Never Stop Praying – 8

 Never Stop Praying – 8

Subject – Praying is Planting

by Rick Welborne

1 Thessalonians 5:17 (NLT2)
¹⁷  Never stop praying.

Exodus 20:2-6 (NLT)
²  “I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.
³  “You must not have any other god but me.
⁴  “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea.
⁵  You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me.
⁶  But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands. 

--Pastor, I have not received my miracle yet. I have not received everything I am praying for yet, so I keep praying and I keep believing until the walls fall. Honestly, I will be praying and believing until I get to heaven.

--About a month ago I preached a message about praying for walls to fall and talked about hyperlinking our faith and our prayer to God’s Word and to prayer…I knew then that I would re-visit this subject.

--Tonight I want share with you how we can hyperlink to the generations who will come after us. The blessings we are experiencing today are connected to pastors and saints who came before us.

--Again today I honor people like Harriet Browne, Pearl Rockefeller, Naomi Larson, the Ickers, and pastors who laid the foundation…Pastor Ward, Pastor Browne, and Pastor Dykes…many others. 

--Don’t you ever believe that all that God is doing is because your present pastor and staff and people have it so much together that we have done this…we were blessed to come after those who cared about future generations.

--So how do we pray blessings on future generations?

1. Praying is planting.

--A man was walking down a dirt road and he saw a man planting a carob tree. The man asked…How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?

--The man replied it would be 70 years. The man asked him if he thought he would be around for another seventy years to eat its fruit? Perhaps not he said.

--The man said when I was born into this world there were many carob trees that I found that had been planted by my father and grandfather. Just as they planted trees for me I am planting for my children and grandchildren. 

--This changed the way the man prayed…in a moment of revelation…praying is planting. Each prayer is like a seed that has been planted…it disappears for a season but eventually bears fruit for future generations!

--In fact, our prayers bear fruit forever. Even when we die, our prayers don’t. Each prayer takes on a life, an eternal life of its own. There are people at Life Church who have been saved by the prayer of loved ones gone.

--Kevin and Nicole Johnson are here, not so much because I challenged them at Kevin’s grandmother’s funeral but because of Sister’s Hood’s prayers…her prayers outlived her…her prayers are still chasing people down.

--Prayer is the inheritance we receive and the legacy we leave. The prayer we do now may save a generation but the seeds we plant can save others. Future generations. 

--Think about how exciting this is…when we pray our prayers have no expiration date on them. We never know when those prayers are going to re-enter the atmosphere and bless future generations.

--Think about all the people who have ever attended Life Church and think about all of those people praying and planting seeds of revival…someday that bowl in heaven is going to be filled and tip over…Revival!

--Never under estimate God’s ability to show up anytime, anyplace, anyhow! He has infinite answers to our finite prayers…our problem is we want immediate answers…forever is good but we want instant answers. 

--Are we willing to be planters for future generations…are we willing to die to ourselves for future children and grandchildren? Jesus is our ultimate example.

John 12:23-25 (NIV)
²³  Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
²⁴  I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
²⁵  The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 

--Jesus being planted has brought forth wonderful fruit for 2000 years…His prayers for us on this earth and His prayers at the right hand of the Father are bearing much fruit. 

--Are we willing to be praying, planting, and to be planted (willing to die to ourselves so we can bring forth fruit). That’s when you are the most effective.

2. We have to be patient in planting and in praying.

--Russian Comedian Yakov Smirnoff immigrated to the United States and he said his favorite thing about being in America was the grocery stores.

Smirnoff – I’ll never forget walking down one of the aisles and seeing powdered milk; just add water and you get milk. Right next to it was powdered orange juice; just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, What a country!

--We live in a quick fix get the answers right now society…just google it or bing it. We don’t want to just have our cake and eat it too, we want the instant brand…give it to me now!

--Because we are surrounded by technologies that make our lives faster and easier we have a tendency to look at God and His promises the same way. Some TV evangelist tell us to give that vow and it comes right back.

--I don’t want to disappoint anyone today but when it comes to God’s promises and miracles they are mostly understood in agricultural terms. We want the speed of light but we get the speed of the seed.

Luke 8:15 (NCV)
¹⁵  And the seed that fell on the good ground is like those who hear God’s teaching with good, honest hearts and obey it and patiently produce good fruit.

--Did you hear it…it patiently produces good fruit…it means that you have to wait for it. NIV says that by persevering you produce a good crop. You have to be patient.

--When we plant seeds, when we pray, when we invest in future generations, God does wonderful things...text:

Exodus 20:2-6 (NLT)
⁵  You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me.
⁶  But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands. 

--When we are patient in planting (when we do not think it is all about us) God will lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations. 

--How great for your family to be looking on Ancestry and find out that their faith started with you and they give thanks to God for your faith from a hundred years ago. Paul speaking to Timothy:

2 Timothy 1:5-6 (NKJV)
⁵  when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.
⁶  Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 

3. We must think long and in terms of eternity. 

--Instead of thinking about our own lives and our own time, we must think in terms of eternity. Instead of us thinking about ourselves, we must think in terms of our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. 

Isaiah 57:14-19 (NLT)
¹⁴  God says, “Rebuild the road! Clear away the rocks and stones so my people can return from captivity.”
¹⁵  The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: “I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts.
¹⁶  For I will not fight against you forever; I will not always be angry. If I were, all people would pass away— all the souls I have made.
¹⁷  I was angry, so I punished these greedy people. I withdrew from them, but they kept going on their own stubborn way.
¹⁸  I have seen what they do, but I will heal them anyway! I will lead them. I will comfort those who mourn,
¹⁹  bringing words of praise to their lips. May they have abundant peace, both near and far,” says the LORD, who heals them. 

--Our job today is to remove obstacles out of people’s lives so they can return to the Lord but since God lives in eternity, we pray and plan to remove obstacles of those coming after us. Those both near and far.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)
¹¹  Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.