The Bravest Prayer - Mark Batterson

[Music] so what is the hardest thing that you could believe God for during this series what is the bravest prayer that you could pray over the next seven weeks all I know is that Joshua asked the son to stand still and then Elijah asen iron axe head to float oh and then Jesus asked his father to raise a man who had been dead for four days you can ask God to move that mountain but let me be very transparent you said alright pastor Mark and what what is it for you what is that mighty mountain I've had asthma since that was three years old I've been hospitalized more weeks and you can imagine [Music] I've taken more pus of an inhaler than anyone could possibly count it's frustrating I prayed every prayer and I've tried everything but I want you to know now I'm going to keep speaking to that mountain because I believe in a God who is able to heal a couple of months ago I'm out in Fort Collins and and I'm telling dick that I might it I'm toying with the idea of maybe trying to run a marathon only because it would be the hardest possible thing for me to do with my asthma but it'll be healed by then and then with my knees with my two ACL reconstructions like running a marathon would be the hardest thing and that's in part why I really want to do it cuz I think it'd probably be good for me long story short I think as I preach that weekend I think I actually believe what I preached and I think I came to a point where I said enough is enough I've stayed at this mountain long enough now here's the thing you don't get to tell God when and where and how the miracle happens but there are moments where you can step out in faith and believe God again I don't know why so many times it seems like that prayer for healing is gone unanswered but a switch flip 50 days ago I want you to know I haven't taken my inhaler between then and now that's 50 days if you add up all the days over 40 years that I haven't taken a puff of my inhaler it wouldn't add up [Music] [Music] I want to be very careful this week because I don't have the emotional capacity or the verbal ability to put into words because it's so unbelievable and so unexplainable to me but that's what a miracle is right one of my heroes is Teddy Roosevelt in fact I've read more biographies about Teddy Roosevelt's in anybody else and I think one of the reasons why I love Roosevelt is because he had severe asthma like I did in fact some of his earliest memories are his father carrying him around their Manhattan home in the middle of the night because he couldn't breathe and it was when he was a young boy that his father said a Theodore you have the mind but you don't have the body and without the body the mind can only take you so far his father said you're gonna have to make your body and that's what Roosevelt decided to do you know you think about all that he did I mean a man's man but the reality is he was a hundred pound weakling but day after day week after week month after month he started working out in the gym that his father built on the second level of their home and it took years but he eventually remade his body I kind of feel like that with this training in fact when I run one of the things I do is I typically run the Mount Vernon trail out to Roosevelt Island and I tap Roosevelt's toe because I think it's my way of tipping my cap to one of the people that's inspired me on April 10th 1899 Teddy Roosevelt was invited to the Hamilton Club in Chicago and he delivered a speech called the strenuous life now it's actually more of a sermon than a speech he said I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life I love that idea in fact one of my mantras is do hard things you got to push your limits you know what I found it's when I feel like I've done something that's killing me that makes me come to life and that's really what this marathon has been about I have a theory anybody can do anything if they work hard enough long enough I know that there are some genetics limits athletically you know if you're five foot tall you're probably not going to play in the NBA but I really believe we're all capable of far more than we imagine if we're willing to work hard enough for it honestly the marathon is about me doing something that I couldn't have done a few years ago and you know if the Lord hadn't healed my asthma I wouldn't even be trying and then add to that six knee surgeries and I'm not a distance runner but you know what in some ways this is about just proving to myself that it's something I can do and by doing that maybe proven in some other people that they're capable of doing more than they think [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] my legs are cramping but I haven't lost my breath one can finish this thing [Music] yeah god bless you we'll see you next week I don't feel like I need to preach but I will cuz I'm up here you know I've hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim I hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu done a couple of triathlons that marathon was the hardest thing I've ever done and that's why I did it last ten miles was cramping up I had to do a little stopping and stretching along the way but I finished it got the shirt to prove it and what a joy to be able to share this weekend I want to say this up front it's not about the marathon it's about the miracle it's about the miracle it's almost an out-of-body experience for me to watch myself preach that message from July 2nd 2016 because I had no idea what would happen and here we are 475 days later and I want you to know that if God did it for me he can do it for you welcome to national community church all eight of our campuses this weekend we kick off a new series titled whisper the book releases next Tuesday but we've got some black market copies and so Laura and I I have a little tradition that before you can buy a copy we want to give you a copy and so it's a gift from us to you and you're gonna get a copy on the way out by the way can I just say I didn't like the cover at first and then Laura and I went out to the Shenandoah Valley and then I liked the cover because I felt like I was looking at it and it was such a beautiful place and it just I feel like the mountains are just so picturesque and and such a picture of the way in which God speaks and so excited about you getting a copy of the book listen this series is gonna be short and sweet two weeks but I'm believing that this series this book is gonna help us learn to hear the voice of God I think it's gonna help us acquire the seven languages that I talked about in the book now the first language is scripture and it's in a category by itself but in Scripture God speaks in some different ways in fact there are six secondary languages desires dreams doors people promptings and pain and I happen to believe that the Lord is the same yesterday today and forever he still speaks in those ways and so I'm praying that it's gonna help us learn to hear the voice of God if you have a Bible you turn over to first Kings chapter 19 and we'll get there in just a minute half a century ago dr. Alfred Tomatis was confronted with the most curious case of his 50 year career as an otolaryngologist a renowned opera singer had mysteriously lost his ability to hit certain notes even though those notes were still within his octave range now he had been to some other specialists they all thought it was a vocal problem dr. Tomatis thought otherwise and so using a sanaa meter he discovered that the opera singer was producing a hundred and forty decibel sound waves that's a little bit louder than a military jet taking off from an aircraft carrier well that discovery led to this diagnosis the opera singer had been deafened by the sound of his own voice and because he couldn't hear the note he can no longer sing the note in dr. Tomatis words the voice can only reproduce what the ear can hear the French Academy of Medicine dubbed it the Tomatis effect and I think the ramifications are way beyond the Opera listen here's my theory all of us have problems relational problems emotional problems spiritual problems and we think that those problems are the problems but I think they're the symptoms of a root cause a spiritual Tomatis affect ears that have been deafened to the voice of God sometimes it's our own negative self-talk and God can't even get a word in edgewise sometimes it's the voice of criticism you've heard that voice so often for so long that you can't even believe anything else about yourself sometimes it's the voice of conformity the voice of culture and sometimes it's the voice of condemnation you know the Bible says that we have an enemy he's called the accuser of the Brethren needs the father'll eyes and if you listen to those lies long enough it will definite if you can't hear his voice you can't sing his song and your life is going to be off-key now let me give you a prescription for the problem learning to discern the still small voice of God is the solution to a thousand problems and it's the key to discovering your identity and your destiny his voice is joy his voice is wisdom his voice is healing his voice is peace his voice is power his voice is grace his voice is truth in the beginning God said let there be light and those four words are still creating galaxies at the outer edge of the universe how did God do it he did it with his voice the universe is God's Way of saying look at what I can do with four words and if God can do that with four words what are we worried about the voice that spoke the universe into existence is the same voice that parted the Red Sea and that told the Sun to stand still his voice can heal a withered arm or wither a barren fig tree his voice can turn water into wine it can install synaptic connections between the optic nerve and visual cortex of a blind man's brain and it can resurrect a man who has been four days dead there's nothing that God's voice cannot say cannot do and frankly he can do it however he pleases he can speak through a burning bush and he can speak through Balaam's donkey he can stop a storm on the Sea of Galilee with three words peace be still and that's tough for us to comprehend and I'll tell you why because we use our voices for about one thing to communicate to speak and sometimes you can talk real loud you can shout how many of you know that's still done now he's work and maybe we can use our voice in a beautiful way and sing but our voices our capacity is is limited to that and so when we think Boise we think phonics but this is about physics most people I know would say that they've never heard the voice of God and if you're talking about the audible voice of God between twenty and twenty thousand Hertz me neither but God's voice isn't limited to our range of hearing the reality is this it's when you get outside the human of hearing that sound waves begin to do some strange and mysterious things now I don't have time to talk about infrasound in ultrasound but suffice it to say God's ability to speak is not limited to our ability to hear audibly can I tell you how God uses his voice God uses his voice to create to convict and to heal and to reveal and to guide and to grace here's what I know for sure God is speaking are we listening and is he the loudest voice in our lives if he's not that's the problem and the solution it's tuning in and turning up that's still small voice these seven languages that we'll talk about and that you'll read about like any language can I just say it takes some time to acquire now I know this from experience cuz it took me about three and a half years of Spanish to learn how to say yo hablo and poco espanol that's about all I got you know can't even roll my arse so pero sounds pretty pedestrian coming out of my mouth it's not easy learning a language I'm going to tell you two things it's gonna take time to learn these seven languages but it's gonna take more than that it's gonna take relationship I know Laura's voice and I know her tone of voice and I know the nonverbals because we've been married 25 years I know her voice like I didn't know her voice the day we got married it's gonna take time it's going to take relationship and that's what God wants a few years ago wrote a book about prayer titled the circle maker and really it's a book about talking to God but I think I realized that that was half the equation the prayer isn't just outlining our agenda to God it's about getting into God's presence and God's Word and God outlining his agenda to us and so I sort of feel like whisper is a sequel it's about listening to God and if you said well which side of that coin is more important listen it's easy listening to God is far more important than talking to God and that's what turns prayer from a monologue into a dialogue and I want you to hear this I need to hear what God has to say more than God needs to hear what I have to say okay get in amen right there okay when I preach that message Mountain moves on July 2nd 2016 I said at some point you got to stop talking to God about your mountain and start talking to your mountain about God and I think that's still true you have to declare his power declare his grace declare his goodness declare his promises now let me tell you a couple of things upfront and then we're gonna jump into the scripture first if you aren't willing to listen to everything God has to say eventually you won't hear anything he has to say if you want to hear his comforting voice you have to listen to his convicting voice I think sometimes let's be honest we're afraid of what God's gonna say anybody else and I think that's because we don't know his heart and I want to say this these seven languages are love languages the Bible says God is love if it's not loving not the way our culture defines it biblically if it's not loving it's not God now listen sometimes it's tough love you know what sometimes it's what I wanted to hear least that I needed to hear most and God's not afraid to go there okay and so sometimes it's tough love the second thing I want to say is we live in a culture where everyone wants to be heard but has so little to say and I think it's because we do so little listening especially to God and so I hope and pray that you find your voice but I think finding your voice starts with hearing the voice of God and if you want people to listen to you listen to God because then you'll have something to say that's worth listening to you know the Lord said to Moses I wish that all the Lord's people were prophets I pray that God would give each and every one of us no matter what sphere of influence you're in that God would give you a prophetic voice and what I mean by that is is this it's first Corinthians 13 it's for comforting encouraging strengthening but it's words that are prompted by the Spirit of God himself and so I pray that God would give you a prophetic voice but it starts with a prophetic year first Kings chapter 19 verse 11 the Lord said go and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord for the Lord is about to pass by then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord but the Lord was not in the wind and after the wind there was an earthquake but the Lord was not in the earthquake and after the earthquake quake came a fire but the Lord was not in the fire and after the fire came a gentle whisper de mama in Hebrew the ESV calls it a low whisper the NASB translates it a gentle blowing the King James a still small voice and by definition a whisper is speaking using one's breath instead of one's vocal cords and the theological significance of that it's pretty profound God breathed into the dust and formed Adam in other words Adam was once a whisper and so were you and so was everything else second Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is god-breathed listen that book is God whispering to you hold that thought we'll come back to it on the morning of August 27th 1883 ranchers in Alice Springs Australia heard what sounded like gunshots the same mysterious sound was reported in 50 geographical locations spanning 113 of the globe what the what the Aussies heard was the eruption of a volcano on the remote island of Indonesia the island of Krakatoa 2000 233 miles away from those ranchers in Australia that volcanic eruption possibly the loudest sound ever measured sent sound waves measuring 310 decibels all the way around the globe four times it generated 3000 foot tidal waves it's through rocks a distance of 34 miles and it cracked 1 foot thick concrete 300 miles away that's the power of a sound wave if sound exceeds 110 decibels we experience a change in blood pressure at 141 decibels we become nauseous at 145 decibels our vision blurs because our eyeballs vibrate and 195 decibels our eardrums are in danger of rupturing and death by sound wave can happen at 202 decibels and on the opposite end of that sound spectrum just above the absolute threshold of hearing is a whisper measuring about 15 decibels now let me double back to first Kings 19 we tend to dismiss the natural phenomenon that precede the whisper and we think of it as insignificant because it says God was not in them but I bet they got Elijah's attention right God has an outside voice and he's not afraid to use it but when God wants to be heard when what he has to say is too important to miss he often speaks in a whisper right above the absolute threshold of hearing and the question is why and how and when and where and I can't answer all of those questions in this message touch on them in the book but let me take a stab at why when someone speaks in a whisper you have to get pretty close to hear them don't you in fact you have to put your ear right next to their mouth we lean into a whisper and and that's what God wants we think that the goal of hearing God's voice is hearing God's voice that's not God's goal God's goal is intimacy with us and so he speaks in a whisper so we have to get really close to hear him now listen when our kids were young I play a little trick on him I'd speak in a whisper because I wanted them to have to get real close and then you know what I do I trick him I reach out and grab him and I'd hug him and I think God plays the same trick on us I think what God wants is for us to be so close to him that we don't just hear his voice we hear his heart Oswald Chambers said the voice of the Spirit is as gentle as a Zephyr aren't you grateful for a gentle God he could intimidate us with his outside voice but he Woo's us with a whisper and his whisper it's the breath of life not shared this story but let me share it again over the span of 40 years I had prayed hundreds of times that the Lord would heal my asthma I honestly don't know why he waited until July 2nd 2016 low past my paygrade not sure I'll figure that one out but I want to tell you why I kept praying and it's because of a whisper right before my freshman year of high school I ended up in the hospital again intensive care unit Edwards Hospital in Naperville it was bad this time I was code blue I thought I was taking my last breath but made it out of the hospital got home and a prayer team from Calvary Church pastor Paul McGarvey came over to our house and they said we want to pray for you and we said would you pray that God would heal my asthma and so they prayed a prayer and God did a miracle but not the one I expected cuz I woke up the next morning and I still had asthma but all the warts on my feet were gone you've heard me share this I was a little confusing ah some kind of mix-up between here in heaven right there's somewhere in somewhere who's breathing great but still has warts on their feet at 13 for the first time I heard the still small voice of the holy it was not an audible voice it was spirit to spirit but I heard it so loud and so clear the Spirit of God said mark I just wanted you to know that I'm able I held on to that for more than thirty years it was that whisper that kept me praying and kept me believing I'm just gonna share this cuz you know no one looks at this except the author but one of my favorite pages on the book is the dedication page I dedicated whisper to pastor Paul McGarvey here's what I said you pray to prayer in August of 1984 that God answered on July 2nd 2016 my healing was once a whisper and that's true of every miracles I survey my life I realized that the genesis of every blessing of every breakthrough is a whisper it's the breath of God evany tzer's our coffee house in Capitol Hill a perfect example when people walk by M&E tzer's they see a coffeehouse but I hear a whisper because that's what it was two decades ago is this graffiti covered building dilapidated with cinderblock and the doors and windows but as I walked by one day I heard the Spirit of God say this crack house would make a great coffee house listen a million customers later a million dollars given to missions every penny a profit praise praise God that God idea turned into a brave prayer turned into a coffee-house but every shot of espresso that we pull was once a whisper and that's true of everything I'm about out of time let me share one thought one challenge do you remember the definition of a whisper it's speaking using one's breath rather than one's vocal chords after God healed my asthma you saw it I made a decision to run a marathon I felt like it was the best way to celebrate and validate the miracle that God had done you also know that I believe in not just praying like it depends on God I believe in working like it depends on you and so I mean I did lots of things including going to the pulmonary specialist because I wanted to validate what God had done I also started researching everything I could find on respiration on oxygen on breathing I made a discovery that somehow managed to elude me despite three seminary degrees now I knew that according to Jewish tradition the name for God Yahweh was too sacred to pronounce but there's another tradition within Judaism if it believes that the name for God Yahweh without the vowels is synonymous with the sound of breathing so on one hand the name is too sacred to pronounce on the other hand it's whispered with each and every breath you take it was your first word it will be your last word it's every word in between twenty three thousand times a day I think we're breathing the name of God in him we live and move and have our being may he breathe on you may may he do what he did in the valley of dry bones he breathed into those bones and they came to life God breathed into my lungs and they were opened up one challenge in 1st Samuel 33 there's a seven word prayer that I believe can change your life it's the brave prayer that I talked about July 2nd 2016 there was a woman named Hannah who could not conceive she begged God and God gave her five children but her first child a boy named Samuel she gave back to the Lord he essentially was raised in the temple in fact I loved this description I think it's my prayer for all of our parents and all of our children here at NCC I think about it when we dedicate children to the Lord because it says that he grew up in the presence of God ah don't you just want that for our children I pray it I believe it says he grew in favor with God and with people it also says that in those days the word of the Lord was rare and there were not many visions but one night the Lord spoke to Samuel but Samuel had not yet learned to discern the voice of God and he mistook the voice of God for the voice of Eli and I wonder if we do the same God is speaking through desires and dreams and doors and people in promptings in pain but we mistake it for something else or we ignore it all together now needs to be filtered through Scripture about as careful as careful can be when you read the book it's the first language but we've got to learn to interpret these messages verse 7 says Samuel did not yet know the Lord the the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him in other words he had not yet learned to discern the voice of God and my fear is a pastor is it this is where so many of us kind of settle in spiritually I hope that the messages that we preached or a catalyst in your spiritual journey that they feed you spiritually that they stretch you but if you rely upon us to hear from God that spiritual codependency you can hear God's voice he wants to speak to you it happened three times and finally the wise old Eli finally figured out what was going on he knew God was trying to get his attention and so Eli gives a piece of advice that changes Samuels life he said go and lie down and if he calls you say here it is the seven word prayer I believe it can change your life speak Lord for your servant is listening God speaks Samuel hears the voice of God for the first time and it ends with this fascinating descriptor the Lord was with Samuel as he grew up and he let none of his words fall to the ground how incredible is that in other words God gave Samuel a prophetic voice but it started with a prophetic ear as we end this message and begin this series can I challenge you to pray that seven word prayer so simple but if you mean it and then after you pray it if your may be quiet for a little bit it's gonna change the game speak Lord for your servant is listening let's pray father thank you for every person at all eight of our campuses this weekend all of us in a little different place in our spiritual journey but thank you that there's a God who's big enough who knows us by name who knows the number of hairs on our head who loves us cares for us and is a God who speaks to us and so lord I pray that you would help us learn to discern your voice in Jesus name Amen

Channel: National Community Church

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Keywords: the bravest prayer mark batterson, whisper mark batterson, mark batterson ncc, mark batterson sermon, ncc, theater church, national community church

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Length: 39min 29sec (2369 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2017