A (3:36)

That's so good. Habit stacking. Write that down so good. I'm gonna give you an opportunity to process and personalize that real fast. What is a habit that you do that you're gonna challenge yourself to? Habit stack prayer right after that and just give you a few seconds, whatever that might be, whether it's starting your car. Every time you start your car, you're gonna say a prayer. Angela mentioned a stop sign. If you're like, oh my goodness, my kids are in the car, we say, hey, guys, every time we see a stop sign and we're stopped here, we're going to pray, bring them along in the journey. So I'm going to give you about 10 seconds to maybe identify a quick habit that you could. That you already do, that you can habit stack the habit of prayer. So good. Okay, Iman, I'm going to have you answer the question. Why is prayer an effective weapon against the forces of darkness? Come on. Boldness.

C (4:43)

Honestly, when I think about this scripture, I think about the value and the importance of having history with God. When you pray and you are in a conversation with God and you have remembered his faithfulness throughout your life, throughout the generations, you've seen God bring breakthroughs. Then when you continue to pray and believe him for things that are standing in front of you, I'm thinking about David, right? He's facing Goliath and he's not worried about Goliath the same way that others are around him. This force of darkness that's coming and spirit spewing threats and is saying all the ways that he's going to destroy the people of Israel. And David sees this figure of darkness, but he's not overcome by Fear because he has history with God. He's seen God deliver him from the bear, from the lion. And so he's able to come up against that darkness because of that history and that faith and that personal understanding of who God is. And so I just. I believe that when we pray according to God's word and we pray His Word out, that His Word has the final say. And so as we see darkness, we understand that we're children of light. And so when we're praying His Word and we're praying light into dark situations first, we know that when we pray according to his will, he hears us. And we also know that light overcomes darkness. Darkness doesn't overcome light. And so if we're focused on who God is and what His Word has to say, we can trust that His Word will have the final say. And we don't have to be in fear. We might be, you know, concerned about darkness. And we may be very aware. I think we're in a season where we're very aware. Our eyes are open, our hearts are sensitive to what God is doing. And there is this opportunity to respond to what we see not as feeling threatened, but recognizing that we are carriers of light in a dark world. And when we pray with that light, we can trust that God will allow the darkness to be removed and to back up.

A (6:58)

Amen. So good. So good. Go ahead, Debbie. Say what you.

D (7:03)

Well, James, I took the next one. James 5:16, says the effectual fervent prayers of a righteous man or woman. They avail much. He made it very clear to us, as Pastor Iman said, when we line up with His Word and His truth, he's encouraging us. Hey, they avail much greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. He gave you that power and authority as a believer in Christ to use the name of Jesus, which is greater than any other name. And I think sometimes we just have to stay renewed in that, especially when you're walking through a testing or a trial to recognize even though my flesh may feel weak, I am strong on the inside because the resurrection life of Christ is in me. I've got the power and authority through the name of Jesus. And I'm just going to knock that enemy right upside the head with the Word of God because that Word will not return void in Jesus name.

A (8:00)

So good you mentioned praying the word of God. Ladies, what do you have to say about praying just prayers? You know, because sometimes you move in a place where you're just praying prayers, and then sometimes you're praying Scriptures. So what do you have to say about what that looks like in your prayer life?

C (8:23)

I think for me, it's important to pray the Word of God over specific situations that align with what I'm facing or walking through. So let's say when I was going through, you know, my health battle years ago, I found specific scriptures about healing. I found specific scriptures about my voice. When my son a couple years ago got an injury, I found a specific score scripture about bones and injuries. And I begin to pray that over my son. And so when we pray the Word of God, this is something I've been talking about with some of my college students because I started asking them, like, do you feel comfortable and confident in praying? Because we pray before every class at the very beginning. And I noticed it wasn't until towards the end of the year that they were kind of like, okay, I'm willing to pray for somebody else. And I began to tell them, if you're not sure what to pray, pray, pray the Word of God. Pray what His Word says. But you have to know His Word in order to pray His Word. So if you don't know it, then you begin to search and find specific scriptures to pray. If. If you're believing God for your children to get saved, find the scriptures on that. If you're believing God for provision, find the scripture on that. Because when you pray God's Word, you're praying God's will and he hears you and he's faithful to perform His Word.

A (9:43)

He.

C (9:43)

His Word never returns. Void. It may not return the way we want it when we want it, but it will return because God's faithful to His Word. I don't know. It's something that's empowered me. And I think generationally, both my grandmothers and my mother were the type. And probably, if you're like me, just put your hand like this. Where you had grandmothers or mothers who had prayer scriptures and healing papers all up in their Bible and they just handed it over to you or you saw it sitting on the kitchen table. Yep. And I can think about that legacy of prayer over me or my family or different situation. It was scripture. It wasn't feeling or I hope my child this. It was according to the word of God, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I believe that God has been so gracious to show us that example in this generation. We can't lose it. We can't leave that behind. It can't be history or old school to pray scriptures over our families and over ourselves. And so I think it's Important.

A (10:45)

It's so good because when we pray, I think it's important if you didn't write it down, that when you pray God's Word, you pray God's will. And when you're praying God's will, what it does, if God's Word is alive, which it is, then His Word, when we're praying it out loud, we are putting out seeds into the atmosphere. We're putting seeds into our heart. And what we're doing is we're building faith. We're building faith because if it's God's will, then we have faith to believe that it can and will happen because His Word and His will is alive first.

D (11:25)

John 5, 14 and 15 says, it gives us that confidence that comes from we know we're praying in according to God's will. Then we know that he hears us. Then we know that he will answer our prayer. And so those sometimes that I would just water my heart, my soul with what his truth says, knowing he's hearing me and he's going to fulfill that. That Word, as we said, what does that mean? It's not going to return to him void. What it means is that prayer which is alive, the word of God is alive. It's not going to fall dead. It's going to perform amplified. Says the precise plan purpose that God destined it for, too. So I have a confidence when I speak that word, angels are looking. They say the scripture says to perform the Word of God. So when I give the angels something to work with, they're like, she's speaking the word. We got to go do this. So you just line up with His Word and He will manifest it for you and it won't turn back to him without performing what he caused it to do.

A (12:24)

So good. So I love how we talked about when there's specific. Your advice on when there's specific situations and circumstances, you find a scripture and you speak that out. Angela, if you could touch on moments in your life where it didn't look as polished as far as I'm going to go find a scripture, Philippians 4:13. But prayers that look like crying out to God, prayers that just come from a place of desperation. What does that look like for you? And how have you seen God meet you in those moments?

C (13:01)

Wow.

B (13:03)

Man. I think about so many verses in Scripture, even though we're talking about when you just don't know about Scripture, but just I think about Hannah and how they literally thought this woman is drunk, like she's out of her mind. And how, how must she have looked, she must have looked so desperate. And I think in my life, what's so, so, so reassuring is that the Word says that when we don't know what to pray, that the Spirit himself intercedes for us. And that is a verse that has carried me. I think in times when there are times when we truly don't know what to pray, when we pour through the Scriptures and when we ask others and we're just at our last and we have nothing left to pray. And I think that assurance that he is interceding for us on our behalf, and then that's also such a beautiful time to be able to pray in the Spirit and to be able to say, I don't know what to pray. I don't know how to pray. But, but I also know there's two ways I can pray. The perfect will of God, it's through Scripture and it's through praying in the Spirit.

A (14:14)

Amen. You know, I think God has honored my desires so many times when I've just allowed my voice to express what I feel is in my spirit and, or what's going on in the natural. I mean, there were. There's been so many moments where, I mean, we, I do, I pray in tongues. And we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But just pouring out my knowing that God is. The scriptures are full of the character of God, that he listens to our cries for help. He listens to. He leans into the tears, he leans into the groanings of our heart. I mean, have you ever just not known what to pray? And maybe you're not even praying in the Spirit, but you just cry out to God that you need him. You know, you just admit your dependence on him. You say, I think any or anytime, you know, anytime you say God, he's, hey, I'm here. Like, he is tuned in to your request to bring your father God into a situation. And that might look polished with scripture. It might look. Some of you have more of a structured prayer life. Some of you, it might be more raw. I think there are times where we really, we really need both. I think our prayer life needs to look like scriptured and it needs to have the scriptures. It needs to have the structure. Praying the prayer of Jabez, that's a great structure. It's in the Bible. Praying the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6, Matthew 6, 9 through 13, Father, not my will, but your will be done. That's a, that's a, that could be a structured scriptured prayer prayer. And then through the structured scriptured prayer. I don't know how many times where I'll be reading it. And I'm thinking, oh, let your will be done. And then you start praying out, God, not my will, but your will be done. Why? Because you know what's best for me. And then that moves into a raw personalization of a scripture. And so I think also there's those moments where you're battling just emotions and you're dealing with a lot of sadness, like, and heaviness. And we're going to talk about that up here before we take it to the table. As far as this week, right. It's been. Or these last few weeks, it's been heavy because of what's going on in the world. Maybe some of your own personal lives, you have some heavy situations going on. I mean, there's just moments in our life where we don't know what to pray, and we start praying in the Spirit. And then there's other times we look up scripture and there's other times where we just say, God, I need you. What is going on? Like, we serve a God that we could cry out to him and give expression to what's being stirred in the spirit. God, why am I so heavy? Lord, help me move past this sadness. Lord, help me. Like, that may not be a specific Matthew 6, 9, but at the same time, it is your heart being poured out to God. And I think a solid deepened prayer life is all of those things exist. All of those things exist. Because if we think we just need a scripture to pray out, then I think we'll miss opportunities where we're just in our raw selves crying out to God. I mean, we would call a friend where I'd be like, hey, Ang, like, I need to cry out to you, man. Your relationship with God shifts when you cry out. I would cry out to Angela, I'd cry out to God. And then it can't just be a whole lot of words and emotions and crying out in your. In your rawness. But God wants us to pray with understanding, and we get understanding with the word of God. And he also. It's very plain in scripture. And we talked about that on here. It says, what's your favorite scripture? I'll let Pastor Debbie share the scripture that she wanted to share because it moves us into the other question as far as what is the difference between being filled with the Holy Spirit, Spirit and the evidence of speaking in tongues? Because we're filled with the Holy Spirit when we're born again. But then there's also a gift of tongues. And I think this. I mean, even just this, I don't know how people. I'm not going to judge anybody who doesn't have that gift in this room. I'm just saying I don't know how to live without my personal prayer language. There are so many things in my family. There's so many things in parenting, there's so many things in marriage. There's so many things that happen out in the world. There's so much to myself that I don't fully understand. The Bible says we don't know what to pray. We pray in the spirit, we pray in tongues, and we ask God for revelation knowledge. These last two weeks, obviously, the heaviness we were talking about how when we feel heaviness, it's an invitation to pray. When you sense heaviness, I want to tell you, don't just think everybody is feeling it. Could it be that is an invitation from your heavenly Father to what we talked about, to pray so that we can experience the gift to be effective, so we can experience the effective weapon of prayer. But so many of us, we wait to understand the way that we're feeling before we act. Man, if you feel sad, if you feel heavy, it is. I believe it's in the heaviness that God births the intercessors. I'm just telling you, those who listen and lean in. I'm thinking about these last two weeks personally, and then I'll let Pastor Debbie talk about that scripture and the difference of that. You know, these last two weeks, I mean, as soon as we heard about the assassination, man, I began to pray. And through the prayers, I began to weep. And I don't believe it was just because of my sadness. I believe it was tears from heaven. I believe it was the heart of God so many times in my life. But if we can just talk about right now in these last few weeks, just been praying in the Spirit, in the spirit. And through that, things would come to my mind, pictures would come to my mind. I'd feel like I'd hear things from God. I feel like, wow, how would I know to pray that out in the. In my known language? How would I even know? I'm not even smart enough to come up with that on our own. I'm just saying I don't want to stifle what the Holy Spirit has been wanting to utter through your personal mouth because you've been trying to understand it or you've been like, understand in the sense of your logic and your reason starts to stifle what the spirit of God is uttering through you. You know, I've heard many people who. They're filled with the Holy Spirit in the sense they have the. They have the evidence of speaking in tongues. But then maybe I say, well, how often do you use that gift? Because it's a gift. It's something we exercise. Number one specific conversation said, well, I could count on one hand. And I'm like, wow, okay, let's talk about that, how you have this gift that how come it's something that you don't use? And we begin to talk about how I feel like if I start praying in the Spirit, it's just going to take over. I'm going to lose control. And then it became a fear of what it looked like in front of people. Well, we can pray in the Holy Spirit, we can pray in our, in our prayer language, but there can still be order in those things. There can still be. There's still self control with self speaking in tongues. But I say that because we have a lot of different backgrounds in here that are not used to that atmosphere. Or maybe because, again, your mind doesn't understand it, you logically reason your way out of letting the Spirit of God utter some really powerful prayers from heaven. I'm just saying, like, I believe that through when I speak in tongues that God gives me personally revelation of what to pray. He gives me what his will is to pray. And there's a confidence that rises up on the, on the inside of me to pray those things. So if you can scripturally talk about Romans 8 and then the difference and that question number four, and then we'll take it to the table.

D (23:24)

So just as Pastor Ashley was saying, every one of you came to the Lord because the Holy Spirit drew you. None of us come without the Holy Spirit drawing us. So you heard him or you wouldn't have made that decision. When you received Christ as your savior, the scripture says you became this new creation in Christ. All things were passed away. You actually became the very temple of the living God. The very power that raised Christ from the dead is what now lives inside of you, his anointing. So his spirit is in you now. We're saying as a born again believer, I now can have access to this awesome gift of the Spirit, which is my prayer language, which then gives you this supernatural enduement, as we say, of power and anointing to be bold, as Pastor Iman preached the other night, in the Spirit. But also I want to read this particular passage to you. It's Romans 8, 26, 27. Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses, 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. Verse 27. Now, he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. This is what Pastor Ashley was saying. So when I received my prayer language, that is the manifestation, we used to say it like this. I was filled with the Spirit, with the evidence. The evidence is I received my prayer language. The evidence is speaking in tongues. When I first received it, I was just a young girl and I remember going to the altar at a revival and I wanted my prayer language. I came from a Pentecostal church. My parents were first generation Christian. But I won in my prayer language. And at the age of seven, I was filled with baptism with the evidence of speaking in tongues. And I received my prayer language. My mom told me, pray in your prayer language every day. You may have two or three little syllables, but it will grow. And of course it did. And as I began to grow in that, I learned the scripture that I could pray out the will of God. The first part of this says he helps us in our weaknesses. I don't always know what I need to pray. I don't always know why my feelings are the way they are. But God who created me and made me, knows how to fix me. He knows what it is. So when I pray in the spirit, it's not just a mindless, it's not of the mind, it is of the spirit. But I want to encourage you that you connect to the spirit. I always see sometimes people, maybe in Charismatic, we go shondala and you just feel like, are you even out there? You're just going. And so the point is, it's like I use it like a curling iron. I used a curling iron today. I had to plug it into the wall where electricity for my curling iron to come on many times. What we need to do in the spirit is plug in. Lord, I am by faith plugging into you. I am stirring up the power of your spirit in me. Then when I began to pray.

A (26:31)

I'm.

D (26:31)

Not just mindlessly praying. I'm connected. I'm releasing my faith. And now I know he's praying in and through me. And we were just talking at our table. Way back years ago at Oru in Holy Spirit in the now class, they would teach us to pray in the spirit, then pray In English. Pray in the Spirit. Pray in English and you'll begin to see how your prayers will change in line with what the Spirit of God is leading you. And just as Pastor Ashley was saying many times, I will pray out things I had no idea to even think of or to pray. But the Spirit of God was praying in the perfect will of the Father so that I could get an alignment with him, so he could manifest his perfect will for my life.

A (27:14)

So good. Great job teaching that. Before we take it to the tables, did you guys have any other thoughts that you wanted to add to that? Yeah, either.

C (27:26)

I will just say real quick as it relates to prayer. And I'm so grateful what Pastor Debbie just shared about praying in the Spirit because it is something that I very fervently and passionately believe in and exercise on a regular basis, not just for doing ministry, but for living in this world. Okay. Praying in the Holy Spirit. The Bible says in Jude, it says to pray. But you dear friends, in Jude, verse 20, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Spirit. I remember when I was little, they had like a little handout or something about praying in the Spirit, and it showed a big, huge muscle. And like you said, the more you're praying in the Spirit, you're building that muscle, building yourself up in your most holy faith, praying in the Spirit. But I just wanted to add this. This is something recently I've been doing with prayer. Is that. Remember that prayer is part of your relationship with God. Okay. We want to have a relationship with God, not just coming to God like, lord, help me, I'm going through. That's a part of it. But all of us want relationship with people who don't just come to us when they're in need. We want to be in relationship with someone who wants to connect with us and know what's on our heart. So apart from of prayer is listening to. We can't just pray, pray, pray. And then we gone out about our day and the Lord's. Like, I had something I wanted to say to you.

D (28:52)

You gone.

C (28:55)

There's something that he wants to say to you, too. And so just the last thing I want to leave you with is that the Bible says Jesus often withdrew to a solitary place to pray. And one thing that the Lord has been encouraging me to do and I've been doing recently that I honestly have never done before is going on prayer walks, leaving my house and going for a walk and talking to God, letting him know what I'm going through, how I Feel, praying for people asking prayer for me. Quiet, walking, listening. And so I want to encourage somebody. Prayer doesn't just have to be in the war room with the scriptures and the sticky notes and everything. That's great, too. But what if you withdraw and go for a walk and pray and just talk to God?

D (29:42)

It's a conversation, and a conversation goes both ways. So always listen. He has so much to say. It was something I remember years ago. I had never really done it, but he was taking me to a place where I always have a prayer journal. But I would write out my prayers and he would say, okay, now I want you to get quiet and I want you to listen. And some days it was a lot of things he said to me in my heart. Sometimes it was just a scripture he brought to my remembrance, but other days he downloaded things to me that he had never told me before. And it was that in that intimate time that I gave him time. And I do remember the one day that I thought, I'm waiting.

A (30:20)

I'm waiting.

D (30:21)

I didn't hear anything. And so I put my Bible down and I got up, and as soon as I got to my bedroom door and I opened it, I heard him say, why didn't you wait for me? I said, I'm so sorry. I thought I gave you. I guess I didn't give enough time. I repented. I went back, sat back on my bed, opened my prayer journal, and I remember to this day some of the specific things that he told me about why he called me the way he did, why he designed me the way that he did. But it took that time of waiting and being patient before the Lord. So I just encourage you, like Pastor Mon saying, I all of this stems out of a relationship with God. And even though I can say I've known him and came to know him as a little girl, there's still so much more. And he desires intimacy. Prayer produces intimacy. And he desires intimacy with each one of you.

A (31:13)

So good. So good. Well, one of the questions that we didn't answer up here that we'd love for you guys to talk about, and we're probably not going to be able to talk about all of these tonight at your table, but one of the ones that I want to create space for is that last time, because we've been that last question. Share a time when your prayers did not get answered and how did you respond? How many of you guys have seen prayers answered in your life? Yes. Seen prayers. How many of you guys have had some unanswered prayers Specific prayers. Look around. Just, just look, look around. So it is a known, it is a known thing. It is a real thing. There are specific prayers that we pray that don't get answered the way that we want them to get answered. And it doesn't mean that prayers don't get answered. It just means that maybe the specific outcome that we wanted wasn't the will of God or wasn't it just didn't happen. Maybe those, some of those prayers answered are not going to be answered till eternity. You know, I mean, if you, if you prayed for someone who wasn't, didn't get healed and they passed away, it doesn't mean that their prayer didn't answer. They are healed, they are healed in eternity. But maybe it wasn't the outcome that we wanted here. And how we respond to disappointment, how we respond to prayers in our life that, that don't get answered is huge in our relationships with God because we can fake it all we want, but if we don't deal with areas in our hearts of unanswered prayers, if we don't have a heavenly perspective on those, we will not only become resentful toward people, but even worse, we'll become resentful toward God. And how many of you guys have ever been frustrated or confused about something that God's doing in your life? He's answering it different. It is confusing and frustrating and hard to take a, take off the kung fu grip idea of what you would want to happen and open your hands and actually God pray for your will. What's your will to be done? We can pray it when it happens in real life. And we realize that the prayers we've been praying wasn't necessarily the will of God that is hard to release. It's hard to release and let go of. So I want us to talk about that at the tables and then we'll have a moment of prayer. And so, yeah, just be, hopefully you guys can be honest and share. Maybe the table host can go first or someone at the table if you have someone to share how you respond. Or maybe you're in the middle of it, maybe you're in the middle of some disappointment and some confusion and some heartache of some unanswered prayers. And I believe that there's an answer at your table. God is going to use your table hosts and he's also going to use one another, each one of you at the tables, to speak a word, a word that brings forth peace in the middle of unanswered prayers. And I'll end with this, and this could be something you can lean on. Bill Johnson shared an amazing message from Bethel, and he was talking about dealing with unanswered prayers. And he said, God, more than I want my answered prayer, I want you. And honestly, I've never forgot that. Because if we think about it, our answered prayers are definitely things that we want and we desire, and God wants those things, too. But it goes back to relationship. It goes back to God more than I need this prayer answered. I want you. I want your will done in my life in this situation. So go ahead and talk amongst yourselves, and then we'll have a time of prayer.