Touré Roberts - Prayer, The Forgotten Advantage - Part 4

We’ve been talking about prayer, and I’ve been trying to finish this series on prayer. I think I was able to do it at the nine o’clock service, and I believe I’m going to be able to do it with you here today. But if you have been listening to this series on prayer and have actually started praying—with understanding—and you’re seeing your life change, and you’re witnessing fruit and results because you prayed, I just want to hear from you. If that’s you, if you’ve been listening, and you’ve been praying, and God is showing up, I’m telling you, miracles are nothing for God. They are nothing for God! We get excited about miracles, and I can guarantee you that God in heaven is not up there saying, «Wow, a miracle!» They are just happenings. I firmly believe that prayer releases miracles; I truly believe that every person in here right now has a miracle in your mouth. You have miracles in your mouth, but you have to pray to release them. We define prayer, and we define to pray as to invoke—come on, those who are listening—the resources of the infinite into finite circumstances. To pray literally means to invoke— to pray down resources from the infinite realm into the finite. In other words, the resources in the realm that you’re praying from are greater than the situation that you’re standing in. Are you hearing me? What a privilege it is to be able to pray—to stand in a moment of limited ability and be able to pray down so that, all of a sudden, a realm that’s bigger shows up and makes this realm obey. That’s what prayer is. Oh, it’s powerful! Where are my praying people in God’s house today? I mean just people who really know: it was one way, and then I prayed, and it became another way. Come on, somebody! Has anyone ever been there before? It looked like this, then I opened my mouth, and I called on heaven, and all of a sudden, the doctor’s report changed, and my situation changed. I was counted out, and now, all of a sudden, I’m plugged in! Where are my praying people? I was counted out, and now I’m plugged in. There are some people in here right now, and your situation is completely different now than it was before you prayed. It truly changes things. Why? Because who you call on is bigger than where you’re standing. He’s powerful! The sad reality is that oftentimes, prayer is the last thing we do. You hear people say it all the time: «Well, there’s nothing left to do but pray now.» And my response is: What were you doing the entire time? And maybe, just maybe, that’s why there’s nothing left to do. We’ve got to be praying people. People ought to get tired of you praying! Don’t come and complain to me unless you’re ready for me to pray for you. What if we spent more time praying than we do complaining? If you don’t like it, change it with your words, change it with your faith, change it with your prayer. Believers have no business being the most negative people on the planet. «Oh, the Earth is going to hell in a handbasket, and this is happening, and that is happening!» Pray! Prayer ought to make you optimistic. Don’t fall on your knees to pray, and then get up and pick that burden back up again! Once you pray, release it, let it go, and expect to see an outcome that is different from the situation that put you on your knees in the first place. Prayer is designed to inspire you! It’s designed to inspire you. You know what? This happened, but I prayed about it. And then I didn’t pray, and then I forgot! Has anybody ever been there? Worrying about it after you prayed about it? Now, if you’re going to worry all the way through, then don’t pray! But it’s a dishonor to your prayer and a dishonor to the outcome that you’re looking for when you pick that thing back up. Who am I talking to today? It’s not where I wanted to go, but I just feel this. You have to learn how to hang out in the in-between. Man, let me tell you something, this thing necessitates faith. Can I keep it real with you right now? I can tell you right now that often, the difference between people doing it big and people not is one word: faith. And faith is not just something you hope for and then it happens automatically. Faith says, «Even if I don’t see it happening, I’m still going to believe it is happening until I see what I ask God for.» That’s faith! None of you were here when God said to plant one church. None of you—not a single one—were here when He said it. What do you do? Well, God says, «This is what’s going to happen, ” but it doesn’t happen in the timeframe you expect. You wait on it, and you move toward it. See, faith is like knowing it’s in your future, so you start walking toward it. You don’t wait for it to show up. That’s not faith! Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Oh my, I’m trying to talk about prayer, but this is a faith thing for some of you right now! I’m trying to tell you how this works. God is never going to show you, and then you do. He’s going to tell you, and then you do. And when you do, He shows you! It’s tell me I obey.