that: if you never pray about it, you'll never plan for it.

So let me ask you, do you ever boldly ask God for success? Boldly just say, "God, these are our hopes and our dreams and our plans. God, grant us success." I used to think that's presumptuous. But I love what Rick Warren says: he says, "If I can't ask God to bless what I'm doing, then I better start doing something else." Does that make sense to you? If what you're doing is something that God can bless and glorify, then ask him for success. And if you feel uncomfortable with that, then you better start doing something else. Now, of course, I'm not suggesting if you just claim it in faith, all your brilliant ideas will come to pass. But I'm promising that God's ideas will come to pass. Boldly ask for success, and then let God define success. And I pray that this fall we will do this for our church. Let us never ever be satisfied with just, "Well, we just want to be this big." I mean, we should be content.

But yeah, I was talking to another pastor, not a pastor at this church, at another place I met a few days ago, and we were talking about churches. She said, "You know, our church is small, but it's just the right size. We want it to stay small, and we don't want to grow." And you might say, "Well, that's kind of a funny thing for a pastor to say because you want to grow and reach people." But do you ever think, "Yeah, our church is big, and it's just the right size. We don't want it to grow"? I hope you want it to grow, and I hope you begin to pray big, think big, plan big because God will do it in his way.

Now, how does this apply to you? Maybe you're praying about a job, and it looked like a job was going to come through, and all of a sudden it falls through. God's purpose for you is not thwarted. He is still going to do great things through you. You can believe that with confidence. Or maybe you're praying about a housing situation, and all of a sudden it doesn't work out. Your plan didn't work out, but God's got plan B. Actually, God's got plan A; your plan was plan B, but you just didn't realize it at the time. So you let him answer in his way, which is going to be big. You let him answer in his time, which is going to be just right.

And number three, you let him answer in his power. In his power. Back to exhibit A: when does God give Zachariah and Elizabeth a baby? When they were physically unable to have a baby. And the lesson is we are always saved by God's power when we are powerless. There's a beautiful story in the Bible that demonstrates this: our next case study, Lazarus. One of Jesus Christ's best friends, and one day he gets sick. One of his best friends gets sick, and so his sisters, Mary and Martha, also friends of Christ, sent for Jesus to come and heal him, John 11:4. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick." Emergency! We need you right now! Stat! Our brother is sick. They were frantic. Next verse: when he heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it." Wow, that sounds great, doesn't it? Well, look at that; that's a promise from Jesus. The sickness isn't going to end in death. No, God's going to get glory from it. They must have been... they must have heard that thought, "Yes!"

But if you look at the story, Jesus doesn't go to help Lazarus. Jesus doesn't even wait until Lazarus is like freshly dead. Jesus doesn't even go to visit him when he's sick. Jesus waits until the funeral, and he shows up in the middle of the funeral. Not only did the sickness end in death; Jesus didn't even try! If you look at the story from the outside, it looks like he's callous. It looks like he doesn't care, and that's exactly what Mary and Martha think. He finally shows up. They come running up to him, "Lord, where have you been? He's buried!" This is like the post-funeral mourning going on when Jesus shows up. "Lord, if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died." And we do that too, don't we? We say, "Jesus, why are you doing this? Why haven't you answered? This does not make sense. I thought I had a promise here."

And Jesus just calmly looks at them and says, "Well, I said you'd see God's glory." And he walks to the cave; they move the stone out of the way, and it says Jesus called out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" And the dead man came out. Now, there's so many great things in the story, but one of the things that just fascinates me is that it's when the situation was humanly impossible, they were absolutely out of options, that Jesus steps in and does something glorifying him, absolutely to everybody's surprise.

Now, how does this work in your life and in mine? You know, are we always going to see something as dramatic as all of our loved ones being raised from the dead? Of course not. That hasn't been the experience of Christians for 2,000 years. But can God still be glorified? Can God still give us power when we feel powerless? Of course! Let me give you an example. There's a man named Judge Harold Medina who in 1949 made the cover of Time magazine. Why? He presided over a very infamous court case. Eleven terrorists were put on trial all at the same time. They had been plotting the violent overthrow of the U.S. government during World War II, and they were caught and put on trial. I mean, it just sounds like something ripped out of today's headlines, doesn't it?

Well, their whole strategy was to try to provoke the judge into a mistrial. Every single afternoon, precisely at 3 p.m., they would do something outrageous in court to scare the judge or to just make him angry so that they would provoke him into some outburst so that they could move for a mistrial. That was their whole strategy, and they did it at 3 o'clock every afternoon, so it would make the afternoon papers the next day. Well, after seven months of this kind of behavior, the judge felt like he was having a nervous breakdown. Every night, an anonymous caller would call, threaten his life, the lives of his loved ones, and so he calls a recess because he literally was having an anxiety attack.

He told Time magazine what happened next. He said, "I recessed the court, walked quickly to the little room in the back, and I laid down. I felt panicky, and he says, 'I'll be frank about it. I was certain I would never go back. I had stood as much as a human being can endure. I knew I would quit.' But suddenly, there in that little room, I found myself like a frightened child calling to his father in the dark. Wanted admission for a high-ranking judge to make. I asked God to help me, just to take charge, that his will might be done. I can't report anything supernatural or mysterious. There was no vision or visitation. But I do know this: as I lay on that couch, some kind of new strength flowed into me. I was in that little room for only 15 minutes, but that brief communion with my God saved not only the trial but my sanity as well." And he said he walked out of that little room with full confidence that he could take whatever was ahead.

You know, maybe today you feel like that judge felt. You're panicked. You're convinced that you cannot do it any longer. You just need to quit. But it's when we are totally powerless that we receive the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. Let God answer his time, his way, in his power. And finally, number four: let God answer for his own purpose. Not only whenever he wants, however he wants, but also for whatever reason he wants. You know, let me ask you this: Why does God answer any prayer of mine? Why does God answer any prayer of yours? What are his reasons for answering any prayer?

Well, biblically, you could summarize why God answers prayer in two statements: God answers prayer for my growth and for his glory. Those are the only two reasons God answers any prayer. He answers prayer for your own growth to transform you into Christlikeness and for his glory. I mean, why did God answer, you know, Elizabeth and Zachariah's prayer for a baby? Not only did they enjoy the baby; the angel says he'll be a delight to you, but also he glorified God. Another case study: Joseph. God says to Joseph one day in a dream, "You are going to be a great ruler." Awesome! Joseph is stoked. Then what promptly happens? His own brothers betray him, throw him into a pit, sell him into slavery. He's a slave to somebody whose wife tries to seduce him. Joseph resists, and she slanders his good name and has him thrown into prison on a false rape charge. His whole life is in freefall. He is in a pit with no hope.

But eventually, because of connections that he allows Joseph to make, God makes him second in command in all of Egypt, and he ends up saving not only Egypt but the future nation of Israel from starvation by drought. And Joseph tells his brothers years later, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." Listen, don't miss this: those things that happened to Joseph, were they good things or bad things? They were bad things—falsely thrown into prison, a job loss, an abusive family, slander, betrayal, to name just a few of the things that he experienced. But God can turn even bad things around and use them for good and make them into a blessing for people.

You know, one of the greatest examples of this is what you're wearing around your neck, many of you: the cross. What's the symbol of our faith? A cross that stood for nothing but death and execution. But now it stands for hope. Why? God turned a very bad thing around and made it the way that he saved the whole world. I mean, look back at all these four points. This is how you can pray with absolute total confidence, knowing God's going to answer your prayer in his time, his way, for his purpose, and with his power.

Now, I want to address a group of people that is sitting in this room right now because to some of you, everything I have said has been at the risk of sounding glib and shallow, and you got a lot of questions right now. Because some of you have been praying for the baby, and unlike Elizabeth and Zachariah or Abraham and Sarah, it never came. Or you prayed for a healing that never came, and unlike Mary and Martha, your loved one is still in the grave. So how do you survive through that?

You know, the last few weeks we've been packing up my mom's house, helping her move into our place, and we found things that I've never seen before, like we found this: it's my mom's prayer diary. And this covers several years of her life where she's writing about her sorrows and her joys, praying and talking to herself about these things she's going through. Now, this is a woman who you'll remember lost her first husband, my dad, to cancer, then her second husband to a heart attack, then her brother and sister-in-law in a plane crash, then lost many of her belongings in a flood, and I could go on. But she's been through a lot of ups and downs. She's very honest about her sorrows and her blessings.

So I'm looking through this this week as we're helping her move, and I pick it up, and one page literally comes fluttering out of this into my hand. This page right here literally fell out of the book into my open hand, and I look at it, and it has to do with exactly what we're talking about today. So I kind of consider this special delivery from God, and I'm thinking maybe some of you need to hear this. This is from several years ago, and mom is writing again. There was no other audience for this but herself. She says, "Troubles and affliction come to the best of Christians. How can a good God let something like this happen? This is a very hard question. But out of my own experience, I am testifying that God can turn this, even this, into a wonderful blessing. He is now your husband. I will be a husband to you," he says, "and a father to the fatherless. So trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. You have to believe, cling to God's promises. You have to be patient. Talk to God as you would to your best friend, and you have to look around you. You're not alone in your trouble." And listen to the way she wraps up, and she just soars.

Sometimes we think we hang on by one finger, but just when we think we have to let go, he is there telling us to give him our load, and he will help carry it. He will come to us and be beside us and tell us to lean on him, and we will find rest and peace, and he will give us a fresh feeling of his love. And we know that in the end, it will be worth it all when we come into his presence and hear him say, "Well done, now faithful servant. Come and be forever free." And she writes, "That will be glory for me when by his grace I will see his face. That will be glory for me." Do you believe that? That's good advice right there.

And you know what's interesting to me is she lives by that to this very day. You look up to God, you look around to others, and you look ahead to the end. I recommend it. So let me close with this, Paul. I think the greatest example of what I'm trying to say we can see in his life. He wanted so badly to preach in Rome, the center of the world at the time, center of influence. In the Book of Romans, he talks about it: "In my prayers at all times," he says, "Oh, I pray now that at last, by God's will, the way may be open for me to come to you. I'm so eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome." His desire, his one motive, his ultimate goal, his dream: preach in Rome. And why not? He could have so much influence, and probably the way he envisioned it is just like it in Athens, just like it in Ephesus. "I can rent a place for six months, a couple of years, really be an impact." So this is his dream; this is his prayer. Does God ever answer his prayer? Yeah, but how?

First, in his own time, he kept saying wait. Then in his own way, Paul's arrested, sent to Rome by the Romans, the most unlikely way. Then in God's own power, a shipwreck, assassination plots. Looks like Paul is doomed, but God comes through, gets in there. But fourth, for his own purpose. Paul wanted to go to Rome to preach. Think: why did God want Paul in Rome? To write. The Bible says when he gets there, he's under house arrest; he can't go anywhere. So to use his time, he pens letters to different Christians all over the Mediterranean, and a lot of the letters he wrote in prison are now the majority of the New Testament. Paul was such an activist, the only way God could get him to slow down and write the Bible was to put him in jail.

Now let me ask you: what made a greater impact, preaching in Rome for six months or writing the Bible? This is how you pray with confidence: God will answer the best way. This is really the big idea here. Am I praying with confidence and expectation that God will answer in the best way? Now, I want you to apply this personally as we take 10 minutes or so to respond to this. Take out your green slip of paper here, and let me ask you this: What is the prayer that you have been praying with anxiety? What worry is weighing you down? We're going to do something that we've only done once before here. We're going to sing a couple of songs as a response, and during the music, I want you to take your biggest worry, your biggest prayer request, and write it down here and just give it to God, saying you answer your time, your way, your power, your purpose.

Now, you can do that quietly in your seat and take this home to remember it by, but another option for you today: I want to invite you to write out that worry on this little slip, and then during the closing song, you can bring it to the front and put it in one of these two urns here. We've also got a couple up there in the balcony as well. Why? It's not a magic act, but a lot of us are kinesthetic learners, and you will remember that for the rest of your life, the day that you put that prayer request up in the front and symbolically gave it to God and said, "God, your way, your will, your power, your purpose." Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you that we can pray with total childlike trust. And God, if there are people in this room who have never done this before, I hope that they would pray, "Jesus, be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for turning the cross from an object of death to an object of hope. I believe it. Help me to understand what your death on the cross meant for me personally more each day. And Lord, help us to let you answer our prayers, to know you will answer them in your way, your time, for your purpose and your power. Help us to remember your ways are always better. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Ever. If thou speak'st aye, our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Glory. Glory. Amen. Amen.