When We Pray Things Change

(gentle music) Morning, church. Yeah, that was naff. Morning, church. - Morning. - Yeah. Are we good? - Yeah. - Yeah, bonjour. Hola. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Teach me some more. Great, okay. (children singing) Did we take up the offering? - Yes. - Oh, we did?

Yeah, thank you. Super, I miss that one. Right. Off you go. Oh, no, you can go. Great, good, good, good. So we sung, well, we sung several great songs this morning. We sung a song that had a great line in of Jesus, You Are Everything. Jesus, You Are Everything.

And these last few weeks, I think God's been trying to get our attention and trying to talk to us a little bit about things, 'cause there's been a bit of a theme running through some church stuff. So, Joan's been sending out some messages over the last, oh, I'm going back a few weeks ago now. So, those of you on the chat, the WhatsApp, she sends out a daily kind of devotion and a Bible scripture and an encouragement and a prayer for us. And she was talking about some things about Paul and Silas when they were in prison and they were worshiping and God set them free. Peter was also in prison and there was a group of people praying and an angel just turned up and led him out which was just amazing.

Peter also prayed for somebody called Tabitha who had died and he prayed for her and she rose from the dead and she came back to life. Jesus, you are my everything. Jesus can do all things. So we've had Joan be putting out some stuff. Joe spoke to us, might be a few weeks ago now, about something's gonna change.

We're still believing in that. Something's gonna change. Something is gonna change. Just after midnight, something's gonna change. Ruth spoke a couple of weeks ago about the importance of prayer and what God was saying to us about the need for us to pray.

And so I'm kind of running on that theme because I think God's trying to get our attention and trying to speak to us. And so I've titled this this morning that when we pray, things change. When we pray, things change. Gonna say it again, when we pray, things change. Things change.

Okay, so I wanna have a look at a story today that's found in the Old Testament. I am gonna need some volunteers in a little while as well. So yeah, I'm gonna nab you guys. (laughing) Looking very comfortable there. Okay, but this is a story from the Old Testament and I'll just give a bit of context about it before we look and deep dive into the actual story. It's found in the book of Exodus.

So this is early on and this is the Israelites and so this is back in the day of Moses and they're on their way to Mount Sinai. This is an important objective, an important mission and important purpose for them to get to Mount Sinai because God gave Moses the 10 commandments at Mount Sinai but on their way there, on this important mission, they got ambushed by an enemy, by somebody attacking them. They've never been attacked before. There's loads and loads of battles that took place after this occasion but actually up until that point, they'd never had a battle, they never had that kind of physical fight and kind of like what's going on and they, so it completely surprised them and came out of nowhere.

And of course, like making a good attack, you're not gonna go for the strong looking people, are you? You're gonna kind of go for the ones that might look a bit weak, that maybe are struggling at the back, there's not so many people huddled together 'cause that's an easier target, isn't it? Rather than a strong crowd looking fierce and menacing and purposeful on their way to Mount Sinai. Yeah, I'm gonna need some of that in a minute, yeah, scary, good. Okay, so that's what's happening, they're on their way and they get ambushed.

And I can't even say the guy's name because I keep getting this wrong. Amalek? Is that how you say it, Phil? I'm gonna look to you. Is that how you say it? Phil's nodding. Phil might just be nodding to people like, but yeah. Him, he and the Amalekites.

Hey, I got that bit right, yeah. Okay, they're the guys attacking, they're the enemy. We don't like them. So they go for them. So Moses has to leave into action and do something about this attack. So can I have somebody to be a Moses for me? Who'd like to be Moses?

What do you do? You just got to stand and lift your arms up for me. It's not difficult. Do you want to come up here and be Moses? And then you have two friends come up here. Come and take a stand somewhere here. Thank you. And then you have two friends, Aaron and her.

So can I have two more people to be Aaron and her? People have been nominated here. Hey, come on. Yeah, have you come? Fantastic. Right, come and stand beside Moses. You're looking very young Moses. You don't need to do it just yet. Yeah, one on each side.

Okay, Aaron and her. Brilliant. Okay. Then I need a Joshua. Can I have a Joshua? Anyone? It could be a... (audience laughing) Right, Joshua, you can stay there. You can stand up. No, no, no, you have to stand up. You can't fight laying down. Okay? So you're going on the battlefield, Joshua.

Okay? So I need a couple of people, you know, just pretend there was more than this, obviously. But I'd like a couple of people to come and stand with Joshua. Oh, I'm just wrecking the joy. Okay, thank you. Couple of people to come and stand here. You guys are gonna stay down here, okay?

And you're gonna be menacing in a minute. And then I need some people to be the Amalekites over here. The Amalekites. Come on, over here. Right, so you're, ooh, scary. Ooh. (audience laughing) Can I just say I've not done a risk assessment for this. Maybe I should have.

Okay, so wise Moses, you're very wise. Wise Moses says to Joshua, you pick your strongest men, okay, and go and fight. So can I see that you guys are looking ready to fight the Amalekites? 'Cause look, these guys are looking pretty scary. (audience cheering) Come on, come on. Little bit of acting, a little bit of fighting. (audience laughing) Okay, come on. You guys, come on.

Right, off the stage, off the stage, right. And you've got to face these guys, face on, okay? 'Cause you're gonna take them down. Okay, so you guys are getting ready for battle to take these bad guys. We can have a bit of audience participation. Boom. (audience laughing) Okay, so Moses, Aaron and her, right, you're gonna pray.

Okay, you don't have, it's all right, you don't have to speak out for this. But when you prayed, you also had a staff, which we haven't got, but just pretend you're holding like a big staff. So yeah, yeah, that's true. And then you put your arms up, okay? Put your arms up, yeah, both arms up, yeah? 'Cause what he was doing, what Moses was doing, he was praying and when his arms were up and he was praying, you guys, oh hey, look at this, pretend that's, yeah, look at this. (audience applauding) Thank you. (audience laughing) - He was old. - Moses was getting on a bit at this point as well, yeah?

But when your arms were up, yeah, thank you, Moses, yeah? All right, watch it. You guys were winning, right? So look like you're winning, you're being stronger, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then poor old Moses, he got a bit tired, where's he gone? So he put his arms down to have a rest.

And when he did, the Amalekites, they looked like they were winning. So the Amalekites are now winning, brilliant acting. Oh, then you raised your hands, then you raised your hands again. And so you guys just wearing that, come on, you're now winning. Yeah, but then you put your arms down again because you were getting tired, yeah, you don't want to play golf. (audience laughing) And so the Amalekites, you are now starting to win. (audience cheering) So they're taking you over.

So Paul, all roses was getting a bit worn out, all that, you know, raising his arms. This battle was going on all day until sunset. This is exhausting. So what happened is you guys will just pretend that you sat down. Can somebody grab me a chair, please?

Thank you. Sit down, Moses, it's been a long day. You sit down. (audience laughing) Aaron and her, you're now gonna hold Moses' arms up for him, okay? Yeah, you're still pregnant, Moses, you can't have a sleep. (audience laughing) Okay, so yeah, oh, you're having a sleep, okay? - He did. (audience laughing) - Casualty in the battle. And so Moses' arms are now up all the time.

So Josh, you're in co, you're winning. You're defeating the Amalekites. Take them down. They're running, they're scared, they're going down. (audience cheering) And, Joshua won the battle. (audience applauding) Brilliant. Can we just give a round of applause for our wonderful actress?

You may go and sit down now. Thank you guys. Are you all right, Moses, to get off? Are you gonna be okay? Wow, thank you so much. I love that. Brilliant. So basically, when Moses was praying and his arms were up and that all important staff slash walking stick, Joshua and Co were winning the battle.

But when Moses's arms were down, actually the Amalekites were going in the advantage and they were winning the battle. And so I wanna go through three things quickly about what we can take from this story. We might not be in a physical battle, just like that wonderful demonstration showed us, but we are in a battle every day in our lives. We're in a spiritual battle. There is an enemy out there who wants to kill, steal and destroy.

We might not see him physically with our own eyes and we might not be in that situation like Joshua, but we're in a spiritual battle. And if we were in a physical battle, if that was, you know, if we were in the army or the military in some kind of way, we wouldn't just go out without any weapons, without any protective clothing, without a game plan. We wouldn't just rock on out and deal with it, would we? We'd have a plan, we'd have equipment. And it's the same in our Christian faith that when we face that spiritual battle and God gives us tools to deal with that and one of them is prayer.

Because when we pray, things change. Okay, so I'm gonna whiz through three things that we can take from this story. So firstly, we need to remember to pray. It would have been really easy for Moses to say, "Joshua, out you go, go and fight this battle. "I'm getting on a bit, I'm gonna have a cup of tea."

Could have been easy for him. That could have been the easy game plan. There's a physical threat, a physical attack. We see it in the natural. We've got to deal with it, haven't we? If we see a situation happening in our lives, we see it and think, I've got to respond.

I've got to do something or I've got to go for a process of whatever that might be, okay? But I don't know about you, but sometimes I can be going through a process and think, I've actually forgotten to pray. Anyone, or is that just me? Yeah, I think, oh, hang on a minute. Why haven't I prayed?

Why haven't I given God this situation? From the onset, it's so easy though to do, but right from the onset of that story, the game plan was, Joshua, you take your guys out and fight, but we're gonna pray, because prayer was just as important as the physical response in that story. Remember to pray. Twice last year, John got pneumonia. He was out of the blue.

And the second time, bizarrely, was more worrying than the first time, because it presented itself differently and we didn't know what was wrong. And he had a lot of chest pain and it was a Saturday night. So who do you call on a Saturday night? You can't just turn up to your GP, you can't go to the walk-in clinic. So we're on, yeah, we didn't look at AI.

So we're like, okay, we better ring 101. And they said we'll need to send an ambulance round. But actually we remembered, or I remembered to pray. And one of the first things we were doing, even while we were on the phone to 101, we were, oh, I was, Jon was just nodding in agreement. I was praying and I was worshiping God and the difference that made in that situation and the peace in our hearts.

And before it even, 'cause this is like 11 o'clock at night, before it even told his family that Jon was needing to go into hospital, we don't know what's wrong, I messaged Phil, Jo and some of the leaders and said, please can you pray, Jon is unwell. And that might seem a bit odd, but why didn't you message your mum or his dad or, and I got to that when we knew a little bit more. But I was like, I need people praying because when we pray, things change. When we pray, things change. And I haven't got time to go into all that changes 'cause you know, sometimes it's not about the actual circumstance that changes, but we change.

Because when I was praying in that moment, and I will be honest, for several minutes, I was really worried about what was going on with Jon with so much chest pain, and I was thinking, what's happening? But I was just singing a chorus over and over again and praying. And I still didn't know what was going on, but I had the peace of God in my heart. So when we pray, things change. Remember to pray.

Like I said, it could have been easy for Joshua to go out, thigh Moses and Aaron and her and maybe others to do whatever, but they recognized the importance and the needs for prayer. And whatever we face in our life, whenever we're worried or stressed, some of you young people have got exams coming up, that can be a worrying time. Okay, there's things going on in our lives all the time, whether that directly impacts us or maybe stuff wider, a field that we read about on the news or hear about from friends and from family that worries us. But you know what? We can give those worries to a God who answers and he's interchanging things, but we need to remember to pray.

Secondly, don't give up with your prayers. Moses, Aaron and her and hopefully others, they were praying until the battle was won till sunset. That's quite a long time to be praying. Now, we live in a bit of an instant society where we can get a lot of things now. And sometimes we can think, you know what?

I'll just say a quick prayer and I'm gonna see an answer now. God doesn't work like that. God is outside of time as we know it. And this isn't to discourage you, but sometimes God takes years to answer a prayer. Now, I don't know why. I don't know why God does that.

And sometimes God will answer a prayer differently to how we'd like it. (gagging) (laughing) You want? (indistinct) Yeah, yeah, yeah. But sometimes God will answer the prayer differently to how we thought he might. I'm really good at thinking, oh yeah, well maybe God's doing this 'cause then that's gonna happen. And God's like, no, I'm not. (laughing) He's got it sorted. But what we need to keep doing is to keep praying because we then keep our focus on God, not the situation.

Okay, and that's hard. Sometimes we can't see, in that scenario, Moses, Aaron and her were praying and they could see then that Joshua and all the guys on the battlefield were gaining the advantage, they were winning. They could physically see it with their own eyes. But sometimes we can't always see what's actually happening. We can't physically see maybe some of the changes that are going on or what God is up to, that he is orchestrating and working out in a way that we can't understand or see, but yet we trust in him that he is.

The lyrics and way maker, even when I can't see it, I know that you're working. Even when I don't feel it, I know that you're working. We have to trust in him. And when we keep praying, our focus stays on him. It stays on the objective of praying rather than what's happening.

And so Moses and Aaron and her and others were praying until the battle was won. So let's be encouraged and not give up on our prayers. And thirdly, surround yourself with praying people. Surround yourself with people who will pray with you. If Moses had just been praying on his own, as we saw, Moses was getting pretty worn out after just a minute or two up here.

If he'd just been praying on his own, he probably would have given up. I mean, have you tried to say how long you can keep your arms raised up? It's really hard, isn't it? Don't worry, I'm not gonna, I mean, you can do if you want, but it's really hard to keep your arms raised up for a long time, yeah. So he needed people with him.

Hey, come on, listen, anyone time in this? But he needed people to be praying with him. Sometimes we haven't got the strength or the energy to pray ourselves, 'cause actually we're feeling really overwhelmed by the situation. Or like Moses, he would have got worn out really quickly on his own, holding his arms up and praying. He would have really struggled to continue that and he needed others to help him.

You know, that's why God puts us in family. You know, he created Adam and he said, "It is not good for man to be alone." And I know that's often associated with about being single. But actually I think it's more than that. I think, or maybe different to that even.

It's about not doing life on our own, but doing life with one another and doing life with God. If you think about a lion looking for prey and it can see a load of zebras, it's not gonna go for the real fierce, strong, tough looking zebras that are neatly in a pack. It's gonna pick off the one that's maybe struggling and a bit on its own at the back. Maybe a younger one. Maybe one who's poorly.

Maybe one who just wasn't quick enough to get with the pack or doing his own thing, whatever. But the lion's gonna go for that one 'cause it's a lot harder to go for the pack. So when we're in church family and we think about that spiritual battle that we're facing, well done. You're having a battle, you guys carry on. (laughing) Oh, I've lost my thread now. - Sorry. - No, no, no, you're all right. It was me who said, me who interrupted myself.

But when we're in that spiritual battle, thank you, Jo. And we're praying with people around us. It's harder for the enemy to get at us and throw us off course 'cause the enemy's end game is that he doesn't want us knowing God. He doesn't want us knowing the glory and the greatness and the awesomeness of our God who reigns forever, who is everything. And so the enemy will do anything to get us off course and send us another way.

And when we're on our own, it's really easy for the enemy to do that 'cause then we're just listening to our own thoughts. And of course our thoughts are always really positive about ourselves, aren't they? And about the situation. No. Oh, well maybe they did have a point or maybe I'm not very good at this.

Or maybe I'll just give church and miss this week and yeah, I'll go next week if I feel like it. And then suddenly that week turns into five weeks, which turns into five months, which turns into something. Do you see what I mean? But when we're connected in the church family, when we're surrounding ourselves with people, we can have people go, I'm gonna pray for you. I'm gonna pray with you.

I'm gonna pray that you can keep your arms up for a long time. Yeah, you're all right. Yeah, you've got help, exactly. For those of you who can't see, Gary's down here and he's got two people holding his arms up for him. But when we've got people around us praying for us, helping us, they can carry us along, they can be our strength.

When we're feeling so overwhelmed by what's happening in our life and we can't pray because we don't know how to, because we don't want to, because we haven't got the energy to, we can have somebody else come alongside us and go, that's okay, I can pray for you, I can stand in the gap for you, I can believe that for you, or for your friend, for your neighbor, for your family member or whatever the circumstance is. But we've got to have people around us. You're struggling aren't you? (laughing) She's determined. So just like Moses had Aaron and her, anyone want to tickle these guys under the arms? Just as Moses had Aaron and her beside him, we need people around us to help us keep going, to keep running, because when we pray, things change.

It might be the circumstance that we're praying for, like the battle, but it also might be about ourselves. Because God doesn't take us out of a situation. When we pray, God doesn't take us out of it, He takes us through it. Yippee! I'm being honest, sometimes I don't want to go through the situation.

I want to just come out and round it and not think or see it ever again and be a stoppy sermon, I'm throwing my toys out of the pram, being totally honest with you. But God says, no, I'm gonna answer it, but I'm gonna take you through the situation because when we go through it, actually God changes us and grows us and develops us. And we know more about Him. Jo was talking about God's voice last week. The more we pray to God and the more we seek Him and listen, the more we recognize His voice, the more we understand and know who He is.

And that comes from communication and spending time with Him, just like a friend or a work colleague or whoever. The only way we get to know them is by spending time with them. And it's the same with God. So, we need to remember to pray, we need to give God the glory because whatever the circumstance, whatever the situation, we need to give Him the glory. At the end of the battle, when Joshua had won the battle, Moses said, "We need to remember this, "we need to write it down "so that generations after generation after generation "will remember this and give God the glory."

That's what he said they needed to do. That's what we know about the story now. So we can be encouraged by that story for our own lives. So we need to remember to pray. Keep going with your prayers. Even if you've waited decades, keep going with your prayers.

And thirdly, surround yourself with praying people. Ben, do you wanna come back up? Ah, you've got a problem now. (laughing) (indistinct chatter) I mean, yeah, like Joe's head is a good thing to do, worship, praise God, yeah. You know, I know we've had a bit of fun this morning, but you know, God just want us to keep on praying because when we pray, things change. Things change in us.

Things change in the circumstances that we're praying for. And it is so important that we are a praying people. There is stuff going on in our world right now. (laughing) Where we gotta be praying. - It's happened. - Amazing. We've gotta be a praying people. Because when we pray, things change.

I'm gonna say again, when we pray, things change. And when we speak it out, I know you think, "Oh, why is Sara making us speak it out? "Oh, wrap up Sara and get off." It actually helps us, 'cause we think, "Yeah, there's a point to that." The Bible says our faith comes from hearing.

Again, when we're together with people, and even if we can't pray or don't wanna pray, we're hearing somebody else pray with us. And we might not in that moment go, "Yes!" - Yes! - We might not do that, high pitched, yes. (laughs) Or that. But we might get home later that day, or later that week and think, "Yeah." And that's the beauty of being together. We can have a laugh together.

But we can pray together as well. Because God's interested in answering prayer and bringing change. And now is a time more than ever where we need to be praying with Him and we need to be connecting with Him. And that can start off as a simple prayer. I'm not saying you've got to do what Moses did and pray all that time.

Although sometimes our prayers have got to be continued and we've got to keep going with it and not just pray a one liner in hope for a situation to change. Because He takes us through it, not out of it. But we can, if we're not used to praying or we're finding it difficult, we can just start with a line. We can start with praying for a minute. Any moment in our day, just taking some time out, maybe just closing our eyes or just really thinking about God and making a prayer.

And bit by bit, it becomes longer or we just feel God put people on our hearts and think, yeah, I need to pray for Michelle today. I need to pray for Mike today. People just pop in our minds. Build it into your routine. When I drive to work, my routine is to pray.

And I will deliberately pray for people that just come into my mind. And so I know I've got that time. It might be my work colleagues. It might be you guys here. It could be my family. It could be whoever. Yeah, you. Because God uses us to pray for people.