Power in Every Petition Part 1

Guest (Male): Today on The Faith Walk with Jonathan Evans.
Jonathan Evans: The problem that we have in the Christian faith when it comes to prayer is that we pray reactively. We don't pray preemptively. We're praying out of reaction to what's happening to us, not realizing Jesus already told you, He didn't lie to you, "In this world you will have trouble." We need to be preemptive in our prayers. We treat God like a spare tire. We only pull Him out when life goes flat. And then when we get rolling again, we put Him right back in the trunk because now, "I got it."
Guest (Male): You're listening to The Faith Walk with Jonathan Evans. In a moment, Jonathan will continue today's message, but first, to thank you for your support of this ministry, Jonathan has a couple of special gifts for you. The first is the audio series that you're currently hearing called House of Prayer: Building a real, consistent, and intimate prayer life through honest, private communication with God. The second part of this gift is a devotional called Kingdom Family, written by Jonathan and Tony Evans. It covers real-life topics for parents and kids to explore together throughout the year. I'll tell you more about these later in today's program, or you can call right now at 1-800-800-3222 or visit tonyevans.org to learn more. Now, let's get started with Jonathan's message.
Jonathan Evans: We've been talking about the house of prayer because that's what the house is supposed to be known for. As we've been talking this month, we talked about how God can revive the things you don't think He can. Then we started talking about the Lord's Prayer as something that we respect, but we don't really reflect. We don't really understand what Jesus was talking about. Every time He talked about prayer, two separate times, He talked about the Lord's Prayer. So there must be something important about it. So I need you, if you happened to unsubscribe this week, resubscribe. Because the notification is going back out today and the video is going to open up, and the greatest prayer warrior of all time is going to give you the how-to on prayer. We learned that He is our Father. As our Father, we must believe as His children our Daddy will do anything for us. We can run into the bedroom and have great expectation that He will do. He loves His children. Hasn't He already done it? Hasn't He already loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son into the world, who was brutally beaten and crucified in order for you to be mended together and sanctified? Understand our Father will do it. Then sometimes when you pray, you just need to go into His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with a praise because of who He is. He says, "Hallowed be Thy name," in other words, reverence, honor, respect, awe, appreciation, and adoration for what He has done, what He will do, and what He is already doing right now. So sometimes it's just a praise. Then He says when you're praying, you yearn for the kingdom if you're a disciple. You want to do His will until He comes. Lord, just tell me what You need me to do and I will do it. In other words, this prayer, as you notice, is really focused on the King and His kingdom. It's really putting us in the servant position and saying, "Our Father, hallowed be Thy name, Your kingdom come, what do You need from me?" Then He keeps going into our sermon for today and He says, "Give us this day our daily bread." That's Matthew 6:11. When you look at Luke 11, when the disciple asked, "Teach us how to pray," in Luke 11:3, it says, "Give us each day." In other words, day by day, we should have a daily dependence on God as our source to give us what we need every single day. Give me what I need, Lord, to do Your kingdom purpose. I just said I want to do Your will. So, Lord, resource me so that I can do what You're calling me to do. Give me the daily bread that I need in order to physically respond the way I need to respond. This daily bread does have to do with what you need physically. It has to do with food, water, shelter, health, and rest because God uses your physical body in order to accomplish His will. So, Lord, give me what I need to accomplish Your will even in my physical body. Now, here in America, we typically don't live hand-to-mouth. So what happens is we've been blessed with so much that our dependency on God has gone scarce. Give us our daily bread for what? I already got that. So we don't have a dependency on God unless your life changes and you end up check-to-check. Unless you don't know how the bills are going to be paid, unless you don't know how you're going to make it in the house that you're in or in the apartment that you're in to the next month, and once you get to where you have less, all of a sudden your dependency on God grows. It shouldn't take a change in resources for us to depend on our source daily. It shouldn't take that. The problem that we have in the Christian faith when it comes to prayer is that we pray reactively. We don't pray preemptively. We're praying out of reaction to what's happening to us, not realizing Jesus already told you, He didn't lie to you, "In this world you will have trouble." We need to be preemptive in our prayers. We treat God like a spare tire. We only pull Him out when life goes flat, and then when we get rolling again, we put Him right back in the trunk because now, "I got it." He says no, we need the Lord daily. Every single day to provide for our needs as our source, and not just reactive, but preemptive. He said, "Give us this day our daily bread." Now, this daily bread is not just physical because you have a kingdom purpose. It's also spiritual. In Matthew chapter four, verse four, Jesus is having a conversation with the devil who is trying to tempt Him, and He said, "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." He's looking at the enemy while He's being tempted and He's able to go back to the bread, the Word. Found in Deuteronomy 8:3, it says the exact same thing. So Jesus knows the Word, He is the Word, He quotes the Word. This is also our bread. Stay with me now. In John chapter six, verse 35, Jesus says of Himself, "I am the bread of life." In John chapter four, with the woman at the well, He says, "I am the living water." In other words, He's saying, "I am the spiritual nutrients you need in order for you to do the kingdom purpose." In John chapter one, He says, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." So He's saying, "I'm the Word, I'm the water, and the bread." So if you get in the Word, you'll have the daily bread, you'll have the nutrients you need and the water you need to not live life spiritually dehydrated. You'll be able, from the Spirit within, to have what you need daily in order to accomplish My kingdom purpose. How often do we really need this bread? Daily. Psalm one teaches us this: Meditate on My Word day and night, and you will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither, and whatever you do, you prosper. So if you want to prosper, you don't want your leaf to wither, you want to be firmly planted by streams of water and yield your fruit in this world, in this season, then you're in His Word. He is the Word, He is the water, He is the bread, so you have all the nutrition you need in order to accomplish His will. He's saying this is what we're supposed to be asking for. I don't know about y'all, but in order to do His will, I need my sanity. In order to do His will, I need my emotional stability. In order to do His will, I need compassion, I need to be gushing with joy. In order to do His will, I need wisdom, discernment, and understanding because Proverbs says that's how a house is built. Do you know how much we need in order to do the will of the King? The reason why we don't go to Him daily is because we've downgraded the job description. We don't really understand what it takes to live a kingdom life in this world that's ruled by the devil. In this evil world, He's calling you to be righteous. He's calling you to live a sanctified life. He's calling you to be a kingdom person, a kingdom man, or a kingdom woman. So if we're not going to Him to pray about, "Lord, resource me and give me what I need in order to do Your will," we must have downgraded what He's calling us to do. I don't know about you, but I need the grace of God to continue to work on my marriage every single day because me and Kanika, that's a kingdom thing. I don't want that to fall off. That's a real thing. But I need God to resource me continually to be able to do that. I don't know about you, but I need the wisdom in order to raise my children in righteousness and justice because they exit my house and go out into this crazy world. They get the world every day sitting there on social media and all of these different things that come at them. I need the Lord to give me this bread to give me what I need. I need sanity and Christ-like attitude to go to work. But many of us lose our mind on the job, but we never requested the bread before we went. We downgraded what God is asking us to do. So, "Lord, give me what I need in order to be able to do Your will." Prayer, therefore, is the opportunity for you and I to go before God who is our source and not downgrade what He's calling us to do, but say, "Lord, give me what I need so that I can perpetuate Your will on Earth as it is in Heaven." That means righteousness on Earth because I know it's righteous in Heaven. Give me what I need. Let me help you understand. There is a difference between needs and wants. We've been praying for wants. He's saying get the daily bread first. You need food, you want a gourmet meal. You need water; some of y'all are bougie, you want sparkling. You need rest, you want a spa. You need transportation, you want a sports car. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't be praying for your wants and desires. My question really is, do you desire what God wants?
Guest (Male): Have you ever had a consistent, authentic prayer life? Building a real, consistent, and intimate prayer life through honest, private communication with God can change your life. Today, when you give a gift to support the ministry of the Urban Alternative, Jonathan wants to give you two life-altering resources. The first is a copy of his series House of Prayer, encouraging you to pray persistently, seek God's kingdom first, and allow prayer to transform your heart to align with God's will. The second part of this gift is a devotional called Kingdom Family, written by Jonathan and Tony Evans, that offers simple, engaging lessons that parents and kids can explore together throughout the year. Both the devotional book, Kingdom Family, and the four-part audio series, House of Prayer, are a way of showing appreciation for the continued support of listeners like you who make this program possible. Get all the details online at tonyevans.org. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or you can call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you. That's 1-800-800-3222. Find your way out of distractions and into God's purpose for your life. Now, let's get back to Jonathan with the rest of today's message.
Jonathan Evans: Do you desire what God wants? Because if you desire what God wants, then it's actually a need because it's for His will. Now the question is, when we're praying for our daily bread, how do I get to the place where I already desire what God wants? Well, the Bible teaches us this. Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." You know how powerful that verse is? God's just going to give you the desires of your heart. John 15:7 repeats, it says, "If you abide in Me and My Word abides in you, then you can ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you." Whatever I wish and it will be given to me? These are some powerful promises. But you've got to understand the reason why you can have that confidence. 1 John 5:14 says, "If you pray according to My will, I hear you." A lot of us aren't hearing from Heaven because we're praying according to our will. We're not praying according to His will. But why aren't we praying according to His will? We don't know it because we're not delighting and abiding. Once you get to the point where you're delighting in His Word, you start thinking like He's thinking, knowing what He's knowing, and figuring where He's going. And then your request for your daily bread is based on the premise of what He's given you, the talents that He's given you, what He's put in your life, the people He's called you to influence, and you're actually going to be requesting from His hand what's already in it when we're able to get on the same wavelength as the Father. Me and Kanika have been married, y'all, going on 19 years. I was comfortable when I was saying five and seven, but once you get to close to 20, you're like, "Oh." You know what I mean? I sneeze and crack my ribs, get up, my back hurts, just things changing when you say 19. But what that means is, a lot of times I'll say something and she'll say, "I was just about to say that." When we're in the kitchen sometimes, we both reach for the same thing at the same time. Sometimes I'll ask my wife for something and she'll be walking by, and I'll ask her, and she'll keep walking and just hand it to me because she already knew it was coming because we ain't just in the same house, we're abiding. There's a knowledge there that when I make a request, she already knows the request is coming because she already knows the plan that we have in our house that we've communicated for our children, and where we're going, and how we're budgeting, and all of the things that we've talked about. So the plan is already there. So when I request something, it's already based on the plan. She's already got it. The question is, are we saved but don't have a relationship? Are we not abiding with our Lord so that when we get on our knees, in our heart or physical, that we're asking for the bread He already wants to give? So that what? We can do His will. Remember what preceded this statement: Your kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. So give me this day. That's a legitimate request so that I can do Your will, not my will. I don't know about your Bible, but my Bible is clear. Philippians 4:19 says He will supply all your needs according to His riches and His glory. My Lord will supply all your needs. How many needs? All. According to His riches and His glory. Not your riches or your glory. Man, why am I not getting what I'm asking for? Because we're straddling the fence with our riches and His riches and our glory and His glory. And He's not straddling the fence on His kingdom. Our job is to, through our lives and the bread that we get, to enrich the kingdom. Not to focus on going to God to get rich off His goodness. The goal for us as believers is to enrich the kingdom. Not just to sit in church so that I can get rich, not just to figure out where my blessing is. No, your blessing is in getting what you need to do His will. One of the things I realized as I was looking at this is one of the reasons we're not getting our daily bread or not requesting our daily bread is because we are using most of our time to get the devil's bread. Because we live in the world ruled by the devil, which is why there's so much sin in it. When Jesus rules it, it's going to be righteous. But we live in this world and we've started becoming okay with this world. We've started becoming anesthetized or numbed to the chaos that we face. "Oh, that's just the way it is." Wait a minute. When the devil was tempting Jesus, he said, "I got my own bread. Take this stone and I want you to turn it into bread to feed your flesh." Take something that's not food or not for you, turn it into something that is for you so that you can feel better. Many of us are living trying to manipulate stone to bread so that we can be and feel better. Some of us are in a relationship right now that we know is stone, it's breaking our whole jaw to eat. And you're trying to take all this time to manipulate something the Spirit of God is telling you is not for you. You're trying to manipulate it because of how you feel to make it be for you. Or you're trying to get right emotionally so you go to the stone of alcoholism or the stone of weed that you got in your house because you need to feel better. So, "I need to smoke my problems away," or, "I need to drink my problems away," and the enemy is glad to let you go ahead and move to that stone even though you got bread and water that's really living, that's Jesus Christ, that actually can do that for you. Especially the young people, going to social media so they can feel value. They post a video and every five minutes looking to see how many likes you got. Man, they saw your video and swiped up to the next one. There's no value there. The value that He has for you is already in His Word. You don't need stones that you manipulate into bread. You need bread, and Jesus is it. His Word is it. Praying to Him for Him to fill you is it. The Spirit of God is it. We're in this world trying to take stone and manipulate it into bread. That bread don't work for this calling. It's a waste of time and I've said it before: When you're born you look like your parents, when you die you look like your decisions. Many of us will die looking like we've been eating on rocks because we're spending all of our time trying to manipulate Satan's world and make it be righteous because of how we feel. The daily bread, the real bread, we need this daily both physically and spiritually, not to do our will, but to do His will. That's why you're here. You're here to do God's will. He drafted you. You're His player. You have on His uniform. You can't just go out there and run your own plays. Whoever do that in NFC, AFC, they're going to lose. The play call comes in from the offensive coordinator to the huddle and the quarterback calls it, and you know what they all do? Run it. They don't just randomly go out there and do their own thing. If they do it, they're going to play hard, sweat hard, hit hard, go through all that, get hurt, and they're still going to lose. Is our life going to be that way? Where we're trying to manipulate stone into bread, and we play hard, sweat hard, live in this world that's ruled by the devil, go through all these problems and get to the end and we lost by way of experiencing the abundant life? Jesus prayed this way. Jesus prayed this way for the disciples in the high priestly prayer in John chapter 17, verse 17. He said, "Lord, sanctify them in the truth of the Word." Because they were about to go into the book of Acts. Go ye therefore, make disciples. We know they got beaten up, stabbed, put in prison. They needed the bread because they were about to go into chaos by doing God's will.
Guest (Male): That was Pastor Jonathan Evans. Before you go today, I want to remind you that we have a couple of special gifts for you: a devotional book called Kingdom Family and a four-part audio series, House of Prayer. The devotional Kingdom Family, written by Jonathan and Tony Evans, is a practical, easy-to-use guide designed to help your family grow spiritually together through short daily devotionals that fit naturally into busy routines like dinnertime or bedtime. We are also including Jonathan Evans's House of Prayer audio series, helping you build a real, consistent, and intimate prayer life through honest private communication with God rather than outward performance. Both the devotional called Kingdom Family and his audio series House of Prayer are a gift to you to thank you for your donation to help support the ministry of the Urban Alternative. It's our way of showing appreciation for the continued support of listeners like you who make this program possible. Call 1-800-800-3222 anytime or get all the details online at tonyevans.org. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or you can call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you. That's 1-800-800-3222. Thank you for listening to The Faith Walk with Jonathan Evans. The Faith Walk is produced as a part of the Urban Alternative, a ministry of Dr. Tony Evans.