Sid Roth

DAVID: So that when it comes you go, you go I had tried everything I knew to do with that and He said that’s right. That’s exactly where I want you because an impossible situation is the perfect setting for a miracle! If you’re in an impossible situation I’ve got good news. That’s the perfect setting for a miracle. You may be looking and saying God I don’t know how you’re going to do it. He will make a way! And I found out that He made a way because I began to weep. And I said Lord, all I want is You. All I want is Your presence. All I want is everything that You have to offer me. Lord, I just want to experience the riches of Jesus!

 

AUDIENCE: Yes.

 

DAVID: And I’ll never forget the Holy Spirit began to speak to me in that moment. And He tells me turn off the light. I turned off the light. He said turn off the fan, it was buzzing. I turned off the fan. He said close the Bible. I said huh!

 

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]

 

DAVID: Lord, are you sure?

 

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]

 

DAVID: I closed the Bible. And He said turn off the music. I said surely You can’t move without the music, Lord.

 

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]

 

DAVID: And I turned off the music. And the Lord said to just look at Him. See we try so hard, don’t we? The scripture says: Be still and know that I am God. We want to be still and know our troubles. Be still and know everything that’s going on. Be still and know that I am God. Stillness precedes revelation.

 

AUDIENCE: Yes. Oh. Wow.

 

DAVID: Before you can know you have to be still. And so I’m in that moment and I remember just, just waiting on Him. And all I did was imagine and meditate. You know the scripture says on His word I meditate day and night. Who’s the Word? It’s Jesus. When you’re thinking about Jesus you’re meditating on the Word. And so I’m meditating on Jesus just thinking about I mean whatever way He’s revealed Himself. If He’s revealed Himself as Healer think about what a wonderful Healer He is. If He’s revealed Himself as Savior praise Him for saving you. And so in that moment I’m just thinking about Jesus in all the wonderful ways He’s revealed Himself to me and the Holy Spirit took my revelation of Him and brought it to reality. And in that moment I felt like a gentle breeze, not physically, but I felt somewhat of what could have been described as, I don’t know how to say it other than I sensed it in the spirit and a gentle breeze moves through my room and I became real calm. I became real still. And I remember feeling like warmth on me, electricity moving through me and that transformed my life. I remember I sensed Him so real I was like frozen. And I thought if I open my eyes I’m going to see Him. I was afraid to move my hand because I thought if I moved my hand I might feel it brush up against His robe. And I just stood there still, quiet. That’s the key to spirit-led prayer. We’re going to go into the Four Keys, I mean the Four Realms and I’m going to go over those very quickly but that is the key. I wanted to spend     some time on this. That is the key to spirit-empowered prayer. It’s silence and stillness. Now silence is the easy part, relatively speaking, compared to stillness. Silence is the putting away of outer distraction. It’s turning your phone off. It’s letting people know you can’t disturb me for the next 20 minutes or the next hour or the next 2 hours. I’m going to seek the Lord. That takes discipline. That takes human effort. That’s our partnership with God. You have to block out the days. You know there’s times we go all day and the Holy Spirit’s drawing us. Come pray, come pray, come pray. We say later, Lord. Later, Lord. Later, Lord. And then we get into our prayer closet and we say okay, Lord I’m here and nothing happens and we wonder why. It’s because you missed the appointment.

 

AUDIENCE: That’s right.

 

DAVID: Now I’m not saying you cannot talk to God whenever you want. But there are certain appointments that He has for us when He, cause He initiates everything. He draws us in. We can’t draw ourselves in and we can’t say Lord draw me in. If you’re asking to be drawn it’s because He put that spiritual desire in your heart to be drawn. So if you’re asking for it, when you sense your desire to move in you’re actually sensing His desire to draw you in because you’re becoming one. And so silence is the putting away outer distractions. Silence is that disciplined aspect of prayer. But stillness is the quieting of the soul. Stillness is when you go to pray and all that’s assaulting your mind begins to attack you. What do you do when you go to pray and there’s the inner chaos. Isn’t it funny that you don’t notice that until you pray? All day you’re fine and then the moment you begin to pray things start running through your mind? Can I tell you something? It’s not that that chaos shows up when you start praying. It’s that you’re quiet enough to recognize it.

 

AUDIENCE: Oh, wow.

 

DAVID: A good measure of what goes in inside of you is how you feel when you’re in silence. Cause when you get into silence you get to judge what’s been in your heart all that time. Anyway so I’m going to quickly now go over these keys. Number One: Requesting. Philippians chapter 4, verse 6 through 7 says: Don’t worry about anything. Instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God’s peace which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. Now this aspect of prayer is what gets a bad rap because you often hear it said, you often hear it said oh, well I want to ask God for something but I’m afraid because I don’t want to be hypocritical. I don’t want to be materialistic. I know God wants to bless me. I know God wants to give me something. But, but I’m too afraid to ask. Can I tell you something? That’s a poverty mentality! Church, that’s a poverty mentality and it needs to be broken! God wants to bless you! Now in our thinking it’s well what about those people in starving third world countries? Well that’s why God wants to bless you.

 

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHING] Amen.

 

DAVID: So you can do something about it. You see God does it to bless you. God doesn’t need to curse someone else. He’s eternally supplied! And so He wants you to request and I’m going to show you why. Remember we talked about this problem with inner chaos. Did you know that the prayer request is actually God’s way of removing that inner chaos from you? Look at this. Philippians 4, verse 6 and 7. Beginning in verse 6 it says: Don’t worry about anything. Instead pray about everything. Okay? Tell God what you need and thank Him for all He has done. So some people say if you’re asking God for something you can’t possibly be thankful. This contradicts that because it’s telling you to while you’re asking God for what you need you’re thanking Him for what He has done. You can be requesting and grateful at the same time! Then verse 7 says, and we all quote this one. Peace that passeth all understanding. Right? But it says: Then you will experience God’s peace which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. When Then. When?

 

AUDIENCE: Then.

 

DAVID: Church, when?

 

AUDIENCE: Then!

 

DAVID: When is then? It’s talking about when you give Him your purposes. Come to God. Ask Him for what you want. Then the peace of God will fill your heart! When you enter into the realm of prayer requests what you’re doing is you’re collecting all of your needs, all of those things that trouble you and you’re handing them over to God. That inner chaos in you you’re taking it and leaving it in God’s hands. So the prayer request is one of the keys to stillness of the soul! When we give God the things that trouble us within us, when we give Him those things that are on our mind it frees us to be able to enter the deeper realms of prayer. Here’s the problem and this is why the prayer request is looked at negatively. Because when people pray and they unburden themselves of their earthly desires and their earthly concerns they give it to God, they feel the peace flood them then what do they do? They say thank You, God and they go on their way. God didn’t give you the peace so that you can walk away. He gave you the peace to move closer! So the prayer request is Number One. Number Two is reverencing. John chapter 4, verse 23 says: But the time is coming, indeed it’s here now, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship Him that way. I was at a church and I don’t mean, if you’re religious I’m sorry, you’re going to get offended, but I was at a church that had one of those angry drill sergeant worship leaders.

 

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]

 

DAVID: The ones who scolds you if you’re not doing exactly what they need you to do during different parts. Oh, don’t you love the Lord? Oh come on. You can lift your hand or you can yell, and they say the same things, you can yell for a baseball game, you can yell for a football game but you can’t yell for Jesus! All right they say those things. And so she’s yelling at people. I’m going oh my goodness! She’s like really angry at this church. I, it’s like, this is like, this is righteous indignation or she’s got to repent, one of the two, and she’s yelling at them and I remember just the atmosphere was very, it wasn’t God. It was the flesh. It was very uncomfortable. And she says come on, you’ve got to get used to this because this is how it’s going to be in heaven. I said I sure hope not!