Ep 44 | Finding Transformation in the Silence of Prayer

There was Jerry West , but in baseball there was Hank Aaron , reggie Jackson , they called him Mr October . I know Reggie Jackson and Willie McCovey , willie McCovey , just old school baseball people .

If you got the name Raleigh Fingers Like .

But you know , when you're a cool church , everything is like what ? Is it Not acronyms ? Is it acronyms ? I don't know CLC Initials yeah yeah sure , and so we just got back from the conference . And so , jake , do you want to tell us a little bit about that , because you're our leader .

There's going to be some things you're going to want to do this year and Ryan and I'm going to want to do , but then we as an entire staff went to this conference and the whole point of CLC is to go and learn about ways church staffs can work together to do a better job of leading their church .

So , you know , you go and you can have these big general sessions where you're learning from pastors and leaders , and then you can go to little breakout sessions .

So , you know , I went to one about church membership and and then , you know , you and Brett and Ryan went to different um breakout sessions and then we're just able to get away and be together as a staff .

Uh , because , contrary to popular belief , uh , you have to work as a team and part of working a team as a team is to get away and and strengthen those bonds , strengthen those relationships . Um , you know , I'm I'm still trying to get you know Maverick to uh , you know , call me his friend and stuff . So we got to go to conferences in order to do that .

Uh , but no , it was a good experience . It was cut short , we had to get back , but we were able to spend a good amount of time together and really be able to grow and , um , it actually gave birth to what we're gonna to be talking about today .

The very first session was about prayer and the entire conference was built around the word cultivate and it was really , really creative . Who has spent the last 50 years of his life worked on this one specific area of land that you know , 50 years ago was kind of a wasteland ?

There was a lot of rocks , a lot of weeds , not a lot of vegetation and 50 years later , it is this thriving farm . And they took the concepts of working on a farm and talked about why a church is so much like a farm .

And the first lesson , the first session , in a room full of pastors that should know better , I mean come on don't pastors already know everything ? They had the audacity to ask us what are our prayer lives like Pastors , how are you praying ? And there was a question they asked about churches that pray . Do you remember what that was , mav ?

It's one of those questions that almost monthly , almost weekly , daily , if you're a really good Christian , you could ask this question is there a clear priority in your life on enjoying time with God in prayer ? So , jake , real quick , like what does that question mean to you , or what is the basis of that question ?

There's a big temptation for church leaders to only read the Bible when they're writing a sermon , to only pray when they're leading it in a congregation and getting into this just rhythm of , oh yeah , I'm supposed to do this right now .

But the big question I had to ask myself was well , jake , is this something you would do even if you weren't a pastor of a church ? If you just you know , you didn't have that on your shoulders , would you still be doing it ? And that was how it really was framed to me was you know , lord , how many times do I seek you in my life ?

Just generally , you know , or specifically you know , how am I speaking to you , how am I growing with you ? And it was actually a really , really pointed time for me , because I had already gone through a little bit of conviction over this . So the Lord really used this to stamp something in me and and um , did he do that in you as well ?

In a different way maybe ?

You know , in school there was so much downtime in school , man , so I would just spend time in prayer at home during commercial breaks . I'd mute it Like I literally just talked about praying all the time .

Ironically , as I started working in a church , you could argue I needed to pray more or just as much or whatever I started praying a whole lot less , and so it's honestly , it's been a conviction for years , for years , cause I knew where I was . I'm like , well , let me , let me get back to that , let me get back to that .

And uh , it just wasn't happening and it was my fault . It's not like there's any , like you know , there's nobody else . It's like I wasn't making it a priority .

And when , when the his name was Timothy Atik he's their like teaching uh pastor at at Watermark he asked this question is there a clear priority of uh in your life on enjoying time with God and prayer and the the underline that I have is the enjoying part . And so I was asking myself like , okay , well , why don't I pray ? Well , I don't enjoy it .

And that's a hard thing to realize because like , okay , we pray , and I enjoyed prayer over the youth . I enjoy praying over the congregation , I enjoy praying in a church setting .

But who wants to just sit and pray and , honestly , sometimes just sit and listen , like not even saying a word , and listening to God and spending time with Him like we spend time with a friend ? It's because I didn't enjoy it , I didn't want it .

I'm so a busybody doing things with my hands and all this stuff , and so I'll share a testimony a little later about how I got back into it . But , jake , have you ever felt that way yourself ?

And she booked me an Airbnb at a cabin about 250 miles from Pottsboro and she didn't give me a choice . She said you're going to get away by yourself . And the goal of that was to get away from everything I'm doing as a pastor , everything I'm doing as a husband , as a father , and just go be with the Lord .

And my first impulse was like yes , praise God , like I need this . And it was exciting and in fact , um , a few of our people knew that I was going to do that and and and committed to pray for me during that time . And one of our deacons , marshall Cathy , texted me Luke , chapter five , verse 16 .

And he said yet he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed , and that's Jesus .

Jesus had an unbelievable prayer life , has an unbelievable prayer life with the connection to his father that , even as busy as Jesus got , he was constantly getting away from the crowds and going and being in prayer and I thought , man , like the doctor has ordered this time , and I'm so excited I can't wait to do it . I drive all the way to this place .

I made the decision that I'm not even going to go out to eat . You know , being a foodie trying to try new food , I'm going to go to the grocery store , I'm going to buy my own food . I'm going to go to this cabin and I'm not going to go anywhere and do much other than just be outside and spend time with God't , just be by myself .

That all was really good until I got there and I'm sitting there in the quiet . It's just me and God . And I felt more uncomfortable than I have been in a very long time . And I didn't know why I felt uncomfortable , like why would I not be comfortable in this moment ?

I struggled to focus , like I was constantly thinking about my phone , I was constantly thinking about you , I was constantly thinking about you know , uh , who's going to be playing in the game tonight ? Or I was thinking a lot about the church , I was thinking a lot about my kids . I was , and then it it hit me between the eyes .

The Lord said you don't , you're struggling to sit here with me right now . You would rather be in a lot of other places , y'all . It took me getting away from everything for the Lord to have enough time with me to say why aren't you comfortable simply sitting in my presence , and it was really convicting .

It was a good conviction , though it wasn't like where I felt all this shame and anger towards myself as much as it was like my , you know , my check engine light came on in my heart , you get realigned .

And it took that two day period to and , honestly , it didn't get fixed there , but it made me aware of it to where , this whole week I've just been sitting and thinking , lord , like why don't I pray to you as much as I did before ? And , um , and , and and .

That doesn't mean I didn't pray , I was praying , but it was the heart of my prayer , it was the , it was the serenity of being in God's presence that was lacking . Well then , you know , seven days later , I'm sitting in a conference and I'm listening to this pastor ask the questions you just asked and y'all .

During the sermon he stopped preaching and we sat in a room of over 3000 people for a decent amount of time , like I can't tell you specifically , but probably about 10 minutes and no one talked . And I didn't try talking to God , I just sat there and it was like the Lord was saying do you remember who I am ? Do you remember me ?

And I began to feel this flood of peace in my heart , this joy that I'd been praying for , this joy that my wife's been praying for me to have this joy that the church needs our pastors and leaders to have . And it took prayer .

He calls us to live differently . It's the moment where we're in the midst of busy seasons , we're in the midst of a capital campaign , we're in the midst of Nativity Live , we're in the midst of just writing a sermon , or family or sports and stuff like that .

It's like , okay , well , I'm too busy , I can't take a moment to pray , so let me pray really quick . And , guys , that's not enjoying that time . And again , that's what I felt convicted with , because I was like man , I don't pray a lot . I study the Bible probably not as much as I should . I study the Bible .

I don't meditate on the Bible as much as I probably should . But it's like God , I'm busy with all these things and they're all glorifying to you , right ? And it's like what you just read , luke 5 . It was like no , jesus , often Jesus was the most busy person in the world .

He had more people following him , more people asking thanks for him , needing him , than they will ever need from me . And guess what ? He found time to often to go away on a mountain , whatever . Go away and spend time with God . They said this to even start it . So the whole theme for CLC was cultivate .

And they talk about a farmer and it's like to the farmer they're like man what's the most important thing ? And he says , well , to get any sort of growth , it's the soil . And he goes . A lot of people , you know they blame the soil , you know for where they live and all this stuff of like , why they can't grow luscious grass .

And he said , if you go to my neighbor's land , he goes , my grass is really really green and their grass is really really dead and he goes . You know what they say in town ? That it rains more on my side of the fence than it does his . He goes . No , it's how you treat the soil . And so the pastor said this what soil is for a farmer ?

Prayer is for the church . We can be as busy as we want to be , but if we're just a church who prays and we're not a praying church . If we're not actively praying in the midst of busyness , if we're not actively enjoying the spending time with God , then really how much are we going to get to grow in our church ?

And I'm not talking attendance-wise , I'm talking discipleship-wise , I'm talking walks in life . What soil is for a farmer , prayer is for the church . Are we cultivating a culture of prayer ? Are we spending our times and meetings more about praying for the meeting than spending time in the meeting ?

So often in my life a problem comes up and boom , I solve it Because guess what ? That's what I do . And then it usually ends up causing more problems . But it's like , when a problem comes up , why don't we stop everything ?

And it just it makes me think back to these little moments in my day that I just miss because I don't pay attention . You know , even even 24 hours from this conference , the Lord just keeps showing me these little avenues of . Hey , there's Bo over there playing with his toys . You could just pray for him for the next 10 seconds .

And and really , just in in when I pray , I'm , I come to this enjoyment of the fact that God loves me , that he loves Bo , um , that that God cares about my son and he realigns me as a dad to him .

And you know , I'm , I'm praying for my wife she's going to be speaking at a , in an event , uh , this weekend and just praying for peace in her soul and tranquility in her life .

And and then , you know , yesterday , on Wednesday night at church , I see people in our church and and and and I see them , and then I , I begin to realize that they're a child of God and and that I could just pray for them . And I know I kind of sound like I'm hovering on the clouds right now .

That's not the point , it's it's the prayer is the most impactful thing we can do for the church and for the people around us . It's more impactful than taking them a meal . It's more impactful than fixing something in their life . It is the most impactful thing we can do is pray .

But how many times when somebody says , oh , I'll pray for you , we feel like they're giving us leftovers . Oh okay , well , that's great . Well , I needed 20 bucks . Oh okay , well , that's great , well . I needed 20 bucks .

We as a society , a church society . What if we helped turn that tide ? And you said something I want to make sure everybody heard that . Are we a praying church or are we a church that prays ? And as leaders , I have to question that in myself . I can tell you we have a lot of prayer warriors at Georgetown .

I think to Teresa Osborne , I think , to question that in myself , I can tell you we have a lot of prayer warriors at Georgetown , you know , I think to Teresa Osborne , I think to Bruce Barnett , I think to Nicole Minshew , I think to people that I know for a factor praying .

And I begin to think , you know , we need to learn from these saints , we need to learn from these folks that pray , that make it a part of their lifestyle . And so if you're sitting here today and you're just imagining your prayer life like that's probably my desire is , what's your prayer life , brother , sister ?

And yeah , you can shame yourself and say , yeah , I should pray more . I should do that . I'd rather , I'd encourage you to do this . Just start praying and start to pay attention and realize that prayer is absolutely coming before the Lord and talking to him about what you need and thanking him for what he's done and confessing your sins .

But don't lose sight of that whole . Sit and ponder the goodness of God in your prayer , that part where we just sit and we realize that we're just in the presence of God , and that should be enough to help us see the point of this .

You can't plan quality time with your kid , but you can plan the quantity of it . And I can't plan , you know you can't plan quality time with your kid , but you can plan the quantity of it . And in the midst of quantity , guess what happens ? Quality time , memories happen , all that good stuff . The same as with God .

You might be sitting there like man , I pray , and nothing really happens , like it doesn't fulfill my soul , whatever . I remember when I first started reading the Bible . It wasn't like every verse was jumping out at me and sticking at me . But guess what ?

The more and more I read , the more and more the Bible became a mirror and I was like , oh man , I want to do this , I want to do that , and I would get so on fire because the quantity of time was rampant . It was going . The same thing goes with prayer . Same thing goes with sitting in the presence of God , even just listening .

Quantity of time will get you to quality , so I'm going to challenge you with this as we wrap up the podcast . I don't know where you are , I don't know when you're listening . I want you to take the next few moments after this podcast ends and I want you yourself to pray . I want you to pray and I want you to spend time with God .

I'm not going to wait now , but that's what I want you to do Be thinking about what you're going to pray about , or really just jump in and spend time with God right now , and then let that go into your everyday routine .

You know , I think back to the hymn . I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses . You know that song in the garden . It says and he walks with me and he talks with me , and he tells me I am his own and the joy we share as we tarry there , none other has ever known .

That song is just about being with God and realizing that there is inexpressible joy in his presence . So we aren't going to get there by being in our own presence . We're going to get there by resting in his . And this is something we're in a work in progress as a staff , as pastors .

But we're not afraid to tell you when we are struggling in an area , because our church isn't afraid to admit those things , because how are we going to get there ? Well , we admit it and then we dedicate ourselves to improving it . So church family as simple as it gets , let's pursue a life of prayer , Absolutely , Guys .