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The Wake-Up Call
On Prayer: Taking off the Training Wheels and Riding the Bike (Part 3)
00:16:20
We're preparing for another year of sowing! Help keep the Wake-Up Call free for everyone by sponsoring a day. https://seedbed.com/springsowing - - - - - - - In this episode, JD Walt reflects on the significance of prayer as a transformative practice, drawing parallels between learning to ride a bike and developing a prayerful life. He emphasizes the importance of moving beyond the basics of prayer to embrace it as a way of life, akin to riding a more advanced bicycle. JD shares personal anecdotes and insights from scripture, particularly focusing on Ephesians 6:18-20, to illustrate how prayer can evolve from a simple practice into a continuous, life-encompassing dialogue with God. He encourages listeners to explore prayer as an exchange with God, where human wishes are transformed into divine ideas through faith. JD also highlights the upcoming series led by Dan Wilt, titled "All the Things: Everyday Ministry in the Power of the Holy Spirit," expressing excitement for the new dir...
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Foreign. Sower nation. It is Saturday, May 23rd in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. We are coming down to the end of the series. We're coming down to tomorrow's the day of Pentecost and Monday. Dan Wilt will take the helm. He will take the wheel and lead us. I'm so looking forward to the series called all the things every day ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. Gosh, it's going to be so good. And I'll be jumping in every Tuesday for a brief time taco chips and salsa moment with Dan talking about that content. So I'm looking forward to that. But please enjoy and bless Dan. Pray for the series this coming. Well, it's Saturday and we've got good meeting time here with Jesus. He's here. He's ready. Let's dive in. Wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry is going to be the part three of three on prayer, taking off the training wheels and riding the bike. We're going to stay with Our text, Ephesians 6, 1820, the closing call to action of Paul on prayer. Hear now the word of the Lord and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. The word of the Lord. I'll just leave it right there. So simple, so clear and just so easy to rush right past it. That's why we've just kind of camped out here for a few days now. Consider this. The only thing better than riding a bike without training wheels is riding a better bike without training wheels. About a year after the training wheels came off, my mom and one of her friends arrived back at our house after a short trip out of town with a huge surprise. They had bought me and my friend Eddie brand new bikes. But these were no ordinary bicycles. They were Yamaha bicycles. They were dirt bikes. And yes, they had everything but motors. They weren't motorcycles. They had an amazing padded seat and super grips and pads on the handlebars and they had shock absorbers on the front and the back wheels. I'll never for how we took off like Evel Knievel, like we owned the neighborhood, jumping every ditch in sight like it was the Snake River Canyon. You see, my life ever since has been a series of ever improving new bicycles with ever advancing feature sets. And I'm finding it fascinating to think about prayer through this lens. I'd love to see how you might push this analogy. Prayer begins as a practice, but it wills to become an entire way of life. It's why Paul in other places will say, pray without ceasing. Okay. He's not meaning stay in your prayer room all the time. He's meaning learn to walk and move and live your life in a way of abiding prayer with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, let's remember the Bible word for prayer is prashu kamahi. Prashu kamahi. That, that, that alone just kind of catapults us out of the sort of tired, cliched. Yeah, I get it. Pray. I know I need to pray more. And, and it takes us into a new universe of, of learning and of experimentation. Prashu kamahi. I don't know much about that and remember its literal meaning to exchange. It means something like to interact with God by exchanging human wishes for divine ideas through an impartation of faith. Yeah. Oswald Chambers, I love the way he puts it. He says, prayer does not prepare us for the greater work. Prayer is the greater work. I think you heard me say probably yesterday. This the great quote. You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you will never do more than pray until you have prayed. I'll close the short miniseries on prayer with a word from Thomas Merton. Father Lewis from the Abbey of Gethsemane in Trappist, Kentucky, a place I used to love to visit back when I lived in Kentucky. This, this word still stirs me decades after first reading. It comes from his book Contemplation in a World of Action. He says prayer and meditation have an important part to play in opening up new ways and new horizons. If our prayer is the expression of a deep and grace inspired desire for newness of life and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar and safe, God will act in us and through us to renew the church by preparing in prayer what we cannot yet imagine or understand, in this way, our prayer and faith today will be oriented toward the future, which we may ourselves never fully see realized on earth. But the generations coming behind us take the baton and they see. They reap where we've sown. They gather where we've scattered. Friends, that's a bicycle. I want to learn to ride. And something tells me the same is true for you. What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard and what no human mind has conceived. The things God has prepared for those who love him. These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. And now let's pray. God our Father, how we thank you for your son Jesus and Lord Jesus keep teaching us to pray day by day. Take us to new places, open up new horizons. Bring your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, as our lives become themselves your temples, your house of prayer. We love you and we are eager to see and hear and conceive of all the things you have prepared for us. Come Holy Spirit, and lead the way. We're praying in Jesus name. Amen. Journal prompts so how has, how is your understanding and conception of prayer growing? How might prayer become a more experimental practice and way of life for you? And three, how are you growing from a prayer life in into a life of prayer? Well, we're going to sing Got a Simple song today. It's day of Pentecost tomorrow. Remember we're in that 10 day countdown from the day of ascension to the day of Pentecost. And I'll be with us tomorrow. We've the vote, the, the survey. There's, there's another option there in the PS today for you to take that survey. I wish you would because the most important thing I want to know is what God's been in your life through this Ephesians journey. It's very important to me to, to see this feedback and you know we're taking the vote on Sundays or at least the opinion poll and we, we've gotten a lot of feedback on that and I'll say more about it tomorrow. We'll be, we'll be with you tomorrow on the day of Pentecost for another short one. But today I don't know, we're just going to sing a song to the Holy Spirit. We're going to sing Spirit of the Living God fall afresh on me. Let me look it up in our hymnal Spirit of the Living God. It's been good to have dad on this series, guys. I've so appreciated all those notes you all wrote him. God. That means so much number 299. 299 in our seed bed handle. Our great Redeemer's praise. You probably know this one. We'll sing it here in just a second. 299. But I want to thank you for, for reaching out to Dad. I want to thank all of you Who've given to the Spring Sowing campaign to help sponsor a day of the wake up call. The email, the. The entry, the. The podcast, the YouTube, the book, the. The putting a new book in a new reader's hands at the ten dollar level. I mean, thank you all. Can you hear me? Can you feel me? I appreciate you all giving to this. We do this at great, great expense but at no cost to our readers. And it's love. It's your love that helps it go forward. So thank you. And yeah, what else can I remind you of today? The survey, the giving. The. I want to. I want to invite you to come to new room this fall. We're going to be in Montgomery, Alabama another year. It's right at the end of September, very first of October. Great stuff going on there. I want to remind you of the conversation. It's on the YouTube, the podcast and the podcast platforms I had recently released. This week with Lou Ann Riley, who's one of our new seedbed authors, is releasing a summer, I mean not summer, but a women's Bible study. It's actually out but now it's called Growing Up Faith Lessons from the Book of James. And we had such a great conversation together and you can listen to that. She's going to be preacher, main stage speaker at New Room conference. We're looking forward to that this fall. All right, well, I'm gonna let you out of class a little bit early today. I've said that a lot of times and not. Not delivered on it. I'm gonna do it today, but. You ready to sing? Let's just deep breath. We're going to breathe in the spirit. We're going to breathe out the song. Breathe in the spirit. Breathe out prayer. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Let's just keep. Let's just pray it now. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Amen. Just encourage you to stay with that a little bit longer today and just welcome the Holy Spirit to carve new channels of grace and mercy becoming prayer in your life. You are a house of prayer, okay? That's what you are. It's what you do because it's what you are. And we're gonna grow. We got great things ahead, friends. I'm glad to be walking this way with you. And for The Awakening, I'm J.D. walt, and I'll see you on the field, Sam.