prayer changes me

We are going to the Word of the Lord in James chapter 5 verses 13 to 18, and I am going to share a meditation that I shared last Sunday with the ministry in English in the morning and I was going to share it that same day in the afternoon for the ministry in Spanish but I felt the Lord go in another direction and you will remember that we ended up touching on another topic related to this idea of prayer and spirituality, but in a different way, but I want everyone to have the same teaching.

Today morning I preached the second part of that sermon on the subject that I am going to discuss with you now and I am going to try to catch up with you also on the second part of that sermon on prayer. Remember that we have concluded last week, last Sunday a week of fasting, crying out and prayer, and by the way, this past Sunday we had a beautiful vigil that was glorious, many different churches from the community came, there was a feeling of the Lord very , very beautiful and I am so glad to have been part of that event, I congratulate the brothers who started it and who were leading this glorious effort.

I left at three, dragging myself to the car because I had to do something else yesterday afternoon, but some stayed and at 5 they finished the party, and I think we felt the blessing of the Lord, amen? We feel that blessing from God and let me tell you, those nutrients are going to be there and I am glad to see many of you there receiving that anointing that we need so much from the Lord, I congratulate you and we are going to continue crying out to the Lord, amen? we are going to keep knocking on heaven's door until we see more and more of His glory descending on our lives, prayer is not wasted time at all, it is an investment we make in the mindset of our spiritual life.

And I want to talk about a subject that is entitled: "Prayer changes me", prayer changes me and I am going to explain the reason for that topic. James 5 verses 13 to 18 says as follows: "Is anyone among you afflicted?" how many afflicted are here? do not raise your hand but simply there in your heart, we can come with problems and difficulties, is what it means, afflicted is sad, needy, with a need that afflicts, that causes weight, pain, anguish and many of us come like this. Glory to God that we come instead of staying beaten up in our house, we come looking for God.

"If there is someone who is afflicted, pray" I love praying, not only praying but praying, it is more active, pray, "Is anyone happy?" Are there happy people here? Glory to God, all the bills are paid, the house is up to date, the wife is cooking good meals, the children are behaving well or whatever, glory to God, he says: “If there is anyone happy, sing praises, praise Mr." God has answers for every situation, there is a mental state, a situation for all this mental that we may be going through.

“Is any sick among you? call the elder of the church and pray for him anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord" is a promise from the Lord and sometimes it does not have to be an elder of those who are here, it can simply be a person who has spiritual authority, that is a spiritual elder ultimately, we can look up to each other and pray, look up someone, look up a partner.

Are you struggling with a temptation in your life, are you under some kind of spiritual bondage? Find yourself someone who can help you, ask them to pray for you, and share the load with someone. “Anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him” what power prayer has, what power so great.

"Confess your offenses to one another and pray that you may be healed, the effective prayer of the righteous can do much" and he gives the example of Elijah who was subject to passions similar to ours. Elijah was not a super man, we see him in the pages of the Old Testament, on one occasion he became depressed, he became cowardly, he went into the desert to isolate himself and asked the Lord to take his life because he was already tired, the Lord told him ministered, restored him, and sent him back to spiritual service.

He was a man subject to passions like ours “and he prayed fervently to something so great that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months; and again he prayed, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.”

"Brother: if any of you has strayed from the truth and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns the sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins." I think that this also refers to intercession, we can play a very important role interceding for one another and asking the Lord to get someone out of a very sinful practice or a sinful situation of some kind, and the Lord you can do that work too.

What I like about this passage is also that it shows us a congregational life and a human life saturated with the practice of prayer where any situation can be addressed through prayer; joy, affliction, sickness, sin, what does the Christian do? Now, praying for us must be an instinct, it must be a reflex, something we do without much thought in whatever situation we find ourselves in, it must be something that saturates the entirety of our lives.

And as we come to the conclusion of this time of fasting and prayer, I want our Congregation to continue to meditate, right? well they will say: we finished that and now we are going to business as usual, now we continue with our ordinary life, no, we have to continue crying out to the Lord, I have seen the blessing this week of keeping ourselves in prayer and of being as a Church in one stronger way in fasting and prayer in our lives.

Prayer is an extremely complex topic, we could spend weeks discussing and exploring it, but there is one topic that I want us to explore on this occasion and that is the topic of how prayer changes us, and how the practice of prayer leads to a more effective life in the spiritual world.

Without a doubt, the most obvious and most direct reason to pray is because the Lord commands us to pray. On many occasions we see the guideline of Jesus Christ, let us pray. The Apostle Paul tells us about praying without ceasing, the Bible talks about praying at all times. The Lord told the disciples: Pray and watch so that you do not enter into temptation and the Bible commands us to pray, as we see here in this passage: saturate all dimensions of our lives with the practice of prayer.

But unless we understand the different reasons for praying, unless we have a biblical theology of prayer, many times prayer can be somewhat sterile, an exercise we do because the Pastor says it has to be done that way and we reluctantly go to a vigil. of prayer or we kneel there for two minutes but in reality we do not feel an emotional, spiritual connection with the act of prayer, the Bible simply says that we have to pray and I believe that this leads to sterility and displeasure in the act of prayer. prayer.

But one of the big, important reasons why we should pray is because of what I tell you, it is because prayer is of great benefit in a systemic way in our lives. Yes, the Lord listens to the specific prayers that we make to Him, but there is a secondary benefit, an indirect systemic benefit that penetrates all areas of our being and that is what I want to direct our attention to.

One of the most important reasons for prayer is that it works changes in me, it changes my spiritual perspective, it makes me a much more powerful instrument for the Spirit of God to manifest through my life. He's like an athlete who exercises and exercises, and does all kinds of agility and endurance exercises to produce an effect on his muscles, on his body, on his state of mind that allows him to withstand the rigors of his athletic life.

A soldier who enters bootcamp, which is the immediate training time for a soldier, what do they intend to do there? put that recruit under a series of exercises, situations, pressures, they yell at him, they wake him up at 5 in the morning, they literally abuse him many times emotionally to give him that mettle, that soldier mentality, and the exercises are simply means to carry to that temple and that posture of the soldier. I believe that prayer is that exercise that shapes our personality, our mind, our perspective and gives us the perspective of a true Christian as we continually practice it.

One might think that the only reason to pray is for God to answer our requests, so that if I have a need, the Lord provides the answer to that need, that is, as if it were a transaction: Lord, I pray to you, I ask you for something, I present to You what I need and You give me what I need, and certainly in Scripture we have occasions where people did exactly that and Scripture actually praises it; There is nothing wrong with one coming before God with needs like the ones we brought here and asking the Lord to intervene to bless our finances, get us out of a financial or material, or family, or material, or marital problem. , or work, whatever, one can come to the Lord to give us something specific.

King Hezekiah specifically prayed for the Lord to heal him from a serious illness as we have seen and the Lord responded immediately, the same Prophet Isaiah who came and told him that he was going to die irretrievably had to return in response to that desperate prayer he made King Hezekiah and said to him: you know what? The Lord heard your prayer, gives you fifteen more years of life and promises you peace for your nation while you are alive, glory to God for that answer. Hezekiah asked him for something specific and he almost changed, that is scandalous to say but we can almost say that he changed the heart of God. I don't necessarily believe that God just wanted to prove it, one could say that trying to defend God's sovereignty and total dominance, but what it tells us here is that Hezekiah prayed and God's judgment was changed in response to his prayer, so that there is no problem in praying for specific things.

In Matthew 7 verses 7 to 8 he says: "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you, because everyone who asks receives and to the one who knocks it will be opened" so I don't want to be more Catholic than the Pope saying: no, do not ask the Lord for anything, ask, ask desperately, ask insistently, ask specifically, ask passionately, ask boldly and that is fine, God likes us to ask directing ourselves to His Heart.

But having said that, there are deeper reasons to pray and that is that prayer has a direct impact on us, our mind, our emotions, our perspective. Many times we are praying to the Lord to give us something and God puts up with his response, and over time we discover that I really do not need that, I do not want it, it is not for my good and we change our prayer, and ask the Lord for other things , prayer has impacts on our life that are totally unexpected, prayer has a powerful effect on our personal perspective, it changes our interior posture, it reconfigures our mind, it allows us to acquire an eternal perspective of the Kingdom to be more penetrable to the messages, the emanations that come from the Holy Spirit, prepare us to be truly useful for the Lord in our life and in our ministry.

As I tell you, I pray many times, not because I have a special request, it's more: there are occasions, brothers, in which I really have nothing to ask the Lord for, that's strange, but I tell him: Lord, you have blessed me in so many ways. and different areas of our lives are in order, and so I don't have something specific to ask the Lord for but I pray because I know that it is good and that it is for my good, and that when I connect with God something happens in my spirit.

It's like a diabetic getting on a machine that purifies his blood. Are you a diabetic? dialysis but what is the disease? of the kidneys, well I'm not going to get into that much, that's why I'm not a doctor, but the fact is, you know what? There are cases in which the person undergoes a transfusion or rides on a machine and that machine has an effect on his body, and the same thing happens with us many times, through that spiritual connection as if the Lord gives us a transfusion mentally, and sometimes we enter the prayer room desperate and anguished, and thinking that there is no answer, and the Lord changes our perspective and we leave there strengthened, blessed, with hope in our hearts.

Next Sunday we are possibly going to talk about a case where a prayer changed a perspective, but I am referring to that aspect of prayer, that prayer helps us see things from an eternal perspective. It does bless us with answers to specific prayers, but something is given in our spirit through the systemic practice of our prayer and that is why I am referring to that aspect, to the systemic practice of prayer, not so much to the particular effect of a specific prayer but to what happens to the general condition of our lives and our minds as we submerge everything we do, all aspects of our lives: our work, marriage, finances, physical health, social relationships, spiritual life, our formation in an environment, in an atmosphere of prayer.

When our whole life is bathed in the practice of prayer, prayer is acquiring as a cumulative effect, our repeated exercise of praying continuously is reaching the Throne of God and His blessings are continually reaching us, and God is always answering a delayed prayer, and blessing like that, and that's what I mean.

There are many people who pray only when the water is already reaching their necks, when there is nothing else to do. I like to think that what we should do rather is pray proactively, pray for all areas of our life, for example: not only pray when we are sick but pray for the healing and preventive health of our body, pray for each aspect. I have told you before and I think it is very important to pray for our body and its different components, and visualize them, and lift them up before the Lord, pray for our hormonal system, our muscles, our tendons, our bones, our circulatory system, the heart , the veins.

I had even come to read a little anatomy to know what things I am going to pray for because my body has so many pieces that sometimes you don't even know all the things you have, pray for it. And one would say: well, the Lord knows, and we only have to pray for health for our body, no. We must saturate our bodies with preventive prayer, we must call God's blessing to fall on us, and trust, and believe: no, the Lord is powerful to bless me and strengthen my body.

We must also pray preventively for our children, pray for their future spouses, for the children, for their finances, for their studies, we have to pray for all these things, pray and fight in advance, and kneel before the Lord so that He blesses our marriages, all things ministry.

I have to continually pray for my Congregation so that the Lord blesses its future and its present, and that he blesses its past as well, including the memories of our Congregation's past, and that he heals wounds that may be there, our finances, one always has to be praying

And what happens? that then there is a sediment, a base that is being built in our life of blessing. It's like in medicine, you know? There are medications that you take and you don't take them to get an immediate response but to get stronger. Why do we take vitamin C, for example? when winter comes we take vitamin C for colds that may come, but it is not like you are going to take a vitamin C now and you will be immediately protected from colds, you have to develop a base.

There are many medicines, vitamins and other types of medicines, the doctor will tell you: look, you're going to have to take this for four weeks before it takes effect, why? because the body needs to deposit that medicinal element and then when the body already has that medicinal substrate then it begins to send its benefits to the affected part, and then what do you have to do? keep taking that medicine to be able to experience those benefits in the long term, instead of when you have a disease you have to take a pill and then the problem is solved at once, no, you have to do it systematically

I encourage you brothers to live lives of prayer, to exercise, prayer is an exercise and it is a discipline that one practices sometimes reluctantly. There are times when I don't want to pray frankly and it's not that it's not spiritual, it happens to all of us if you're honest. There are times when one drink, pray is like drinking a glass of lukewarm water, one does not want to do it but does it because they know it is good, that it is necessary and then you plug into the dimension of the spirit, and then the Lord He ministers to your life, speaks to you, advises you, strengthens you spiritually and you receive things from the Lord, and you leave strengthened simply because you prayed.

Apart from any specific benefit that you want to receive you form yourself as a person from a spiritual perspective. I believe that many times our Christian mentality is oriented towards the crisis, and when the crises of life come, sometimes that is the worst moment to pray because one does not want to pray, and unless one is already trained in prayer many times the temptation is going to be to run away from the situation, stop praying, get irritated with God, annoyed with God for what you are going through instead of simply doing what a soldier does: stand your ground until the bad day is over and that The end finds us standing, standing up as Ephesians chapter 6 says.

Prayer has to be something continuous that fills all aspects of our life and that's why this past week we were revisiting the basics of prayer because in a time like that, when a Church is mentioning prayer and we accelerate the process of prayer, and we come to cry out to the Lord, to seek the Face of the Lord, we are giving a subliminal message to all of us, we are telling ourselves: this is a Church that depends on the Lord, a Church that depends on the forces of the Spirit. It is a Church that trusts that if we bring our needs to the Lord the Lord will respond, a Church that knows that it is not with sword or army as the Word says but with the powerful Spirit of God, we send a message to ourselves and we acquired what I call a supernatural mentality.

What is a supernatural mindset? It is when you look at the experiences of your life through supernatural spiritual lenses and when you look for solutions that come from the spirit and not only from matter, when you know that the prosperity of your life depends on God and not on your own efforts or of your own cunning.

A supernatural mentality allows a Church to spend time in adoration, for example, because we know that adoration is an eminently spiritual process and that when we are before the Presence of the Lord and we are adoring Him, things also happen within ourselves, in passing, God speaks to us. , God releases. How many times has God spoken to us in a moment of prayer and cry? How many times have we arrived at Church tied up and afflicted, and something happened? We don't know how, but through adoration we were freed from our worry and we left with the hope that God has a solution, the same happens with prayer.

When you spend time there in prayer, what's more: there are times when you don't even know how you're going to pray and you just, there's one of the benefits of praying in tongues because praying in tongues is just raw prayer. It is naked prayer, it is prayer that you bring before the Lord and it is simply your biology crying out to the Lord, you do not know how but your spirit is crying out through you, and in that act of connecting with God through prayer with tongues something breaks, and you plug into the things of the Spirit. Prayer is that, it is plugging us in, it is connecting us to the life that comes from God, we need prayer to be a continuous platform in our lives and to put us in contact with God.

Why did Jesus pray? Why did the Son of God spend nights in prayer? I think it was partly because of that, because He was simply there delighting in the Presence of His heavenly Father, that perfect communication that had been broken by the incarnation and now Jesus was a man, He was in the midst of impure men, impure women, and the Lord needed to separate for a while and simply seek the Presence of His Father and communicate with Him.

On many occasions He did this to make the big decisions that He had to make in His Ministry. There one of the passages shows us that the Lord spent a whole night in prayer and the next day He went and chose His twelve disciples, and there is a connection between those two moments. By connecting with the Father simply in the act of prayer, He was able to receive nourishment from the heavenly Father and then make a firm decision about each of those individuals who were to accompany Him on His spiritual career. I believe that congregations at this time need to exercise in this way.

And sometimes what we have said, I shared with you last Sunday, there are times when we have to do spiritual mentality exercises where we decide to throw ourselves into the abyss and experiment with the techniques and technologies of the Holy Spirit, and dare to flow in the Spirit and do unexpected things. Now that precisely requires a Congregation with a spiritual mentality because if there are people in the Church who are not mature in the faith and see that the program has changed at the moment and perhaps there was no preaching, and everything was dedicated to praise, they can say: ooh! there was no preaching today, that is a Church that does not love the Word of God, but no, what happened was that the Word of the Lord became incarnate through worship and ministering.

Many times, brothers, more is achieved in a time of spiritual effusiveness than with ten sermons, and look who is telling you, and it takes people who then understand what is happening and who are there worshiping, praising the Lord, doing spiritual warfare in In favor of those who are praying here in front, let them know that when we come to Church we do not come to be entertained, we do not come to be given something, we come to exercise ourselves in the Lord.

And hopefully the day will come when we would have such spiritual courage that we would not be afraid of what is going to happen, and that, I tell you for myself that many times my concern as Pastor is the order of the Church, that the purposes that we have, that tithes and offerings are collected, and that announcements are made, that babies are presented, you know things are fulfilled and that is natural, but you know what? many times it is a holocaust to the Lord when we simply take off our moorings and say: we are going to be the people of God, we are going to make spiritual disorder, speaking like this metaphorically, we are going to let our bows fall and simply flow in the spirit and let God do whatever He wants through us and in our lives.

And I ask the Lord for that ministerial spiritual value and pray that the Lord gives me more of that value, brother, because I believe that this is the way in which God manifests himself in a Church, you know? when we stop measuring time, giving God time to spoonfuls there and simply let God be God in our life.

And you know what? You don't get to that perspective unless you practice prayer. I have not seen anyone who is truly effective in the Kingdom of Heaven who does not have a nurtured prayer life.

Brothers: the world needs churches like never before, congregations with a supernatural mentality nourished by a life of clamor, of prayer, of use of the gifts of the Spirit. I don't see how this modern 21st century culture can be achieved, frankly, except through a supernatural mindset.

I wonder how these nations of the Middle East, the same Pakistan, the same India, are going to be reached? I am going to say with respect: the enemy has erected a metallic helmet over their minds over these nations and has united culture and family with religion in a very cunning way, where changing your religion is death but total: you lost your identity, you lost your past, you lost your relatives, the sacrifice is immediate, and you are asking a person who does not even know the full benefits of the Gospel, you are asking him to take a deadly pill, and to lose his identity completely, and to Put your life in danger and the life of your family in danger for accepting Jesus Christ, it is terrible, and that is what happens in many Muslim countries, in many societies where parents cast off their children and completely annul them, their existence for accept Jesus Christ.

Now, I believe that when there is supernatural power, when there is a Church filled with the Holy Spirit where there are miracles, where there are interventions of the Spirit, then God can do something to break the inertia and resistance of the enemy. And that was what happened in the first century in Jerusalem, that Judaic culture was not going to be conquered by well-developed teachings from the merely intellectual point of view. That is why Paul said in Corinthians in the passage that we saw last Sunday: when I went to you, I did not go with excellence of speech or with human wisdom, but I promised myself that I would not teach anything other than Christ and Christ crucified so that your spirituality is not founded on the words of men but on the power of the Holy Spirit. He removed all human scaffolding and only laid bare the power of Jesus Christ and His cross in order to teach these people how to be effective Christians.

I believe that this 21st century culture is worse than any other culture, here in the United States we talk about Muslim countries, but in this country there are tens of millions of people who are captive to intellectualism, to secularism, to an anti-Christian mentality, to a totally secular way of seeing the world without absolute foundations, completely confused, sometimes highly developed but on a moral level confused and on a spiritual level they are worse than babies, they are tied up. Read many of the intellectual magazines in this nation, read the New York Times, I read it practically every day and I read it reluctantly because of the crap that I read there from people who are highly developed intellectually but with two fingers of a spiritual brain, they don't have understanding, they have a great and incredibly developed intellectual arsenal but they do not know about things of the spirit.

That is why I ask the Lord: pour out Your Holy Spirit, give us a second revival like the one experienced at Pentecost, a fresh visitation of Your Power, because I believe it is with signs and wonders, a powerful ministration of the Holy Spirit that the miracle is going to happen in our times.

I have nothing against the intellect brothers, the intellect is beautiful and I celebrate what reason can give, but I tell you brothers that in the world of the spirit the rules are very different and fire is required, the power of the Spirit is required Holy, a life is required that knows that God is real and that he answers the prayers of His people, and I will not be happy in my spiritual life until I see those miracles, those signs and those wonders manifest in the midst of His people. .

There is a lot of boasting in the midst of the evangelical people there, a lot of boasting about many things but frankly, brothers, many times I do not see the power and effectiveness that is supposed to exist in the people of God, I say it because, do you know what I say? I know what the true power of God is and it exists, and it is real, and we have to ask the Lord to manifest it. We cannot settle there with feints of power, we have to cry out to the Lord and ask Him to visit His people with truly Power of the Holy Spirit.

And we have to generate spiritual strength from within, the ability to attract that power of God, and many times the power of God does not come down until the people have not cried out and have stripped naked before the Lord, and asked again and again . Until a town has reached that level of steam, and many times it takes a long time for that to happen, we have to keep knocking on the Lord's door. I have spent years knocking on the Lord's door and saying: Father, visit us with this power, and prayer for me is essential in that sense.

We must pray for obedience, we must pray because we know it is important, we must pray for the Lord to change us, make us more sensitive to His Voice, make us more sensitive to our sin, make us more sensitive to the call to holiness and integrity, may the Lord bring repentance to our hearts, may the Lord remove the layers of secularism in us, the attachment to appearance, the attachment to the vanities of the world and make us beings who simply yearn desperately for the Lord, And for me, the practice of prayer is one of those disciplines that we practice and that little by little cleanses us and undoes those layers of secularism in our personal lives, and brings other types of attitudes.

I ask the Lord: Lord help us to incorporate more and more the element of prayer in our services, intercession and not make it another ritual because many times it can become another ritual, we are here we pass the microphone to three, four people and we believe that we comply with that, no, it is something different. It has to be something with which the Spirit brings something different into our life every day, Father help us, Lord help us.

Let me pray right now: Father in the Name of Jesus for this Word Lord, we cry out to You, we cry out for a revival Lord, we cry out for an explosion of Your Power in this place Father, we are clear that we need more than what we already have, is not sufficient. We bring you our limitations Father as Church before You.

Send a spirit of cry, send a spirit of holiness and surrender Lord, do something different in the midst of Your people Father, visit us Lord, and we ask your forgiveness because many times we need technological aids and human appeal when the only thing we need it is that the glory of God descends around us, Your holy Spirit that descends and fills us.

Father: we are hungry for You, we are hungry and thirsty for You, visit us Father, fertilize us Father with Your Power and make us a people that cries out to You Lord and that seeks Your Face above all things. Change us Father, shape our minds, shape our mentality and help us to be a Church that commands the respect of the unconverted for the exclusive glory of Your Name. Make us a Church that is a prophetic and apostolic presence in this city Lord, make us a desperate people that cries out to You, that seeks Your Face continually in prayer, teach us to be those soldiers of Yours, those soldiers trained by You. Give us a spirit of prayer Father, help us to seek each day more and more of Your Power, of Your Grace Lord, create in us a spiritual understanding Lord and that we can see life and the world through the eyes of the Father Spirit, to be able to be those effective people for the glory of Your Name.

We cry out to You Father, change us and change our prayer and cry patterns Father, we need You Lord, we need You Father, we want to see Your Glory Lord, send Your Power, in Jesus Name, in Jesus Name, amen and amen .