The Power of Prayer

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When they were able to fix it and restore it, we then gained power back. It's the same way with us. When we're connected to God, we gain power. When we're disconnected from God, we lose power. We were created for connection. And we were created for connection to each other. This is why this is so special. And we were connected and created for connection to be with God. Scripture says nothing could separate you from the love of God. You're always meant to be connected to that love.

You're never meant to be separate from it. It was never meant to be an independent relationship. We were always meant to be dependent on God and his love. When you think about Jesus, what did he say? I am the vine. You are the branch. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Nothing. We are weak. We are powerless. We are nothing without God. When we are disconnected, we are weak. We are powerless. How do I know? How do you know? Go look at the world. Do you see all the mental health challenges today?

Everyone is trying to figure out what the problem is. All mental health disorders report feelings of isolation. Being alone, disconnected and separate. When you are depressed, you don't want to be around anyone. You feel disconnected. You feel separate. You feel so alone that you don't want to be with anybody. I've been depressed. How about you? I've been there. I know what that feels like. The root for the Greek word of anxious means to separate and divide.

So when you're anxious, you actually feel separate and divided. Think about it, when there's a gap, a separation between you and God, God, you, those negative thoughts come through that gap. All those overthinking thoughts, right? No one lays in bed at night, their thoughts race and they can't fall asleep thinking about how awesome life is. No one says, I have too many positive thoughts. It's always those negative thoughts that are always coming in. In the gap, they come in.

When we're connected, those negative thoughts cannot come in. Think about bipolar means two poles. There's a separation between the two poles. Schizophrenia means split mind, a separation, split mind. And when someone experiences trauma in their life, and I would say many of us probably have dealt with some kind of trauma, growing up. What happens is there's a neurological separation that happens in the brain.

The separation that happens actually within our mind and our soul manifests itself in a physical neurological separation in the brain. There is a disconnection that happens. And in that disconnection, all these negative thoughts flood in. Fear floods in, worry floods in, doubt floods in through that.

And I know when people have an addictive personality, most likely addictive personalities have experienced some sort of trauma because in that separation between them and God, they're looking to fill it with anything that will make them feel better. And so often it's alcohol, it's porn, it's fame, it's wealth. They're trying to fill that hole they have in that soul. They're trying to fill the separation when they really want a connection to God. But they're choosing cheap substitutes instead.

Have you been there? Cheap substitutes, instead of the real thing, the connection with God. Adam and Eve is a story of separation. Adam and Eve in the garden, they were separated from God and from each other. There was a disconnection. What happened? They didn't trust in God, so they tried to be God, and that separated them from God.

Hey, Taipei personalities, quarterbacks who I talk to all the time on the phone who are struggling, tell them this all the time, you're trying to be God, because you don't trust in God, and that separates you from God. The very thing that makes you actually successful in a lot of ways, actually is destroying your soul in the process, because you feel so disconnected and separate. How do I know? Because that's me. I know, I can help Taipei Personality, because I'm a Taipei Personality.

I know what it's like. I know what that separation feels like. But thankfully, thankfully, there's Jesus. He restores us. He reconciles us. He brings us back to the Father. He brings us back into connection, into oneness, oneness. Corinthians 6, 17 says, He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. One spirit with God. Connection, oneness. That is God's plan for us. It's actually oneness. It's actually connection. It's to be one with him. But think about this.

Okay, if Jesus is the solution to the separation, if he is the answer, if he restores us, if what happened in the garden then gets reconciled and brought back into oneness and right standing with God, then why are there so many Christians that struggle with fear, with anxiety, with depression and sin? And I prayed that prayer. I asked God, why is that God? Because I wrote in The One Truth. I wrote in this book. I wrote that Jesus is the solution to the separation.

But then I'm like, okay, people are gonna read this and think, okay, if Jesus is the solution, then I know that Christian and they don't seem like they're doing too well. And it hit me. God gave it to me. So you've been baptized. You've given your life to Jesus. You've been saved. So your spirit has been saved, but your soul still needs healing. Your soul still has the patterns of the past, of the sin, of the trauma, of the pain that you have been through.

So you know that you've given your life to God, and yes, you're going to heaven, but yet you still feel like you're living in hell. And so many of us have been there. We know we're going to heaven, but we feel like we're living in hell. See, the soul is the integrator. The soul is the integrator between the flesh and the spirit. And the spirit and the flesh are at odds with each other. They're always fighting each other, and the soul is in the middle. And Romans 8, 5, 6 is my favorite scripture.

It's my favorite passage, because it explains everything. It explains everything. A mind governed by the flesh leads to death. A mind governed by the spirit leads to life and peace. So what is your mind being governed by? Is it being governed by the flesh or the spirit? Power, fame, success, a little too much alcohol, maybe. That's the flesh. I'm not judging anyone from last night at all.

No, it's okay to indulge, have fun once in a while, but if that becomes your god and you're tuning into that all the time. See, the brain is an antenna. Not like an antenna, it actually is an antenna. You have 86 billion neurons in your brain. It's how God wired us. It's how he designed us. And free will was designed literally into our genetic and our physical makeup. And that antenna literally has two main frequencies to tune into. Positive and negative. God, the spirit and flesh.

What are we tuning into every single day? And what do we tune into every single moment? Right? When I tune into the spirit, I'm taking a step towards connection with God. When I'm tuning into the flesh, I'm taking a step away from God. God's always there. He has a move, His love, He is always with us. Am I moving towards Him or am I moving away from Him? Are you moving towards Him or are you moving away from Him? How do we move towards Him? Well, let me give you an analogy first.

You take a cucumber and you'll never forget this. You take a cucumber and you submerge it in pickle juice and then pull it out real quick. Is that cucumber transformed? No, that's baptism. Baptism was never meant to be a one-time event. We're meant to actually submerge ourselves in the pickle juice. When you take that cucumber and you submerge it in the pickle juice and it stays there and it bathes in the pickle juice, what happens? It gets transformed. It gets transformed.

When we bathe in the pickle juice, when we bathe in the Holy Spirit, probably never heard of pickle juice in the Holy Spirit before, but when you bathe in the Holy Spirit, that's when you get transformed. That's why I thought this talk was so important, because how do we then bathe in the Holy Spirit? Prayer. It's through prayer, the power of prayer. Prayer is how we connect to God. We were created for connection, and when we pray, we connect to God. When you pray, you're never the same.

Every prayer literally changes you from the inside out. Every prayer changes you. So every time you pray, you will be a different person than when you prayed before. Every time you pray, you will be different. You will be changed. Because when you are communing, communing, becoming one through prayer, right, through prayer of the Spirit, I'm becoming one, I'm bathing in the pickle, I'm becoming one with the Holy Spirit. And as I commune with God, the eternal God will change your eternal nature.

Because if I spend time with the creator of the universe and one spirit with him, my spirit, his spirit, we become one spirit in that prayer, it's going to change you. It's going to transform you. It changes the way you think. It changes the way you act. It changes your mind. It changes your heart. It changes your soul. And when you commune with God and you spend time with him, in your oneness, his spirit becomes your spirit. His power becomes your power.

His creative genius becomes your next great business idea. Most importantly, because Jesus came here with a healing ministry. His healing becomes your healing. And guys, this is what happened to me. I was not a believer. I was 31 years old. I told my wife, right, that I was struggling, that I was losing it. My wife had enough of my negativity because I was always being negative to her. She had enough of my negativity. She said, if you don't change, we're over.

Like she was literally about to leave me because I just wouldn't change and I was so negative, I was so depressed, I was so anxious, I was so fearful. My teammates can't believe what I'm doing now. My teammates from college cannot believe that I work with all these athletes and the best organizations on the planet and the best leaders. They're like, you were a mental wreck in college. And I was, and I was a mental wreck in my 20s.

And I was disconnected and I was anxious and I had no relationship with God. I look back and it's so clear to me now, but then I didn't know. So you know what I did? She threatened to leave me and I said, okay, well, just stay and I'll change. I'll work on it. I'll become more positive. And I began researching all the ways I could be more positive. And I was a new-ager at the time, Buddhist, mom was Jewish, new-ager, and now I'm just trying to become more positive.

So I go to positive psychology and now I'm researching all the ways I could be more positive. And I began practicing these ideas. And one thing I read was, you can't be stressed and thankful at the same time. And I realized if you're feeling grateful, you can't be stressed. So I began taking walks of gratitude every single day. I had a Buddhist background, so I was a Buddhist meditator. And so I would meditate.

I'm like, all right, the discipline of doing it every single day, something Christians don't do. Christians often don't have the discipline of doing those kind of things. But I was a new ager, so I learned about practice and discipline and doing that. And so now I'm taking these walks of gratitude every day. And while I'm walking, practicing gratitude, those eventually led to walks of prayer. And then I started listening to some sermons called Why I Follow Jesus.

And then I started seeing a glowing cross when I would meditate. Buddhist meditations, glowing cross. And I said, God, if there is something to this Jesus, I'm open, just show me the signs. Just show me the signs, God, I'm open. Next day, I'm driving down the road going to speak. I was a speaker, not a big speaker, just struggling, but just speaking, looking to the left. I hear, look, I turn to the right, the sign that says, Jesus is the answer.

A literal sign, I asked for signs, God gave me real signs. And literally gave my life to Jesus at 35 years old. And from that moment on, those walks of prayer became walks of surrender. That's why last night was so powerful, walks of surrender. And I've been now praying so much in the course of my life, and I look back and I realize, that's what happened. Like, I thought, I thought my mind needed fixing, but I realized my soul needed healing.

I gave my life to Jesus, I was saved, but I still needed to be transformed. And now at 54 years old, I am a completely different person than I was 20 years ago. Your prayer changes you, and it transforms you, and it heals you. And you know what? Every book I've written takes three and a half weeks to write. This last one I wrote, 16 days. And I tell you that not because I'm special. God gives me these great ideas. No, I'm not special at all. It's because I pray, I surrender, and I'm open.

Oh my God, what do you want me to write? What do you want me to do? And the more I pray, the more I'm open, I say, God, use me for your purpose. Guide me towards my purpose. I've been saying this prayer for literally over 20 years now. Use me for your purpose. Guide me towards my purpose. Show me the way, God. Show me the signs and I will follow them. Where do you want me to go? And I will be obedient to be there. God, who do you want me to go speak to?

You be my speaker bureau and I will go there. I live literally surrendering and open to what God has for me. And when you do this, when you decide to pray like this, he may not give you the book idea because maybe you're not meant to write a book, but he's gonna give you the next great idea. He's gonna give you the next way to be with your family, the next way to help your friends. He's gonna guide you every step of the way when you spend time and you start communing with him.

Are you with me on this? My goal when I came here was like, guys, I'm not here to mess around. I'm not here, I could have made you laugh for an hour. My goal coming here was to say, okay, how can I help you guys to pray more? Because I feel more and more called. My mission is to develop positive leaders who make a positive impact in every business, school, team, organization around the world.

I got a big mission and I know that God has called me to it and I'm going to start living it more now than ever. We're launching a big initiative that we're actually going to start doing that. That's what I was talking about the other day. Like God gave me this mission. I know what we're here to do. But here's what I realized. A praying leader, a praying leader helps you become a more positive leader. So you got to be a more praying leader to become a more positive leader.

And here's the key to leadership, by the way. You don't want your team to rely on you. You don't want your kids to rely on you. If they're coming to you for all the answers, then you got to challenge. Your job is to point them towards God and a relationship with God. And that's what I realized I got to do.

I got to point leaders towards God because as you start connecting more with God and communing with him through that Holy Spirit, he will guide every step of the way and he will answer every question you have. Now, people, I know what I'm saying. People go, yeah, but I don't know how. I don't know how and I don't feel connected to God. That spirit you're talking about, yeah, I get the picture, I get the visual, but then I start praying and I just, there's no connection. And you know why that is?

Because your frequencies are off. God's a higher frequency. You're a lower frequency. I've been there. When I started walking and doing the gratitude and prayer, I felt so awkward. There was no connection. There were times when I started walking on the beach, even last week, and I'm walking, I felt no connection to God whatsoever. God, where are you? My frequency was off as I started praying and I started reaching out.

And it's like that girl you were dating that maybe eventually became your wife. But at first, you weren't on the same page, but then you started spending more time with her, start sharing more love. She starts sharing more love with you. Now, oh, now there's a sink. Now there's some synergy happening. There's an energy happening. The more we spend time with God, you'll start to actually be on the same frequency.

His higher frequency, we will raise your frequency, and you'll actually start to be on the same frequency. Because if you've been tuning to The Flesh for so long, that's where your pattern is. That's where your actual default station is. We want to get to 1111, but we're operating at 666. Flesh, spirit, flesh, spirit. What are we making time for? Where is our focus? So, do you guys commit to praying more? Yes. Raise your hand if you're going to commit to praying more. Do we need to pray more?

Do we all need to pray more? What do you think? Everywhere I go, I always ask, do we need to pray more? And everyone says yes. And I will admit that I need to pray more. No doubt. I didn't pray enough. Paul says we should pray. Jeremy, how often does Paul say we should pray? Without ceasing. So we're actually meant to pray all the time, because we're meant to pray to connect with God. Now, we also have to have jobs, we have lives, we have to be on the phone.

But even in moments like when we're struggling, you could just say a short prayer. Whenever I feel anxious and I get anxious, an old wound will come up, but I get anxious. And I just go, God, I don't have all the answers. But I trust in you. And I surrender to you in those moments of surrender. So how do we make this practical? Okay, let me just give you a few practical ways that we can pray more, and then I'm done. One, when you tell someone you're gonna pray for them, actually do it.

How often do we say, yeah, I'll be praying for you. I'll be praying for you, man. Yeah, I'll be praying for you. And do we? I always wanted in the next day, after they say that, the next day I want to text them and say, hey, did you pray for me like you said you would? And you know why I say that? Because I used to say that. And you know what I do now? I don't say that anymore. Now I say, I'm praying for you right now. That's what I say. I'm praying for you right now.

And I say a prayer right then and there with them on the phone, or if we're texting, I put the phone down, we're done, and I pray right then and there for them right now. Because I know I'm not going to pray later. I don't say it. So pray for them right then and there. Let's honor their prayer. In the mornings when you get up, say the Lord's Prayer. Simple thing. At night, before you go to bed, pray with your wife.

My new thing is if I can get men to pray with their wives, man, transformation happens. That wife almost left me. That was at 31. At 40, I told her what I did when I was 29 to 30. 31, how I cheated on her. Jeremy's not the only one. So at 40, I tell her. At 40, I become a Christian. At 40, I rode the energy bus. I was a best-selling author. Traveling around the world speaking. I'm on planes going all over the place, and yet I had this past. She didn't uncover it. I knew I had to uncover it.

God was convicted me to tell her. So I told her. The hardest thing I've ever had to do, walking on the beach and telling her what I did years ago. I thought she'd say, oh, you've changed so much. You're not that guy anymore. She looked at me, she said, I'm leaving you. And she literally was about to leave me. She was going to leave me. I'm on this plane going to my next speaking engagement and my wife's about to leave me. I'm not that person anymore. I'm like, I can't believe I'm not that guy.

I'm this guy now. How could she be mad? But she felt so betrayed. And I look back on that, I realize how she was so betrayed. And I'm talking to this guy on the plane. This guy has no idea who I am. And so and I'm like pouring my heart out to him. Yeah, I'm like, I've changed and I told her about what I did and all this stuff. And he goes, you know what? He goes, you know, my wife and I pray before bed every night. It changed our marriage.

So I said, God, I'm gonna say, all right, God, I'm gonna pray with my wife, but what should I pray? Because he told me he had a prayer. I said, God, what's our prayer? God gave me a prayer. It's this, God, we invite you into our marriage, to love us, to unite us, to heal us and to strengthen us. So we can grow strong together and serve you together and raise children that glorify and honor you. After about two, three weeks, I made my way back into the bed, no action but just laying there.

And then we're laying there and I would pray every night. I started saying that prayer every night. My wife wouldn't say it. And then one night, she tells this story too. We wrote about this in our book Relationship Grit. We share it all in relationship grit. We're honest and real. We're not saying how great our marriage is. And we're literally laying in bed and she grabs my hand as I was praying. And that was the moment she chose to forgive me. What you uncover, God will cover with His grace.

What you try to cover, God will uncover. Ephesians 4.23. Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and your attitudes. Galatians 5.16. This is big. He who walks in the Spirit shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. As we pray and we surrender, what happens is you and your wife become one Spirit with God. So now you're communing together. You, your wife, because you're both Spirit. And now you're communing with God, and all three in one, the triple braided cord, become one Spirit together.

And then you renew your marriage. Don't be conformed by the patterns of this world. Jeremy said last night, right? Paul said it first. But don't be conformed by the patterns of this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I want to give you a last visual of this, of what's happening when you're praying like this. When you're praying like this, imagine Jesus called himself living water. He said the wellspring will rise up right within you. There's a wellspring.

When I said bathe in the Holy Spirit, you and your wife together, you by yourself praying, what's happening is, as you're doing that, imagine it's not a lake, it's a river. And the river is flowing, and as it's flowing through you, your wife, your family, it's clearing out all the debris, all the muck, all the goo. It's clearing out all the crap, and it's clearing it out, and it's renewing you, it's recharging you, it is healing you, it is restoring you.

Living water is doing that, and that is truly the power of prayer. Guys, I have a prayer acronym. I don't have time for it today, but it's P-R-A-Y-E-R. I've been sharing this a lot lately. It's in the back of The One Truth, but if you want me to text it to you, I will, and it's this, praise. So you walk in, as you're walking, you praise God.

All prayer should start with praise, and I was with a group of pastors recently, with John Maxwell and Chris Hodges and all these pastors and such godly men, and one guy, John Stockstill, out of Louisiana. He said, I loved what he said. He said, we need to praise more. We got a lot of people praying. We need more people praying, but we got people praying, but we have to praise more. All prayer starts with praise. So praise in God, it aligns your heart with God.

And then there's the R, there's repent. Repent to God, repent of the sins. Repent of your sins, repent and forgive those who have sinned against you. And then there's the A, ask God for what you want. Then there's the Y, which is yield. That's the surrender, which we talked about last night. You gotta surrender. That's, I feel like when I'm surrendering, I'm dissolving literally into the Holy Spirit. I'm surrendering in the Holy Spirit.

Now, I'm like this, like I get the sludge in my pipeline, right? And when I repent, the sludge is removed from the pipeline. And now I allow God to be able to flow through me. And as he's flowing through me, I'm dissolving into that flow through the yielding. And then there's the E, which is expect. And when you pray, you expect your father to deliver actually. You expect and you trust that he's got a plan for your life. So expect and trust. I just trust. God, I expect great things to happen.

God, and I trust in your plan for me, whatever it may be. And then there's the R. This is the big one, received. So many Christians, like we think we've done wrong in the past. We feel guilt and shame. So we don't receive what God has for us. And God wants to give you blessings. And most of all, he wants to give you his love. And all you got to do, guys, all you got to do is receive. Because you're worthy, not in your own.

I'm not worthy of my own, but you're worthy because God says you're a child of his. You're a child of his. A father wants to give his love to his child. And God wants to love you abundantly, powerfully, and he wants to bless you. Why? So you can be a blessing to this world. God bless you guys.