How To Pray When It Seems Like Nothing Is Going On Inside

We want to welcome you this evening to our worldwide prayer meeting. This prayer meeting is now being accessed by people from up to 211 countries and dependencies throughout the world. And I want to welcome in particular those that are joining us this evening from the Return International. You're more than welcome. And we just love having you here with us to pray. And I want to encourage everybody to go to the website. It's time to pray dot org. And on that website, you can see prayer requests that have come in from all over the world. You can indicate that you're going to be praying for people so that they know that they're not standing alone. And you can also see the answers to prayer because there's thousands and thousands and thousands of prayers that have been answered, some of them miraculously, all around the world. And when you see these answers to prayer, it can encourage your heart, especially if it's your marriage that's in trouble, your children that are away from God, your body that's suffering sickness. When you begin to see what God has been doing around the world for others as they've turned to him, it will be a great encouragement to your heart. Now, let your friends know about this burn meeting because this is becoming a kind of a hub, a meeting place for people who just want to pray from all over the world. It's a very unique meeting. And one of the few places, I think, that we can actually have communion together every Tuesday night at 7 to 8, 30 Eastern time. At the end of this meeting this evening, we're going to have communion together. And I wish we had a video where we could see. We have a request tonight from China, for example, a believer in China, somebody in Sweden, people in Norway, people in Africa, people all over the world, in Central America, as we lift the bread and the juice to our lips together tonight, celebrating the victory that is ours in Jesus Christ. We may not ever meet each other here on this side of eternity, but one day, we will meet in heaven and we will know, the scripture says, as we are known. And we'll be so thankful that we were here to encourage one another, especially at this moment in history that we're now living in. So please, if you want to join us in communion this evening, go to your cupboard and get some crackers or juice of any sort. And they're just emblems that remind us of the cross of Christ and this great redemption that we have. And be prepared to join with us in about 20 minutes or so at the end of the sharing that I have for you this evening. Pastor Tim Delina, the senior pastor of Times Square Church, spoke a powerful message last Sunday morning called a prayer to pray when you face your toughest moment in life. And if you haven't heard that, I really encourage you to go and listen to that message, because it really does minister to you. I listened to it for the second time this morning, and it just, again, spoke to my heart. And I love it when truth is unpacked from the word of God, how it builds your heart, it builds your faith, it builds your understanding. We're a generation, we can't live on just subjective religious experience in this generation any longer. These times are tough, and we have to have a foundation of truth in our heart and in our lives. So you have to hear the word of God. I encourage you to listen to this message, a prayer to pray when you face your toughest moment in life. And as I was listening to it, the Holy Spirit gave me an on-ramp into the flow of the thought that he had given to Pastor Tim. And I'm going to just carry on with his thought this evening. I've got a message from 1 Corinthians 6, verses 19 and 20, and it's called, how to pray when it seems like nothing is going on inside. How to pray when it seems like nothing is going on inside, especially of your life. So, Father, I thank you, God, as we come to your word again this evening. Your word is indeed a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. It's by your word, God, that I'm given understanding. It's by your word that faith arises in each of our hearts, and we're able to believe you for things that we can't see with our natural eye and sometimes can't reason even with our natural mind. But we're able to believe that all things are working together for good, because we do love you and we are called according to your purpose. I pray for an empowerment of the Holy Spirit to come on this frail, physical body and enable me to bring this truth out in a way to your people so that they can comprehend it, embrace it, lay hold of it, oh, God, and be strengthened by it. And, Father, we just thank you so, so much that, God, you're teaching us, Lord, how to survive in these days and thrive because of your presence inside of each of our lives, and we thank you for this in Jesus' name. Amen. How to pray when it seems like nothing is going on inside. 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says these words in verses 19 and 20. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and you are not your own? You were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. You see, it was God's plan from before the foundation of the world to redeem you and I and to indwell us as his temple on the earth. Can you imagine, we are actually living something that the Old Testament saints could only dream about. The anointing of God, that specific anointing of God that empowered people to be more than they could be in their natural state, that anointing that came on Samson, for example, the anointing that obviously was on King David, the anointing that was on prophets of old. The prophet Joel made a statement one day that one day the spirit of God is not going to come down just on a select few, but on all flesh. Everyone who turns to Christ, everyone who turns to God, the Holy Spirit is not just going to be outside of us in some physical cosmos or some building made with men's hands, but the spirit of God is actually going to indwell us, our human body on this earth, and we're going to become the temple of God. So here we are, the fulfillment of a promise that in the Old Testament was only a dream. Can you imagine people reading in those days the book of the prophet Joel talking about an interior presence of God coming upon us in our ordinary humanity and making us extraordinary and giving us the strength that only a select few that they had ever known in their lifetime had ever had come upon them. This was God's plan. Everything in the Old Testament was a type and pattern because this is what God had in his mind from before the creation of the world. He was going to have a bride, a people that was going to be a bride for his son. God in the third person of his Godhead was going to indwell that bride by the power of his Holy Spirit. And Paul, the apostle in Colossians chapter 1, let me just read this to you. He called it a mystery, chapter 1, verse 26 and 27, a mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. You see, we have what they could only dream about. Can you imagine that? You imagine if we were in that place where God is saying there's something coming for a people on a certain day in another time, but it's not for you, not right now, and how disheartening in some measure that would be. But here we are, the recipients in a sense of God, indwelling our physical bodies where we become the physical dwelling place of God on the earth. Now, if that truly sinks in, something happens to you inside. If that truly sinks in, you begin to realize, oh, God, you're not... I don't have to shout to you out in the cosmos to pray to you. I don't have to get all fancy in my speech. You actually, you live with me all day. You walk with me. When I'm brushing my teeth, you're there in my temple. You're still God. When I'm drinking my coffee in the morning, you're God. When I'm on the bus, you're God. When I get up in the morning, you're God inside of me. When I go to bed at night, you're God. I can talk to you anytime I want, and you are doing your work inside of me. Whether I see it, whether I understand it, whether I know it, you are still God. You are still doing a work inside of me that if I could fully comprehend it, I would be on my face just shouting glory. As somebody said in a prayer today, we would just be shouting hallelujah. We wouldn't even know what else to say. Glory to God. That's all we could do is just shout hallelujah. The mystery which has been hidden from ages and generations now revealed to His saints, to them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of the mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, when you look up the word glory in the original text in the Greek, it's doxa, which means there's several, there's a lot of definitions. It goes almost a third of a page. But realistically, if you bring it down to a statement, it means something that catches the eye and draws attention to God. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, make it personal. Christ in you, Christ in me, doing something in me that causes people to catch, it catches their eye and causes them to give glory to God. It causes them to be drawn to God because they see something going on inside this earthly temple that can only be attributed to God. It's not just the accumulation of knowledge, it's the transformation, it's the indwelling power, it's the creative power of God being, in a sense, released inside of our lives, polishing out the rough edges, removing the old foundations, recreating us, in a sense, into the image of God. Yes, we've not attained, you haven't and neither have I. But as Paul the apostle once said, we leave behind those things that need to be left behind and we move forward to this incredible high calling of God in Christ Jesus. You think of the original temple, that physical temple built by King Solomon, given to his father David by the pattern of the Holy Spirit. David gave it to Solomon and Solomon built it. It was a foreshadow. It was a type, in a sense, a physical type on the earth of God, one day coming and indwelling a body, a people. It was no longer going to live in a building. This was an event, it was a one-time thing, but it was so glorious. The scripture says the Queen of Sheba, 1 Kings 10 verses 4 and 5, tells us the Queen of Sheba, she walked in to the temple, this place that God had designed, God had built, God had given the pattern, God had given the tradesmen even inside the skill to do what they were doing. And when she saw how people moved, when she saw, as Paul says, in Him we live and move and have our being. And when she saw just the way people moved in the temple, when she saw how the cupbearers served, when she saw how the attendants gave heed to their duties, when she saw the throne of Solomon, when she just looked around and she knew. She was a queen. You see, she had all of this. She would have had some kind of even temple, I'm sure, in her kingdom. She would have had a palace, she had servants, but she didn't have this. And when she saw it, the scripture says there was no more breath in her. She saw something that this world can't produce. Now, the world can produce a fancy building, but the world cannot imitate the presence of God. You see, the world can make itself look good even through religion, but this world cannot imitate the presence of God inside an earthen vessel. And if there ever was a cry in my life and in your life, it ought to be, O Jesus Christ, Son of God, bring glory to your name through my life. I yield to you, God. I yield the rights to my life. I yield my future, I yield my doubt, I yield my unbelief. I yield my struggles, I yield my failures, I yield my strengths, I yield my victories, I yield it all to you. And I'm asking you, God, rearrange it any way you want and glorify your name. Do something in me that causes me to say, only God could have done this. Only God. When somebody says, as Peter the apostle said, be ready to give an answer for those who ask you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. How much more in this generation, this hopeless, hopeless time in history that we're now entering into, which is, I believe, gonna get darker and darker and darker as time goes on. What a time for the people of God to recognize that we are the temple of God. That God has chosen to dwell on the earth in us and express his glory through us. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Now, as we take a moment just to look at the building of this first temple that David gave the pattern to his son Solomon, and we look at it as a type and pattern of that which was to come, which is you and I. So I want you to look at it that way, just as we're not gonna go through a lot of scripture. I'm just gonna, I encourage you to go to 1 Kings and read chapter 5 and chapter 6 on your own when you have the time. Cuz you're gonna see a lot of, and read it in the context of, God, you were showing a pattern. You had one thing in mind. It wasn't about building a physical building necessarily, as important as that was at the time. You had one thing in mind. You were going to have a church on the earth. You were going to have a people that you were going to indwell. Now, these people of this time couldn't have fully comprehended that. You had them, you gave them a design of a physical building that you were gonna literally have your glory indwell, that physical building. But it was a pattern, it was a type of what you do. It was a pattern of how you establish a life and how you exhibit your glory through it. And so as we read it, what can we learn from it? Well, first of all, when God was about to build this temple where his glory was going to be housed, the first thing that they would have to do realistically is find a place and then clear out the rubble. And that's exactly what happens when you and I come to Christ, thank God. He finds us in our mess. And before the construction even begins, he declares us righteous. He cleanses us. He cleanses us from all iniquity. He clears out, in a sense, the rubble. He destroys its power to occupy the place where he is now going to occupy. And we may not think it's cleared, but it is. Our sin is put away. Our iniquity no longer has the right to govern our lives. The presence of God is now inside of us, and he has now determined to bring glory to his name through us. And so, I see it in my mind's eye, and I've been there, actually. I've been in Israel, in Jerusalem, and I've seen the location of this first temple. But you can see there were a lot of people assigned in this building. It says King Solomon raised up, chapter 5, verse 13, a labor force out of all Israel, and the labor force was 30,000 men. In verse 15, he said he had 70,000 who carried burdens, 80,000 who quarried stone in the mountains. Can you imagine? That's a lot of people. And the Bible tells us that we have a great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us. A great number of people have been involved in the work of God in passing on, as it is, the understanding, the history, all of what needs to happen in your life and in mine, in our generation. And the stone squarers went into the quarries, and they cut out these incredibly huge, absolutely monstrous stones, perfectly rectangular or square, whatever the case was. And they began to bring them in and lay the foundation of this temple. You know, in the New Testament, Paul says we are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. In other words, in Christ, we are being built into a house that is standing on things that have been proven, standing on lives that trusted and were not let down. People have gone through flood and fire and trial and difficulty and mockings and scourgings and shipwrecks and whatever it was. And being part of that foundation that was built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ, they have triumphed. So we are part of a house. We are part of a temple that will not be overcome by the storms of life. We are built on the rock. We are not built on sand. We're not built on just subjective religious experience, but we're built on the truth of God's word, and we're built on the faithfulness of God through past generations. He kept his saints. Yes, they went to jail. Some of them died. Some were torn apart by lions. Some finished out with a relatively easy walk. But nevertheless, whoever it was, he kept all of those that have gone before us because God is faithful. And Jesus Christ said, I'm building my church on this foundation and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Hallelujah. You will not be triumphed over. This is a great promise of God. As frail as you think you are, as flawed as you might think your life is, when you have put yourself on that foundation of trusting in God, you will not be overcome. God has proven himself faithful over the generations. And if tonight, those that are listening online, if you turn to trust in Jesus Christ for your future, if you call upon him and he comes by his Holy Spirit after forgiving you to indwell your life, you will not be overcome by darkness. That is the promise of God. Trial and difficulty will come your way, most likely, but it will not take you down. As the scripture says, you'll go through the flood, it won't drown you. You'll walk through the fire and it won't burn you. And not even the smell of it will get upon you. God promises to be in you and to be with you. We look at the construction of this temple and we see after the stones, cedar wood was brought in and cedar wood covered the whole of the inside of the temple. And to the point where the stones were no longer visible, it was really just all about the cedar wood. The stones were there, but the cedar wood covered, covered, covered the whole of the inside. And it speaks to me about a life that has come to Christ through the cross. And the cross and the victory of the cross and the triumph of God's Son on the cross is at the center core of our life. We trust that the sacrifice that he made for us is sufficient for our sin, for our trial, for our struggles. The inside of the temple is built and covered in the victory of another, the victory of the cross. It's not my victory that gets me to heaven, it's his victory. And it's my trust inside of my heart. As I've been looking at this, I say, God, cover the inside of my heart with the wood of the cross again. Don't let anything else be in there, but a trust in your victory that you took captivity captive. You destroyed the power of hell. You paid the penalty for sin and you broke the cords of iniquity that felt they had a right to govern my life and my future and my eternity. But you gave me the victory. And after the cedar wood had covered the inside of the temple, you think that would be good enough. And after that, all of it was covered with gold on the inside. Can you imagine walking in? So we got stones, then we got cedar wood, then we got gold. Jesus Christ said to the church of Laodicea in Revelation, he says, I counsel you to buy me gold tried in the fire. And so that speaks of the life that's built on the foundation of God's faithfulness in Christ Jesus and how faithful he has been to all who have trusted in him through the generations. It's built on the not personal victory, but the victory of the cross. And then the gold represents the promises of God for the future. It's a heart that says, well, I'm not what I ought to be yet, but I'm going to be different tomorrow than I am today. I'm going to grow in grace my life. I am going to be changed from image to image and glory to glory, even as by the spirit of God. Now, go back to the temple with me just for a moment in Solomon's day. Now, the scripture says inside of that temple there were workers and they were they were skilled workers, obviously given their skill by God himself. And the workers were carving roses and flowers. You see, there's a skilled worker inside of you right now called the spirit of God. And he's anointed some of us to help in his work and carving the little roses in your life and the little cherubims and all of the things when you read it, this carving is going on inside the temple the whole time. And the temple in interior of the temple is being made beautiful. And an incredible thing in verse seven of chapter six, it says in the temple when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built. So this this incredible work is going on in the temple. But it's incredibly quiet at the same time. That would have taken you could just imagine this this this magnificent dwelling place of God is being built. But when you walk in, you don't hear any hammering. There's no jackhammers. There's no chisels. There's no noise. Those those huge stones are just being slid in and put into place. The timber is being attached to the walls. There's people up on scaffolds and they're carving roses and the carving emblems. And the place is is being made so beautiful. It's amazing. What really would have taken the stranger back and walked in is the absence of noise in the place. We in America are uncomfortable with silence. I used to teach cross-cultural communication on the police department before I left, and I remember this this one part of the teaching was that in in traditional traditional Japanese society, if it was a an old school traditional Japanese person, if you ask them a question to show that they respect your question and they respect you as the questioner, a Japanese, a typical older Japanese person, if you ask them a question, will stand there, close their eyes, fold their hands and sit quietly and stand there quietly for maybe two to three minutes just to show you that they respect you. And they respect your question and they are thoughtfully pursuing an answer to your question. In Western society, we are uncomfortable with silence. So what happens when you have a traditional Asian person, Japanese person and a traditional Western American meet in an elevator? The Western American says, so are you enjoying your time here in New York City? The Asian person, a Japanese person closes their eyes and folds their hands. And the American person says, I said, are you enjoying your time here in New York City? Did you hear what I said? Because we are not comfortable with silence. We haven't been raised with silence. We don't understand the purpose of silence. In the Christian church, we made the mistake of thinking that for God to be working, there has to be noise. And God's people all over the Western world have been running for the last two decades to places to shake, to shout, to scream, whatever, everywhere or anywhere that there's noise because we're so unfamiliar with the way God actually works. And we so got alienated from the presence and the spirit of God. Remember in the book of Isaiah, I'm just going to read it to you, please, for time's sake. But in Isaiah chapter 30, here's what God said to his people. And it was in a time of crisis. And he said, for thus says the Lord God, that's Isaiah 30 beginning at verse 15, the Holy One of Israel, in returning in rest, you shall be saved in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. In coming back to me and simply resting in my faithfulness, this would be your strength. Then he says to the people, but you would not. You said, no, we'll flee on horses. He said, therefore, you shall flee. In other words, we got to wait. We know how this should be done. We have a plan. So we're going to go and we're going to do something with our own strength, by our own ingenuity. And he said, no, we'll flee on horses. He said, therefore, you will flee. And they said, we will ride on swift horses. And then he said, therefore, those who pursue you will be swift. A thousand will flee at the threat of one and the threat of five, you shall flee till you are left as a pole on top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill. In other words, if you want to do it your own way, God says, go ahead, do it your own way until there's nowhere else to go but to the high ground, until you have nowhere left to go but back to Calvary again, back to the place of the cross, back to where the real victory has been won. And he says, therefore, the Lord will wait that he may be gracious to you. And therefore, he will be exalted that he may have mercy on you. For the Lord is a God of justice and blessed are all those who wait for him. God says, OK, try it your own way. Do it your own way to find peace in the middle of your storm. Run if you must run here, run there. Do this, do that. I'll wait for you. I'll be I'll be at the place of victory. And when you have nowhere left to go but the cross, I will meet you there and I will show you mercy there. Isn't that amazing? I thank God for that with all my heart. In Psalm 46, I'm going to close with this one thought. The psalmist says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, even though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried in the midst of the sea, though the waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling. God is in the midst of her. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Come behold the works of the Lord who has made desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariot in the fire. Then he says at the end of Psalm 46, and it's speaking of a time of of global upheaval. Really, he says, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. Now, we know there's a final day where he returns and sets everything back in its right order. But until that day, he is exalted through his people. So, the exhortation is, be still, be still. How do I pray when nothing seems to be going on inside? Well, first of all, something is going on inside. You just can't hear it. The carvers are carving. The painters are painting. The cedar boards are being put up. The stones are being slid into place. But you see, you can't hear it because the work of God is done in times of quietness and confidence. The work of God is done in times of stillness. 158 times in the Old Testament, God exhorts us to trust in him. Trust me. He said to Moses, how long will it be before the people trust me for all that I have done? Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Be still. To those that are listening online tonight, be still. Open your heart and invite Jesus Christ, if you've never done it, into your life and admit that you need a savior. Don't try to save yourself. You can't. Invite him in. Say, Jesus, I've sinned against you. I've lived a life that is so different from the life that I should be living. I need you to save me. And then believe that when you pray, he will hear you and answer you and come and dwell your life. By his Holy Spirit, you will become the temple of God. I mean, you're sitting there tonight and you're listening to me and you're a drug addict and you got alcohol in your cupboard and you're depressed and you don't see a way forward. And the thought of you becoming the temple of God is almost absurd to you. But it's still true, whether or not you think it's absurd. He chose to make you his temple. It's not your choice, it's his. You choose whether or not you're going to open the door and let him come in. It's really that simple. In one of the churches in the last book of the Bible, he said, Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone opens, I'll come in. I'll sit down with you. I'll commune with you. And he will begin to do the things that only God can do. And you don't need noise to make it happen. It's a wonderful work and it's never stopped. You just thought it had to be a certain way. Be still, be still. Confess him with your mouth as, say just, you don't have to have it all together. Just say, Jesus, I believe that you died for me and I opened my heart and I confess you with my mouth as my God, my Lord, my Savior. And you're going to have to tell me and show me what that means. You're going to have to teach me. But your part is just to open your heart, open your mouth and be still. It's so hard to learn to be still. We want to always, we want to do like Uzzah. We want to always give God a hand in the praise. We think he should do things a certain way when he says, No, it's not the way I work at all. I've shown you the pattern. It's there. And if you will let me, I'll do a work in you that will take somebody's breath away. I'll do a work in you that somebody will meet you down the road. You know, I had that happen to me. I went back, I was the, I was the keto speaker at my high school reunion, if you can believe that. And I had people, my old friends, they couldn't get over it. They just couldn't, they kept coming by. Now they're all drinking. It's a secular event, right? And they're all saying, I just, and they would swear and apologize. And then they would just say, I can't believe you, you of all people. What happened to you? And then they would come back as they had a little more alcohol in them and say, How do I get this? Amazing, amazing. It's just amazing. I had just been away for a lot of years and I had the privilege of going back. And it was a prayer, actually, that God answered. I did pray one time. Lord, I'd love to go back and tell the people I went to school with about what you've done for me. And he made it away. And there I was standing in a hockey arena with all the people that ever attended my high school. Telling them about Jesus. Amazing, just amazing. Be still. I will trust in God all of my days, though the seas may roll, And mountains leave their place, the hearts of men may fail, Tears on every face, safely I will stand in God's amazing grace. I will trust in God, I will trust in God, Come what may in Christ I say, I will trust in God. I will trust in God, I will trust in God, Come what may in Christ I say, I will trust in God. I'd like to sing that one more time. I will trust in God all of my days, though the seas may roll, And mountains leave their place, the hearts of men may fail, Tears on every face, safely I will stand in God's amazing grace. Sing it with me now. I will trust in God, I will trust in God, Come what may in Christ I say, I will trust in God, I will trust in God, I will trust in God, Come what may in Christ I say, I will trust in God. Take a moment now, just go to your kitchen.