I want to speak to you this morning on the topic: 'Prayer Makes the Difference.' When it comes to prayer, I want this year to be a year of prayer and small groups. Where we go back into prayer, and we go back into small groups. Small groups, there's a reason for that, and I won't highlight that this morning. What I want to highlight this morning is the importance of coming back to prayer. The church is called the House of Prayer. We, as Christians, we know there is power in prayer. The example for me when it comes to prayer is Jesus Christ. He prayed on earth. He prayed in the garden. He prayed on the mountain. He prayed when He was facing a very large decision, which is who's going to be His 12 disciples. He prayed when His cousin got beheaded, and He went to process His grief and sorrow. Like a human being that Jesus was, He went to prayer. Jesus prayed in the Gethsemane right before His betrayal. He prayed on the cross. He prayed in heaven, when He went to heaven that the Father will send the Holy Spirit. And guess what Jesus does as a full-time job in heaven right now? (Hebrews 7:25) Therefore, He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always... somebody say, always, come on, those of you in second sanctuary, say always, lives to make intercession for them. Which tells me that Jesus deems prayer as a noble full-time job in heaven. If our Savior who died for us on earth, thinks prayer is so important that He always lives to make intercession for us, that tells me Jesus wouldn't be involved in something that is worthless or pointless. Prayer has power. What is prayer? Prayer is three things. Prayer is a cry; it's a conversation, and it's a confrontation. A cry means, you're hurting. God, help me. Conversation means you have a relationship with God, and a confrontation means in prayer, you take authority. In prayer, you speak to the mountains. In prayer, you speak in the Holy Ghost, and you begin to see a shift in your life. In prayer, the Bible says in Matthew 7:7, 'Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you,' which tells us three types of things we can do in prayer. We can ask; we can seek, and we can knock. When you ask, it's you petitioning God. 'Lord, bless me with my business. Bless this appointment I'm about to have.' It's petitioning. 'Lord, help me with this; heal this person; deliver this person.' Seeking is when you are beginning to press into the presence of God, and you're soaking in His presence. You are receiving God's presence in your life; you're devoting yourself to Him. And knocking now deals with intercession where you're standing in the gap, and you're interceding. You are stepping into the enemy's territory, and you're saying, 'I'm going to take back my family members for God. I'm interceding for them to be saved. I'm believing for them to come to the knowledge of the truth. I am knocking on heaven's doors so that God will grant them repentance and salvation.' Which tells me that these three types of prayers should be in our life. Now, some of us, we're more likely to just cry, petition. We have a list of things we're praying for; we come to the Lord and say, 'Lord, bless ABCD,' we're done. Some of us, we're more like Mary's at the feet of Jesus; we just say, 'Come, we turn on worship, and for hours, we just worship. We don't even ask anything; we're like, 'Lord, you know my problems, and plus, I probably deserve them anyway, so I'm just going to love on you, Jesus. I don't care about my problems, and honestly, I'm not even sure you want to help me with those, but I just love you.' That's not bad. And there's some of us; we're just intercessors. We literally, from the first second we come into prayer, we're like, 'Father God, in the name of Jesus Christ, I just pray right now for this person to be saved.' And we have a list of people; we lay hands on the sheets at the morning prayer, and it's good. But I want us to understand that God wants this prayer to be all three at once. There will be seasons when you spend more time in worship, there will be seasons when you spend more time asking, there will be seasons where you spend more time interceding. But do not neglect neither of them at the expense of another when it comes to prayer. Amen. The first thing I want to highlight is this: Prayer brings a reward. Prayer brings a reward. Matthew chapter 6, verse 6, it says, "But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will..." Now, I find it interesting what the Bible says here. He will reward you openly. What should it say? Since you're praying, it should say, "The Father will answer your prayer openly." But it doesn't say that. The Father will reward you openly, which tells me the ultimate goal of prayer is not always to get results, which means sometimes you will not get the results you're praying for, but God still will reward you for praying. Prayer brings a reward. In Genesis 15:1, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying, "Do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward." Prayer is as much about results as it is about a reward. God's presence is the reward of prayer. Yes, we receive results, like brother Jose mentioned. When we pray, God answers, and I'm going to mention that in just a moment. But I want you to not think of prayer as only a means by which you get what you ask for. God says to us in Matthew 6:6, "If you pray, I will reward you openly." And then to Abraham, the Lord says, "Abraham, I know you want a son. You're asking for a son. But before I give you a son, I want to give you Myself. Do not limit your prayer to only getting results, because prayer is where God wants to give Himself to you. He wants to be your exceedingly great reward. When it comes to prayer, I want to highlight about answers. If your request is wrong, God will say no. If your timing is wrong, God will say slow. If you are wrong, God will say grow. And if everything is right, God will say go. Our requests do not get answered all the time. What we pray for does not get granted to us right away. And this should not discourage us. The reason why is because the ultimate benefit of prayer is not just getting results; it's getting a reward. And that reward is God's presence, and that reward is God Himself. Charles Spurgeon said, 'We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God if we remember how long and how graciously He once waited for us.' Secondly, prayer brings revival. Not only does prayer bring a reward in the sense that we experience God's presence, but secondly, prayer brings a revival. It revives our spiritual life. Luke 3:21 and 22, when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized. And while He prayed, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him. And a voice came from heaven saying, 'You are My beloved Son; in You, I am well pleased.' I want you to see this: while He prayed. Say this with me: while He prayed. While He was praying, we see heaven gets opened. While He prayed, we see that something else happened: the Holy Spirit descended. While He prayed, a voice came from heaven. Another instance, Luke 9:29, as He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, His robe became white and glistening. Which means, as He is praying, we see the first time, while He prayed, God opens the heaven. As Jesus is praying, while He's praying, His face begins to change. So, prayer is not only where God is giving me Himself; prayer is also when God is transforming me and changing me into His image and likeness. He changes me before He changes my circumstances. Prayer is not only to get results; prayer is also to get revival. Revival for you, where your spiritual man gets ignited, where your face changes, where your mood is altered, where your thoughts come down, where your spirit man gets built. While He prayed, the heavens were opened. While He prayed, the Holy Spirit descended. While He prayed, God spoke. Something happens when you pray; you experience personal revival. There was a guy named Dave—Dave Robertson. Some of you may be have read his book, "Walking in the Power and Walking in the Holy Spirit." His mom was an alcoholic; his father was violent, in and out of jails, and would beat him. His grandfather decided to raise Dave. But, while the grandfather taught him work ethic, he also verbally abused him. He said, "You'll never amount to anything. You're worthless, and you're just going to be like your dad." At 16 years of age, Dave got saved in the Pentecostal church. Because the church did not have a follow-up, two weeks later, Dave backslid from God. He eventually joined the Navy for a term and, after that, came back to God in some legalistic holiness church where he found his wife. One good thing happened in this legalistic church: he got baptized in the Holy Spirit, and after that, he never backslid. He was working in the lumber mill, working with wood and all of that stuff. One day, at the age of 30, he wakes up one morning, and he has a vision. In the vision (and I'm going to read it how it happened), his eyes were opened, but instead of seeing his bedroom, he saw an auditorium with people in wheelchairs on the platform. He was seated three rows behind, back to the left. Somehow, he knew this was the meeting that was supposed to be his meeting. The associate pastor began to announce the speaker and looked right at Dave. And Dave had his Bible open to Jude 20 and 21, which teaches about speaking in tongues. So, this is happening in the vision. Dave started to stand up, but suddenly, an associate pastor pointed to the stage curtain, and there came a blonde woman who moved mightily in the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. People got out of wheelchairs, and then the auditorium became empty, except for Dave and this woman who looked at him and said, "I don't know why God has chosen me, but it's probably because you failed." He wakes up from the vision at the age of 30. This was a dream or a vision from God, and it messes with him so bad that for the next two weeks, he doesn't know what to do with himself. He quits his job. And instead of working 8 hours a day, typically when he would go to work, he would find a closet in his church, go and pray there in the closet until there would be a whistle at the local place where he worked for a break. There was this whistle that would happen, so he would end the prayer 4 hours into it, go have a coffee break. There was another whistle to go back to work, and he would go back to prayer. And he did that 8 hours a day, 3 months straight. Now, of course, the first few days, he ran out of things to pray about because his English ran out in 15 minutes. And then he started praying Jude 20-21, started praying in the Holy Ghost. As he would pray in the Holy Ghost for 4 hours and then 4 hours after lunch, treated it like work. He says, "If I worked at this mill station, I could work in my prayer. He would build the spirit man." One day, somebody invites him to a meeting. It was a church meeting, and he was so glad to go so he can get out of prayer as well. As he goes to this church meeting, the preacher was boring, the service was dead. I mean, things were just as dead as Lazarus—dead Lazarus just dead, and he sat there just bored out of his mind, thinking, "I probably should have been praying instead of sitting at this dead meeting." Instantly, he looks at this woman, he sees an x-ray of her knees, and in this x-ray, he's literally just seeing like a clear image of what is wrong with her knees. So, he approaches in the middle of the meeting to her, scoots over to her, and says, "Hey, do you have a problem with your knees?" He's like, "I've never had this happen before to me, but this is happening at the meeting." And she's like, "In fact, yes, I do," and she pointed to some kind of disease that she has. He says, "Hey, can I just pray for you?" So, he prays for her. God supernaturally touches this woman, creates a commotion in the service, prays for another person, another person gets healed, and it literally launches his ministry that eventually lasted for 40-something years into different nations of the world of —Healing Ministry, Deliverance Ministry. Then he pastored also a large church. But one thing he attributes this to is this: God told him that this happened to him because he chose to build himself up in the spirit by praying in tongues. He added fasting to his prayer and eventually had seen a Healing Ministry for 49 years, and he passed away in 2022. What this tells me is that prayer is a reward. God gives us His presence. We experience Him. Prayer is also a revival. If you want to have revival this year, it cannot happen without you praying. And I'm not just talking about a prayer before a test: "Father God, please help me because I didn't study. May you add super to my natural." I'm not just talking about when you are driving, you are speeding, and you really have a police officer on your tail, pulling you over. He's like, "God, I promise I will give half of my income to the poor. Just please don't let this police officer give me a ticket." And I'm also not talking about a prayer when you came to church, you're single, you're ready to mingle, you found somebody that you like, your heart is beating fast, and you're like, "Man, can she just look at me once? And that would be a sign, Lord, a sign that you love me and you will never forsake me." Not that kind of prayer. I'm talking about a prayer where you are dedicating time, like Jesus did. He went into the water and prayed while being baptized. He went to the mountain, and His face was changed. God wants to revive your spiritual life. Mark my words: If you dedicate yourself to continuous prayer this year, you will live in continuous revival. There are people who want revival, and there are those who live in revival. It's time to move away from just wanting revival, hoping for revival, asking God for revival, to live in a spiritual revival. And that secret is a secret place. Can somebody say Amen? Number three: Prayer brings a release. So, not only does prayer brings a revival, but prayer also brings a release. In fact, let me just mention a few more things about revival. If prayer brings revival, prayerlessness will bring you into a spiritual rut. Matthew 26:40 and 41, Jesus said, "Then He came to His disciples and found them sleeping and said to Peter, 'What, could you not watch with me for one hour? Pray, watch, and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.' John Bunyan said, 'Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.' EM Bounds, who I think is like an apostle on prayer—if you want to read anything on prayer, EM Bounds is the guy. He said, 'No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.' EM Bounds also said, 'To give prayer the secondary place is to make God secondary in one's affairs. Pray when you feel like praying, but it's a sin to neglect such an opportunity. Pray when you don't feel like praying, for it is dangerous to remain in such a condition.' Turn to your neighbor, say, 'It's time to pray.' Number three: Prayer brings a release. Luke chapter 22, verses 40 and 41: When He came to a place, He said to them, 'Pray that you may not enter into temptation.' He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and prayed. Few verses down, verse 43, it says, 'Then the angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him.' Now I want to address that for some people. You're sitting here today, and what I'm sharing is falling on deaf ears right now because the argument you have in your mind, maybe, or a stronghold is this: 'I did that, that you're talking about, and it didn't work. I prayed, but my mom still died. I prayed, where was God? Why didn't He answer my prayer? Because this situation only got worse.' This week, we had the opportunity to meet with some young people, and as I was meeting with them, I was just asking them about the state of their spiritual life. And one of the young men mentioned, he said, 'What really hit my prayer life this year, last year, and he said literally knocked me out was the fact that on my wedding day, my mom died. And I hoped for a breakthrough. I believed for a breakthrough, and it didn't come. What's the point of praying? Why press in? Where is God in all of this?' And I know how devastating it could be when you experience tragedy. When I was 9 years of age, I saw my best friend had half of his skull gushed out in front of my eyes. It's traumatizing. Why did God not prevent that? I was born with something that damaged my optical nerve. Because of that; I struggled with insecurity as a teenager. You know how many prayers I prayed for God to heal this? Many. Did God answer it? Well, you're looking at it still. And it was a struggle for me too. What do you do when you're asking God for this, and it's not happening? And I mentioned to this young man what I want to share with you today. I don't think any believer could ever walk with the Lord for more than a few years without having an experience of disappointment where some prayers are not answered like we want them, when we want them to be answered. The strong Christians are not those who didn't have these experiences; it's those who walked through them and found God on the other side. I would submit to you, my Savior, your Savior had an unanswered prayer. In the garden of Gethsemane, God didn't answer His prayer: 'Father, may this cup pass over from me.' That was never granted. And I'm glad it was never granted because if Jesus's prayer in the garden would have been granted, I would have been doomed to the lake of fire. I am not in any way comparing my prayers to Jesus's prayer; absolutely not. What I'm saying is I have a high priest who can sympathize with me in my weakness. And Jesus did not give up on prayer just because of a garden of Gethsemane situation because He still prayed to His Father on the cross. And when He rose from the dead, He prayed to His Father to send the Holy Spirit. And guess what He does? continuously still pray. So what do you do with this experience where some prayers were not answered even when there was a clear scriptural proof that it was God's will? You can take it internal and say, 'Oh, I didn't have enough faith; I'm at fault,' and you start beating yourself. You can blame somebody else. What do you do? This week, the Lord gave me a scripture that brought a lot of clarity personally for me, and I want to share that with you. It comes from Revelation. In the book of Revelation 6:10 and 11. It says this: 'And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" Then a white robe was given to each of them, and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who would be killed as they were was completed.' What an irony. These people cry out to God: 'God, when will you avenge our deaths?' God doesn't grant them their request. He still answers them, but not with, 'Oh yeah, let me go do it right now.' God says, 'Puts a robe on them first. Clothes them with a white robe and says, "Rest a little while because more killings are going to happen, more death is going to happen, and then I will step in as the Righteous Judge and judge the iniquity, judge sin, and judge even death itself." When it comes to prayer, I want you to—if you hear anything I'm going to share today, I want you to, for the next minute and a half, two minutes, open both of your ears wide. You cannot approach the topic of prayer ignoring the foundation of the gospel. The gospel tells us: Good God, bad people. His Son, Jesus, dies on the cross to rescue us from the grip of sin. God gives us the gift of salvation. We are rebels to God, and God gave us mercy. We live in a broken world where sin and Satan still rules and dominates. Things don't work out like God wanted them because of sin, because of our rebellion, and because of Satan. And one day, God will make everything right when He will judge sin. Satan, curses will be thrown into the lake of fire. Death will be thrown into the lake of fire. And we are in between that season where if sometimes some prayers do not get answered here on earth, we have to remember it's not just about 70 years on earth. Don't box God into this thing. If this doesn't happen to me right now, if my physical body doesn't get healed, if my finances don't break through right now, God, I quit on you. Because if you have that approach, you forgot about the fact you are a rebel to God. The world is under the demonic oppression. We live in a broken system, and there is more to life than 70 miserable years on earth—there is eternity. Eternity. And we also forget that God is not bullied by our threats. He has His own timeline, and the time is coming where God promises to judge sin, to judge injustice, and to execute His righteous judgment on this earth, and God will make everything right. So how do I deal with the fact that some of my prayers did not get answered, especially, I would say, concerning my physical appearance? How do I deal with them? I just turn them over to God, and I know one day when I see His face, I will have a perfect face. Until that day, I'm not going to stop praying. I'm not going to stop trusting, and I'm not going to stop walking with God. Because prayer for me is not just getting everything I want from God; sometimes it's releasing the pain I'm experiencing, the struggles I experience. I go to God with my doubts, I go to God with my hurts, I go to God with my disappointments, like my Savior did. He went to God and said, 'Lord, could you cause this cup to run pass Me by?' God didn't grant the prayer, but God sent an angel to strengthen Him. When God doesn't remove the struggle, He will renew your strength. When, in prayer, God does not always fix every single thing, He will come and strengthen your heart and say, 'Son, I am with you. I will walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death. I will walk with you through the fire. I will walk with you through the struggle. I will be with you in the flood, in the river, and in the fire. Amen.' I want to encourage you with that today. When the answer to prayer is delayed, God will clothe you with the robe of His comfort. There was this guy named Ivan; he endured all the horrors of Soviet prison camp. One day, he was praying with his eyes closed. When a fellow prisoner noticed him and said with ridicule, 'Prayer won't help you to get out of here any faster.' Opening his eyes, Ivan answered, 'I do not pray to get out of this prison; I pray to do God's will.' Don't turn prayer into a vending machine experience—if I punch in the right numbers, everything I want will come out. God is not a universe that you pray to, and God is not a law of attraction. God is a Being, a just Judge, your Father, and my Father. And He asks us to ask Him, and we pray to Him. He gives us results, but there are things we don't get sometimes on this side. And this should not discourage and destroy our faith; this should strengthen our faith to bring our hurts, frustrations to Him in prayer. If you stopped praying because you've had a very disappointing experience with prayer before, maybe God didn't answer the prayers, and you stopped completely, I want to ask you to step over that mystery of why it did not happen and to step into many more answered prayers that God wants to answer in your life. If I would stop praying, you know, as I could stand here today and say, 'Well, look, God didn't answer this prayer,' when people even pointed to me when we couldn't have children, saying, 'Look, where is your God now? You guys can't have children.' So what? Our God is a good God, and He answers prayer. But even if He is not going to answer, I'm going to still love Him, seek Him, press into Him. Why? Because I believe in the gospel; my sins have been forgiven. I've been washed by the blood of Jesus Christ. And if God doesn't answer one prayer for the rest of my life, I will love and praise Him, why? Because of what He did on the cross for me; He saved me. I'm a rebel to God, and He converted this rebel into His son and adopted me into His family. That's such a big deal. This life on earth, whatever I get, good, bad, or ugly, is still going to come to an end. And whether you're rich, poor, it doesn't matter—six feet underground, all of our bones and skeletons will be the same. And all of our lives will be reduced to one dash. But what happens in that eternity, that's what's going to matter. And I want, on that side, to be with this God who gave His Son to die for me. And that's what we need to remember is the gospel, eternity, His love for us, be clothed with that righteousness when we experience prayers that don't seem to get answers. Sometimes they'll get answered just a little bit later. But in that moment, the enemy will come in and say, 'You know, look what happened to you. This person died.' Yeah, but this person is in heaven right now, hoping you will stop whining and actually trust in God so you can have a family reunion in there. I remember when Sid Roth, you know, when he got saved, his family got saved, and his brothers and sisters got saved, his mom got saved. And there was the last person who didn't want to give their life to the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, and that was his father. And Sid Roth said, on the deathbed, he would come to his father and say, 'Dad, you need to get saved. You need to believe in the Messiah. You need to believe in Yeshua as the Messiah.' And his dad, of course, was a stubborn Orthodox Jew, like, 'No, I'm not going to do it.' And then him and his sister would come and say, 'Dad, everybody's going to heaven. We're all going to be in heaven. We're going to miss you, Dad. For crying out loud, get saved so we can have a family reunion.' And something about that just broke his heart that he's going to be in hell alone, and the whole family is going to be without him, him in heaven. And right there, I think a few hours before he breathed his last, he shouted that he wanted to get saved. Sid Roth wasn't convinced, so he's like, 'You need to shout louder that you want to be saved.' He's like, 'I just want to make sure, with an exclamation mark, that we will be with you in heaven, because I don't want to go to heaven without my whole family being in heaven.' And when that dad got saved, such a big deal. That's what the most important is: our eternal salvation, not our temporary blessings. Now, now, with that said, the fourth thing is prayer brings results. The Bible records 650 prayers, 450 answers to prayer. Jesus prayed 25 different times during his ministry. Paul mentions prayer 21 times in his writings. Jentezen Franklin said this: 'One of the greatest tragedies of prayerlessness is the unemployment of angels.' Myles Munroe said, 'Prayer is the earthly license for heavenly interference.' Mark Batterson said, 'Prayers are prophecies; they are the best predictors of your spiritual future. Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.' Abraham prayed for Abimelech, and God answered it. Job prayed for his friends, and God answered it. Solomon asked for wisdom, and God granted it to him. Hannah asked for a son, and God gave it to her. Jabez prayed for protection and blessing, and God granted his request. Ahab was a heathen king, and he prayed for repentance. God granted him repentance and postponed judgment. Hezekiah prayed, God added 15 years to his life. Nineveh prayed, and God postponed destruction. Zacharias prayed, and God answered that prayer by giving him a son. Yes, prayer will not change God, but it will change everything. Interesting, some of us say, "Well, God promised, it settles it. I don't need to pray about it." Yet, it's interesting when God came to rescue Israel from Egypt, He didn't say, "Hey, I made a promise to Abraham, and I'm going to rescue." The Bible says God says, "I heard your cry." So, yes, God will fulfill His word, but he loves to answer your prayer. Just because God gave you a promise to bless you, protect you, save your kids, don't sit and fold your hand and say, "Well, God said it. I'm just going to simply chill about it." No, you need to pray through because the Bible says that God loves to answer our prayers. We see that God the Father promised the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, yet Jesus asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit. Why? Because it's not just about God making a promise; it's you partnering with God so God begins to release that promise because of your prayer. There was this Baptist preacher. He was on the way from a service. It was January 18, 1989. His name was Don Piper. He died; his car smashed to pieces. Virtually every bone in his body was broken and shattered, and he died on the scene. He remained dead for 90 minutes. The steering wheel, he said, impaled me in the chest, and then the car's roof collapsed on my head. So there was just no way you could survive this accident. He said that his heart stopped pumping, and the paramedics declared him dead. He was without a pulse for 90 minutes. Now, another guy was driving by. His name was Dick Onerecker, and he decided to go and climb over where Don Piper was at and hold his hand. The guy was dead for 90 minutes and pray for him. He prays for him, prays for him, prays for him, prays for him, and God specifically instructed this another Baptist preacher to pray specifically for him that he will not have internal injuries, he will not have any brain or internal injuries. After 90 minutes of being dead, medically verified dead—10 minutes, you're a vegetable; 15 minutes, you're gone—90 minutes, a guy that's praying for a dead man. Don is already in heaven, has visits in heaven, seeing his family, everything. But somebody on earth is not giving up and praying, and Don comes back to his body. God didn't just bring him back into his body, God used somebody to intercede and to pray. Interestingly, of course, when he came back to his body, every part of his body was damaged, except what the preacher prayed for: no brain damage. Supernaturally, God protected his brain, and he was not a vegetable. So, this Baptist preacher is holding the hand of this dead guy who just came back to life, runs to the paramedics, and says, "Guys, I think he has a pulse." Of course, the paramedics are like, "He's gone. There's no way he can have a pulse. It's been 90 minutes," and they're about to leave. This Baptist preacher lies on the floor on the road and tells the paramedics, "You're going to have to run me over. You're not leaving until you go check on him." So, of course, paramedics wouldn't run him over, so they came to check on him. When they come to check on him, they find out he actually has a pulse now, of course, two years of like 30-something surgeries, and God brought him back, and not only that, he lived and still testifies to the glory of God, the power of prayer. If prayer can bring somebody from the dead, what can your prayer do? What would happen if in the next 21 days, you start to pray? Not only you'll experience revival, not only you'll experience God's reward of His presence, not only you'll experience some release in your life, but there will be results that only God can do. Can somebody say, "Amen"? A Buddhist monk, a Buddhist man, he was born in South Korea. Steve Kong, at the age of six, he started to attend Buddhist temples, and at the age of nine, he moved to the United States. He started having an identity crisis in middle school: confusion, anger, rebellion, depression, sadness. He coped with it by taking drugs. In his freshman year of college, he ended up living in a dealer's house, and they were transporting, carrying, and selling drugs. In 1998, during the summer, he got high, so he calls the Buddhist temple for help, and they didn't help him. So, he smoked what is called death bow, which is a heroin, cocaine, and PCP combined. He stayed awake for 10 straight days, started to experience trips, an old Asian grandpa would show up to Steve and tell him if he takes his life, he will have 50,000 years less in hell and go to heaven. He's on such heavy drugs for 10 days; he's not sleeping, so he's going crazy. He's seeing this grandpa, and then finally, this grandpa who is just a demon, tells Steve to kill himself, points to a kitchen knife, and says, "You need to go do it right now." Now, Steve's mom was in the house at that time, and so Steve goes for the kitchen knife and starts cutting himself. And as he's cutting himself, what begins to happen, his mom comes in and starts to get the knife out. The grandpa shows up to Steve and says, "Do it faster and do it right now because she's hindering your salvation." The moment he dies, Steve leaves his body, and the grandpa disappears, and instead, he ends up in hell. Now, his mom, being a Buddhist, calls a Christian lady who is the mother of the drug dealer's house that this is happening at. They all come to the house; the pastors come, and they begin to intercede for hours for Steve, and God brings him back to life. He gets rescued from that hell, comes back to his consciousness, and then these pastors and leaders tell Steve, "Say, do you want to get saved?" He says, "Yes, yes." He prays the sinner's prayer 10 times, just in case, and it saved his life, the mother prayed him out. Though he was a Buddhist, but God rescued him. Today, Steve is a pastor and a leader and tells other people about Jesus Christ. Moms, dads, never give up praying for your children. There is power in prayer. There are results that God will do when you begin to pray. Let me tell you about a Liberian warlock named Joshua; they call him the "Naked General." There are documentaries about him, stories about him. Actually, I had the privilege of interviewing him already, but I can't post the video because his reception was really bad. His father was in line to be a priest for this deity in Africa. But because his father was rich, this deity, it's a demon, didn't choose his father instead, he was chosen. At 11 years of age, he becomes a high priest for a demonic deity in Liberia. Four years before he becomes a priest, so 11 minus 4, 7 years of age, he starts the process of preparation for high priesthood. This process involved being blindfolded, and from morning till evening, hunting animals as a 7-year-old blindfolded, killing an animal with bare hands, ripping the heart out from an animal blindfolded, and eating the heart of an animal. Four-year training, disgusting, nasty; that's what demons cause people to do. Finally, he qualified to be the high priest. At 11, he becomes the high priest, and the first thing he has to do as a high priest is now not kill animals but children and eat their hearts, a human sacrifice. And for the next 14 years, this happens every year. He has 3,000 something priests under him as an 11-year-old, 12 year old because he's so demonically possessed. Eventually, the president of Liberia was under his control. He went from being a witch doctor to becoming a warlock, where he now organized an army and started killing people. In fact, about 20,000 people were killed directly under him. Now, I didn't think a lot of it was true until I tried to fly him to Romania a week ago. So, I can interview him, and they flagged him at the airport because of 20 to 30,000 people that were killed by him. Now, he received forgiveness. Now, he's helping. He's totally restored but still in Europe. He can't go anywhere because of his background. Christian group, knowing this guy is completely crazy, started to intercede for him, and they named him Joshua. Their intercession wasn't for his salvation but for his immediate death by God's judgment. So much death he caused. They didn't even dare to pray for his salvation. The reason why they changed his name to Joshua so, in case somebody finds out, they'll never be able to link them to his judgment. And so, they will not have repercussions for their prayers. God brings a prophet to this Christian group of intercessors and says, 'Don't pray for his judgment, pray for his salvation.' Him, this guy, kills children. He's a warlock. 30,000 people were slaughtered, not him. He needs to burn in hell. He's on the level of Hitler. But God had a different plan. So, they start praying for his salvation. And if that was not enough, they were brave enough every day to try to go to his house and evangelize to him. This is the funny part, interesting part. None of his security could detect Christians. They would pass through his security; none of them saw Christians. Only he had an encounter with them every day. He would always decline the gospel. He would say no to them. But because they kept praying for him and God supernaturally protected tehm where his army men didn't kill the Christians. Until one day he said, he'll come to church. And when he came to church, he had an open vision at the altar. And God supernaturally touches him, and he becomes saved. Interesting part, he goes to Nigeria to share his testimony. And in Nigeria, while he's sharing his testimony, God starts delivering him. The very thing he swallowed as an 11 years of age priest, there was a particular demonic object he had to swallow. Now, as a saved Christian in another country, during deliverance, the same objects that were in his body came out. And God totally set him free. And today, he rescues child soldiers and ministers to them and prays for them. And we have people in our church who actually worked with him in Liberia. This is not something I read off of the internet, and they can testify. This man's life is dramatically and crazily changed. The power of prayer! If your son, your daughter, maybe, is involved in some sinful things and you say there is no way God can rescue them, my friend, keep praying because our God does miracles. Because nothing is impossible. May this be the year where God does the supernatural miracles in your family. May this be the year where God does supernatural miracles in your finances. May this be the year where God will do supernatural miracles in your life, in Jesus' mighty name. Can somebody say Amen? I want to encourage you to pray. In conclusion, I don't want to just inspire you. I want to give you practical steps on how to pray properly. Our prayer is to the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. Say this with me: say, 'Our prayer is to the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.' We don't pray to Mary, we don't pray to saints, and we don't pray to the universe. We pray to the Father, in the name of Jesus, by the Holy Spirit. The second thing, the place of prayer. You can pray privately, you can pray publicly. Men of God had altars where they prayed. Later on, people prayed in the temple. Jesus prayed in the wilderness, prayed on a mountain, in the garden, or any solitary place. We are told to go into a room to pray. We are also told to gather together as a church and pray. The third thing, practical prayer, the posture of prayer. The heart is more important than any postures, but in the Bible, people prayed sitting, people prayed standing, people prayed kneeling, they prayed face to the ground, they prayed with hands lifted up, they prayed with eyes lifted to heaven, they prayed placing the head between your knees (probably not a best idea for a lot of us, but you can still practice that if you really want to go biblical). And some people prayed pounding their chest (don't want to do that when if you come to the morning prayer, but in case you're privately in your home and this really helps you, you can pound your chest. Somebody in the Bible pounded their chest, but they were sinners and they pounded their chest, and God reacted or responded to that. The biggest question that people have is, 'What do I pray about?' I have a solution for you, very simple: pray TACOS prayer. Tuesday TACOS, Monday TACOS, Wednesday TACOS, Thursday TACOS, and Friday TACOS. What does TACOS prayer stand for? TACOS stand for: T - Thanksgiving (thank God for what He did and does in your life). A - Adoration (praise God for who He is, His righteousness, His holiness, His promises, His character). C - Confession (confess your sins, confess your wrongdoings, confess who you are in Jesus, confess His promises over your life, confess prophetic words over your life, do a confession). O - Others (pray for others, intercede for your family members, intercede for your co-workers, for your immediate family members, for your friends). Pray for others and lastly, pray for your self. S - Self (pray for yourself, pray for your needs, your goals, and desires). So, next time you get into prayer, you're like, 'Man, I don't know what to pray for,' try TACOS. Thanksgiving, adoration, confession, others, and yourself. Pray in the Holy Ghost, pray in tongues, lift your prayer, and you will see God will begin to meet you at the point of your need. Next 21 days, starting tomorrow, we want to embark on a 21 days of prayer. Now, it's also fasting, but fasting without prayer could just be physical. The purpose of fasting is spiritual reasons, not just physical. Instead of eating, replace your eating with prayer. Maybe you've never prioritized getting up a little bit earlier, do that. If you are able, and you don't live very far from the church, come to church to pray. Let's make this a house of prayer. We're starting something with our team, and I want to invite you to be a part of that. I want you to pull out your phone, and if you have a Telegram chat, I want you to go to this Telegram chat. If you want to be a part of this prayer with us, you don't have to if you don't want to, but if you want to, I want you to join this Telegram chat. This is a HungryGen prayer chat where the night before, we will put some prayer requests that we're going to be praying for the day after. So, like tonight, we're going to tell you who we are praying for tomorrow, who got saved today. We're going to also pray for specific things. Each day we have prayer requests that we're going to be praying, and then when you join that and that morning, when you go into prayer, you can say 'started' when you started. When you finish, you can say 'finished'. This is not to show off. We don't care about that. This is to hold us accountable and as a church to build a church culture of prayer. We invite you to come to pray at church, but I like what a new friend I met this week, and he said, the Lord touched my heart, my life. I come three times a week to church to pray, and the rest of the four times, I pray at home. So, I can cultivate prayer at home, so I can build a church, so I can build prayer in church, and I can build prayer in my house. And maybe that's something some of you can do. Come two, three times, or one time to church prayer and then pray at home. Our goal is not to get everybody to come here to pray. Our goal is to have everybody praying strategically, specifically targeting those things God has given to you to target in prayer this year. And if you add fasting to that, God's going to do so many amazing, incredible things this year. May this year be different than any other year, but may you approach this year differently than you approached it before. If you're pregnant, nursing or you're a child, you're not encouraged to fast. In fact, you're encouraged not to fast food because it's not healthy. If you're on heavy medication, before you make a decision to go fasting, if you're not sure, talk to your doctor. Don't just kind of go in and just say, 'Okay, I'm just going to go fast.' But if you are healthy and you're not on any meds and you feel the Lord's leading to go into a fast, you will be okay. The Lord will sustain you. The first three days will be hard, but please understand, your body has about over 30 lbs or something fat stored for days like that. God wired you like that, that you have extra stuff. Now, most of us, some of us have extra, extra, extra stuff. On average, you can go on about 68 days for your body to have enough fuel. So, what happens tomorrow when you stop eating, your body actually goes into eating. It starts eating toxins, it starts eating all the extra stuff in there. That's why you get bad breath, that's why you get a little bit of headache. All of that detoxing begins to take place in your body. Your body starts a buffet; it has enough to store. So, the craving is here, not in here. So, I want you to know that. Don't fall a victim, 'Oh my gosh, I'm going to die.' No, no, no, no, no. That's here. For most of us, it's right here. The body has enough fuel for most of us to last many, many, many, many, many, many days. And in fact, there are studies that have been done where actually fasting is beneficial for your health. But again, we're not doing it for a diet, we're not doing it to get healed physically. We're doing it to draw near to God. And again, this doesn't mean every person needs to do a water fast. It just simply every person needs to talk to the Lord and ask what does the Lord have them do for the next 21 days. Will Jesus love you less if you don't fast? Absolutely not. Our love for the Lord is not determined by our prayer, fasting; it's determined by the cross. God doesn't love us more or less, but we can draw nearer or further from Him during the season that the Lord is drawing us nearer to Him.