July 28, 2025 • 23 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One time I was at a megachurch pastor's conference of
the early Days, and we were all having roundtable discussions
about issues of what's going on in our churches. We
seem to be getting a lot of people, but not
very many disciples. And finally I dared to speak what
everybody knew, that the church has become a mile wide.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
And an inch deep. Is it that we don't need prayer? Folks?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I mean, are we so self sufficient we don't really
need God? Is society so good that there's no need
to pray?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Today? Today, Today, Today with Jeff Fines, pastor, apologist and
Bible teacher.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
This is today with Jeff Fines. Thanks for joining us now.
The Bible is very clear about the importance of prioritizing prayer.
Jesus demanded it when he emptied the temple of all
the merchants and customers, and in the history of the church,
fervent prayer has preceded revivals and the growth of Jesus Church.
(01:00):
Let's join past to Jeff as he finishes today's message.
You can catch the whole message wherever you listen to podcasts.
Just search for Today with Jeff Minds.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
In Acts, chapter two, what were they doing. They were
praying and waiting on God. They were praying and hoping
and waiting, and Pentecost came. Now preaching followed for an
explanation of the gospel. But the church is born while
people are praying.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And the reason is Jesus.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Said my house will be called a house of prayer.
In Acts, chapter four, Peter and the disciples are beaten up.
They're persecuted because they're preaching the name of Jesus. Now
what did they do after they were beaten up in torture?
Did they go out and protest? Did they take the
matter to the Supreme Court. Did they try to get
some political leverage. No, they go back to a prayer meeting,
(02:01):
and they said, God, give us courage to speak the
gospel in the face of death. Give us a boldness
in spite of the threats that we're receiving, so that
it appears that God's.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Intentions for us are this.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
When in trouble, pray when intimidated, Pray when challenged, Pray
when sick, Pray when diagnosed with a terminal illness. Pray
when persecuted, Pray when anxious, Pray when afraid, pray, Pray.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And there's something special about our prayers.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
According to scripture, I had been in Africa for ten
years and I was living in New Zealand. My mom
passed away. Well, I was living in New Zealand, and
on one trip I came back. This probably was six
or seven years after my mom had died, and my
father said, look, I want to show you something.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I've been meaning to do this for a long time.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So he took me back in the back bedroom and
he opened up this chest, and in that chest was
another box, and it had my name on it. And
he took out that box and my mother had kept
every report card I had ever had in my life
and every basketball clipping from the time I was five
to the time I graduated college. She had kept all
those clippings. And my father said, on days she would
(03:12):
miss you when you were in Africa, she would go
and get that box and she would look at the
report cards and she would just go through those clippings
and she would cry, but she would also have joy.
There was a time of remembering something that had happened
in the past, and somehow it drew her closer to you.
Now I use that example because the same thing evidently
happens with us our prayers and God. And as I
(03:36):
was doing the series in the Book of Revelation about
eight years ago, I came across Revelation five to eighth
that says this, now, when he had taken the scroll,
the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fell
down before the lamb, each having a harp and golden
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
And you start thinking, what must prayer be to God
(03:57):
that he keeps it in bowls, that he goes to God,
the Son God, the Holy Spirit, and says, hey, read
another one.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Get those prayers out and let's read them.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Let's remember a time when Jeff Binds was praying, when
he had hope, when he had trust in the Father.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Because he hasn't talked.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
To me in a while, get one of those out,
read the name, read the prayer, so that when you
and I stand, or we kneel before God in prayer
and we talk to God and we really open our hearts,
somehow these are kept in heaven and they are precious
to God.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Okay, Jeff, we got it. What's your point?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
My point is, what if God wants to heal What
if God wants to cure our depression and anxiety and
internal frustrations. What if he really wants to heal our city.
What if he wants to restore our families? What if
he wants to bring our children back to us? What
if he wants to heal our marriages. But he's waiting
waiting for what for his house to become a house
(04:54):
of prayer? That's what he's waiting Beyond token prayers.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I'm just talk prayers, but prayers that are motivated.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
By a burden of the heart, real authentic passion, phil
spirit phil prayers.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
What if that's what he's waiting on.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
First time I went to Rwanda, my translator Anistas Sabamunga,
it was the first time. Now I'm gonna go back
years after this, but the first time, I gotta tell you,
I was very nervous. I'm thinking, I'm out of my
element here. He's taken me into this prison where people
are responsible for orchestrating the genocide of killing over a
million people in Rwanda, and I'm supposed to go and
and preach the gospel to these murderers. And then the
(05:34):
first time I went, they put me in a prison
that held five thousand women. I was the only guy
in there. Listen, five thousand nice women are intimidating. These
are people who've used machetes. And Anistos looked at me
and he could tell this is our first relationship.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You know, you could tell. I was a little nervous,
and I.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Love what he did. He stood as if he was
in a defensive position.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And playing basketball.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
He'd bent his knees and he looked at me and
he said, Pastor Jeff, I know you're nervous.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's okay. Just give me whatever you got. I'll clean
it up through the translation. He said, I can't do
I can't work with nothing.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
But if you'll just give me something, I'll make sure
it has power. And you know what, the Bible says,
that's exactly what Jesus does for you. You don't have
to you don't have to be good in prayer. You
just got to give him something to work with. And
the Bible says, if you give it to him, Jesus
will take it, translate it, and make it appear much
better than it is because he's on your side. You say,
(06:36):
what does it say that Romans eight twenty six. For
we do not know what we should pray for as
we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered. So somehow he communicates
to the Father in a way that you and I can't.
But he has to have something to work with. You
got to give him something. And then Jesus says, look,
(06:58):
those people are praying to you for the city, for
their children, for their marriages. They're praying to see you
in a way they've never seen you before.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And then, according to scripture, when we find.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
This later out and this is a this is kind
of like the harmony of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles,
we learn that when you pray like that, then God says, okay,
that's it. Deploy Michael and the archangel and then you
say what paul is clear in Ephesian six, he says,
their struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
(07:32):
against powers, against the.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Rulers of the darkness of this age. See.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Our mistake is we think our real battle is with
our husband or wife, or children, or community, or with Washington.
That's not where the real battle is. The real battle
is in the heavenly realms. In other words, what Jesus
is saying to you and me is you're not strong
enough to do this. You need supernatural intervention. And you
get supernatural intervention when you start to pray, because your
(07:59):
real enemy, Principality's powers against the rulers of the darkness
of this age. And Jesus said, that's why people who
are humble and really realize what.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They're up against.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
There will be those who would just go through life
thinking that's as good as it gets. Then there will
be those few, those call those chosen ones, that will
remember that he who is in us is greater than
he that is in the world. There's a spiritual battle
going on, and if his house becomes a house of prayer,
he will release his power into our lives, and things
will happen that we've not seen before, done before, and
(08:32):
or felt before. And it didn't start just in the
New Testament. It's all the way back in second Chronicle seven.
If my people who are called by my name will
humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn
from their wicked ways, I will hear them from heaven,
and I will forgive their sin.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
And heal their land.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Folks, listen, don't you want more? I mean, aren't you
kind of bored with in some ways? With the whole
church thing. It's okay to be honest.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You're in church. That's the way to go. Don't you
kind of.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Get in a rut sometimes? Okay, we have this song,
then this song, then Jeff speaks and then we have that.
Isn't there something that is missing? And do you know
where you've?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I'm just being very honest. I'm glad you're here. Don't
stop coming. I'm glad you're here. But do you know
where you're gonna find it? What you're looking for is
on the Monday night prayer meeting that happens once a month,
the first Monday night. And many of you have never
been there, and that's why you're feeling the way that
you do.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And you can deny it, but yet you can't explain it.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
God shows up, and I wonder it's because on that
night his house has become a house of prayer. Is
there something about when you become a house of prayer?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
God is just motivated to show up.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Not everybody gets healed, but there have been some people healed.
Not everybody gets exactly what they want.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But God moves and releases is the energy into their lives.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And it's not like this is kind of a shocker.
This is the history of the early Church. The church
has had good, bad, and ugly times, there's no doubt
about it. But it's also had times of revival, strength, growth,
and power. And every time, if you study early church history,
every time that happened, it was always, without fail, preceded
(10:25):
by prayer. Somebody somewhere started to pray. Moody goes to England.
What happens? They started to pray. Charles Finney goes to
Upstate New York.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
They started to pray. The Great Awakening came from Europe
to the Americas.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
What happened? People started to pray. Did they preach yes,
did they sing? Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But they identified mark was prayer. Prayer preceded it, Prayer
kept it going. And the minute prayer ended, the spirit
of God lifted and the church got.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Back to their old way of arguing about church.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Music and politics and legalism and the color of the
pain on the wall and church business, and it became
possessed with program rather than prayer.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
When I was in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I started at expository Wednesday night. That meant I went
through the Bible verse by verse. It grew to eight
hundred people. I tried to do the same with a
prayer meeting. The most we ever got fifteen. Why one
time I was at a megachurch pastor's conference of the
Early Days, and we were all having roundtable discussions about
issues of what's going on in our churches. We seem
(11:33):
to be getting a lot of people, but not very
many disciples. And finally I dared to speak what everybody knew,
that the church has become a mile wide and an
inch deep.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Is it that we don't need prayer? Folks?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I mean, are we so self sufficient we don't really
need God? Is society so good that there's no.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Need to pray? We don't have any worries or concerns
or anxieties.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
We don't need to pray for our children, to pray
for our health, or pray for our marriages, or pray
for one another. He's so strong against the power of
the devil. We really can take care of business ourselves.
You would think, and I'm saying we would think. I'm
not judging you. I'm judging us. I mean, I'm the
leaders right, So wherever we are, we're here because a
(12:17):
lot has to do with where I've taken you in
our ministry. Now I know that it's God's church, it's
not mine, and he's the ultimate leader.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I got that.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
But I would assume that there's an expectation on my
life and yours, and you would think that I would
go to the scripture and I would read where it says,
asking you will receive and knock on the door will
be open. Seek and you will find. Call on the
name of the Lord, you will be heard. You have
not because you ask not. You think Christ follows would
read those and say, man, I got us start praying
(12:47):
because evidently there's so much available for me that I
don't have, because this is not.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
A house of prayer Hebrews four.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace,
that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help
in a time of need. I don't know about you,
but I need all the mercy and the grace I
can get. God is so into his children pray that
(13:17):
sometimes he'll do whatever it takes to get you on
your knees. You know that right, God will bring you
to your knees so that he can get you on
your knees. Otherwise he knows you're not ever gonna pray
motivated by burden of the heart unless the rug is
pulled out from under you and you've got nowhere else
to go. Because the reason God wants you to pray
(13:41):
is not so that you can change his mind about something,
so he can change yours about something. The way that
you look at life and your recognition of where the
real power for your hope and your future really lies.
It's where your eyes are open to the habits that
are kill you and where your eyes are open to
(14:02):
the habits that should be in your life that will
bring you life. And when the church begins to pray,
people begin to repent. I mean, this is the thing.
When you come to pray and you become the house
of prayer, when you become a house that is known
mainly for prayer, you know what happens.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
One of the first things that happens is purity.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
People stop sleeping with each other that aren't supposed to be.
People get rid of the habits that they know shouldn't
be in their lives, things like pornography become defeated.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Now you say why, because.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You cannot spend time with someone without their way of
life affecting yours. And the more time you spend with God,
the more you become like him. But if you spend
no time with God, then you're influenced by everybody else
around you, and you just go the way of everybody else,
which means you'll never experience the supernatural. Something happens in
(15:00):
your life that just opens your eyes to the potential
that you have in Christ.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Don't you want something more? Come on, don't you want.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
To come to this place with expectation where you move
past singing into worshiping. Now you know there's a difference.
Singing is when you just look out the words and
you sing them and you got your hand. Worshiping is
when you enter into the presence of God. But I
can't make you do that. It's something you have to
(15:29):
decide on your own that you're going to do. And
if you tell me, pastor jeth, I just don't feel
anything a church. It's not God's fault. You've got to
come in with the attitude.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That you're going to worship God.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
And you're gonna thank God for all the things you
do have and bring before.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Him the concerns of your heart.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
When this becomes a house of prayer, revival will come.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Sinners will turn their hearts toward home.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
People will begin to repent sexual immorality will be purged,
marriages will be restored, children will be brought back home,
and God will.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Forever be praised.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
A few years ago, Ron Hall and I were talking
and I said, Ron, I'm just concerned about how do
we do this?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
How do we start a prayer meeting? And Ron was brilliant.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I'm sure that as God was talking to me, God
was talking to him and he said, man, you need
people to start a prayer meeting. You need people who
are desperate. And I got about two hundred of them
and celebrate recovery. And we started that money not prayer
meeting and it's grown to jam pack capacity, and anybody
who attends it will tell you that's their.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Favorite service of the month. It's different. Jeff doesn't preach.
They love it.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Oh, he'll sometimes give a devotion up front, and sometimes
he does talk too much, but he only does that
when he's trying to motivate us. Mostly worship and prayer,
and we pray for people and they come up to
the front, and the elders are here, and people get
prayed to be healed. And then sometimes we'll be praying
for somebody to be healed and then their whole life
group will come up and surround them, and I just
(17:12):
step over to the side and let the church be
the church. Almost every time we meet together, somebody out
of the audience walks up to receive christ salvation.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
See, I'm telling you the.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Real church service happens on the first Monday night of
every month.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Now you said, is this not church? Yes, it's church.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
But we're constricted somewhat, aren't we. And we're restricted because
we've got a certain amount of time to get you
in and get you out. So this is still important
what we do, the teaching of the word, but you
can make it so different by the attitude with which
you come into this place, because you can pray the
whole time you're here. When my sermons get boring, just
(17:56):
use it as a time to pray. If you're not
tracking with Pastor Jeff, I'm okay with that. I'm going
to pray because he's just not doing it. For me.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Then at least you're getting something out of it, do
you know.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
James five sixteen is a verse that I've had in
my mind for ages. It says, the prayer of a
righteous person is powerful and effective. But the King James version,
which in this case I happen to like because it
puts the modifier in the right place, says, the strong
powerful prayer of a righteous person is effective. Strong identifies powerful.
So we're talking about a prayer that you pray to
(18:32):
God that is motivated by a deep burden of your heart,
and it must be prayed by a righteous person. But
remember there are two ways to be righteous, keep the
law perfectly, or you're saved by grace because Jesus died
for you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So you don't have to be perfect to pray a
powerful prayer. You just got to be willing to pray
a powerful prayer.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
And then the response is effective, which is the Greek
word energace like our word energy, that means releases the
divine energy of God.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Every time you pray.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Jesus said, my house should be called a house of prayer,
and I want you to know that when you start praying.
Oh man, there's so many things there's so many there's
a huge cost to not praying, and there's a huge
cost to the church for not becoming a house of prayer.
You should never start a meeting of any kind without
first going to the Father. And if you do somehow
(19:28):
manage to get that into your life, the first dividend
of that investment is the thing we all want the most.
At peace, just an overriding peace. And that's why Jesus
in the middle of a storm that had killed hundreds
of fishermen on the sea every year, and the disciples
(19:49):
are right in the middle of it, thinking they're going
to die. That Jesus is down below decks sleeping, sleeping
because he's at total peace. And given the fact that
twenty one million people in the world are on prozac,
I would think that peace is something that we want.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
My favorite historical reference.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Concerns a man in early Church history by the name
of Peter Myosius. Okay, so they're killing Christians because they
will not recant that Jesus is the Christ, the son
of the Living God. And so this is basically the
first edition of waterboarding. They're holding the Christians by their
feet and they're putting their head under water and waiting
till just the right moment, just before death, pulling them
(20:31):
back up again, and then giving them chance after chance.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
If you'll just recant, if you'll just.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Tell us that Jesus is not the Christ, the son
of living God, will let you live.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
And they just keep doing that until they think you've
given up.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well, this dude, Peter Myosius, they pulled him up like
the eighth time, and.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
This is what he said to them. Please stop interrupting me.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Lower me again in the midst of the peace and
quietness of the frogs and the toads, where I can
speak with my Lord in private. You know what he's saying.
You know what he's saying, don't you. I don't want
to hang out with you guys. Put me back down there,
and if I die, I die at least I am
with the Lord. Prayer is the key to everything, everything
(21:16):
that's happened in our church. Let me use my East
Tennessee grammar. It ain't us. It has nothing to do
with us other than being willing to pray and God responding.
And the older I get, the more peaceful that is,
because I know it doesn't depend on me. It's God
and I hope this will become a house of prayer.
(21:38):
I don't know what that looks like other than what
we're doing now. You might need to pray for me,
because the next fourteen to twenty one days, I'm going
to go before the throne and I'm going to ask God, God,
what does that look like? What do you want me
to change that we can be known as a house
of prayer, that when the windows and doors are oping,
there is a aroma of prayer. Just show me the way,
and I challenge you and from now on, draw a
(22:00):
line and never go back the other way. When you
come in here, you forget about everything out there, and
you focus for one hour and ten minutes on God,
and you pray and you worship, and you don't worry
about the song that you don't know. If you don't
know the song, pray, If you don't like the sermon, pray.
If communion didn't touch you, pray. Anybody can pray, And
(22:24):
that's when this place becomes a house of prayer. Father,
I thank you and I praise you for the beauty
of your word. This passage that continues to just penetrate
the heart of every believer that.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
This house is a house of prayer. Father.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I pray for our online campus that is growing by
the day, that all campuses, all of us, would be
people of prayer, expecting God to move, to see things
that we wanted to see from the time we first
became Christ followers, to feel things we've wanted.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
To feel in so long.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And I pray for those prayer warriors that already exist
in our church that they would go double tom and
their prayers, that revival would come and we would see
Jesus and his name. We pray.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You've been listening to Today with Jeff Fines. Next time
we'll bring you a new message from Pastor Jeff. You
can listen to more messages like this. Just search for
Today with Jeff Fines wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
You met me with Everything
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Today, Today, Today, Today with Jeff Fines
One time I was at a megachurch pastor's conference of
the early Days, and we were all having roundtable discussions
about issues of what's going on in our churches. We
seem to be getting a lot of people, but not
very many disciples. And finally I dared to speak what
everybody knew, that the church has become a mile wide.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
And an inch deep. Is it that we don't need prayer? Folks?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I mean, are we so self sufficient we don't really
need God? Is society so good that there's no need
to pray?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Today? Today, Today, Today with Jeff Fines, pastor, apologist and
Bible teacher.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
This is today with Jeff Fines. Thanks for joining us now.
The Bible is very clear about the importance of prioritizing prayer.
Jesus demanded it when he emptied the temple of all
the merchants and customers, and in the history of the church,
fervent prayer has preceded revivals and the growth of Jesus Church.
(01:00):
Let's join past to Jeff as he finishes today's message.
You can catch the whole message wherever you listen to podcasts.
Just search for Today with Jeff Minds.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
In Acts, chapter two, what were they doing. They were
praying and waiting on God. They were praying and hoping
and waiting, and Pentecost came. Now preaching followed for an
explanation of the gospel. But the church is born while
people are praying.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And the reason is Jesus.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Said my house will be called a house of prayer.
In Acts, chapter four, Peter and the disciples are beaten up.
They're persecuted because they're preaching the name of Jesus. Now
what did they do after they were beaten up in torture?
Did they go out and protest? Did they take the
matter to the Supreme Court. Did they try to get
some political leverage. No, they go back to a prayer meeting,
(02:01):
and they said, God, give us courage to speak the
gospel in the face of death. Give us a boldness
in spite of the threats that we're receiving, so that
it appears that God's.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Intentions for us are this.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
When in trouble, pray when intimidated, Pray when challenged, Pray
when sick, Pray when diagnosed with a terminal illness. Pray
when persecuted, Pray when anxious, Pray when afraid, pray, Pray.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And there's something special about our prayers.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
According to scripture, I had been in Africa for ten
years and I was living in New Zealand. My mom
passed away. Well, I was living in New Zealand, and
on one trip I came back. This probably was six
or seven years after my mom had died, and my
father said, look, I want to show you something.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I've been meaning to do this for a long time.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So he took me back in the back bedroom and
he opened up this chest, and in that chest was
another box, and it had my name on it. And
he took out that box and my mother had kept
every report card I had ever had in my life
and every basketball clipping from the time I was five
to the time I graduated college. She had kept all
those clippings. And my father said, on days she would
(03:12):
miss you when you were in Africa, she would go
and get that box and she would look at the
report cards and she would just go through those clippings
and she would cry, but she would also have joy.
There was a time of remembering something that had happened
in the past, and somehow it drew her closer to you.
Now I use that example because the same thing evidently
happens with us our prayers and God. And as I
(03:36):
was doing the series in the Book of Revelation about
eight years ago, I came across Revelation five to eighth
that says this, now, when he had taken the scroll,
the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fell
down before the lamb, each having a harp and golden
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
And you start thinking, what must prayer be to God
(03:57):
that he keeps it in bowls, that he goes to God,
the Son God, the Holy Spirit, and says, hey, read
another one.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Get those prayers out and let's read them.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Let's remember a time when Jeff Binds was praying, when
he had hope, when he had trust in the Father.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Because he hasn't talked.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
To me in a while, get one of those out,
read the name, read the prayer, so that when you
and I stand, or we kneel before God in prayer
and we talk to God and we really open our hearts,
somehow these are kept in heaven and they are precious
to God.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Okay, Jeff, we got it. What's your point?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
My point is, what if God wants to heal What
if God wants to cure our depression and anxiety and
internal frustrations. What if he really wants to heal our city.
What if he wants to restore our families? What if
he wants to bring our children back to us? What
if he wants to heal our marriages. But he's waiting
waiting for what for his house to become a house
(04:54):
of prayer? That's what he's waiting Beyond token prayers.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I'm just talk prayers, but prayers that are motivated.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
By a burden of the heart, real authentic passion, phil
spirit phil prayers.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
What if that's what he's waiting on.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
First time I went to Rwanda, my translator Anistas Sabamunga,
it was the first time. Now I'm gonna go back
years after this, but the first time, I gotta tell you,
I was very nervous. I'm thinking, I'm out of my
element here. He's taken me into this prison where people
are responsible for orchestrating the genocide of killing over a
million people in Rwanda, and I'm supposed to go and
and preach the gospel to these murderers. And then the
(05:34):
first time I went, they put me in a prison
that held five thousand women. I was the only guy
in there. Listen, five thousand nice women are intimidating. These
are people who've used machetes. And Anistos looked at me
and he could tell this is our first relationship.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You know, you could tell. I was a little nervous,
and I.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Love what he did. He stood as if he was
in a defensive position.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And playing basketball.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
He'd bent his knees and he looked at me and
he said, Pastor Jeff, I know you're nervous.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's okay. Just give me whatever you got. I'll clean
it up through the translation. He said, I can't do
I can't work with nothing.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
But if you'll just give me something, I'll make sure
it has power. And you know what, the Bible says,
that's exactly what Jesus does for you. You don't have
to you don't have to be good in prayer. You
just got to give him something to work with. And
the Bible says, if you give it to him, Jesus
will take it, translate it, and make it appear much
better than it is because he's on your side. You say,
(06:36):
what does it say that Romans eight twenty six. For
we do not know what we should pray for as
we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered. So somehow he communicates
to the Father in a way that you and I can't.
But he has to have something to work with. You
got to give him something. And then Jesus says, look,
(06:58):
those people are praying to you for the city, for
their children, for their marriages. They're praying to see you
in a way they've never seen you before.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And then, according to scripture, when we find.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
This later out and this is a this is kind
of like the harmony of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles,
we learn that when you pray like that, then God says, okay,
that's it. Deploy Michael and the archangel and then you
say what paul is clear in Ephesian six, he says,
their struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
(07:32):
against powers, against the.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Rulers of the darkness of this age. See.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Our mistake is we think our real battle is with
our husband or wife, or children, or community, or with Washington.
That's not where the real battle is. The real battle
is in the heavenly realms. In other words, what Jesus
is saying to you and me is you're not strong
enough to do this. You need supernatural intervention. And you
get supernatural intervention when you start to pray, because your
(07:59):
real enemy, Principality's powers against the rulers of the darkness
of this age. And Jesus said, that's why people who
are humble and really realize what.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They're up against.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
There will be those who would just go through life
thinking that's as good as it gets. Then there will
be those few, those call those chosen ones, that will
remember that he who is in us is greater than
he that is in the world. There's a spiritual battle
going on, and if his house becomes a house of prayer,
he will release his power into our lives, and things
will happen that we've not seen before, done before, and
(08:32):
or felt before. And it didn't start just in the
New Testament. It's all the way back in second Chronicle seven.
If my people who are called by my name will
humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn
from their wicked ways, I will hear them from heaven,
and I will forgive their sin.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
And heal their land.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Folks, listen, don't you want more? I mean, aren't you
kind of bored with in some ways? With the whole
church thing. It's okay to be honest.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You're in church. That's the way to go. Don't you
kind of.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Get in a rut sometimes? Okay, we have this song,
then this song, then Jeff speaks and then we have that.
Isn't there something that is missing? And do you know
where you've?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I'm just being very honest. I'm glad you're here. Don't
stop coming. I'm glad you're here. But do you know
where you're gonna find it? What you're looking for is
on the Monday night prayer meeting that happens once a month,
the first Monday night. And many of you have never
been there, and that's why you're feeling the way that
you do.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And you can deny it, but yet you can't explain it.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
God shows up, and I wonder it's because on that
night his house has become a house of prayer. Is
there something about when you become a house of prayer?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
God is just motivated to show up.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Not everybody gets healed, but there have been some people healed.
Not everybody gets exactly what they want.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But God moves and releases is the energy into their lives.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And it's not like this is kind of a shocker.
This is the history of the early Church. The church
has had good, bad, and ugly times, there's no doubt
about it. But it's also had times of revival, strength, growth,
and power. And every time, if you study early church history,
every time that happened, it was always, without fail, preceded
(10:25):
by prayer. Somebody somewhere started to pray. Moody goes to England.
What happens? They started to pray. Charles Finney goes to
Upstate New York.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
They started to pray. The Great Awakening came from Europe
to the Americas.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
What happened? People started to pray. Did they preach yes,
did they sing? Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But they identified mark was prayer. Prayer preceded it, Prayer
kept it going. And the minute prayer ended, the spirit
of God lifted and the church got.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Back to their old way of arguing about church.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Music and politics and legalism and the color of the
pain on the wall and church business, and it became
possessed with program rather than prayer.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
When I was in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I started at expository Wednesday night. That meant I went
through the Bible verse by verse. It grew to eight
hundred people. I tried to do the same with a
prayer meeting. The most we ever got fifteen. Why one
time I was at a megachurch pastor's conference of the
Early Days, and we were all having roundtable discussions about
issues of what's going on in our churches. We seem
(11:33):
to be getting a lot of people, but not very
many disciples. And finally I dared to speak what everybody knew,
that the church has become a mile wide and an
inch deep.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Is it that we don't need prayer? Folks?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I mean, are we so self sufficient we don't really
need God? Is society so good that there's no.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Need to pray? We don't have any worries or concerns
or anxieties.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
We don't need to pray for our children, to pray
for our health, or pray for our marriages, or pray
for one another. He's so strong against the power of
the devil. We really can take care of business ourselves.
You would think, and I'm saying we would think. I'm
not judging you. I'm judging us. I mean, I'm the
leaders right, So wherever we are, we're here because a
(12:17):
lot has to do with where I've taken you in
our ministry. Now I know that it's God's church, it's
not mine, and he's the ultimate leader.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I got that.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
But I would assume that there's an expectation on my
life and yours, and you would think that I would
go to the scripture and I would read where it says,
asking you will receive and knock on the door will
be open. Seek and you will find. Call on the
name of the Lord, you will be heard. You have
not because you ask not. You think Christ follows would
read those and say, man, I got us start praying
(12:47):
because evidently there's so much available for me that I
don't have, because this is not.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
A house of prayer Hebrews four.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace,
that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help
in a time of need. I don't know about you,
but I need all the mercy and the grace I
can get. God is so into his children pray that
(13:17):
sometimes he'll do whatever it takes to get you on
your knees. You know that right, God will bring you
to your knees so that he can get you on
your knees. Otherwise he knows you're not ever gonna pray
motivated by burden of the heart unless the rug is
pulled out from under you and you've got nowhere else
to go. Because the reason God wants you to pray
(13:41):
is not so that you can change his mind about something,
so he can change yours about something. The way that
you look at life and your recognition of where the
real power for your hope and your future really lies.
It's where your eyes are open to the habits that
are kill you and where your eyes are open to
(14:02):
the habits that should be in your life that will
bring you life. And when the church begins to pray,
people begin to repent. I mean, this is the thing.
When you come to pray and you become the house
of prayer, when you become a house that is known
mainly for prayer, you know what happens.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
One of the first things that happens is purity.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
People stop sleeping with each other that aren't supposed to be.
People get rid of the habits that they know shouldn't
be in their lives, things like pornography become defeated.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Now you say why, because.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You cannot spend time with someone without their way of
life affecting yours. And the more time you spend with God,
the more you become like him. But if you spend
no time with God, then you're influenced by everybody else
around you, and you just go the way of everybody else,
which means you'll never experience the supernatural. Something happens in
(15:00):
your life that just opens your eyes to the potential
that you have in Christ.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Don't you want something more? Come on, don't you want.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
To come to this place with expectation where you move
past singing into worshiping. Now you know there's a difference.
Singing is when you just look out the words and
you sing them and you got your hand. Worshiping is
when you enter into the presence of God. But I
can't make you do that. It's something you have to
(15:29):
decide on your own that you're going to do. And
if you tell me, pastor jeth, I just don't feel
anything a church. It's not God's fault. You've got to
come in with the attitude.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That you're going to worship God.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
And you're gonna thank God for all the things you
do have and bring before.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Him the concerns of your heart.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
When this becomes a house of prayer, revival will come.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Sinners will turn their hearts toward home.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
People will begin to repent sexual immorality will be purged,
marriages will be restored, children will be brought back home,
and God will.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Forever be praised.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
A few years ago, Ron Hall and I were talking
and I said, Ron, I'm just concerned about how do
we do this?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
How do we start a prayer meeting? And Ron was brilliant.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I'm sure that as God was talking to me, God
was talking to him and he said, man, you need
people to start a prayer meeting. You need people who
are desperate. And I got about two hundred of them
and celebrate recovery. And we started that money not prayer
meeting and it's grown to jam pack capacity, and anybody
who attends it will tell you that's their.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Favorite service of the month. It's different. Jeff doesn't preach.
They love it.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Oh, he'll sometimes give a devotion up front, and sometimes
he does talk too much, but he only does that
when he's trying to motivate us. Mostly worship and prayer,
and we pray for people and they come up to
the front, and the elders are here, and people get
prayed to be healed. And then sometimes we'll be praying
for somebody to be healed and then their whole life
group will come up and surround them, and I just
(17:12):
step over to the side and let the church be
the church. Almost every time we meet together, somebody out
of the audience walks up to receive christ salvation.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
See, I'm telling you the.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Real church service happens on the first Monday night of
every month.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Now you said, is this not church? Yes, it's church.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
But we're constricted somewhat, aren't we. And we're restricted because
we've got a certain amount of time to get you
in and get you out. So this is still important
what we do, the teaching of the word, but you
can make it so different by the attitude with which
you come into this place, because you can pray the
whole time you're here. When my sermons get boring, just
(17:56):
use it as a time to pray. If you're not
tracking with Pastor Jeff, I'm okay with that. I'm going
to pray because he's just not doing it. For me.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Then at least you're getting something out of it, do
you know.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
James five sixteen is a verse that I've had in
my mind for ages. It says, the prayer of a
righteous person is powerful and effective. But the King James version,
which in this case I happen to like because it
puts the modifier in the right place, says, the strong
powerful prayer of a righteous person is effective. Strong identifies powerful.
So we're talking about a prayer that you pray to
(18:32):
God that is motivated by a deep burden of your heart,
and it must be prayed by a righteous person. But
remember there are two ways to be righteous, keep the
law perfectly, or you're saved by grace because Jesus died
for you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So you don't have to be perfect to pray a
powerful prayer. You just got to be willing to pray
a powerful prayer.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
And then the response is effective, which is the Greek
word energace like our word energy, that means releases the
divine energy of God.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Every time you pray.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Jesus said, my house should be called a house of prayer,
and I want you to know that when you start praying.
Oh man, there's so many things there's so many there's
a huge cost to not praying, and there's a huge
cost to the church for not becoming a house of prayer.
You should never start a meeting of any kind without
first going to the Father. And if you do somehow
(19:28):
manage to get that into your life, the first dividend
of that investment is the thing we all want the most.
At peace, just an overriding peace. And that's why Jesus
in the middle of a storm that had killed hundreds
of fishermen on the sea every year, and the disciples
(19:49):
are right in the middle of it, thinking they're going
to die. That Jesus is down below decks sleeping, sleeping
because he's at total peace. And given the fact that
twenty one million people in the world are on prozac,
I would think that peace is something that we want.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
My favorite historical reference.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Concerns a man in early Church history by the name
of Peter Myosius. Okay, so they're killing Christians because they
will not recant that Jesus is the Christ, the son
of the Living God. And so this is basically the
first edition of waterboarding. They're holding the Christians by their
feet and they're putting their head under water and waiting
till just the right moment, just before death, pulling them
(20:31):
back up again, and then giving them chance after chance.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
If you'll just recant, if you'll just.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Tell us that Jesus is not the Christ, the son
of living God, will let you live.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
And they just keep doing that until they think you've
given up.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well, this dude, Peter Myosius, they pulled him up like
the eighth time, and.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
This is what he said to them. Please stop interrupting me.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Lower me again in the midst of the peace and
quietness of the frogs and the toads, where I can
speak with my Lord in private. You know what he's saying.
You know what he's saying, don't you. I don't want
to hang out with you guys. Put me back down there,
and if I die, I die at least I am
with the Lord. Prayer is the key to everything, everything
(21:16):
that's happened in our church. Let me use my East
Tennessee grammar. It ain't us. It has nothing to do
with us other than being willing to pray and God responding.
And the older I get, the more peaceful that is,
because I know it doesn't depend on me. It's God
and I hope this will become a house of prayer.
(21:38):
I don't know what that looks like other than what
we're doing now. You might need to pray for me,
because the next fourteen to twenty one days, I'm going
to go before the throne and I'm going to ask God, God,
what does that look like? What do you want me
to change that we can be known as a house
of prayer, that when the windows and doors are oping,
there is a aroma of prayer. Just show me the way,
and I challenge you and from now on, draw a
(22:00):
line and never go back the other way. When you
come in here, you forget about everything out there, and
you focus for one hour and ten minutes on God,
and you pray and you worship, and you don't worry
about the song that you don't know. If you don't
know the song, pray, If you don't like the sermon, pray.
If communion didn't touch you, pray. Anybody can pray, And
(22:24):
that's when this place becomes a house of prayer. Father,
I thank you and I praise you for the beauty
of your word. This passage that continues to just penetrate
the heart of every believer that.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
This house is a house of prayer. Father.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I pray for our online campus that is growing by
the day, that all campuses, all of us, would be
people of prayer, expecting God to move, to see things
that we wanted to see from the time we first
became Christ followers, to feel things we've wanted.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
To feel in so long.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And I pray for those prayer warriors that already exist
in our church that they would go double tom and
their prayers, that revival would come and we would see
Jesus and his name. We pray.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You've been listening to Today with Jeff Fines. Next time
we'll bring you a new message from Pastor Jeff. You
can listen to more messages like this. Just search for
Today with Jeff Fines wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
You met me with Everything
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Today, Today, Today, Today with Jeff Fines
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