Pray Like an Optimist

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Prayer, what we're gonna be looking at in 15 through 23, if you prayed that for others and you prayed that for yourself, it would change lives. In this prayer, just to summarize it, Paul is praying for the church to be more in tune with the Holy Spirit, to be more discerning, to be more confident, and to be more optimistic. We're gonna look at how he's doing that, but he's gonna look at it, and as you are praying that for yourself and for other people, man, that will change your life. And I wanna kinda show you how. Let's look at the prayer in full. The prayer starts, he says he's going to pray for them, but in 17, he really begins to pray. So we're gonna do just 17 all the way through 23, and then we're gonna kinda go back and look at it, okay?

So here's his prayer. His prayer is that the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, let me look at it here, just to double check myself, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, enlightening the eyes of your heart, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named. Not only in this age, but also in the one to come. He put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him,

who fills all in all. That's a big old prayer, man. That's a huge prayer. What I wanna do is I wanna begin to break that down and I wanna challenge you this week. I'm gonna be continuing to refer to this week whenever you're praying. That's my challenge to you. We're gonna be looking at how, as we look at these verses, but that is my challenge. I'm gonna keep on saying that to you.

Let's just start with verse 17. Let's just start there and then keep going. Verse 17, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and of knowledge, excuse me, of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Okay, so first the prayer is to give the spirit. To give the spirit. What does it mean to give the spirit? I thought if we're in Christ, I thought we already had the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to give the spirit? If you already have it, why give it, right? This is similar to how different points in the book of Acts,

it's gonna say that somebody was filled with the Holy Spirit or that somebody spoke and they spoke maybe at the specific direction of the Holy Spirit. It's an idea, it's an idea that God would open the door wider. This prayer is to say open the door wider for you to experience the Holy Spirit. Kind of in different points in different ways, but that whenever Paul is praying that God would give the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, what he's saying is, he's saying, Lord, help this church, help these churches experience the Holy Spirit more fully, okay? It doesn't mean that they weren't Christians before, they don't know what the Holy Spirit is or anything like that. It just means that he's praying that they would experience the Holy Spirit more fully in their lives. And it's not just experience the Spirit, it's not just give you the Spirit,

but it's give you the Spirit in the knowledge of him. In other words, Lord, help this church relate to you more often. Help them to know you, not just checking the box that you prayed today, but help them to seek you in prayer. Give them the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Help this church become familiar with how the Lord works. What a prayer. Help this church become more familiar, more intimate with the Lord and how he works, how he works in other people's lives, how he works in my life, how I want him to work in other areas. Help me become, help this church become more familiar. God, help these people love you deeply, help them seek you in prayer, help them trust the process of you coming through.

Let this church be more caught up in you and let this church be changed by your presence. When we pray this way fervently, it does, it will change all our lives. I mean, just look, just verse 17, man, just 17, that when you're praying, that we all become more in tune with the Holy Spirit, that we need to all become more in tune through good times and through tough times, that you're just more in tune with it, right? That when you're singing a worship song, you're not just kind of moving your lips a little bit, but that when you're singing, you're just in tune with it, that it just takes on more weight, you just mean it more. It doesn't mean you cry more. It doesn't mean you necessarily raise your hands or kneel or anything like that, but it just means it hits hard. When you're making tough decisions, if you're a manager, if you're a parent, if you're ahead of your household,

when you're making tough decisions, that you would be more in tune with the Holy Spirit, that you would train your children in a way that is in tune with the Holy Spirit, that you would treat your coworkers in a way that is in tune with the Holy Spirit. When you are facing difficulty, financial difficulty, emotional difficulty, physical difficulty, whatever, when you are facing that, that you would be more in tune with the Holy Spirit, Not that you'd be like dancing on a cloud and like petting a unicorn, but that it would be something where it's, you're familiar, there's a trust. There's a peace that accompanies that. It means the more that you pray like this, the less power other things have to trigger you. Let's look a little further. Because he prays for them to be more in tune with the Holy Spirit, but there's more even in verse 17, and we can kinda see it as we combine it with 18.

So let's look at those together. So as we're praying that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. So there's this idea that giving the spirit in the knowledge of him, but the spirit is specifically of wisdom and of revelation. And it has something to do with having your eyes, the eyes of your heart enlightened. The heart in the New Testament, whenever it's talking about that, this is cardia, the Greek word cardia. And it really means, what they mean when they write heart is it's kinda the seat of the person's whole self. So this is the spiritual seat, this is the mental seat, this is the physical seat. We tend to differentiate in our modern day between head and heart. When they say heart, they mean head and heart. They mean the whole thing.

And so when it talks about having the eyes of your heart enlightened, it means that your whole self is illuminated, is brightened, is lit up by wisdom and by revelation. Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, it means that you are now, you are being illuminated by something that you were not illuminated by before. It was a dark spot that is now being illuminated by wisdom or by revelation. I wanna take both of those to be illuminated by wisdom and then to be illuminated by revelation. Those are different. To be illuminated by wisdom, I'm reminded of Romans 12 too when it says, and it'll just be up here, it says, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern. Everybody say discern. Discern. You may, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

When you are lit up by wisdom, it doesn't, it means that you can see better, not just differently. It means that you can discern. This is how we, this is part of how we become new. This is part of how the Lord God changes us over time is that he changes what we actually perceive when we look at something. Does that make sense? In other words, you as a, maybe as a young Christian, immature Christian, or even before you met Christ, whenever you were walking into a work situation and there is some tension in the room and you might be reading that tension, you might not be, I mean, depending on who you are. And you're just reading and reacting but all you see is physically what's in front of you. Maybe all you see is your career. Maybe all you see is an opportunity to get ahead. Maybe all you see is, oh, this guy's about to get fired or man, there's some drama, I'm gonna go get some popcorn.

I'm not sure what you're seeing in that moment but when you have discernment, you walk into that room and you see something different. You see different things at play. You see ministry opportunities. You see the spirit convicting people. You see the spirit working. And I'm not saying you just see that but I mean, it is a transformation of what you are able to perceive. This is called discernment, discernment. We're given the spirit of wisdom and our eyes are enlightened by wisdom and this is discernment. Discernment is determining what is true and from what is false or in the illustration I gave, what is actually significant from what is actually not significant. What is reality, real reality? And then what is superficial, right? Discernment is the ability to determine between those things. This is much of what we call spiritual warfare. We're gonna get into that in Ephesians six

so that's a couple of months away. But in spiritual warfare, a lot of what you're dealing with is discernment. You are learning in discernment, you are learning to tune out the false accusations of your identity from the Lord and you are learning to tune in what the Lord says about you, what's real, what's true, right? What is life? You tune out, you actually have three channels. This is not that exact but I'm just gonna say it this way. You have the enemy that's telling you lies, right? Just throwing lies at you. You then have another frequency that's like your flesh, just stuff you wanna do, okay? Or like stuff in your past. Stuff that if you go to therapy for, they're just gonna tell you you gotta cope with it. It's like stuff the way you were brought up, bad memories, trauma, all of these things that are there that your flesh is telling you to do, right? Now the weird thing is you can become anxious

because you're listening to a lie from the enemy or you can become anxious because you are reliving a trauma. Either way, it feels like anxiety, right? It doesn't matter which frequency you're tuned into but you need to know, like that's where that's, it can come from one of two places. Sometimes they can work together, it's a whole thing. But then there's another frequency that you can turn into, tune into where that frequency is the Lord God in the spirit telling you what is true. Telling you what is true about you, what's true about the situation you're in, okay? So it might look like around you, you might see like hey, I'm really frustrated and I can't get anywhere, I can't move fast enough, I can't be secure in this area. This isn't going to be okay. And what the spirit is telling you is I am working all things together for my big plan and my big plan includes your good,

it includes you being closer to me, it includes you being changed, being different, being more like me, it includes you having joy in the midst of a big trial. And that's what the spirit is saying, right? Rusty, amen, yes. Listen, y'all gotta be more like Rusty. I like some back and forth, okay? It's okay to just yell stuff out, okay? It's okay, nobody's gonna look at you funny. I'm not gonna call you out, Rusty can take it, he's fine. But I'm not gonna call you out every time. I do enjoy a little bit of amen back and so just remember that, okay. Ah, hey, look at there. Sorry, Nicole, I'm already getting started. All right, this prayer, prayer for discernment, might be different than how you're praying now. Because how we often pray is in a defensive posture, we often pray like, Lord, don't let this bad thing happen to the people that I love. Look, that's not a bad prayer, okay?

I'm not picking on that prayer, that's great. You wanna pray for traveling mercies? Pray for it, man, that's fine. You wanna pray for a hedge of protection? Do it, great. That's not unbiblical, it's not weird, it's just not the only way to pray. Lord, don't let this diagnosis be bad. Don't let this test grade be bad. Don't let this friend be mad at me. Don't let, you know, don't let this, whatever. Don't let me suffer the full consequences of whatever poor choice I just made, okay? Like, that, you know, right, that, or the poor choice somebody else made. I mean, I'm not trying to blame people, I'm just saying, like, we pray in a defensive posture because we are in reaction mode, right? Where life is happening to us and life will tend to do that, it'll happen to you and then you're just praying that things aren't so bad. Okay. My encouragement is that you begin to pray

on offense for discernment, right? That you would read Ephesians 1, 15-23, and then you would ask for these things in other people. Whenever we read this through, you're gonna find it. If you read it through, none of it's defensive. All of it's offensive. All of it's like, give the church this, give these people that. Like, help them to be stronger here. Help them to do this, help them to do this. Help them to take ground for the Lord. That's the mentality, it's offensive.

It's offensive. Like, where we can begin to pray, like, Lord, change my desires in the morning whenever I don't wanna spend time with you. Change my desires. Do you realize that's a very fine prayer to pray, okay? It actually is pretty great because you're being honest before the Lord and you're saying, look, God, I don't have the want to. Okay, my heart's not here. I'm not excited about reading your word this morning. I'm kinda tired. I stayed up too late last night, right? All of these things that are pulling you away from just spending time with the Lord, spending time in prayer. But it's okay in that moment to say, Lord, give me the desire to do this. Help me do this. I got somebody that prays for me every Sunday morning and he texts me every Sunday morning and he prays for our, he prays for me, he prays for the message and he texts me about it. And it's a, sometimes it is a big encouragement to me.

And other times it's just conviction, right? Other times I'm just like, ugh. You know, I should've been praying more. I should've been, but here's the reality. The reality is like I'm not earning it anyway, right? So I can just receive prayer in any form, people praying for me and praying offensively, right? Praying on offense, not offending me, but praying on offense, going somewhere with it. Go on offense with the Holy Spirit, man. The Holy Spirit is convicting, is busy, is inspiring others. The Holy Spirit's doing that. Okay, that's enlightening the eyes of the heart with wisdom. Let's look at enlightening the eyes of the heart with revelation, okay? When you have the eyes of your heart enlightened by revelation, you are able to see the Holy Spirit moving in mysterious ways.

Another way to say that is that God deeply wants us to perceive what He is doing and what He will about to be doing. What He is about to be doing, thank you. It's not gonna be up here, just listen to this though. Listen to Isaiah 42, right? It says, this is God talking to His people through a prophet. He says, behold, the former things have come to pass. The new things I now declare before they spring forth, I tell you of them. This is God talking to His people. Look at Jesus in John 16. He says, when the Spirit of truth comes, this is John 16, 13. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak and He will declare to you the things that are to come. Strange, why? And look, I read that verse in Isaiah, that was Isaiah 42:9. I mean, I could have thrown a dart and like just hit a random page in the Old Testament

and something would have been there about how the Lord is telling somebody about how things are going to be, right? He's bringing Moses up on the mountain in Exodus and what's He telling me? He's telling, hey, these things are gonna happen. You're gonna leave my people out of Israel and you're gonna come worship me on this mountain. Why is He telling Moses that? Why is God so concerned to know that we know what's coming? That's a strange thing, right? What are we supposed to do with that information? Make it happen? Right, we're not God. What is it, are we supposed to be fortune tellers? Are we supposed to predict the future? Why do we have the book of Revelation in the first place? Why do we have Old Testament prophets? What was their job? Why? Well, we're not supposed to be fortune tellers. So if anybody, you know, tries that on you, just laugh and run,

God gives us the spirit of Revelation and the knowledge of Him so that we can be confident in our faith. So that we can be confident in Him. That we can know from experience, not just reading Scripture, we can know in our own lives that the Lord's speaking is His doing. That when the Lord says it, it's done. It's done. How does He create the universe? Does He gather particles from like other dimensions? Does He, how does He do that? With the Word, He speaks it. He speaks it into existence. Think about that. I mean, that is crazy, right? That the Lord spoke things and they were. Ooh, man. He spoke things and they were. When the Lord says something is going to happen, it's going to happen. By hook or by crook, it'll happen. But by somebody intending on it to happen or not, it's gonna happen. And we can trust it.

We can actually, man, we can actually just like put our whole lives on it. We can bet the farm and more. We can bet our future. We can bet our legacy on it, actually. Much less our 401K, right? We can bet all of it on it. God gives us the spirit of revelation for confident faith. Look at verses 18 and 19 together. So we just read the first part of 18 already again. It says, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, why, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you. That you may know what are the riches of His glorious inheritance and the saints, and that you may know what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe. That you can know all those things. God wants us to be confident in Him.

God wants us to trust Him and believe that He will come through. God wants to show us the beginning, the middle, and the end, and say, look, isn't that beautiful? Because I got it. He wants to give you a vision for the future, not so that you can stress and be fearful that you won't make it, or that maybe that you won't measure up, or maybe that you're not gonna do it, or maybe you won't achieve what you wanna achieve. No, God doesn't do that so that you freak out. God does that so that you can have confidence and say, man, the Lord is going to do this. What a great day. What a great moment. How can I trust in that? God wants our, over time, He wants our confidence to grow that He will come through.

Because however confident you are right now, you could use more, right? However confident you are that the Lord is gonna come through, you can use more. This week I'm gonna be, I wanna challenge you to pray every day. That's my challenge this week on a base level. I want you to, if the day ends in why this week, I want you to pray on it, okay? Pray on that day that others would see what God sees.

If you write down anything, in fact, I might encourage you, just take a pen, write this, if you're not writing anything down, write it down right here. Your challenge this week to pray every day that others would see what God sees. What a prayer. What a prayer. That others would have the eyes of their heart enlightened, that they would be able to see with discernment, that they'd be able to see God moving in a spirit of revelation. They would be able to see all of that. And they would be changed because of it. And you can even read verses 17 through 19 just like as a prompt, right? So you're asking for yourself and for others that you will be more in tune with Jesus and the knowledge of Him, right? That you would ask for yourself and for others. That you'd ask for discernment, right? That you'd ask for confidence to believe that God is going to come through.

Man, what a prayer. Verse 19 and following, so all the way from 19 through 23. It really just localizes on this power, right? So He says that He prays for them to have their eyes of their heart enlightened. Why? So that they may know three things, the hope to which they've called them, the glorious inheritance of His riches in the saints, and the immeasurable power, the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe. So when it talks about that, the immeasurable power of His, the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, I'm not gonna get it right. It's okay. Whenever He's praying for that, it's almost like you see the light bulb go off and He's like, oh yeah, and about that power, right? And He just spends some time on that power. Look at verses 19 and 20. It says, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe?

According to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. Paul is praying for this church to know this power. Paul wants this church and other churches, and he wants really the Spirit wants us to see this prayer and to begin to pray this. The Spirit wants to see in us and in others for us to know this power. What, know about it? Measure it? Do we need to create a scale for like, okay, God's using God's at like 68% here? Or what, why? Why know, what does it mean to know this power? Because Scripture often does this. This is a common recurrence in Scripture that God is like displaying His might. And again, like almost like throwing a dart. Like you could play Bible roulette, right? You could actually like just drop the Bible and let it open to whatever page it's gonna open on.

And you're gonna find, you're gonna find something about God's power, whether it be a psalm, whether it be in the Old Testament prophets, whether it be the book of Acts, whether it be a miracle of Jesus. The power on display, it's everywhere. And I'm not even, this isn't even hyperbole, literally. If you drop a Bible and just open it somewhere and you read for 10 minutes, 10 minutes, even if you're a slow reader, you're gonna find something about God's power. I mean, just, that's not even hyperbole. That's actually like an educated guess, okay? I've read the Bible, that's my educated guess that you could literally play Bible roulette, read for 10 minutes and find something about God's power. Look at verse 21, the next verse. It says that Christ is seated far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named. You mean popular names that are now?

No, no. Every name that is named not only in this age, but also in the one to come. Look, there's almost no way to overstate this. But Jesus is number one. He's the all-powerful. Nobody's gonna come and surprise him with something. He doesn't see a demonic stronghold in a place. He doesn't see a demonic stronghold in a household and look at that and go, ah, I don't know what I'm gonna do about that. I don't have a plan for that. I'm freaking out, what do I do? I need to go back to my drawing board. I gotta figure this out, I gotta get the slide rule out. I gotta plan, I gotta recruit these people. That's not what, that doesn't happen. Jesus is seated in heaven at the right hand of God,

co-regent, right, Father and Son, spirit, ruling as the Godhead, displaying his might and just saying, look, I've got it under control. I was listening to somebody preach and they were talking about how there was this really big problem of political corruption in Israel in a certain point. Elijah, Elijah the prophet, Elijah the prophet is called by God and he's called by God. He says proclaim a drought that's coming for six years so he proclaims the drought. And then he calls Elijah out of his living quarters and he says go out in the wilderness and live by this brook and you're gonna drink by the brook and the ravens are gonna feed you every morning. Which is kinda crazy because Elijah just predicted a drought so that brook is going to dry up. So Elijah's doing things that just seem crazy to him. But he's being obeyed, he's like okay, okay. Calls Elijah out and all this kinda weird stuff happens

and through that weird kind of adjacent random seemingly random stuff happening, stuff that's moving slowly, stuff that's just not, it doesn't seem connected to the political corruption, the absolute turning away from God that Israel was in the middle of. It seems completely unrelated but he pulls Elijah out and he does all this with him. And I'm sure in Elijah's mind he might be thinking like, Lord, do you remember that there's like thousands of prophets of Baal? Do you remember that there's a big deal going, do you remember there's a king and a queen who are in kind of an incestuous relationship and they are just killing prophets? Do you remember that? Why am I out here by a brook getting ravens to feed me breakfast? That's wild, right? And seemingly completely unrelated. If you would say, Drew, hey, what's your plan to absolve Burleson of political corruption?

We don't, I don't think we have, it didn't matter. But just an example, we don't have political corruption as far as I understand, at least it's not rampant. Anyway, I'm speaking from ignorance at this point. I would tell you that my last plan would be to go in the wilderness and have ravens feed me breakfast and drink from a brook. Okay, last, it probably wouldn't make the list of like a hundred plans. It's completely unrelated. And if I would tell that to somebody else, hey, look, listen, we got some political corruption in Burleson, here's my plan, ravens. Okay, all right, it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Except when you continue reading the story and it makes perfect sense. The only way it can make perfect sense is if you were in control of everything. The only way it can make perfect sense is that he was preparing Elijah to do something completely different

and Elijah couldn't see it. He's not giving Elijah the whole plan. He's giving him part of the plan. But he said, I'm gonna go over here and do this thing. Listen, your life is going to seem disconnected and random and you're like, why do I have to learn math? Why do I have to teach my kids math and relearn math myself? Why do I have to, you know, why do I have to do this thing? Why do I have to change this diaper today? Why do I have to take out the garbage? All these things that seem completely unrelated. It's a terrible plan to save the world. It's a terrible plan to redeem humanity in your mind. But I will tell you, I will tell you, I've read Ephesians one and I believe it through all of these small, menial things. These unrelated things that involve ravens and breakfast and brooks, right? These small things that involve getting to work on time and getting better at productivity

and just menial, small things, saving for your kid's college fund or not eating out that night or just some small, having your quiet time that morning. It all seems so small and random and if you are looking at it the wrong way, you're gonna say, none of that's related. None of that even makes sense. But it does whenever the one you are praying to is the creator of the universe and sits above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that has been named or ever will be named in this age or in the age to come. Nobody's coming up behind Jesus gonna take his throne, his seat, his place. He's there. He's good. He's confident. He's working a plan. Are you working with him in that plan? That's the only question that matters. Look, we pray because we wanna see change. But that's everybody.

Everybody wants to see change. You ever heard the phrase, there's no foxholes? Oh, excuse me, there's no atheists in foxholes. If you're in the middle of a war, I mean, it doesn't matter if you have ever prayed before. You're praying now because you don't wanna die. Look, everybody at some point is gonna just pray because they wanna see something change and sometimes they wanna see something change very desperately.

I'm not throwing shade on that. I'm just saying. Here's the difference though. If you're a Christian, you can pray because you want change and you believe it can come. You're not just screaming at the sky. You're praying in trust that you believe that something can come. God wants us to pray as Christian optimists. I hesitate to use the word optimist because it has a ring of naivete to it. It makes it sound like people are inexperienced. Like, oh yeah, you're optimistic because life has not beaten you down. Congratulations, you're an optimist.

But that's not what I mean. As a Christian, you are not smiling because you are ignorant of the dangers and the disappointment that life can give you. In fact, you are smiling in spite of those things. You have a genuine confidence that all things are working together. Jesus, whenever he's talking about prayer, what does he pray? In Matthew seven, he says if you ask for bread and are you gonna get a stone? You ask your own father, your physical father for a piece of bread. Are you gonna get a stone? No. If you ask for fish, are you gonna get a serpent? No. And Jesus says even like stupid, wicked, earthly fathers, okay, even they know not to give their children stones

when they ask for bread. Even the ones that are kinda hanging on by a thread who maybe they just got out of a drunken stupor, right, when their kid, when their little kid asked them for fish are not gonna go find a snake and throw it at them. Even the dumbest dad is going to give the kid what he needs when he asks. And then he says, how much more your father in heaven who is going to give you everything that you need? Oh, come on. That's amen. There you go, you said amen. I need you to say it louder. That's okay. No, that's good. We're learning together. It's okay. We're one body. We're figuring it out. God wants us to pray as optimists. Jesus says that you need to pray to move your body and pray to move mountains. Look, I know that you know you can't move a mountain, but do you believe God can? Right, hey. Yes, do you believe God can? What is the Lord calling you to believe?

And in your mind, why isn't that possible? What's the Lord calling you to believe, right? What's the Lord have in front of you? Maybe you've seen something through discernment. Maybe you have a situation in front of you that seems dire or frustrating or there's no way out or you don't really know kind of what you're gonna do. How is the Lord in that moment calling you to see differently, to discern, to see him moving in mysterious ways, to believe that he can do it? And you're going, you're just there a little stubborn. You're like, I don't know, God, I can't see it. I don't know. Kind of wishy-washy, kind of hand-ringy, you know? You're like, ah. I've been witnessing to a couple of the baristas

that I, the coffee shop that I go to, right? And they know my pastor, right? They could see me coming from 50 miles away. And so one of them said to me, she said, hey. This is actually a first for me. She said, hey, look, I know you're a Christian and I grew up in the church, but I'm kind of over it. And so don't, like, don't bother with me. She was very sweet about it, but she was like, don't waste your time, don't waste your breath. I'm fine here, right?

And I don't know why the Lord has made me this way. And it's annoying sometimes, and it is here, where, like, when you tell me that, I'm like, okay. Challenge accepted. So you're telling me there's a chance, you know? Like, it's insane, I know. And I'm not like that with everybody, honestly. Like, I usually just respect boundaries. But recently, I was having a conversation with her and she was really frustrated at something and she didn't really know. She was in that situation where all she could see in front of her was just a lot of stress, a lot of frustration. She's very young, but she had to grow up fast, right? And then I just said, hey.

I said, look, I'm gonna pray for this situation, okay? This was Wednesday. This was Wednesday week, so 10 days ago. And I said, look, we're gonna pray for this. I'm gonna pray for this all week, next week, whenever the stress comes, right? And I said, I'm even gonna pray now. And I did, I didn't pray right then, like with her, but I prayed, I went back to my seat and prayed. And then, like, a week after that, this past Wednesday, she comes up to me and she says, she says, Drew, I'm thinking I'm gonna get another job. And I was like, oh, but she was very excited. I'm like, oh, tell me about that. And she said, well, so and so walked in

and we started talking about another job. And she was asking me how, and she offered me a job at some rival coffee shop, it's coffee shop drama. I kinda stay out of it a little bit, but she offered me another position and then it all, and she just started telling me about how fast something was happening, right? Like, the manager called her the next day, she had an interview faster than she wanted. The interview went really well. She's probably gonna start within a few weeks. And it just went bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And I said to her, I was like, that is great to hear. Tell me what day that was. She said, Wednesday, a week ago. And I said, was that the day that I said I was gonna start praying? She said, I think it was. I didn't circle the bases, I didn't flip the bat, right? I didn't do that, right? I didn't take the moment, I didn't do that. I just said, okay, the Lord's good.

That was it, just the Lord's good. Look, man, I didn't like read the prayer of J.Bes before I did that. I didn't have some sweet, quiet time before that happened or anything like that. In fact, that just felt like a normal day. Actually, I had a lot of stress that day. I had a lot of stress in my back. I've been a big baby about it. And so you can ask my family, it's been horrible. So it wasn't some like banner day for me spiritually. I wasn't on top of the world. I didn't feel like anything was gonna happen that day. But I just walked forward in just some really small step kind of stuff and said, you know what, I'm just gonna pray because I feel like the Lord is just gonna do something. And this is to a 20 year old girl who doesn't believe at all. It's probably been, she probably got a lot of church hurt, honestly, and I say, you don't wanna pray for that. The Lord is good.

This week, whenever you pray on any day that ends in Hawaii, I want you to pray like an optimist. I want you to pray with the belief that God is not limited by your vantage point, that you are looking at a situation where you are discerning things, you are listening to the Lord, you are in tune with the Holy Spirit, and you are confident that the Lord can do something. So Lord Jesus, I believe that you can heal this marriage. I believe that you can help this frustrating relationship that I have at work, that you're moving in it. Not that you can make it better and snap your fingers, but that you're moving in it, that you have something to teach me in it. You have something to work in it. Give me the wisdom and discernment that I need to be a great parent. Give that wisdom and discernment and spirit of revelation to my children. Enlighten the eyes of the heart of my wife,

of my coworkers. Lord, help me to just see and be optimistic in a way that is appropriate. Over time, you and others will begin to see what God sees. I really wanna focus on these last two verses because they're quite astonishing. Because we have just glazed the astral plane in verses 19 through 21, where it's like Jesus seated in the heavens far above all rule, authority, and power and dominion, far above anything that ever thought it ever had control over anything. Jesus is over that. He's all over that. And so, man, we are cosmic at this point. And then what do you see in the last two verses? It says, and he, God, put all things under his, Jesus's feet, and gave Jesus as head over all things to the church.

Okay. Verse 23, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all? Why, why can we be so confident and optimistic in our prayer? I'll tell you why, it's a simple answer. Because we're the church, we've been given Jesus as our head. And again, let's not flip the bat. Let's not go slow around the bases. But man, that's a grand slam. That's a walk-off right there. There's no contest after that. We're the church. And we've been handed the keys. We've been handed this ultimate power at our disposal. It's all right there. We've been given Jesus as our head. We are his body. We're not a religious organization. Can I tell you, it just burns me every time. I have to put that down as some category for our church. So if you have an Instagram profile, what kind of organization are you? We are a religious organization. Okay. Man, we're more than that, right? But it just feels really small.

Church can feel like it exists on the margins of society. Now, we don't have a ton of money. Now, like, don't get me started. Like, 1% of churches have a ton of money, okay? And many, many, many, many, many, many other churches do not. Many, many other churches are like us, okay? There's some that have a ton of money and they make all the news, but many churches do not. Ministry, real ministry to people, discipling people can feel frustrating and unproductive. It can feel like we're not doing anything. Others seem, others who curse God actually seem to have more influence or fame or resources or ability, right? They seem to live better. However, there is nothing and no one more powerful than the Lord Jesus Christ and he's the head of our church. And we are his body. Hallelujah, right? What a beautiful truth, right? And many of us kind of shrink. Whenever I say something like,

hey, let's pray with authority, a good portion of you probably shrink at that a little bit. You shrink at that prospect because it sounds overconfident. It sounds like you're trying to name it and claim it, right? But as the Lord's church, we have the privilege and the command to be connected to Jesus as one body. We have the privilege and the command to pray in confidence that his mission will be accomplished.

We have the privilege and the command to enjoy his gifts by serving others with them. You are created for a purpose. You are given gifts. As you pray for others to be more into it with the Holy Spirit, more discerning, more confident, more optimistic, pray with the authority that has been given you. And to do this, I'm gonna challenge you. Again, this is your whole week. You're gonna be praying all week. It's gonna be amazing this week, by the way. It's gonna be amazing because you're praying. Pray like you never prayed before, but I want you to pray with authority. And as you read verses 17 through 23, it's gonna trigger, I promise. You don't even need to remember this list. Just read those verses. And as you do, as the end, you're gonna remember like, oh yeah, I'm part of this church. We have authority to pray this way. We can pray this way. This is a good way to pray, okay.

So you may have heard, name it and claim it, right? And when you've heard that, when you've heard that phrase, you've heard it in kind of this, as an expression of like the prosperity gospel, okay. We're gonna be talking about that this summer. We're gonna be spending all summer on heresies. It's gonna be amazing. Okay, sorry. I'm super pumped. A summer of heresies, okay.

So, sorry, name it and claim it, prosperity gospel, okay. The way it gets kind of perverted is people say, oh, I'm gonna see something that I want. I'm gonna peruse the catalog. Any catalog, not a spiritual catalog, any catalog, any kind of catalog I want, any website, I'm gonna go on Carvana, I'm gonna go anywhere. I'm gonna go on eBay, I'm gonna go on Amazon. I'm gonna find anything I want and I am going to pray over that.

And I'm gonna pray that the Lord would give me that and if I pray enough, it's gonna manifest in my life. You ever heard anything like that? Raise your hand if you've ever heard anything like that. Oh yeah, we've heard it, okay. I will tell you the only problem, the only problem with that, the only reason that's false is because it's selfish, right. So let me say it a different way. In prayer, we actually can name it and claim it.

Okay, we can name it and claim it for the Lord's sake. We can name it and claim it on His mission, right. So what can we name? We can name people to the Lord and ask for the spirit of revelation to be given to them. What a prayer, what a prayer. Write names down, name it and claim it. But do it for the Lord for His sake, not for your new jeep, okay. That's not what we're naming and claiming here just so I'm clear, okay. You can name that frustration and you can ask for wisdom.

You can name that enemy, right. Somebody who's actually like going after you, right. And you can ask for grace and peace. You can name gratitude and ask for joy. You can name an obligation and ask for desire. You can name your fear and ask for courage. Here's my encouragement to you this week. Name it and claim it. Pray in the authority given you, not for a new jeep, but for something much better than that. For something that will last for eternity. Pray for the Lord's mission to be accomplished. If you're praying for somebody with cancer, let me just illustrate this. If you're praying with somebody with cancer, right. Obviously, a defensive prayer on that that is perfectly biblical and okay to pray and God bless you for praying is that the cancer would go away, yes. But don't just pray for the cancer to go away.

Pray for the Lord to reveal Himself through the cancer. Pray for the Lord to reveal Himself through the frustration at work, through the trouble in your marriage, through the strained relationship with your child, through those things. The Lord wants to reveal Himself. The Lord wants to bless people through those things. We don't just need to pray defensively, we need to pray on offense. And so let's name something now. I wanna give you a minute. And I want you to name something now. Maybe you already did something like that. I would invite everybody to close their eyes if you don't want to, it's fine. I'm not gonna shame you.

Name something now. Not out loud, you don't have to. Just name something. Name a person, name a frustration, name a gratitude, name a fear. On this authority, on this power, it is not that we contain that authority or that we contain that power, but we are stewards over it. Be a good steward and pray in it. We are the body of the ruler of the universe. That is good. The reason that the Ephesians needed this prayer is the same reason that we do, is that our vision can drop. Continue and pray with me. Lord, we need a big vision of you. We need to see you on your throne. Far above all rule and authority and power.

Where the angels echo holy. We need to see you seated in the heavenly places. Far above every name that is named in this age and in the age to come. Whoa, let us just soak that in and let that fuel our prayer. That was to remember the first thing. That we're praying to. That we don't just say in your name whenever we are done praying, but that we pray in your name, that we pray in your power.

Where we think of it as opportunity to pray now. And it is in your name, in your power that we do come before you and pray. Amen.