You Are Not a Mistake, So Do Not Pray Like One

Sermon outline

Pray with purpose for God's will in your nation and your own life, knowing, doing and continuing in His will, because God has invested everything in you and you are not a mistake: pray like a son, not a victim.

1. Number four: the kingdom in our civil family

   The fourth priority is the nation: Greenwood Park, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and Africa. Pray for the president and every leader by name, for wisdom, the right people around them, compassion instead of selfishness, a stronger currency, a growing economy, service delivery and a voice for the church in government. Whatever our party or culture, as Christians our culture is Christ.

   “Our culture is Christ.”

2. Pray on purpose, not hit and miss

   We do not pray hit-and-miss prayers. It does not make you less spiritual to write down prayer points and follow a roadmap. And we do not attend church to tick off a religious card and then go about our business, because your business is God's business.

   “Your business is God's business.”

3. Knowing His will

   Paul prays that we would be filled with the knowledge of His will, walking worthy and increasing in the knowledge of God, not of your industry or field of study. What God tells you may not make sense in the natural, but as you seek and grow He reveals more, sometimes for years ahead. If He showed you the whole picture at once, you might dismiss it.

   “His wisdom is the only wisdom that matters. His way is the only way that matters.”

   • Colossians 1:9-10

4. Doing His will

   We are strengthened with all might for all patience and longsuffering with joy. God gives young believers room to grow inside a safety net while the Spirit and the word teach them principles, and expects us to be patient that He will do what He said.

   Illustration: Parents give small children a lot of freedom, then expect older children to know the rules of the house and accept the answer when it is no, yes, or "let me think about it", while keeping their mistakes within a safe space.

   “To have that long-suffering with joy, it means to accept the answer when it's no, and to accept God's timing, and to accept God's way of doing things.”

   • Colossians 1:11

5. Continuing in His will

   Christianity is not something you try once and drop when the giving, the praying or the healing did not work the first time. Jesus said "when you pray" and "when you fast", never "if". Be obedient when He tells you to pray for someone, sow a seed, or get up at three in the morning, even when He lays on your heart a person you are holding an old offence against.

   Illustration: Someone carries offence because a person said something terrible to his father in 1965, before he was born, when perhaps his father was the one in the wrong.

   “Remember, Christianity is not McDonald's.”

   • Matthew 6:5-6
   • Matthew 6:16

6. How God speaks, and the safety net

   God sometimes speaks in visions, dreams or an audible voice, but most of the time it is the still small voice and a witness on the inner man. Everything the Lord says can be found in the word, and He never moves outside it, which is how you know when it is not Him. When He says something you do not fully understand, He expects you to seek Him for more.

   “Everything that the Lord says to you, you can find it in the Word. He will never move outside. So that becomes the safety net.”

   • 1 Kings 19:12

7. Know how much God has invested in you

   Paul prays for the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we would know the hope of His calling and the riches of His inheritance in the saints. He reads it in the New Living, Amplified, Message and NIV: God has invested His Son, His Holy Spirit and His word in you, and planned for you to be here. The inheritance is not only for heaven but for now on the earth.

   Illustration: Parents send their children to a better school than they went to, and the children take it for granted until they are old enough to understand what it cost.

   “It's not that He doesn't know. It's that we don't know.”

   • Ephesians 1:16-18

8. Pray like a son, not a victim

   Reading Ephesians 1 from a paraphrase, he shows that faith reveals how enormously advantaged we are in Christ, that the same energy that raised Christ seated Him above every rule and authority, and that the church is His body. God has a master plan, and you are not a mistake.

   “You are not a mistake. So when you pray, you don't pray like a mistake. You don't pray like a victim. You pray like a son who has authority.”

   • Ephesians 1:19-23

In this message