Prayer That Actually Works | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign. Hello.

Hello, everybody. This is Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real raw and relevant. I raised my hand to brush you off, and you jumped.

But tells everybody what goes on. Kid, I'm gonna be struck when you raise your hand. God, I can't.

Run. I don't hit you. I've never hit you.

You struck me.

No, I haven't. And you jumped again. And you got lint all over.

What you doing? How are you? What's the black shirt that shows everything?

There he is. Why are you jumping?

Cause I'm gonna be struck.

My God.

Traumatized by it, are you? Yep, I am. Tell them what we're talking about today.

We're talking about today. Prayer life. What is a prayer life? How to develop your prayer life.

In our last podcast, we kind of set you up for this one. It came from our son, Chaz. Chaz is. We now have young adult pastors. I've never had those until this year, ever. But Gen Z is in such an organic, passionate move for God, I felt like it's something we needed to pay special attention to. So east coast is my son, Chaz, and west coast is Paco Jonathan Mendoza. He's actually our pastor of our Spanish speaking church as well.

But you gave him a Spanish name.

Paco. I just said, you look like Paco. So I started calling him Pastor Paco. I don't even know what Paco means. He just looked like Paco to me. So he loved it, though. He loved the new name I gave him.

He embraced it.

But Chaz came to us and said, if you really want to know, because we're always asking people about topics, because the fact is, we're in our fourth year of doing this. I mean, you know, that's a lot of topics. Plus, I preach season four.

That is crazy.

So suffice it to say, he came and said, you know, if you really want to talk about a topic that I get asked a lot by the young adults, pardon me, Leon, in a podcast, but he said, I get asked a lot about a prayer life, how to pray. And he said, especially by the guys in his, you know, his small group. He has a rather large, actually small group of guys that come out of his young adult ministry. And one of the things I like to do with our podcast is just talk about topics. Not preach, but talk about topics of great interest to people. And that is. That's a great question, actually, because I remember I don't want to speak words over myself, like diagnosed with add.

You'Re undiagnosed.

Long term Focus. For me, it's hard.

What did you say in staff meeting today? You said something about focus and you said, oh, I can't remember how you worded it. Anyway, it's about you not being able to focus.

I can, but it's hard and it exhausts me. Because what may come natural to some people, if you have a short attention Spanish, it is work to dial in for extended periods of time. And those who deal with that know what I'm talking about. I will tell you this. I'm dangerous when I can focus. I've always said if I can lock in on something, my mind is like a drill bit and I'm going to lock in till I strike oil. But somebody else can have a normal day of being in a meeting. But if I'm in a four hour meeting, I go home and I feel like I. I feel like I've been in a UFC fight. Because what it takes, that's why I go home so tired on Sunday, because I preach 45 minutes for the most part without notes. But I mean, man, I am locked. I am locked in. And then when I finally let that level of focus go, it has had a tremendous toll on me. You know, when I go home, I tell you I don't even want to listen to songs with words. That's how done I am. You're making me yawn.

It's this rain today.

I've said all that. Said, what's any of this got to do with your attention span? Pastor Ron? A prayer life does not come easy to everybody. And it's not because they're not good Christians and don't love God.

Well, I think a lot of people too, when they come to Christ, they're coming from different backgrounds. They're coming from maybe Catholicism or nothing at all. And so they've learned a certain way or they've never prayed in their life. So they think it's this lofty, big, almighty, wise God. Yes. This whole big thing when it's really just communicating, it's talking to the Lord.

A real prayer life is communion.

Yeah.

And so the first thing I would like to tell somebody without this becoming a sermon, if you're a new Christian or you are a person who's been a believer for some time, but you've just never had that aspect of your life developed. It's necessary because it is. How? It's not the only way. That's not true. It is a significant and major part of developing your relationship with God.

Prayer needs to be a priority.

Number one.

You have to make it a priority.

There are two aspects to prayer. Number one, I believe there's consecrated prayer. Consecrated prayer is when I put that time of prayer aside. I have different times during my week that I put specific times of prayer aside. It is a time of full focus, full consecration. All my energy and all my attention is turned toward that prayer time.

I'm going right now to spend time with and talk to God.

Going to spend time with God. But then the Bible says pray without ceasing, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. That is relational.

That's all day, every day.

Yeah, that's relational talk.

That is what's going down the road.

That is me. Oh, man, I almost left my phone in there. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

Yeah, that's in the shower. Lord, I just thank you for this day.

Exactly right.

I thank you. It's going to be a great day. Thank you for giving me a good night rest.

That's when God brings to your memory, you know, bless you. Bless you again. That's when God brings to your memory, you know, so. And so your. Your son and grandson are driving through the mountains day. Lord, I just thank you right now that you protected them. And I just commission angels now to cover them in the name of Jesus. You know, that is the prayer without ceasing. That's every day where it's a constant awareness of what's going on with you and bringing God into it and that.

You have access to that. You don't have to go through somebody else. You have access through Jesus to God.

Exactly. So those are the two aspects, the consecrated prayer. And I would tell you that is the harder one for me and for most people. When I first got saved up, I was very serious about my relationship with God. I can't. I can't tell people how serious I was. I don't know how to explain it. I was just so all the way in and I knew I needed to pray. I remember getting up every day and hearing my daddy walk around the house and pray. My daddy prayed out loud. My daddy was loud. My daddy walked around the house. I don't care if you was blow drying your hair and getting. He walked through the house and he prayed. And I remember, Ron, you need to have a prayer life now that you are serving the Lord. I hope I remember it was extremely difficult. And I would set times, time in my dorm room. You remember those things they called that you lean on your bed like a husband. They call them a husband. I remember I'd take that thing and put it in the floor. And I would just lay down on the floor and kind of lay my head up against it and try to get comfortable. And I would start praying and I would call everybody's name I knew and I would talk about every topic I could think of that would be on my heart that I wanted to bring to God. And I looked down and 13 minutes had passed. And, you know, and I heard, you know, Jesus say, could you not tarry one hour? I think, how in the world does anybody pray for an hour?

Prayed everything in 13 minutes.

Yeah, I mean, I just. That did. That just looked like, wow, like we.

Think there's a ticker that we have got to, you know, make.

We probably had a little bit of that. I probably had a little bit of that.

We really haven't prayed.

Even when I would pray for our services on Saturday night, if I hadn't gone to the church a good two hours, you didn't think you'd pray today? Yep. I hadn't put it in and I wasn't going to be anointed the next day and I hadn't put the time in. So I'm going to do full blown confessional here. I think that kind of legalism was alive and well in me that I had to give a certain amount of energy, a certain amount of time.

It had to be warfare too, didn't it?

And it had to be warfare oriented or God was not going to have his hand on what I did the next day. I don't know where I learned that. I don't know that anybody taught me that. It was just inside of me. And so prayer looked like work.

When it's supposed to be natural.

Yes.

Like this.

Yeah, it was work to me. Okay, I got to go to church and I got to pray now. Not I get to. I got to. And so prayer was something that I knew was going to take a great amount of my energy. It was going to make me tired. And then I realized it was two hours of me doing all the talking. And I'm like, why is the idiot doing all the talking? And it wasn't really until probably my early to mid-30s. I had to get out of my 20s, my early to mid-30s, before it became much more relational. I would submit to anybody who's learning now start. What took me 10 years to get to there is warfare, prayer. I'm not trying to teach you on the types of prayer I got on YouTube. Go look at my prayology. I think I did 18 weeks on different kinds of prayer. There's all kinds of prayer, but the main two aspects is that relationship with God all day long, where he's just a friend that sticks closer than a brother. And then you make your petitions, be made known to God. That's the consecrated prayer. That's the, you know, my marriage is in trouble. That is the my child is on drugs. That is, I've just been diagnosed. That is. That's different. You got to go in. And the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. So I got to be in right standing with God. And then I've got to pour into that experience all my spirit, all my emotion, all that I am. And it does weary you. But because Jesus did that in the garden, Jesus poured himself into that prayer until his sweat became like drops of blood and it exhausted him. And then he went back. Nobody else could pray on that level because they was already sleeping. And that's when Jesus said, could you not just tarry one hour? So ongoing prayer, all day, consecrated prayer, no matter which it is, you approach God in a relational tone. I did talk a little bit Sunday about the courts of heaven. That's kind of a different thing. I don't want to go there now. I'm going to go back to Larry Lee. The first book I read outside of the Bible is why Christian leaders Fall. Because when I accepted the call to ministry, PTL and Jimmy Swaggart just had all that stuff. That's the first book I've read. Second book is could you not tarry with me one hour? There's a gentleman that a lot of people in this generation may have never heard of, named Larry Lee, that kind of wrote the prayer manual of the 80s. Okay, let me tell you what he did. He took the Lord's Prayer, which we call the model prayer, and he said it was never meant to be a rope prayer like we. The football prayer.

You're not supposed to bow down and.

Say, our Father, which art in heaven hallowed be. That's really not what it was meant to be. Now let me take this. Open my eyes.

Outline of prayer.

So he said, it's the model prayer. In other words, it is a model that takes you through God's prayer protocol. So, number one, our Father, which art in heaven hallowed. So you start off with thanksgiving, praise and worship, telling him how awesome. You just don't come up in his face. So that consecrated prayer, you start off with your thanksgiving unto God. Anything praiseworthy, anything that God has done, where you can give him thanks for. You come in with that posture with.

Thanksgiving and into his courts.

You enter his courts with praise. So stage two, the praise is that is who he is. That's not really what he's done. That's not God's accomplishments. That is the greatness of God and who God is. And he needs to be lauded for that. So, you know, there needs to be a five to seven minutes of just. Lord, I'm grateful, Lord, I'm just thankful for you. I'm thankful today. Thank you, Lord, that I'm not in a hospital. Thank you, Lord, that all the assignments of the enemy failed. Thank you, Lord, that I have a beautiful wife. And I thank you, Lord, that I have your peace. And I have your. I mean, you literally just go down the line and everything where you can begin, think. And Lord, I praise you because now you're good. And Lord, I praise you because you're faithful. And Lord, I praise you because you never let me down and you never. So those are the attributes of God that you begin to praise him about and ascribe to him. If you get lost in that, that's an easy five to seven minutes easy. Hallowed be thy name.

And you don't have to keep talking. That's the part about prayer. We feel like we have to keep saying, saying, saying prayer is and is communion with God.

I can sit in. It's a conversation.

And I can sit in Ron's presence and be. Just be. And that's communion. It's the same. I get caught up in my time with the Lord and sometimes just cry.

You know, I know when you sit in my presence, it's overwhelming to you.

But sometimes when I'm in the presence of God, I don't have to talk. I cry. Right?

Sometime in my presence, you cry.

I'm done with you. We try and talk. I'm done with you. Go.

You took it somewhere different. I was going to go ahead and saddle that pony up and ride it. But anyway, thy kingdom come, okay? Thy will be done to me. Those are declaratory. I talk a lot. This is not a teaching on bread. I don't have near the time. I talk a lot about prayer is not begging God for stuff. No, prayer is declaring out of your mouth what God has said is yours. He wants it to come. God don't have to go. Do already is in heaven.

And you got to say it.

You've got to say it in the earth. His word is forever settled in heaven, but it's not settled in the earth. And it has to come out of your mouth. Thy Kingdom come. So what are your concerns? Okay, your concerns about your financial well being? Lord, I thank you that you have chosen us to eat the fat of the land. And Lord, I declare today that we are the head and not the tail. And we are the borrower and not the lender. We're blessed.

Coming in, begging bread.

Never seen the righteous forsaken, nor your seed begging bread. And I thank you that to the tither you open the windows of heaven and you pour out those blessings. And I thank you today that when I give, it is given to me pressed down. Shake. You're praying the word yes. That is the declaratory moments where if I'm in financial need, if I'm in marital need, if I'm in relational need, if I'm in anxiety need, if I'm in health need, you begin to declare what God has said over those. And if you don't know, y' all got Google. We didn't have Google. Google up 10 scriptures on healing and sit there and say, lord, I thank you. That according to Psalm 119 and 27, you know, declare those things. That gets me excited. I'm a declarer. Yep, I'm a declarer. And I love to walk around and declare the word of God. So when you talk about thy kingdom come, his promises are the kingdom.

Yeah.

Declare the promises of God over your life. Don't beg God to do stuff. He's already done it. Declare that it's done in your life. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. It is all right to pray for your needs.

That's right.

Bring your needs before God. Make your petitions. The Bible said, be made known to God and the peace that passes understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. So you enter the throne room boldly. Why? To obtain mercy and find grace when you need mercy of God in an area, the grace of God in an area. And you need to make your petitions made known. God has given you that access, so you understand his name is hallowed. Thank him and praise him. You begin to declare the promises of God over your needs. And then this next area that I just said, I will be done. Give us this dare, Deborah. Pray for your sustenance, the resources, the things which God will provide for them.

But even in that, you declare it. Lord, I thank you that you have said we are in need as a family, whatever it is, we need money for our kids college.

I thank you that you provided a.

Way, that you provide a way you.

Made it a way.

I thank you, Lord, that you already know that little Susie needs to go to college and right now we don't have the money. But Lord, I believe you.

And I thank you, Lord, that you have a house for us and that you take us strategically there and that you. I mean, you just. Those are the things that you make those petitions known to God because they have to do about the personal resources of your life. God's provision for your life. So give us this day our daily bread. Now, wait a minute. Where was that? The kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us of our trespasses.

Ah, now this one you gotta bog on down. Forgive us our trespasses as we as.

In parallel, in conjunction with as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. That is the area where prayer becomes letting the Holy Spirit do personal reflection. Who have I not forgiven?

Yeah.

Who do I have alt in my.

Heart, Lord, show me my heart today.

Who have I held offense against? Where are bitter roots in my life, Lord?

Where have I sinned?

Where do I have hatred? Where do I have rage? Those are things God says, don't talk to me about me forgiving you until you've forgiven them. That's right. Bible says, if you have ought with your brother and you're about to bring a gift, leave your gift on the altar and go make it right. Go make it right and then come back and give your gift. So the Bible says, if you don't forgive, you won't be forgiven. That is one thing God has, that is in conjunction with something that we have to do. And the Bible says in another place that when you are not forgiven, you are handed over to the tormentors.

That's right.

So there's a time where I need to stop and let God talk to me. You know, this right here really bothered you. And if somebody ever brings it up, you get a. There's a response there. What'd you say? Well, there's a tone. There's a what stone? Where there's a tone, there's a stone. So the personal reflection is really where you go quiet and let the Holy Spirit speak.

You remember when we were teaching our kids how to pray? We were teaching them this whole pattern. And we got to this point, we were like, no, kids. You have to ask the Lord to forgive you every night, you know, have a time where you. Before you go to bed, Lord, show me my heart. Show me what?

Forgive me of my sins.

Forgive Me of my sins. He and the kids started praying this and Chase. The first night he was going in, he was.

And he said, lord, but he did it more and more.

But he started the first night, he said, and, lord, I thank you for the sins that I have made.

And every night, every night he say, lord, I thank you for the sins that I've made.

Because we were teaching them to declare, lord, I thank you. You know, that I'm the head and not the tail.

He was getting. Mechanically, he was getting them mixed up.

And then he started saying, lord, thank you for the sins that I have made. And we were like, what in the world? We were like, Chase. No, no, no, no, no, no. You don't thank him. You say, forgive me. He did that for a long time.

Say, lord, I enjoyed them sins. Thank you for them sins, Lord. Oh, me. Anyway, so forgive us our sins as we forgive. Forgive us our trespasses. We forgive those trespasses. Lead us not into temptation. Those are where you let the Holy Spirit show you your weaknesses, temptations, and your personal proclivities that given the right people in the right circumstance, you would be given to this.

Yeah.

That's where you ask God to shore up your life and protect you from those things, that you not be led into those. So here again, bring in your weaknesses and all those things. You see how now how easily an hour could pass. Yeah. Because five minutes on each of these categories, you know, 40, 45 minutes.

Unless you're thanking him for the sins you've made instead of confessing. Confessing them.

So anyway, should have let Chase come in and teach us on that. So what was the one I just on? Lead us not.

Lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Deliver us from evil. And then.

For thine is the kingdom. The kingdom, the power and the glory.

The power and the glory. It's declaring it every day and ascribing unto him the glory that's due here again. So here again. I've always said in prayer, nobody talks about it. You exit the same way you enter.

Yep.

So you don't come in there and praise him and throw all of your won't list and amen. You go right back into Praise Lord, I've prayed because the very fact that I asked you shows you I have faith. I would not even have asked if I didn't believe you could do it. But I believe you can do it. Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. God, when all these things that I've prayed about get your glory, Lord, Receive your glory. Every Sunday when I go back, I lay down about 30 to 45 minutes every Sunday. I don't really nap. I just rest. Do you know what I do when I lay my head down? Lord, get your glory, receive your harvest. I didn't die for those people. You died for those people that got saved today. Lord, receive your glory. So you're leaving saying, lord, if and when. Not if, when you answer all these prayers, receive glory.

And then you say, now angels go. Don't you angels go.

I do. The Bible says in Psalm, I want to say Psalm 103, I think it is that angels, go. You who excel in strength, who hearken to the voice of the Word of God, go now and do. Do it. The Word. So wherever you have declared the Word, you have the right and the authority to commission angels to perform those words that you've declared. They don't hearken to your voice. They hearken to the voice of the.

Word coming out of your mouth.

So when the voice. When the word comes out of your mouth, they don't just listen to what you say, but when you say what God says out of your mouth, they move. And so I always end with commissioning those angels on my behalf to go and perform the word of God. And we've been talking now about a half hour, but here's what I want to tell you. Relational prayer without ceasing, and also relational consecrated prayer, which does have different kinds of prayer, different kinds of protocols. Yes. And like I said, go check out my YouTube videos on prayology. I did a lot of teaching about the different kinds of prayer, but in our daily time with God, there is a model prayer that was not a 60 second prayer, but it was a model categorically to go by whereby you can have a cyclical prayer and finish a whole cycle from praise all the way back to praise with God.

It's good, Ron. I think this is really going to help a lot of people.

It would have helped me.

Yeah.

And I studied. I'm going to tell you, that Bible, could you. That Bible, that book. Could you not tarry one hour from Larry Lee?

I'm sure it's still in publication.

I know. And man, it was the book.

Yeah.

Back in the day, I mean, every student on our campus was carrying that book around. And so it is still a great model. And his whole premise for the book was this. You know, everything starts as a discipline.

Yeah. But then it turns into a.

It moves into a delight. Let you let this one desire take your desire and let it become a discipline. So let your desire fuel the discipline. And after you've learned the discipline of prayer, you will come into the delight of prayer.

That's right.

I remember. That's been a long time since I read that book. But I do remember him saying that. And pretty much that has become true. I think God really gave him a revelation on that.

You start talking to God in prayer, just talking to God. He's going to talk back to you and you're going to learn to hear.

Him call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.

You're going to learn to hear his voice. You're going to have a relationship. A relationship is not one sided. A relationship is talking, both of us talking.

There's the prayer faith.

Yep.

There's intercessory prayer, there's the prayer of healing. There's all types of different kinds of prayer. But I'm just talking about your personal devotion life. This is what we're talking about today, your daily communion with God whereby you get to know him and you're enriched by that experience.

Good. Before we go, I want to let you know about calling all queens ladies, wherever you are in this great big world. I want you to join me in San Antonio, Texas in January, January 15th, 16th, 17th. We're going to have us a time. We've got Lizzie Morgan, Ashley Hayes, Stephen and Lori Ward leading worship. Me, Kelly Steele, Christine Worship. No, I said then me, Christine Cain, Kelly Steele, several others speakers. We're going to have a great time. You need to make the investment in yourself. You need to be there. Don't overthink it. Just say yes. I have an appointment with God in San Antonio in January and I will see you there. Go to hopecarpenter.com/events to get registered.

Ronald and until next time, until next.

Time, this is Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real, raw, relevant.

See you later.