Lesson 2: Prayer: The Heartbeat of Revival

Memory Text
Matthew 7:11 (NKJV) 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

Question 1: How do we get the good things God wants to give us?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

We have to ask. What is it called when we connect God and ask Him for something? (prayer) To get the good things of God, we have to pray. Is revival a good thing? How do we get it? We cant be revived without prayer.

Q2: How does Luke record this same teaching of Jesus? (Luke 11:13)

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall [your] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
1. God is waiting to give us all the good things He has promised us. 2. All that God has promised is appropriated through prayer. Q1: What is the condition for laying claim to the promises of God? (2 Cor 1:20)
20

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are Yes in Christ. And so through him the Amen is spoken by us to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 1:20 (NIV) 1. The ABCs of prayer are Ask, Believe, and Claim. 2. But the ABCs of prayer cannot be exercised apart from Christ. 3. God says Yes to His promises only for those who come to Him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. 4. Gods promises are fulfilled only through Him. 5. Thats why we pray in the name of Jesus. 6. It is only by acknowledging Him as our Savior and Lord that we can hope to receive the promises of God. John 16:23 (NIV) 3 . Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

Promises

: What kind of good things has God promised us? Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13) Wisdom (James 1:5) Healing (James 5:12) His will (1 John 5:14) Our needs (Phil 4:19) Forgiveness (1 John 1:9) Salvation (Rom 10:9 ) Q2: What kind of good things has God promised us? Luke 11:13 (read previously) James 1:5 (KJV) 5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. James 5:14-15 (KJV) Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
14

And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. 1 John 5:14 (KJV) And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: Philippians 4:19 (KJV)
19 14

15

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

9 1 John 1:9 (KJV) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Romans 10:9 (KJV) That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Many, many more
9

Revivals Heartbeat
Q1: What does the word revival mean to you? 1. We might think of someone who is dead or near dead. 2. Somebody has flat-lined. Their heart has stopped. The medics get out the defibrillator. They yell clear, and pass a jolt of electricity through the paddles that starts the victims heart again. 3. That person has been revived. He was essentially dead or comatose, but now he is living again. 4. Webster defines revival as: 5. Restoration to vigor or activity. 6. A bringing or coming back to life or consciousness. 7. A stirring up of religious faith. 8. According to Webster, the word revive means: 9. To come back to life or consciousness. 10. To come back to health and vigor. 11. To flourish again. 12. To come back into use or attention. 13. All of these definitions can be applied to our spiritual condition and life.

Q2: Why do we need revival? 1. The truth is that we all tend to become lax in our commitment to the Lord. 2. As that wonderful hymn puts it: Prone to wander, Lord I feel it; Prone to leave the God I love. 3. We all have a propensity to follow our fallen human nature and make selfish choices. 4. We get our priorities out of order and waste our time and efforts on the temporal rather than the eternal. 5. Our natural tendency is to allow our first love to grow cold and become lukewarm. 6. It is a constant battle to deny our selfish desires and live for the Lord. 7. Some may need revival more than others, but we all can see a need for a more fervent commitment to the Lord.

Q3: How essential is prayer to becoming a Christian? How essential is prayer to growing as a Christian? 1. The first and foremost revival is when someone who is dead in trespasses and sin becomes a born again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. 2. What needs to happen in order for someone to be saved? (They need to be justified by faith.) 3. The faith that saves is not just a nebulous belief in Jesus as a teacher, a prophet, or a good example. 4. Saving faith is trust in Jesus Christ as a living person for forgiveness of sins and for eternal life with God. (Wayne Grudem) 5. Justification deals with our sins: It is Gods declaration in heaven that we are not guilty because our sins have been laid on Jesus and His righteousness has been laid on us. (2 Cor 5:21) 6. How do our sins get forgiven? (1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins anc cleanse us from all unrighteousness.) 7. What do we need to do to confess our sins to God? (We need to pray, to tell Him that we sinners, to confess our sin, and ask Him to forgive our sin by laying it on Jesus or Substitute and Savior.) 8. It is prayer that jump-starts the heartbeat of the Christians spiritual life. 9. Those whom God justifies, He sanctifies and fills with His Holy Spirit and makes us new creatures in Christ.

Jesus and Prayer

Q1: What can we learn about Jesus prayer life from the gospels? (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; 9:18) 1. We also know that Jesus prayed before meals: The feeding of the 5,000, the 4,000, and the breaking of bread at the home of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. 2. Jesus also prayed at night in the garden of Gethsemane as shown in the artists picture on this slide. 3. He prayed there ling enough that His disciples fell asleep three times. Q2: Where is your Gethsemane or your solitary place where you can spend time alone with God? 1. Mine is in my bedroom kneeling beside my bed. 2. Maybe I should get out of the rut and get outside. Thats where Jesus prayed. 3. Maybe that would be a good change. Q3: Why are we too busy to pray? 1. Life is busy. 2. Satan would like nothing better than to keep us so preoccupied with the urgencies of life that we have no time to pray. 3. Dwight Eisenhower is quoted as saying it this way: What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important. 4. Satan would have us focus on the details of life that are seldom important in the end but seem urgent at the time. 5. We need to look at things from eternitys perspective. 6. In the end, there is nothing more important than having a strong saving relationship with the Lord Jesus. 7. We must make that our priority even though it is not urgent. 8. Even though we could put it off until later, lets start the day with prayer and make it a priority like Jesus did.

Q4:

How can we make our own prayer life more like Jesus? 1. It is a matter of setting priorities. 2. If Jesus needed to spend quality time daily with His Father, how much more do we need to do the same. 3. Think about how much time you spend in prayer compared to how much time you watch TV.

Prayer and Revival

Q1: What were the disciples doing before the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out? (Acts 1:14)

1. What were the 120 doing in the upper room? (They were praying and they were united.) 2. Do you want to feel close to somebody? 3. Get off alone with that person, share your burdens and needs with each other, then pray for each other. 4. Prayer changes things. And one of the things it changes is us. 5. You feel close and united to the people you pray for. Q2: What priority did the early church place on prayer? (Acts 2:42, 4:31, 6:4) 1. In the book of Acts we see the power of prayer and the priority of prayer for the early church. 2. The apostles chose deacon to wait on tables so that they could devote themselves to prayer and the preaching of the word. 3. The Holy Spirit was poured out in answer to prayer to give them boldness in preaching the word. Q3: What was the result? 1. The result was that thousands were added to the church. 2. On the day of Pentecost, 3,000. By Acts 4:4, 5,000 men. By Acts 6:7 a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith. 3. By chapter 8, the gospel goes to the Gentiles.

Foreknowledge and Prayer

Q1: If God knows the future in all of its detail with absolute certainty, can the future be changed by prayer? 1. If God predestines the future, it is fixed and no prayer can change it. 2. If God foreknows the future in absolute detail with absolute certainty, it is just as fixed. 3. It cannot be changed by prayer or by anything else. 4. This is one of the problems with the traditional view of God: that He knows the future in the same exhaustive detail as He knows the past. 5. If that is true, the future is just as fixed as Gods foreknowledge of it . 6. If His foreknowledge is absolute, the future is absolutely fixed. 7. Then the only thing that prayer changes is our attitude to what God already knows will happen.

Q2: If we believe that prayer changes things as it did for king Hezekiah (Isa 38:1-6) what does this say about the foreknowledge of God? 1. It says that the future and the past are different to God. 2. God can know many things about the future because He will bring about in the future the things He has planned, particularly the things He has revealed in Bible prophecy. 3. But there are other things about the future that are not fixed but remain open until we make decisions that determine them. 4. This is the Open View of God, described in the book The Openness of God by Adventist theologian Richard Rice. 5. This allows us to make real choices that affect the future by making something definite that was previously indefinite. 6. It allows our prayers to have a real effect on God and on the future as did Hezekiahs prayer.

Praying Together
Q1: What is implied by Christs instruction to pray in small groups? (Matt 18:19-20) Matthew 18:19-20 (NKJV) Again I say[a] to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.
20 19

For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of

them. 1. The implication is that there is extra power in prayer when two or more join forces and pray together for the same thing. 2. Again, we must temper this promise with other texts that say that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us (1 John 5:14) 3. But the implication is that a prayer meeting where people meet to pray together has extra power in changing things.

Q2: What is the promise of verse 20? 1. Jesus promised to be in the midst of 2 or 3 gathered in His name. 2. Of course, He is present in the person of His representative, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. 3. This gives us an idea of how prayer works: 4. The Holy Spirit is present with us when we pray. 5. The Spirit is Christs representative, so what the Spirit hears, He uses to intercede with the Son in the heavenly sanctuary. 6. Jesus then intercedes with the Father in heaven on our behalf. 7. While we may not know exactly how prayer works, we know that it does work. 8. The Bible is saturated with prayer from beginning to end.

Q3: Is your prayer life in a rut? What can we do to get it out? 1. It is easy to fall into a routine where we pray essentially the same thing each day. 2. Our blessings are almost always the same before meals. Our personal prayers are very close the same each day. 3. We need to intentionally shake up our prayer life. 4. Try praying the Lords prayer as an outline, expanding upon each phrase. 5. Try praying through the 10 commandments. 6. Try praying through the fruit of the Spirit. 7. Try reading scripture and focusing prayer on that passage you read. 8. Try a good devotional and use it as a springboard for prayer.

Summary
Prayer is an amazing privilege. Through it we can commune with our Creator and Redeemer. Through prayer, we can ask for, believe, and claim the promises of God. All of His promises are yes in Christ: they are conditional on being in Him. Jesus placed a very high priority on prayer: He put it first in the day, He found a solitary place to pray, He spent quality time in prayer. How much more do we need to incorporate these same disciplines. Prayer was vital to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and to the growth of the early church. We have every biblical assurance that prayer changes things, even if we do not fully understand how it works. There appears to be extra power in prayer when we join with others to pray. Seeing the importance of prayer, will you move it up in priority this week?