Cultivating a Love Relationship with God through Prayer and Listening

1. Prayer: Part 3 of 3(000,000) Sue Bohlin November 19, 2002

2. Prayers we pray persistently (review) • “God, show me where I’m being deceived.” • Prayer for protection of ourselves and others

5. How Do You Cultivate a Love Relationship with God? • Ask Him for a child's heart (Bailey’s Jesus) • Ask Him for a lover's heart toward Jesus • The Sacred Romance (John Eldredge and Brent Curtis)

6. How Do You Cultivate a Love Relationship with God? • Gratitude / God Sighting Journal • Give • Spend time with Him • Praise music • Seek freshness in His word: The Message

7. "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." Jesus

8. Listening Prayer: How Do You Know God's Voice? • Relationship means one speaks, the other listens, and vice versa • “My sheep hear My voice” John 10:16 • Christianity is supposed to be supernatural • Check it out with the Word, with wise counsel, with circumstances • Go to where the peace is

9. Listening Prayer: How Do You Know God's Voice? • Munich • Ray: God's no to Chicago • You don't always know it's God • Curt: ”There's the girl you're going to marry"

10. Learning to Listen to God 1. Quiet your heart and spirit before God 2. "Lord, do You have anything You'd like to say to me?" 3. Read through a passage of scripture with an attitude of expectation that He wants to speak to you

11. Learning to Listen to God • Different from reading the Bible to check off your "to do" list • Different from Bible study • Read it until He stops you. Then listen.

12. Learning to Listen to God 4. Isaiah 55:1-2 • "Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy?” 5. Be alert around water (bath, shower, pool)

13. Praying in Jesus’ Name • Star Trek: Jean-Luc Picard's "Make it so” • Christian belief that saying "In Jesus' name" forces God to make it so • That's a belief in the power of words to create or change reality: sorcery.

14. Praying in Jesus’ Name • Christ’s death on the Cross is what it cost to: • Pay for our sins • Reconcile us to God • Give us the authority to approach God • We must never pray as if we deserved to be heard. • On the other hand. . .

15. Praying in Jesus’ Name • “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

16. Praying in Jesus' Name Means: • We approach the throne of God with a conscious identity of who we are • We pray the same way the Lord Jesus would pray. • HWJP? (How Would Jesus Pray?) • In confident expectation of being heard • In humble submission to the Father's perfect will

17. Praying in Jesus' Name Means: • Praying on the basis of the authority Christ Himself granted us. • “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him." James 5:14-15

18. The Role of Faith • Word-faith praying is • Deciding what you want • Confessing with your mouth that God has done it • The power is in your faith, not really in God

19. “Many sincere Christians have been influenced by the sorcerer's gospel to imagine that faith has some power in itself. . . .To them faith is not placed in God but is a power directed at God, which forces him to do for us what we have believed he will do. At the very least this makes God subject to alleged "laws" that we can activate by "faith"; at worst it eliminates God from the process altogether, putting everything in our own hands and thus turning us into gods who can make anything happen by our "power of belief."

20. If everything works according to such "law," then God is no longer sovereign and there is no place for grace. All one needs to do is to exercise this "power of belief." That is the basic idea behind sorcery. Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon, The Seduction of Christianity

21. The Role of Faith • We need to have faith in GOD, not faith in our FAITH • We need to trust God, believing that • He CAN do whatever we ask • We submit to His will regardless of what it is

22. The Role of Faith "God, I believe you can do what I'm asking. I trust You to do what is best here. I ask for ______, but I want your will to be done."

23. Faith That Moves Mountains • "Truly, truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it shall be granted him." Mark 11:23 • This kind of faith is a gift of God, not a work of the flesh.

24. Faith That Moves Mountains • "20 Reasons We Do Not Receive Healing" essay: • "If you use 'If it be thy will,' you are destroying faith. God said already that it is His will." • Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Please let this cup pass from me, but not My will but Thine be done."

25. Faith That Moves Mountains • Mountain-moving faith is a spiritual gift (1 Cor. 12:9) • Don't feel guilty if God didn't give you the gift of supernatural faith! • Experiencing God author Henry Blackaby has the spiritual gift of faith

26. Prayer and the Law of Agreement • "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in My name, there am I with them." Matthew 18:19-20 • Context of this passage: church discipline