Tag Archives: Knowing God

Payette River Vineyard, Sermons

Prayer: Intimate Communication

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angel-n-isaiah-the-prophet-unclean-lipsThe below are the sermon notes from Sunday, March 16th. The audio file can be found on the Payette River Vineyard Christian Fellowship website. Blessings.

Sermon

  • Why teach on prayer to a church full of praying people?
    • What more can I say that hasn’t been said?
  • Did you know that here are a lot of books out there about prayer?
  • It seems that prayer is a bestselling topic
    • Everyone seems to have written about prayer
  • Prayer is a HUGE topic to write or teach about
  • One could talk about healing prayer
    • How to pray for the sick?
    • What happens when folks don’t get healed?
    • What do you do when they DO get healed?
  • Corporate prayer
  • Intercession prayer
  • The Lord’s Prayer
  • Dinner time prayer
  • Bedtime prayers
  • Not to mention our two favorite types
    • prayers of petition
    • prayers of help
  • Over the next five weeks we are going to be focused on the spiritual discipline of prayer
    • About creating an ongoing prayer rhythm in our lives.

Intimacy

  • It is about intimate communication with our Lover, our King, our Best Friend and Master
    • Some of you may have a hard time thinking about God as your lover
    • Especially  men…
    • But we are the Bride of Jesus – just read Song of Solomon
    • It is full of language that should make you blush
    • God is seeking an intimate relationship with Him
  • Sadly, I think we – stereotypically – have learned to be content in having a so-so relationship with God
    • We like Him – we will give Him our tithes
    • We’ll go to church
    • We may even study the Scriptures
  •  But if we were honest with ourselves, we really don’t want a truly inmate relationship with Him
    • It is scary
    • It is a freighting
  • Not because of what may happen, but because I think deep down in our heart of hearts we don’t want Jesus to know who we really are
    • We can fool our neighbors
    • We can fool our family and friends
    • We can even fool ourselves to a certain degree
    • But we can’t fool God
  • And that makes us nervous
  • One of the verses that has shaped my life the most is Isaiah 6:5
    • Isaiah is mining his own business – perhaps prayer, perhaps not – we don’t know
    • All of a sudden he sees this vision of God
    • As he watches these seraphim start sing

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

  • As they sang the temple shook and Isaiah drops to his knees crying out:

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”