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Give Time To Prayer, Part Three | Nancy Dufresne | Jesus the Healer Broadcast
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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message.
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As I said last night, God had begun dealing with me about this one word for these services, and that's this word time. That for us to move into the fullness of what God has for us, it's going to take time on our parts, time in the word, time, time in prayer, time in the Spirit. And now don't misunderstand me when I talk about that, that time does not necessarily mean secluded time that you have to be off in a prayer closet, so to speak, or by yourself. We have to learn. Yes, there are times that we go alongside with God, but we have to learn how to. When we're out among daily duties and responsibilities, that we still learn how to keep our hearts turned toward God. So that if, if I could say this, we don't break spiritual stride, we still stay in contact with the Father all throughout the day that we learn to turn our time into time with him, even when we're in the midst of duties. You know, when I think about somebody, the testimony of Smith Wigglesworth's life. Now think of him. Many of you would know of him. He was an English preacher whose ministry was so strong a faith healing, miracle ministry in the early half of the 1900s. And he made it a practice that all throughout the day he would feed on the Word. He would feed on the word for 30 minutes, pray for 30 minutes, feed on the word for 30 minutes, pray for thirty minutes. And you say, well, yeah, but Pastor Nancy, I have a job. Well, you know, before he was supposed he was in the full time ministry, he had a plumbing business and he had learned how to go about his daily responsibilities with his heart turned toward God. And I tell you, that takes practice and it takes a little bit of discipline on our part to turn our hearts toward God. So this is something that we have to take time to become skillful in. Because the more time we give to the things of the Spirit, the more time we give to prayer, the more we're going to develop in these things. The less time we give, the slower we're going to develop. And I tell you, when this last day, we don't have time to face these days undeveloped, we're going to have to develop ourselves. Then some people get this idea that there are certain people that are just called to prayer. But I want you to know and understand there's nothing in the Word that states that the Bible says that some are called to be apostles. Some are called to be prophets. Some are called, you know, evangelists, pastors and teachers. We never see that word in connection with prayer. What we do see is how the disciples gave themselves to prayer. So it's not a call to prayer. It's a giving of ourselves to prayer. And you can look at somebody who maybe has become very skillful and effective in prayer and say, well, they just have a special anointing for prayer. Or, you know, they have a special call to prayer. And that's not true. If someone is developed and skillful in prayer, it's for one reason. They gave themselves to it. And in giving themselves to it, they developed beyond someone else who didn't give time to it. So this is the thing that has been standing out to me about us giving time to developing our prayer life, time to spend in the word, time to develop our spiritual walk. One of the greatest distractions that the devil will use against the development of our spiritual lives and our prayer lives is this word distractions. This is one of the greatest strategies the enemy will use against us. Distractions eat up our time, the time we need to use to be developing spiritually. So Jesus describes in one account, he gives a parable about, there's four different kinds of ground, four different kinds of soil. And my husband used to say, four different kinds of dirt. And that's talking really about the soil of people's lives. And in the four kinds of ground spoken about, only one kind of ground of the four ever produced any fruit. And that ground produced 30, 60, and 100 fold. But the other three types of ground didn't produce any fruit. I wanted to read a passage from there in Mark 4, 18 and 19. And I'm going to read out of the Amplified translation. It says, and the ones sown among talking about the sower sows the word. The sower came out to sow seeds. And the seed sown among the thorns are those who hear the word. Then the cares and the anxieties of the world. And listen to this. And the distractions of the age and the pleasure and delight and false glamour and deceitfulness of riches, and the craving and passionate desire for other things creep in, and they choke and suffocate the word and it becomes fruitless. So notice, the word can be sown and that word can become fruitless if we don't tend to it right. But I wanted us to see this phrase. The distractions of the age is one of the things that can make us unproductive and unfruitful. In the spiritual life. Notice in this passage that I just read, the devil isn't mentioned. What's mentioned are the devices that he will use. And one of the main devices he uses is the distractions of the age. So notice the wording, distractions of the age, giving us the idea that every age has its own distractions. You know, before we had some of the modern day conveniences, just the maintenance of daily life was so difficult. I mean, to travel anywhere. I mean, people traveled by wagon or stagecoach, you know, or by horseback or by foot. The travel time was so long without the modern convenience. That was a distraction of that age, of how much time it took to travel. And then talk about ladies just doing the laundry. I mean, can you imagine before the washing machine. Listen, I can imagine because my mother used that old wringer washer for years, the whole time we were growing up. So I know the time involved in that and the time involved in taking the laundry out to, to hang it up to dry, just the maintenance of that. What about producing your own food? I mean, years ago and generations ago, they grew their own food or they had to go out and hunt their own food and then they had to kill it. And then can you imagine the preparation time on that's modern day. Ladies can rarely even conceive of that. But those were distractions. They were the necessities. But they were distractions that belonged to that age that really could consume someone's time if they let it. Then what about this? Now that we have all these conveniences that are huge time savers for us, our time is eaten up with distractions that are typical to this age. I mean, even though we have all these modern conveniences, there's other kinds of distractions that previous generations didn't have to deal with. I want to, you know, go with me, if you would. Let's go to Luke chapter 10. I want us to read there in Luke chapter 10, verse 38, and I'm going to read out of the amplified and we're going to read verses 38 through 42. It reads, now while they were on their way, it occurred that Jesus entered a certain village and a woman named Martha received and welcomed him into her house. So notice this woman. She made a place for Jesus in her home. She made it right room for him to come and utilize her home for his purposes. So we know this. She had a love and she had a regard for Jesus. She had a love for the Word. She had a love and a regard for what he brought. And verse 39 says and she had a sister named Mary who seated herself at the Lord's feet and was listening to his teaching. But Martha, and the Amplified says she was overly occupied and too busy, was distracted with much serving. And she came up to the Lord and said, lord, is it nothing to you that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me, to lend a hand and do her part along with me. But the Lord replied to her by saying, martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. There is need of only one or but a few things. Mary has chosen the good portion, that which is to her advantage, which shall not be taken away from her. So notice, I mean, Martha has invited Jesus, but if you invited Jesus in, you got a crowd of people, too, because everywhere he went, there were people following him. So it wasn't just Jesus in her house. It was people who wanted to sit under his ministry, hear what his words were and listen to his teaching. They would crowd in that house. And so Martha is so mindful of being this wonderful hostess. I mean, this is her home, and she's hosting this precious man of God. And she wants to put, so to speak, her best foot forward. And we understand that. But she needs help in performing the tasks of hosting all these people. So she's trying to get Mary's attention. And Mary won't even respond to her. And so notice what Martha does. She comes almost, if I could say this, frustrated with Jesus. And she's saying, don't you even care that my sister's not even helping me? You know, this is what happens when people are distracted with the wrong things. They get frustrated with people who are tending to the right things, and they get frustrated that you're not as frustrated as they are. And that's what Martha came. She was, if I could say, displeased that Jesus was not seeing her predicament and helping her. And so she was trying to tell out on Mary, mary's not helping. But it came back and said, mary's not the problem, Martha, you're the problem. How many times have we gone to God and said, God, I mean, help me out with this. I mean, I'm doing all I know to do. You need to deal with this person, or you need to deal with my husband, you need to deal with my wife. And God turns around and points at you and says, hey, you're the one that's going to need to adjust something. And that's what Jesus did. So listen, Jesus is ministering in Martha's house, and she's not even in the same room listening. She's in the kitchen area preparing. And so, you know, what is she doing? She's mislabeling what is important. And if we're not careful, we can mislabel what's important. And we can neglect this divine privilege of prayer, the divine privilege of having fellowship with our Father because we are so distracted and our time is being eaten up with things that we call important. That's really not so important to her. Being hostess was more important than listening to what Jesus was saying. My goodness, that's a dangerous approach to take. To think that your job is more important than going to church to hear what God would say to you and your family. That's a dangerous approach and a dangerous mindset to have. Being a gracious hostess and being good at it's important. I mean, I don't diminish that. But we have to remember this. Jesus was the one serving up the real food that day. I mean, Martha was trying to host everyone and be a gracious hostess, but I mean, nobody could serve up what Jesus was serving up. And Martha was completely missing this divine meal that was being served in her house because she was distracted with what she thought was important, that wasn't important. So you see this. She wasn't eating what he was serving because she was thinking wrong, thinking that what she was doing was more important than what he was doing. Now we have to know this. Things that we have going on in our life may be important, but nothing is as important as what God is doing in the earth. You know, that's what it says in Matthew, chapter 6, verse 33, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. So many people so much of the time are seeking things, things to be added to them. And in the seeking, they're not giving proper time to what God is, what God is doing and what God calls calls important. So this is exactly the situation that we find Martha in. She was thinking that what Jesus was doing was not as important as what she was doing in the kitchen. And it's so easy to fall into the flow of responsibilities in the natural that pull at you that you don't take the time to set it aside. So this is something that we have to guard against, is that distractions that look legitimate. I mean, it was a legitimate thing to be a hostess, but it no longer is as legitimate when Jesus is there serving up the meal. And so this is what she was missing. And Jesus said to her in verse 41, he said, Martha, Martha. I tell you what, you know you're in trouble when he doubles up on your name. Martha, Martha. Why did he say her name twice? Probably to get her attention. I mean, anytime when my children were growing up and I had to say their name to them more than once, it's because they weren't listening. I mean, their body could be standing right in front of you, but their mind is off on something else. And basically this is what we see, that Jesus doubled up on her name. He had to call her name twice because although her body was there, her mind was racing with all of her duties as a hostess and he had to grab her attention. He said, martha, Martha. He said, you are anxious and troubled about many things. He nailed her that day. She just thought or she just presented it like she had one problem and that was marriage. Not helping. But Jesus saw the whole picture of her life and he said, the root of it is that you're troubled about many things. So what is it that we see? Notice this is not a one time problem with Martha. She had allowed a bad habit of being distracted by the unimportant into her life. So when the important showed up, she gave way to the habit instead of giving way to what was important. She was so used to tending to things that didn't have the same weight to them. They didn't matter the same. So the bad habit of allowing distractions was affecting her spiritual life and her spiritual development because she wasn't even sitting and listening to what Jesus was saying. Now notice what Mary did. Of course, she chose not to be distracted even by a sister who was pressing on her to come help. You don't even know. We don't even know what it might have looked like that day in Martha's house. If Martha was coming up to Mary while she's sitting at Jesus feet and saying, you need to come help me. Or was she passing that information down the road to everybody that was sitting around? Mary, come tell her to help me. You don't know if she's behind Jesus trying to get Martha, trying to get Mary's attention. You don't know. But we know this. Mary would not yield to distractions because to her, what Jesus was serving up was more important than anything else that was pressing on her. This is a discipline that we have to put in place if we're going to give proper time to our spiritual life, to our prayer life, to the development of our spiritual life. Look at this. How many times have people been in a setting where Jesus was speaking to them through their passing. People sitting in a church service and they're sitting there listening to their pastor, so to speak, or at least their body is there, but their mind is somewhere else, and they're missing what their pastor is serving because they're distracted in their mind. They're undisciplined in their mind. How many today, when we talk about the distractions of the age, let's talk about this one. Sitting in church, using a device, going texting a friend, looking at emails, surfing the web, shopping online, playing video games during a church service, you talk about a distraction of the age. You talk about something that will hinder spiritual growth and development because people will pull out these devices and they kind of make it look like, well, I'm reading my Bible. Because so many people may be reading their Bible on their phone or on their iPad, but you can tell that when they've got one finger going and they're just. You can tell when they're texting something to somebody. You can tell as a preacher, I mean, how many times I look out and I go, oh, they're not even listening. Their body's here. But they're distracted. Distractions will cost us. Distractions are expensive because we will miss hearing what we need to hear when we don't hear. Deal with distractions. A bad habit of distractions, being distracted will cost us more than we ever really realize. My remedy for that, if that catches you, if you realize, hey, Pastor Nancy, you know, I'm sitting there, I'm reading the Bible, then all of a sudden a text pops up and I go there, then I would just encourage you, maybe you need to be reading the Bible out of a book and not on a device. If a device is a distraction is something that is something you're not very good at, you know, not being distracted by, then put your device away and pull out the Bible. Because distractions are expensive. They will cost you so, so much. I remember years ago, I was going to a church to preach. They had invited me to come, and I had said to God, I said, God, you know, I'm glad to go preach, but I know this, that this, the church, they have a little bit different flow than we have. They emphasize things differently. And I'm not sure how my ministry will be received there, because I understand, you know, people have different ways or emphasis in their ministry. And so God spoke to me and said, I want you to go there. And he told me what to preach on. He said, because I need you to warn the pastor if he does not Change the direction he's going in his ministry. He will not live out the length of his life. Well, God did not want me to privately go and talk to the man. God told me what sermon to go and preach that would hold the answer for that pastor. So, I mean, I'm there on an assignment that's sobering. I'm there, of course, to feed the sheep that are in the service. But there is a special purpose why God sent me to that church. And so I'm preaching along and I'm building up to some of the things that this pastor needs to hear to turn his life, to turn his thinking, to turn his mind, ministry in a different direction of what God wanted me to say to him. And so I'm laying the groundwork and laying the foundation so I can say some of these very sobering, weighty statements to him that will be a rescue to him. And here I am. I take maybe 20 minutes or so to build up to it. I'm getting ready to say the things that this pastor needs to hear. And right then, he turns and calls for, like, an usher to come to him. And he's given him instructions about something in the building. And I'm going, oh, my goodness, no, no, no. You can't be missing this. You've got to hear this, because your life depends on it. Your future depends on it. And so I'm watching him carry on a conversation with his usher during the service. And so you say, well, what did you do? Well, I just kind of, if I could say this, I just kind of treaded water for a moment to try to give him time. I just kind of did some filler, so to speak, to try to give him time to get done. And then I had to go back and restate some things and state things all over. He had no idea that he was getting ready to miss the rescue for his life. The devil will love to send an undisciplined thought life and send all kinds of distractions your way during a service so that you miss the answer for your family, so that you miss the answer for your finances, so that you miss the answer for your health. The devil will use just these slight little things so that you miss what God is saying to you. I tell you, it is so important that we have to learn to recognize that and put our foot to the neck of that. This is really what Martha got rebuked about. She did not know, and she didn't recognize that she was allowing her life to be stolen from that There was a wealth of A meal that Jesus was serving in her house. And she wasn't getting any of it because she was. She thought just because she was present, she was fulfilling her obligation. So many times people think, well, I'm present in the church service. And so they think that they're developing spiritually. But you know what? If our faith isn't growing, if our prayer life isn't developing, if our skill in the Word is not developing, our spiritual life is not developing. And so we have to realize that there are things that the devil will use, and then he'll use just things around us, just everyday things. So distractions will come. But I tell you this, we don't have to yield to those distractions. We can make adjustments in our life and recognize distractions and get rid of them. I mean, we need to pay attention. Wait a minute. What distracts me? What do I allow my attention to go to? And then you need to pay attention to that. And I tell you, the Lord will help us with it if we'll ask him to. Because these distractions not only rob us of answers, they rob us of time that we need to be spending with the Word, spending time with the Father, spending time sowing to our spiritual life and developing skill. There are so many natural things that can come up in a home, in a life, in a business, in a family that distracts us. We may have to step back from some really fun family gatherings and social gatherings so that we give appropriate time to spiritual things. Listen, God wants us to have a social life. He wants us to have time with our family and recreation time, but he wants us to have an appropriate measure of it. It's when we have an inappropriate measure of it that now it's going to start robbing and hindering our spiritual life. You know, Kathryn, she had a tremendous healing ministry back in the 1960s and 70s. And she said this. She says, I cannot live my life like other women. Others can go and shop and have a social life. And she says, I'm recognizing that the outcome of people's lives are depending on me spending time with God and my fellowship with God. She had to prepare herself to minister to the people. She realized that if she was going to be someone that God could use, that she was going to have to conduct herself differently than the average person did, you know, because sometimes these distractions can be perfectly legitimate activities. But even the legitimate activities we can overindulge in. And when we overindulge in them, they cost us much. You know, there are some families that they spend every weekend. I mean, they work during the week, but they spend every weekend going and doing recreational things. I mean, every weekend is that. And they train their family in the recreational life more than in the spiritual life. That will end up costing something. So we have to realize that how we are training our children and our families. What are we training them in? Are we. Are we training them to be distracted by the unimportant or the overindulgence of that which is unimportant? So we have to make sure that our prayer life isn't suffering our life in the Word. Because I tell you, there's going to come a day when we need our faith to work. There's going to come a day when we need to be effective in prayer, when we need to have a skill in prayer. And we have to make sure that our hobbies are not what we're exchanging our divine power for. Because I tell you, no hobby and no pastime is as important as operating in the power of God. Listen, I want to pray with you. Father, we're so grateful for the time that we get to spend together. We judge ourselves right in the middle of this sermon. We take this time to judge ourself and we ask you, show us. Show us things that need to be changed. Show us things that need to be adjusted. Father, we repent for times that we have overindulged in the natural, overindulged in the unimportant, and it's cost us. And Father, we want to go on and we want to be used the way you want to use us. Just right here in the middle of this service, we check ourselves. We judge ourselves because we want to be pleasing to you and we want to fulfill what yout have for our lives. So we purpose to give the time to the joy of our fellowship with youh and the joy in the Word Hallelujah. So I tell you, those things will bless us if we'll listen to them. Amen.
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