<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Newington Three Angels Church

Prayer

Eric Walsh

New Year’s Day Season of Prayer Part 1

Praying with Power for the New Year Part 2

All right, so open those up and we're gonna go into God's Word Philippians 4 6 and 7 says be careful for nothing But in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving let your requests be known unto God And the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Our talk tonight is Praying with Power in 2025.

This is the key to our church growth and our spiritual development.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity, Lord, to study a word and to learn a bit more about prayer for this new year.

Some of us, Lord, we barely got through last year.

We took a lot of punches, we took a lot of hits.

Lord, there were times we wanted to give up, but Lord, you saw fit to get us to 2025.

And with that, Father God, We now don't wanna just get through 2025.

We wanna thrive, not just survive, but thrive in 2025.

And with that, Lord, now we're asking for an extra outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

As we study your word now, Lord, I pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would lead us into truth.

All right, so before we go into the story, let me just speak on this verse.

It is what makes it so that the Christian in America, when I do talks on how Christianity is good for you, especially for your mental health, this is 1 of the reasons why.

The Christian has the opportunity to pray and leave burdens at the foot of the cross.

We just sang the song, Burdens are Lifted at Calvary.

When we pray, in the sermon last Sabbath, last 2 sermons I did, I quoted from Hebrews chapter 4, Verse 16, that we are to go boldly to the throne of grace.

As Christians, we have an opportunity to employ the great God of the universe in our struggles.

Now, the story I wanna go to, and the reason this is important is verse 7 says, and the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

If you don't have Christ Jesus, you will lose your mind.

The last few weeks, even before we get into this, the last few weeks, I've watched in the news some very troubling things.

The first was the car that drove into the crowd at the Christmas market in Germany.

Last night, New Year's Eve, a car, a terrorist attack is what they're saying it was now, drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street.

I've been in that packed place like this on Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras and at New Year's before, and there's nowhere to run if a car comes in.

1 of them was a student at University of Georgia, which was supposed to play a bowl game tonight, and they had to push it over to tomorrow night because of this tragedy.

And I could go on and on, people being set on fire on the subway.

There's another, somebody got pushed in front of a train on the subway in the last few days.

It is as if we are watching a declination of all sensibility in society.

We are watching morality erode right in front of our eyes.

And when the CEO of 1 of the insurance companies was gunned down in broad daylight, people cheered.

I know how frustrating the insurance companies are.

But if we become a country and a society where murder is the solution to problems, we will go back to the worst in the wild, wild West.

But the Christian has got to stay steadfast.

If you're going to keep your mind, prayer is key.

Which means you can't just pray a superficial prayer.

You must get to a point where your prayers are deep and engaged.

You've got to get to where when you pray, it's as if you are speaking with a friend, but not just any friend, a friend with the resources to deal with what you're going through.

A friend with the resources to reach the folk you want to come to know Christ.

So great example of that is found in 2nd Kings chapter 18.

I mentioned that we would go through Hezekiah's prayers and I mean we may not get to the second 1 tonight because the first 1 is so juicy, but we'll at least mention it.

2 Kings chapter 18, there's a lot of background I wanna lay because I want you to understand the condition and the circumstance that King Hezekiah found himself in.

I've said this before here, the Northern Kingdom of Israel never had a righteous king.

Not 1 king in the Northern Kingdom of Israel was ever righteous.

But Judah, the Southern Kingdom, did have some righteous kings.

Now, these are the enemies of Israel speaking in 2 Kings 18.

Then Rabshakeh, who was asked not to speak in the Jews' language, stood up and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language, and spake, saying, Hear the word of the great king, the great king of the Assyrians, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria.

Thus said the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you out of his hand.

He goes to the people of God, and he begins to plant doubt in 1 of the few righteous kings either kingdom has ever seen.

1 of the reasons prayer is so important is because the devil is going to come to you in 2025 and try and convince you that God cannot do what he says he can do.

Thus said the king, let not Hezekiah deceive you.

Verse 30, neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord.

Everything in our society is designed now.

Almost every TV show, most of the music we listen to that is secular.

All of it is designed to make you not trust in the Lord.

They are literally, we literally on our Spotify playlists and on Netflix viewing, we are listening to Rabshakeh of today, trying to convince you that God cannot be trusted.

The Lord, he says, saying, don't listen to Hezekiah, he says, saying, the Lord will surely deliver us and this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

Hearken not to Hezekiah, for thus said the king of Assyria, make an agreement with me by a present and come out to me and then eat ye every man of his own vine and every 1 of his fig tree and drink ye everyone the waters of his cistern.

When the devil tries to get you, he wants to barter with you that if you follow him, you'll get what you want.

Jesus says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.

You cannot be a Christian and hold on to everything you used to do.

Verse 32, he says, until I come and take you away.

Now, so the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, was going to take them away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil, of oil, olive, olive oil, and of honey, that you may live and not die and hearken not unto Hezekiah when he persuades you saying, the Lord will deliver us.

He, and the devil, this Rabshakeh is still around, still trying to convince you that your plight is so bad God cannot show up Then he starts to give facts Look at what rap checker says has any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

What history describes is the way that they oppressed and beat down people.

It's 1 of the reasons why Nebuchadnezzar is chosen to punish Judah and not Assyria.

What comes to mind after all of my studies on World War II is that these were the Nazis of their day.

If any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria, what they want the Jews to believe here, or the people of Judea to believe is that just like those other gods couldn't deliver, your God won't be able to deliver either.

And let me tell you what the devil will do.

He will always make you forget what good God did for you and constantly remind you of when you feel like it didn't work out well.

And when I did addiction medicine, they talk about the fact that people run tapes in their minds.

What the devil will do is run the tapes of all the times everything went wrong.

He says, we are the gods of Hamath and Arpah?

He starts to make the point, look, these were great kingdoms.

Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Henna, and Iva?

Have they delivered Samaria out of mine hand?

Who are they among all the gods of the countries that have delivered their country out of mine hand that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand But the people held their peace of it when the when the people of Judah the children of Israel heard this these are the last couple tribes left down in the south in the kingdom of Judah and Answered him not a word for the king's command was saying answer him not I have learned 1 of the ways you defeat the devil is to not debate with him And sometimes we want to argue with the devil We want to argue in our situation.

We want to engage the person that hurt us.

Series

Prayer

New Year’s Day Season of Prayer Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Dylan McWilliams Weekend

Our Tactical Advantage, Part 2

1h 4m

The Key to Finishing the Work

Taste and See

1h 8m

This One Thing

42m

GoTential

The Tentmakers Tactical Advantage

33m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 3 - The Church of Acts

1h 18m

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Leadership

Ministry of Attendance

43m

Plenary

The Lamb and the 144,000

1h 9m

Revival Plan-The Elijah Solution

The Elijah Solution - Part 5

1h 1m

Crisis At the Close: Gethsemane

52m

A Day In Anil’s Life

45m

Being an Elder 101

53m

Kickstarter Series '15-'16

First and Second Barcelonians

54m

Sound Doctrine