I Believe in Miracles (Since You Came Along) | Pete Greig

so lovely to be back here with you all at HTV so many friends and all so great to be with those of you watching it on so square and it's exciting to be with you at the start of a new year really September first Sunday in September start of a new term start of a new season not just for students but most families for many workplaces and for us as a church you may know this is always a time where we pause and we take stop we reflect and we set our sights and say where is it that God is sending us and what is he calling us to do and so Nicky Gumbel is going to speak next Sunday on how we bloom where we are planted in this city and I'm going to try and begin that process warm up the seat for Nicky a little bit by thinking about how we are rooted in prayer that all of our fruit in life the lasting fruit comes from being rooted in God in prayer and you know prayer is the heart of this church it's the heartbeat it's the the bottom of the volcano all the different ministries all the different activities are rooted in this place of conversation intercession worship the presence of God if you think about it without prayer alpha is just advertising a religious product without prayer church planting is just rolling out outlets for a franchise for the religiously inclined without prayer our works and social transformation are let's be honest a second-rate social work without prayer we are religious but we don't have a relationship a conversation or interactive relationship with a living god and so we're really thinking today about one of the great priorities of life in fact the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has said that his number one priority is the renewal of prayer and the religious life in this nation and we believe the Spirit of God is calling us as a church to pray and so let's look together at James chapter 5 the letter of James we're going to read verses 13 to 18 I think it's coming up in the screens we only do that to stop you playing Pokemon so James 5:13 to 18 the prayer of faith is any one of you in trouble well you should pray is anybody happy sing songs of praise is any one of you sick call the elders of the church to pray over you and anoint you with oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer offered in faith will make you well the Lord will raise you up if you have sinned you'll be forgiven therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective Elijah was human just as we are he prayed earnestly that it wouldn't rain and it didn't rain on the land for three and a half years again he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops so the Apostle James is writing a letter here not just to one church in one city but to the church that is scattered across many cities throughout the Roman world they've been scattered by persecution they are displaced people fearing for their lives it's a scene we're familiar with in our own world at the moment people fleeing afraid often for religious reasons throughout Europe and the Middle East and so these communities are forming around the Roman Empire of people who know Jesus but their lives aren't ease their lives are difficult they have endured levels of pain that some of us may never know and James the brother of Jesus writings to them I want you to feel the drama of this the brother of Jesus Christ has written us a letter and we've given up everything and and here we are what is he gonna say and one of the key bits of advice from James to the Christians then and I believe now is this he says come what may you must pray it is that important he says are you in trouble pray ask for help are you happy well pray give thanks to God are you sick pray ask God to heal you call the elders of the church have you messed up your life have you sinned are there areas of of damage and dirt in your life you want to get free of will confess your sins and you can receive forgiveness we are called says the Apostle James to pray not just occasionally but in all circumstances and for all things remember a few years ago some good friends of ours James and Julia said to Sammy and me do you want to bring your family on holiday with us this year and let's just say James and Julia go are much nicer holidays than us and so we said yes we do we want to come on holiday with you and they had rented out a catamaran at Wynn hulled yachts on the Aegean Ocean and they said you have one hull for your family and we'll have the other hull for us and we'll meet in the middle for snacks you know and we said okay you're on that sounds good and so it's terrific holidays sailing around the Aegean and we'd it go into these nice little coves every evening and drop anchor and then swim and eat and play cards and as the Sun sets terrific and I know some of you were just hating me right now but I'm just it's a gift James said the one thing is you've got to pay for one round of drinks so I did and fortunately there are quite a few people drinking coke and waters it was a cheap round as well and vomiting tonight we dropped anchor in a especially lovely little Bay and everything was just a Dilek the Sun was setting and it was very still and we were there we had all the food out the kids gathered around her about to eat when these clouds of mosquitoes came at us again some of you thinking good you deserved it you guys have issued as some of you honestly and it's the clouds of mosquitoes coming at us and my friend chains amis image Ames is a great guy he's very intelligent he runs a very successful business he came to know Jesus on alpha here in this building a number of years ago and he's a sharp guy but the movies mosquitoes came as James immediately started to pray and this is what he prays Oh God we just pray you take away these mosquitoes we stand against these mosquitoes giving up all of that and I'm thinking this is a stupid prayer I'm the leader of a prayer moon I'm nauseous this is a dump her written books about what a dumb bear this is Ricky thinks it's horrific and you know I'm thinking this is dumb bread because first of all you know God's busy you know he's got a lot on his plate instead of the Middle East presidential elections you know I mean there's just stuff there is stuff out there and and he's probably a little too busy to prioritize the alfresco dining arrangements of posh people in the Aegean I'm aware this is HDB and for some of you that's deal-breaker and then one thing he's a dumb prayer because my kids are listening and when not if it doesn't work they're going to be disappointed never pray anything ever again and become Satanists thanks James and so I'm thinking all this but everyone else about oh I shot that gun you know we just stand against the spirit of mosquito nests as it says in the message and and it's so annoying as james prayed rebuking the mosquitoes this light breeze rose up they all blew away and i was surrounded with the worship meeting the whole everyone oh thank you lord you even care about alfresco dining arrangements I'm going I'm so annoyed I wanted those mosquitos to prove my theological standpoint now I don't know whether it was a meteorological fluke masquerading as a miracle or whether God the God of the universe actually did sort out those mosquitoes but here's what I do know when you pray about the tiny things in life continually you're continually grateful but if you only ever pray about really big serious things you'll only be very occasionally grateful if you want to live more joyfully learn to pray continually if you want to be more grateful learn to pray about the small things as well as the big things learn as Adam and Eve to walk and talk with God continually in the core of the evening amen now look none of us are stupid we all know that there's plenty of pain in life that I pros don't always work big prayers don't always work prayers not just we want that we need sometimes don't get answered the way that we would like and certainly many of our small prayers don't get answered but God is not a slot machine I was interested Danny Willits when he was winning the u.s. masters earlier this year said to a journalist I am a Christian but I think God is bigger than whether I shoot 65 at the US PGA he's right God's bigger than those things we're not going to lose our faith because of a few midge bites or that we didn't come first in a sporting content test or whatever but here's something else I know that when I'm heading home from a hospital visit or a funeral and my heart's just breaking a little bit and I walk into the house I don't require my children to be miserable in fact I want them to talk to me about the silly little things in their lives and their heads and their days and I want them to ask me about the little things that they want in life I don't resent that I don't mind that in this world with such vast problems I still buy my children chocolate bars so we can talk to God even about the details the Apostle James says whatever is going on pray that's why we have the 24/7 prayer room in the car park here at prompting road where we pray continually we take a little break in the holiday times just refresh the room but then we pray night and day anyone can go in there get an hour in there or half night of prayer in there and encounter God it is your golden ticket to step into the Holy of Holies the presence of God and anything can happen when you're in there some of the most extraordinary experiences of my life have taken place in 24/7 prayer but those places and that place in the car park there it's kind of a picture it's a peach of what God wants for your life when you leave this building and you look at that prayer room remember that's a picture of God's plan for your life because the Bible says that he is calling you to be a tabernacle a prayer room a temple of the Holy Spirit someone who carries the presence of God with you wherever you go and your family in your workplace into great situations and difficult ones he wants you to be a place where people in come and encounter God that somehow as they get under your skin they find that there is more to you than just flesh and bones he wants you to be this living conversation with him it's what you've been designed for and when you're filled with the Holy Spirit you're filled with a prayer meeting because we're told that Jesus lives to intercede we're told the Holy Spirit right now is praying for you in groans that words cannot express and that same passage romans 8 says that sometimes we don't know what to pray but the Holy Spirit steps in and interprets our grunts and our groans in our tears and our sighs and I'm not knowing into something that means something before the heart of God so when you're filled with the Holy Spirit you're filled with the praying spirit we're called to be temples of that spirit to be prayer rooms and it's not just us that are called to be prayer rooms the book of Revelation says that this city is called to be a city of Prayer that one day there will be no more dying a normal crying there'll be no more tears there'll be no more cancers there'll be no more abuse and oppression and division and breaking of promises there will be none of that horrible stuff but there will be a new jerusalem a new city that is filled with the presence of God the whole city will become the place of encounter and prayer so when you step into that funny little room you're stepping into the future you're stepping into your own destiny you're stepping into God's calling even upon this city a place of encounter with him no wonder the Apostle James says that prayer is powerful and effective because there are some people who just say well I believe in prayer as a sort of contemplative technique I don't believe that things change out there but I believe that things change in here now there is some truth in that there is great power and contemplative prayer in prayer often our perspective is rewired often we experience peace and we walk out of the prayer room as the answer to our own prayers but there is also truth and this is on almost every page of the Bible that there is power in prayer to do miracles and I don't care whether it's true or not you cannot read the Bible you cannot be a follower of Jesus and not believe in miracles I believe in the words of hot chocolate in miracles before they add less helpfully since you came along you sexy thing I stick to the Bible and the Apostle James as his example of how powerful and effective prayer is chooses the Prophet Elisha who prays and doesn't rain for three and a half years and then prays again and it does by the way he says pray down earnestly and it didn't rain sometimes you have to pray quite a few times with a bit of passion even Elijah and I think I've experienced a little bit of this I mean when I read these kind of stories I think well this is out of my league they do have a head start there in the Bible but some of you will know that when the 24/7 movement started one of the first missional frontiers got opened up to us as the prayer room has began to give birth to mission his prayer rooms always do it's how the church got born was God open the door for us on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza because the daily mail had called it Sodom and Gomorrha and so we thought happy a good place to go and pray and love people and tell them that Jesus and we went and amazing things began to happen I still remember in those early days meeting with some of the Christians on the island and we did the kind of Christian thing we said to them how can we pray for you and the Anglican priest on the island said well what we'd love you to pray for his reign because we're in the worst drought we've had in living memory and I thought rats that's a big prayer what and worse it's a measurable prayer you know you know I like the unlike the ambiguous ones well maybe it was a miracle maybe not who will ever know it's very surrounding cannibal tea and cake and maybe it was Jesus maybe not she said would you pray fit arranged so we thought we're gonna have to do it so we all raise our voices and give it a bit of that Jesus make it rain please and I still remember leaving that place we got into our cars I couldn't someone else was driving I still remember the first splats of rain on the windscreen and you know in those hot countries how dusty everything gets and splat splat splat and the windscreen at first which is dragging mud across the screen and it began to rain it rained harder and harder - there was flooding and it was the hardest rain the heaviest rain that had in that month in more than 30 years and it happened within minutes of us ask you know maybe it was coincidence but the weird thing was is we driving I received a text message from someone who was in San Petersburg Russia in a prayer room who said I don't know why it's the middle of the night here but God's just spoken to me for you guys and I be thir 1 Kings 18 the bit where Elijah prays for it to rain and God says I'm gonna send rain I guess it's a metaphor of something spiritual because amongst Christians all metaphor I'm looking at those windscreen wipers I think this isn't very metaphorical you sexy thing maybe it was just coming since I had a journalist got in touch with me and and he said so you're the bloke thinks you made it rain in Ibiza right I said no that'd be ridiculous he said well I heard I said no no I'm just saying we prayed for it to rain and then it rained you're making the connection he said am i I said yes you are I said look I totally respect your viewpoint if you think that it's ridiculous that a bunch of people can talk to the sky and somehow God makes it rain I understand that in fact maybe you don't believe this God maybe this whole life is just coincidence and there's no real meaning and purpose we're just cosmic flukes with no meaning or purpose it's just Darwinian sort of survival of the fittest and there's no power whatsoever in prayer and the majority people who ever lived wrong and the he said no now don't get me wrong right my mom's a Catholic and I think that headline he gave us was God Squad claims first miracle if I don't know if it was coincidence but sometimes you know I just get exhausted trying to believe everything's fluke and it's easy just to relax since the idea that there is a God a creator behind creation a God behind goodness he's still doing today what he did 2,000 years ago he loves us he hears our prayers and the answers I remember my good friend John Peterson who's one of my sort of spiritual directors he he lived in Holland for a number of years and he he was in Amsterdam at that time when you probably some of you remember others have read about it when communism was just falling all across the Eastern Europe and the Berlin Wall you know and and and the Iron Curtain was coming down and so John was interceding over a map one day of Europe he had it you know laid out before him he's praying for God's kingdoms garma God's purposes you standing against this sort of then the aggressive atheism that many of the communist governments had espoused and as he was praying God spoke to him and said leave right now I've got a mission for you in Sofia Bulgaria now Bulgaria was still under communist rule at that time and so John without a word to anyone packs his bag goes to the airport gets a flight and turns up in Bulgaria thinking what am I doing here have you ever noticed I think sometimes God tells you what to do and then when you do it you don't know what to do next and he's like you're on your own power you're like hey but then he goes to the baggage carousel and there's a guy waving frantically at him who says to him John Peterson I remember you I saw you a few years ago at a conference and this morning I was praying and God said to me John Peterson is coming to Sofia today and you're to go and meet him at the airport and so I have been at the airport waiting all day meeting every lights and here you are God has sent you so the two of them are like how did yeah this there were no emails you know there was no whatsapp there was no phone causes god has set them up together and then the guy said I told all my friends you're coming and we've got a Bible study arranged at my house tonight you're speaking at it they're all very excited to hear you it's a John shared with a little sensitive Authority that night and then the next day they when it's been six hours praying around the central Battenberg square there in the middle of Sofia and they marched around the white marble mausoleum which was a sort of shrine to the dictatorial founder of Bulgarian communism people would come on pilgrimage it's funny when you get rid of God how we just create a lesser one and so they're all you know this is more so Liam and John and and it's mate error Yuki said Jesus is Lord with only worship Jesus worship some set of bones and then there's this big headquarters of communism overlooking the square and they're praying declaring freedom for Bulgaria and within days that dictators bones have been stolen from the mausoleum and that building the headquarters had burnt down and freedom had come to Bulgaria now was it John's prayers that brought down Bulgarian communism single-handedly of course it wasn't thousands of people have prayed diplomats have been doing their thing in corridors but did John's prayers have nothing whatsoever to do with it of course God sent him there to pray of course his prayers his earnest prayers played a part and so for me this bake begs a question it's one that we must all sometimes ask God why do you do it this way but are you can'tyou deposed dictators without me getting on a plane to Sofia can't you make it rain you're quite good it in England yeah shifting mosquitoes stopping rain starting rain bringing a dictate what do we have what do we need to pray about it and the answer is simply this you are not an automaton God gave you phenomenal power which is why any one of us can leave this building and make the most terrible or wonderful decisions and they will have lifelong consequences you know the power of your choices many of us live terrified by the power of our own choices some of us are here today still living with the consequences of choices good or bad that we made in the past the most important things we do their lives like getting married is just a simple choice yes I will and so you have this power you're not just an animal you have this phenomenal power and got wind with that power of conscience because imagine having that power of decision making without the discernment of a conscience and that power of making choices operates not just at the human level but at a spiritual level whereby we can use our wills to say yes to God's will we can be an Amen to God's prayers we can say let your kingdom come let your will be done we can think up things and partner with God and work together on bringing his purposes into the world and it's not just partnership with God's will its partnership with one another because Jesus says where two or three are gathered together I'll show up that's why it's good to come together and pray not just to pray on your own that's important but come to prayer meetings we have a Tuesday morning prayer meeting 7:00 a.m. in the spring down there come along and intercede it's one of the times we come together as a church not to get something you know good teaching or you know nice worship time or a bit of fellowship in a pastry but to give it's just hard gritty intercessory priestly work because we know our worlds in a mess and we are the ones who are gonna pray for it 7:00 a.m. Tuesday mornings then we have twice a term kingdom come prayer events and the next one will be Tuesday week on the 13th Alpha Live will be praying for this alpha campaign because we know it's not just advertising for religious product this is spiritual warfare this is a battle for the soul of a nation this is a battle for individuals who don't yet know Jesus it is the biggest battle of anyone's life that they would come out of darkness into life out of slavery into freedom out of corruption of sin into the freedom of forgiveness and holiness in Jesus Christ that's the biggest battle we'd better not just throw a bit of money and a couple of business plans and Excel sheets at it we'd better pray because that's where the battle is really won Ephesians 6 says your battle is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers in high places please please don't stand against Satan with a spreadsheet learn the power of partnering with a very will of God in the name of Jesus in prayer and so we have prayer meetings we have prayer events then we have the prayer room where you can come and you know some of you might be feeling really call to intercession something stirring within you things you know I know all Christians are called to pray but this really is strong within me and we we have this thing called a furnace community that is right at the heart of the heart of HDB if prayer is the heart of HDB the furnace community is the heart of the heart it is those who are interceding every breakthrough that we get to share here on Sundays the Alpha campaign in 60 Nations these kind of breakthroughs thousands coming to know Jesus miracles healings leaders getting trained up churches getting planted every breakthrough is not for our credit but it is for God's glory because it is an answer to prayer and not just the product of human endeavor so those people in the furnace community are probably the most important people in this church if you want to get involved with that you certainly can prayer is a partnership with God is our source of power of his perspective and of his presence Jenson Franklin at focus this year says you need a time to pray and a place in which to pray or you won't grow in prayer the great thing about a place of prayer he says is it gives you a way of showing up even when you don't want to talk to God just by showing up you say I don't want to be here God but I'm here raise your hand if you ever feel like that yeah some of the great thing you sign up for 3 a.m. in the prayer room and then at 2:30 a.m. you're thinking this is demonic this is the worst idea ever I hate Pete Gregg you know I think that and I think I am Pete Gregg and you go because some poor soul you know can't go home and it's you rock up there and then you go in and someone with breath smells of coffee and kebabs you know prays for you ah you got a busy day ahead the door shuts you're in a car park in Kensington and then you find yourself alone with God in the middle of the night and that's when the miracles begin the Bible says your seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart how you know when you see can go with all your heart easy 3 a.m. in a car park in Kensington Wall encounters are waiting for you and there Jesus thought it was essential to pray all night if you don't sometimes at least try a half nighter with God you're missing something that Jesus thought was essential I don't want to put a heavy thing on anyone this is not a big heavy shirt but some of you just longing to grow and I want to feed you with some challenges and some invitations to go deeper in your relationship with God we're living at a time with vast problems in our worlds and incredible opportunities in htb you are right at the heart of one of the most incredible things God's doing this alpha campaign is phenomenal millions are coming to know Christ churches are being planted leaders are being trained this is a most amazing story and you're right at the heart of let us be found in prayer not just trusting in Nikki's brilliance and good pastries and spreadsheets and business plans because we know in our heart of hearts it is not by might not by power but by the Spirit of the Living God and for his glory that all these things are happening and they're being done we are called to be a house of prayer for the nation's I'm Bear Grylls my favorite way to start the day the Bible in one year that's how wild I am find out more at Bible in one year dot org or download the Bible in one year app

Channel: HTB Church

Views: 20,827

Rating: 4.7395349 out of 5

Keywords: sunday talk, pete greig, 24/7 prayer, prayer, pray, hope, peace, miracles, htb, htbchurch, htb church london, church, london, london uk, UK, england, christian, christianity, faith, religion, preacher, sermon, god, jesus, christ, holy spirit, power, blessed

Id: 9GueVxFAW9I

Length: 31min 0sec (1860 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 07 2016