WHY THIS MATTERS: Prayer | Erwin McManus - Mosaic

so today we continue our conversation why this matters and i'm specifically choosing different topics that sometimes we assume they matter but we don't really question why they matter we begin by talking about the church and why does it matter that we come together why does it matter that we become a unique community that moves together through life why does the church matter and and we saw that the church wasn't supplemental it is essential for human experience and for spiritual growth and vitality we also looked together at why giving matters and one of the early conversations that all of us really have in our faith journey is about our money and that always becomes so tense and it and it becomes an area of real concern and skepticism why does the church talk about money but the reality is that the church doesn't just talk about money all human beings talk about money in fact money affects everything in the world and if we didn't talk about money we would probably avoiding one of the most important topics in human experience because what matters to you shapes who you are and your posture toward consuming and creating is shaped around the generosity of the human spirit so giving generosity is not supplemental it is essential and it matters and what i want to talk to you about today is prayer i mean why does prayer matter does it really matter whether you pray about something or whether you live a life or prayer does prayer actually do anything or or make a difference in any way i mean i mean i think all of us have probably had the experience that we've prayed for something with such desperation and nothing happened or at least nothing that we wanted to happen happened and and if you have grown up with any kind of religious background prayer was probably in some ways drummed into your mind into your heart to your soul into your lifestyle i'm from el salvador born in san salvador and you cannot be from a more religious context than a country named after the savior of the world you cannot be in a more religious context than than being born in the capital that's named after the savior of the world just the name san salvador el salvador lets you know that i was raised within the context of of religion and i was raised as a roman catholic and and even though we didn't go to mass all the time that the belief system definitely seeped into my view of reality my human experience my my understanding of god of faith of spirituality and one of the things that really began to grip me was prayer and i don't mean necessarily in a positive way because from my earliest memory i've always struggled with ocd and and i know everybody likes joking about being adhd or add and being ocd and and it becomes almost like a cultural uh point of humor but but there's nothing funny about actually struggling with ocd and i struggled with ocd long before it was really defined as ocd and i so i had all these repetitive patterns that i struggled with all the time and and things i did over and over and over and over again and i was controlled by that obsessive compulsive uh disorder in my own life and and and even though kim and i have been married what almost 38 years now and when she sees it flare up she'll always try to tell me to stop she'll say stop doing that stop stop doing that with your hands and and she thinks just saying stop will solve the whole problem but but if it were that easy i wouldn't start and i can tell you that one of the things that i've always struggled with is is that dynamic of of those repetitive patterns that somehow give me some control over my mind that i know are irrational they're illogical maybe even superstitious and so whether it was counting all the squares in a room or following all the lines and sometimes i find myself even drifting off into this compulsion and i don't even realize i've i've detached myself from what's going on around me because i've i i suddenly started counting every single chair or or every single crack in every single space and and and i don't want to think about this too much because it'll start to drive me insane but but one of the things that actually integrated into my obsessive compulsive nature was prayer i i was taught to memorize certain prayers i wasn't very good at it but i remember there were at least the big three there was the lord's prayer there was the acts of contrition and there was the hail mary and those are the three prayers that i distinctly remember trying to memorize so that i could go through my first confirmation and communion and and they taught us to pray those prayers over and over and over again in fact when i went through my first confession and i went to the confessional booth and i had to say uh forgive me father for i have sinned this is my first confession and and then the priest talks to me and tells me to begin to confess my sins and and then i realize well you know this priest probably recognizes my voice and he probably knows me and knows my my parents and if i if i say anything that might indict me and incriminate me that he's going to go tell my mom and dad so i realized well i thought in my mind this is a a parental scam this is a way that that the system gets you to confess what you've done wrong so i wasn't going to tell him anything and he got really upset with me and of course i i tried to um uh plead innocence i i said i just don't have any sins i can think of and he says you don't have any sins you need to confess and i said no i i none and you go so you're saying you don't have any sins at all and and and i knew that sounded a little bit um outrageous or posterous so i said well you know i can think of one sin but i'm not going to tell you and and the priest got upset with me and so he gave me something like you know 50 acts of contrition and 100 hail marys and and 30 or 40 uh lord's prayers and i left the confessional with my now duty to go and pray and so i went into the the cathedral and and i went to the very front where there were the statues of of mary and jesus and and different saints and i remember kneeling down and thinking to myself i don't remember the acts of contrition and and then thinking to myself all i remember is hail mary full of grace and the next line just doesn't seem to pop up in my mind and the only prayer i actually remembered was the lord's prayer the our father as i knew it and so i i said to god okay god i don't really want to stay here and do this a hundred times or however many times it was um assigned to me and i said so i'm going to pray it three times once for you father and once for you the son and once for you the holy ghost and i hope one prayer for each of you will be more than enough and and so i prayed that same prayer over and over again but but it said in me this this repetitive pattern of prayer where i kept praying the same prayer or saying the same thing over and over and over again and somehow i thought the the act of a prayer was what god wanted of me and and in fact so many of us and as i've traveled the world i see this across religions where where muslims pray five times a day and they pray the same prayers and and hindus pray all the time and they pray the same prayers and and and and even buddhists in their meditations they they they have mantras and and they they chant and they they repeat the same phrases and over and over again there seems to be something inside of religion that drives us toward repetition that drives us to believing that if we can say the same thing over and over and over again it will somehow connect us to the transcendent it will connect us to god and it will satisfy his need for our repentance for our humiliation and that somehow prayer is almost an act of contrition rather than the connection of intimacy and anyone who knows me knows that i'm both both spiritual and also painfully pragmatic i do not like doing anything that doesn't make sense and and so when i'm asked to pray prayer has to make sense to me it it it can't just be something i have to do because i'm told to do it because it's a part of the routine it's a it's a part of the ritual of of our faith and i think what's happened to so many of us is that prayer became a spiritualized version of ocd it never had the power to actually effect change and so we did it out of obligation we pray before our meals because well it's a habit but we don't pray after our meals and we don't pray in between meals and we don't pray because we don't really see that prayer actually matters because after all if prayer makes no difference in the world then why do something that doesn't matter and and even our understanding of of how life plays out how history unrolls and and how the future is ushered in i mean is is the future predestined is is it determined is god completely in charge of the future in such a way where no matter what we do or what we say or what we pray has any effect i mean why bother praying if you cannot affect the outcome of life so i think for so many of us prayer doesn't matter and in a very practical way we may pray out of obligation we may even pray out of respect but we do not pray because prayer is essential and i wonder even over the last two years as you face some of the greatest challenges perhaps in your life as we as a human species have faced one of the greatest crisis of modern times i i wonder what we've prayed how we've prayed and whether our prayers have actually had any effect at all i mean after all how many times did we pray for kobe to be gone how many times do we pray for this pandemic to come to a close how many times did we pray for the quarantine to be unnecessary how many times have we prayed for our businesses how many people prayed that the restaurants would would not go out of business how people pray that they're that they would not lose their company how many people prayed that that they wouldn't lose their homes how many people prayed prayers that for from all practical perspective remained unanswered and and the truth is this see if you think that it is prayer that distinguishes you as a follower of jesus you think oh well one of the things that makes us different as christians is we pray it it doesn't you see people pray regardless of their beliefs regardless of their religion people pray and in fact i would go as far as say even atheists pray when they're desperate you know the old phrase that there are no atheists and foxholes will sometimes the office can feel like a foxhole and your marriage can feel like a foxhole your career can feel like a foxhole sometimes the loneliness and desperation in your soul is a foxhole and sometimes the broken relationships in your life are a foxhole and if there are no atheists and foxholes i have a sense that so many of us that would be intellectually atheists are actually practical desperate believers who hope against hope that if you throw out a prayer maybe there's a god out there who might hear you and and actually care about what's going on in your life so the question then becomes well if people from all religions pray and if people even without religion pray what makes us different why does prayer matter does this really matter in the way we live out our lives isn't enough just to be a good person or just to try to be a person of virtue isn't that enough to try to live your life in a way that honors the character of jesus and isn't it enough to try to be a person of integrity and and a person of compassion and kindness and and all of that really matters and all that is a beautiful reflection of who god wants you and and me to become but it is inescapable that in the scriptures there is an invitation to pray that goes beyond ritual that even goes beyond the dynamic of everyday life but into the transcendent into the extraordinary to the life changing the history changing in james chapter 5 james the half-brother of jesus writes these words in verses 17 and 18. he's writing a short synopsis of the life of elijah who is a historical figure in the nation of israel he says elijah was a human being even as we are by the way is that an odd way to start elijah was a person just like us because i don't know about you but if he hadn't said that i would already assume that right because when you're talking about a human you don't usually say by the way um speaking of lebron james lebron james was a human being just as we are where steph curry was a human being just as us or albert einstein was a human being just like us and and i guess you you you actually lay that as a foundation stephen hawkings was a human being just like us richard branson was a human being just like us whenever whenever you start the sentence like that you know they're about to do something that's not just like us so when he starts by saying elijah as a human being even as we are you know what's going to follow this is something that is not normative to the human experience and what he doesn't want you to do is he doesn't want you to hear what happened and then discount elijah as something other than us and so he wants to make sure that as he unwraps what happened in elijah's life that we don't put him in this exclusive category oh yeah but elijah is different than us because well you know elon musk he's different than us and steve jobs well he was you know different than us and beyonce she's just different than us and and and so whoever has achieved something extraordinary that you admire you just go yeah but they're just different than us and and the reality is that maybe their talent really is different than us or or their capacity is different than us or their intellect is different than us and and there may be things about them that are different than us but here james wants you to know what he's about to tell you about elijah it's not like that it's not because elijah is more intelligent than you or more talented than you or more gifted than you it's not that that elijah somehow falls in this category of genius or or savant or um or whatever other category you want to put in that allows you to not measure your life and your experience by his life and experience see when james says elijah was a human being even as we are he's saying that so that we have to measure our life against his life he's saying that so that we have to measure our experience with his experience see he doesn't want us to look at his life and say yeah but that's him that's not me i'm not like him what he wants to know is no you are like him but you may not be living like him elijah was a human being even as we are he prayed wow he prayed those two words can be so easily discounted overlooked underestimated because how many people's lives cannot be described with she prayed or he prayed he prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years again he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops this is the summary of the life of elijah he prayed and he gives us this parenthetical picture of his life saying he prayed that it would not rain and it did not rain for three and a half years and then he prayed again now i imagine there were other prayers over those three and a half years other things he prayed about other things that may have happened but but for this story for this moment he lets us know this is the the parentheses of his life he prayed that it would not rain and it did not rain for three and a half years and then he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops saying elijah was a person just like us and he prayed but when he prayed everything changed see the difference between a humanity that prays and a humanity that's connected to the creator of the universe is that when you pray it moves heaven and earth elijah prayed and it did not rain he prayed and the skies broke open the storms came and the rain refreshed the earth what kind of person has this kind of capacity to pray and actually see their prayers shape reality see i i want to just throw out the possibility that we've been underestimating the power of prayer that we we've thought of prayer as a catharsis and and i think there have been times i've been guilty of this myself i remember years ago one of the young guys in our community did a talk on prayer and and and throughout the talk he kept talking about the uh the neuroscience because i'm fascinated with neuroscience and i broadened a lot of the language and and a lot of the studies of of neuroscience and so i think i just sort of created that kind of platform and that kind of context and and he was really enthralled by any spent the whole time talking about how prayer changes our neurological uh construct how our brains get better how things actually improve within us when we pray and and when he finished the entire talk we sat in the back and he asked me what i thought and i said here's the one problem you described all the the physiological or psychological benefits of prayer but you never once described a moment where you prayed and god heard you unanswered and so prayer now became a a product or or a methodology a mechanism from which to to find self-healing but it was almost completely void of the reality of whether prayer actually works i think it's because most of us we've tried to work prayer but it's not really worked for us i think if we were honest with one another most of us would feel frustrated how how inept our prayer life is in relationship to the outcomes of what we're asking and i know all the cliches and i i i know we say sometimes god answers yes sometimes god you know answers he never says no he says not now or or he says later and i think no i think sometimes god does say no he says are you out of your mind if i gave you that you would regret that the rest of your life you have to take in consideration that maybe what you're asking god for he knows that you think you want that but you really don't want that i think sometimes the greatest punishment is for god to give us what we ask for but i think there's something else going on here that that prayer isn't supposed to be something that's actually disconnected from god see i think when we think of prayer we think of god being so far away that that we're almost isolated from god's presence and and so prayer is throwing out this harpoon that hope that we hope somehow will connect to the heart of god and then we can pull god in and we can get him to answer our prayers but the reality is that if there is a distance between you and god prayer has no hope see even strangely enough when you do not know god god knows you see even when you choose to be far from god god chooses to be near to you and even if you're listening right now and you would say i'm an atheist i'm an agnostic i do not believe in god i don't want to have anything to do with god i want you to know that you did not chase god away you didn't chase him off he's he's not he didn't just throw his hands up in the air and say well he said you don't want to have anything to do with me i don't want to have anything to do with you i want you know that god is pressing up against your soul right now and he is as close as the air you're breathing just waiting for you to open your life to him see prayer isn't having to throw something out into the universe hoping that it'll somehow reach god prayer is a whisper it's not a shout or scream when it comes to god there is no need to yell we were having a staff a celebration in the back of our house and we were all about to eat food and kim had her radio on from a distance and i guess she had alexa on and i i don't i don't actually engage alexa alexa makes me nervous and and but kim she uses alexa all the time and and so we're back there i'm sitting down with people and i and i i hear the music and we're about to pray and and then i hear people trying to get alexa to stop but alexa's not listening and and so i just looked across the backyard and i just whispered to alexa alexa stop and she stopped and everyone just sort of looked at me in that moment and i realized what was going on was everyone's shouting but they're shouting in different directions and alexa has a very limited intellectual capacity and so what she needed was someone who just who just whispered in her direction and they whispered in her direction was more powerful than shouts going in every direction i think unfortunately so oftentimes we think that prayer is is working ourselves up so we can finally get god to care about us finally get god on our side finally to get god to to see our pain or our fear our frustration or our dreams and our hopes and we we miss the nuance that that prayer isn't shouting into the universe prayer is whispering to the god who's intimate and knowing that he hears you because you hear him and here's the connection see for for god to hear you well you need to be listening well the power of prayer is born out of the listening not the speaking it's not about what you say to god it is about what god is saying to you let's go back to first king chapter 18 where this story plays out in verse 41 it says it's in the middle of the moment elijah has already prayed and the heavens were shot it did not rain for three and a half years so now there's been three and a half years of drought three and a half years of of famine affected that was the outcome of that drought three and a half years where elijah spoke to the sky and it refused to shed tears and elijah said to ahab go eat and drink for there is the sound of the heavy rain so ahab went off to eat and drink but elijah climbed to the top of carmel bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees go and look toward the sea he told the servant and he went and looked there's nothing there he said seven times elijah said go back the seventh time the servant responded or reported a cloud as small as a man's hand is rising from the sea so elijah said go and tell ahab hitch up your chart and go down before the rain stops you meanwhile the sky grew black with clouds the wind rose a heavy rain started falling and ahab rode off to jezreel the power of the lord came on elijah and tucking his cloak into his belt he ran ahead of ahab all the way to jezreel but i want you to hear again how the story begins here and elijah says to ahab go eat and drink for there is the sound of a heavy rain now i want you to realize that when when ahab went off to eat and drink and then elijah climbed up to the top of carmel and he bent down the ground and he put his face between his knees and then he sent his servant to the sea and the servant we looked at the sky and there wasn't a cloud in the sky and when he came back the first time to elijah he said there's nothing there it's not not a cloud to be found and it didn't discourage elijah in any way he just go back and he went back a second time and the sky was blue and it been like that for three and a half years so they knew exactly what it looked like and he came back and said there's nothing there and he went back again and he went back again they went back again then he went back again they went back again and again and he kept back coming back saying there's nothing there there's nothing there there's nothing there so how did elijah know to keep sending him back why didn't he give up on his prayer it's because you see before there was ever anything to see there was something to hear see before there was ever a drop of rain before there was ever a dark cloud in the sky elijah heard the sound of a heavy rain elijah heard the sound of a heavy rain if you could bend your understanding of reality just for a moment you could either conclude that elijah somehow heard in his imagination the sound of a heavy rain or you could conclude that elijah heard the future coming before it became the present it was already raining in that future he was about to step into and he could hear the sound of a heavy rain which tells me that elijah's conversation with god was not initiated by him but by god that it wasn't as much what elijah was saying to god he was so much more what god was saying to elijah wanna know how you can have your prayers answered when you listen carefully enough to god whisper and say this is what i'm about to do i want you to declare it so that everyone knows it's me for the first 20 years of my life prayer was a ritual it was a routine in fact it was a desperate a desperate effort to get god's attention the the one sin i wouldn't tell that priest it wasn't really much of a sin but you know when you're nine it feels like a lot i was trying to run away from home and i got caught and i got sent to my room and held captive in my mind and and i was so angry so angry that i that god didn't let me get away that i just looked at the ceiling of my room and i yelled jesus you're so stupid that was me being really profane back then when i said that i had this moment of fear thinking maybe god's going to strike me dead but nothing happened which was consistent it seemed as if god didn't do anything when i believed he didn't do anything when i was desperate he didn't do anything when i needed him he didn't do anything when i was angry he didn't do anything or else defiant maybe the reason god didn't do anything is because god isn't anything the great danger with praying is that if it's disconnected from god your prayers will become your proof that god does not exist it took a transformation a transition a shift in my life from thinking that prayer was a transactional conversation with god me telling god what i needed me telling god what i wanted me telling god what i was desperate to see happen and hoping that god would somehow agree to help me to the moment where i realized that god was the one always speaking to me but i wasn't listening but i didn't get to choose the agenda i didn't get to really pick the conversation that really prayer comes out of an intimacy with god where you listen before you speak see when i opened up my life to jesus and that first visceral conscious prayer where i said jesus i give you my life even that prayer for me was not the the action that initiated everything my prayer jesus i give you my life did not initiate the conversation with god when i said jesus i gave you my life that was not an action it was a response it was me finally acknowledging that god has always been speaking to me that god was desperately trying to get my attention it was me finally listening to god and saying i hear you and deciding that that his agenda would be my agenda see i discovered the power of prayer i discovered that that prayer matters because prayer became for me a very different thing than i ever understood before prayer was not me trying to move god or motivate god or coerce god or manipulate god prayer was me opening up my life and myself and saying god what is it that you want to say what is it that you want me to say who do you want me to become what do you want me to do god i'm an open book i just want you to write on my soul story of me has seen through you that prayer changed everything for me and and maybe it's because i'm such a skeptic that that right away such unique things happened in my life that that changed my whole understanding of prayer it became this dynamic intimacy with the creator of the universe and you know when i i went i went forward at a more traditional church so that um i could actually give my life to jesus because that's the way they did that they took me to a back room and they talked to me about god they talked to me about about my need for forgiveness how i needed to repent of my sins and give my life to jesus and use language i'd never heard of i'd never heard the word repentance before i'd never really heard the word sin that much i i was unaware of the vocabulary of faith but but what i knew is i needed jesus in my life i needed god and if jesus really was god and if he really died for me and if he really wanted me i wanted him i wanted to be wanted by god and and the way i remember it i'm not saying it's it's the way it was i'm just telling you how i experienced it i i i prayed and i gave my life to jesus and then and it took a long time because i was a little slow in the process and they held up the whole the whole gathering they held up the whole service for me to come out so they could welcome me and celebrate that i give my life to jesus and and when i came out i'm not sure if it was the lights or whether i had some kind of like physiological response to the shift from from a dark space to a light space but i just i just felt blinded and i couldn't see anything all i could see was this bright light and i was unaware of where i was and and i couldn't see anything and and i heard my my they called my mom up and and she said honey look at the pastor but i she really i couldn't see anything and so she kind of turned me and i and the first thing i saw was a guy holding this bible he said irwin will you follow jesus and will you obey his word i didn't even know what was in that book i had no idea but if it came with jesus i was in and it it set a different posture in my life it i didn't even know when i prayed and asked jesus to change my life whether he would hear i didn't know whether it would change me i i didn't know because i'd never traveled this path before but it changed everything because what i knew somehow was that i heard the voice of god he spoke to me that my response to him opened up a dimension i didn't even know existed and then went right back to college and and a whole series of things began to happen and those of you who know a lot of my story are familiar with them but i'm just going to leave you with a few moments that i cannot explain because there are some of you that are new to this community some of you are new to our um to my story and i just want you to understand how i came to conclude that prayer matters i was just told look this is now a relationship between you and god and prayer isn't something that you go do prayer is like inhaling and exhaling prayer is like breathing and the bible says to pray without ceasing so every moment of your life you need to be praying you need to either be talking to god or listening to god but there needs to be this this dynamic interplay between you and the creator of the universe and so that's the way i began to understand it is that prayer isn't something i want to do something prayer was something that i it inherently became just like i breathe just like i inhale and exhale prayer is supposed to be that integrated into my essence and my existence and and i i remember i i organized this outdoor concert i'd only been a a follower of jesus for a couple of months but i saw an outdoor concert right before i came to jesus and it kind of pulled me in so i thought that'd be a really cool thing to do on our campus so i organized this event and and here i am i know nothing about the bible nothing about christianity very little about jesus and i'm organizing this huge event outdoor concert so that people can know about jesus and and and then the the the guy in charge of student activities on the campus the man came up to me said hey there's a hundred percent chance of rain today we're gonna have to cancel your event i thought why god would you do that i've put so much into it i've risked so much and you you're in charge of rain why would you let it rain i mean after all you don't have to do anything miraculous but could you just at least cooperate and not make my life miserable but i know any better so i started going on campus and everywhere i went wherever i saw someone that i discovered was the follower of jesus i would say pray that the rain would stop pray the rain would be held back pray that it would not rain and that guy kept coming up to me and he said everyone we're gonna have to cancel this and i said no it's taken care of i've prayed it's not gonna rain see i didn't know any better i hadn't been taught by all the christians who have given up on prayer that prayer doesn't work like that and so i just kept telling them all day long it's already taken care of we prayed and it's not going to rain and what's amazing is when it was time for that concert the musicians and artists who were coming in didn't come in to perform they came in to join us in our misery to let me know that they're so sorry that the event was canceled because they came in from thunderous rain but the moment they came on the campus there was no rain there and i can tell you that not one drop of rain touched that field on the campus and i know this because i was told the moment there was one drop of rain their million dollars worth of equipment would be taken away so i know that not one drop of rain touched the ground where we stood that night because you see i i thought that elijah was a man a person just like me see if he could pray desperately that it would not rain why couldn't i pray now i i can't say that every time i've prayed my prayers have been answered the way i want them to be answered but i do know this while god may not answer every prayer you ever pray he will not answer any prayer you do not pray now i still remember in fact for years i i i wouldn't even talk about it and i never put it in the book and and decades later kim came to me and said there is a story in your life that you told me that you've never written about she goes why won't you put it in the book and i said cause because i don't even know if i believe it and even even though i experienced it it's just i i just don't understand how it happened and and i and honestly i didn't want to be seen as insane because see when you begin to pray crazy things begin to happen well i was one particular day i i was a musician at that time but i couldn't afford a guitar so i borrowed this guitar from this girl and she she to me seemed like a really like mature follower of jesus and she was one of the people i admired i was brand new in my faith so everyone seemed mature to me and one day she came up to me and she said hey irwin you don't know much about my my past but i used to live with a guy and i used to like drink a lot and we did a lot of drugs and i just don't feel god anymore and he called me and i called him and he's coming to get me today and i'm leaving i just couldn't even imagine i couldn't imagine anyone who had met jesus choosing to walk away i i couldn't imagine someone who would who had found freedom to go back to their captivity it was just i didn't even know what to think and and and i remember looking at her i said you can't do this i said if there's she says i just don't feel god anymore i just don't feel his love anymore and i i looked and i said i just know there's anything that that that god could do to prove his love for you he would do it now i know now what i should have said is jesus proved his love for you by dying on the cross he doesn't need to do anything else to people's love for you but you know in those moments of crisis and when you're brand new in your faith you don't get it right you just say what is there and and i just said if there's anything i could do to prove his love for you he would do it and in that moment her response just threw me off in fact it's one of the reasons i had such a hard time understanding women because she looked at me she goes well then i want to snow where does that come from like where does that get pulled out of nowhere well then i want snow see guys wouldn't do that see if a guy if i said if god could prove his love for you he would do it the guy will then i want like a sports car or you know i i want a promotion at work where i want the hot girlfriend it's very concrete but this girl she just picks something so bizarre well then if jesus really loves me i want the snow and there was no chance of snow we were in north carolina at the time and there's no precipitation expected there's no snow coming our way and and when she said well then i want the snow it caught me off guard and and to this day i don't know why i said this but i looked her and i said jesus is going to make it snow and when i said that i got really scared and i said within 24 hours i meant to say he would need more than 24 hours but i got it backwards and i made it even harder on myself and she said all right then and she left and then i went back to my room and i closed my door i turned off the lights i pulled down the shades i got on my knees i got on my face i did like elijah where your head is in between your legs and i was like god i don't know why i said that i i was that you was it me speaking what i heard you say if it wasn't you god could you sort of adopt this idea and do this i i don't want to pretend it was also clear to me i was praying out of so much desperation and what i didn't know is that she decided to go all over campus and tell people oh god's going to make it snow for me because he loves me god's gonna make it snow for me because he loves me got to make it snow for me because he loves me and i don't know maybe an hour so later i fell asleep honestly praying and my roommate mark came in and he woke me up and he came in the room and he said have you been outside and i said no and when he said that i knew he knew that i had said this and he said yeah your friend's been all over campus telling people god's gonna make it snow for her because he's gonna prove he loves her and my heart was just pounding and he said then you should look outside and i thought you wanted to mock me and humiliate me and just rub it in my face and i saw i take it like a man and i walked over to the window and took a breath and pulled up the shade and there was snow everywhere everywhere snow everywhere almost from the moment i fell on my knees the snow began to fall i i'm not trying to explain to you how this happened i just want you to understand that it did happen and you know in that moment everything was so clear to me i knew the whole time right that it was going to snow but i began to pay attention see i began to realize that that if you listen carefully you're going to hear things that you shouldn't know and you're going to be able to pray things that that seem as if you're asking god to do something but it's actually god asking you to trust him that he will do it i remember it was a sunday july 8th 1990 we were in dallas texas a band a rap band called two live crew was coming to dallas they had been censored in florida for being obscene they were this incredibly nasty band i think they had a song like as nasty as they want and and it was just a big deal in dallas and so we're in this room and kim says we should pray against two life crew and that's not really like my style and form as much and and they'll go okay okay we'll pray and they're all praying like you know prayers like and we just prayed that everything will be okay and that you know the event will go well or that people will realize that there's more to life and then kim prays jesus i declare that tomorrow you're going to shut down that concert and that two-life crew will not be able to perform in dallas tomorrow night and amen and after all the team came up to me really awkward going i feel so bad for kem i feel so bad for tim because tomorrow everyone in the room is going to know that god did not answer that prayer at around 11 30 on that sunday night on july 8th two life crew wanted their payment up front and the manager didn't have it and they were told they were not going to get paid up front they needed to perform and there was a delay around three hours and then after three hours someone jumped on stage became angry demanding their money back then out of those 500 or so people in that room 50 of them went violent and started destroying all the furniture in the club and two live crew did not perform and to this day because it was the day before aaron's birthday to this day i have to go back and be astonished by the fact that this small woman declared something that everyone else thought she would be humiliated by declaring and i have to wonder to this day if the fact that two life crew could not perform the next night was connected to the prayers of this small woman named kim i wonder what your prayers have caused in the universe of moving heaven and earth because you're just like elijah you're just like kim just like me i'm just like you we're not different types of spiritual species see elijah was a person just like us but he prayed he prayed desperately he prayed he spoke to the heavens and the heavens obeyed his declaration and it did not reign for three and a half years and then he listened and he heard the sound of a heavy rain and he knew that the rain was coming and that seventh time the servant went back that seventh time when he said i see a cloud the size of a fist that's all elijah needed he said now go and tell ahab the rain is coming god is looking for women and men who know why prayer matters see why does this matter it matters because prayer is the intersection between heaven and earth paris intersection between god and all of humanity and when you step in that intersection you become god's agent of the miraculous you become god's agent of change maybe it's time to pray and watch the future get ushered in through our faith you may be listening right now and you're like this is crazy and i here's the thing if you open your life to jesus see if you pray this simple prayer that begins everything jesus i give you my life i'm telling you when you pray jesus i give you my life you are inviting eternity to step into time and space you're inviting heaven on earth you're inviting the creator of the universe to come to dwell within you and that will be the most profound and powerful miracle you will ever usher in through prayer when you pray to give your life to jesus it is the first miracle you will ever be a part of but it will not be the last so if you're here right now listening to my voice then cross the line of faith whisper to the one who is near jesus i give you my life jesus i give you my life this is the beginning of everything why does this matter because prayer connects you to god [Music]

Channel: Mosaic

Views: 7,042

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC

Id: fMq558k0gDQ

Length: 51min 44sec (3104 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021