You may feel weary from praying for loved ones who haven't changed yet, but remember that Jesus is the one who stands in the gap for you. Keep trusting in His power rather than your own strength, and refuse to let doubt silence your intercession. Your persistence in prayer is a vital part of the spiritual fight for their salvation.
I've heard the word. It's powerful, and it's gonna challenge you where it comes when it comes to prayer. Amen? Todd Siddig, come on out, brother.
Thank you. Hold up. You haven't heard me speak yet, so Alright. Good morning, Real Church. Good morning.
My name is Todd Siddig, as David said. My family and I have been coming to Real Church since last July, so coming up on a year, which is wild, and it's kind of wild because of how much our family has been transformed by the presence of God in this church and with this body of believers. And actually, when we first came here, we actually came out of a really painful church split situation. And so, I wasn't exactly hopping on Google the next Sunday going, oh, where's the next closest church? And I want to jump right back in.
Because if you've ever been through something like that, which I hope you haven't, but if you have, you know that you're not just eager to be like, I want to go back to church. But some good friends of ours who we trust, who know pastor David, recommended Real Church to us, and so we're like, okay, we'll give it a try. And I've got to tell you, when I first came in, I was coming in still a little bit bitter and still stinging a little bit from what had happened, and was kind of viewing everything through a really critical lens. So, first off, I walk in, and I'm not thrilled to be going to a church that meets in a middle school, because I'd kind of been there and done that in my past, and was like, dear Jesus, please don't put me in a situation where I have to stack chairs again. And I was critical of other things like the production and all of these superficial things that don't really matter at the core.
But we were immediately drawn in to the earnest hunger and humility of the people here, and the presence of God that they carried. It was people who valued *Jesus* above all else in their lives. And we knew kind of early on that this was our people, so we we joined and and just the culture of the church came through, is to make true disciples, to to love well, to communicate transparently, and to spur 1 another along in good works. And so, if you're new here, we love you and we're so glad you're here. And my prayer today is that you encounter the love of Jesus in a way that marks you and changes you forever.
Amen. That being said, if you've been church shopping, which we've all been there, think, and you've been hopping from church to church, maybe you're looking for a place where you can sit in the background and sing a couple nice songs, and hear a nice message, and then go about your day, I can guarantee you that before too long, you are gonna be challenged, and your buttons are gonna be pushed in love and in the best way here. I don't say that because real church is in any way superior to other churches. We're just a body that is in vigilant pursuit of what Jesus has for our lives and the world, which requires us to live that surrendered life to him, allow him to live his life and will through us, and oftentimes that means getting uncomfortable. That's right.
Amen. And I want you to know that speaking of getting uncomfortable, I am exhibit a this morning. So, you're in good company. If you told me 10 months ago when we came here and I was sitting in bitterness in a critical spirit that I would be preaching within a year, I would have called you crazy. In fact, I sat down with pastor David, and when he asked me to speak, I think I said something along the lines of, pastor David, I have never questioned your judgment until now.
As David said, he opens every message with nowhere I'd rather be, nothing I'd rather be doing, and my first thoughts were, I can think of any number of things I would rather be doing in any number of places I would rather be. But I'm so grateful to God that he leads us in love, and he sometimes gives us that gentle rebuke as his sons and daughters to get our mindset more into alignment with what he's called us to do. And I'm excited to be here today. I'm excited to share what God's put on my heart. I'm extremely humbled to be here because of how I've seen God move in this house, and I'm just honored to be a part of it.
So before I jump into the meat of the message, I'm gonna pray because I honestly don't wanna move forward without doing that. So if you'll join me. *Jesus*, we are grateful for your presence. God, thank you that you inhabit the praises of your people, that you're here right now with each and everyone in this room. God, I pray over every heart that's in this room that it would be soft and open to receive your word.
Holy Spirit, help me move aside so that you can just speak what you wanna speak. We love you, and we honor you, and we worship you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Alright.
So today, what I want to talk about is perseverance. And I know that's a theme that we see pop up in scripture a lot. You probably think of a couple verses when I say that. Before we get to that, I do want to start with just a simple definition. So, perseverance is defined as a **steady persistence** in a course of action, a purpose, a state, especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles or discouragement.
So, as I said, I'm sure there's some verses that come to mind. I'm gonna just jump into 1 today that I think will lay the context for the rest of the message. And, it's Romans-5 3 and 4. So, if you've got your Bibles, your Bible apps, or you can just look at the screen because it's gonna be up there. So, Romans-5:3-4, which says, we "glory in our sufferings" because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.
So, this is kind of a funny verse when you're not thinking about the context, and you're going, we glory in sufferings, like, is Paul who wrote this book, is he a masochist? Like, yay, suffering. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that when we're going through life and we encounter difficulties or trials or tribulations, in that moment, there's an opportunity to yield to the spirit of God and to say, Jesus, I can't do this without you. Jesus, I don't know what you're gonna do in this situation, but I know that you can work through me and and and work through the situation.
And ultimately, when we build a track record of that continually, that's where perseverance comes in. It forms the character of Christ in us, who is our ultimate hope. So, that's why he says, glory when suffering comes your way because the end result is that I'm gonna look more like Jesus. It's not about the circumstance, it's about the opportunity to let him live through me. And so, with perseverance in mind, the the kind of aspect of that that I want to focus on today is perseverance in prayer and intercession for the lost.
Lost family members, lost friends, and just the lost in general. Keeping a posture of faith, not losing hope. How many of you have someone in your friend or family circle who you've been praying for for years, and you're just like, man, I want them to get saved. Like, God, when are you gonna move? And and it can feel like oftentimes our circumstances get worse and worse and worse before you start to see God move.
So how many of you now would maybe admit that there's been times where you've felt a sense of hopelessness about that person and and thought things like, I just don't know if they're ever going to come around. And maybe you've even laid down praying for them for a while because you're just frustrated and discouraged. I don't want you to admit that to shame you at all. I've had those thoughts myself in the last couple months. But what I'm hoping to do today is to give you some keys and some encouragement through scripture and through my testimony because this has played a huge part in my own testimony and how I've seen God move through my family.
And there are kind of 3 key areas I want to focus on. And this is not an exhaustive list at all, but it's a good foundation for to begin. And areas to persevere in prayer, first, is understanding the fight that we're in, that we're in a spiritual battle. And the second part is understanding our authority in Christ that we have in that battle. And then the third is just circling it all back around that being in a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus is where we're ultimately going to persevere in prayer.
So, I want to set the stage by telling you some of my testimony. I was raised in a Christian home, but for all intents and purposes, we were nominal Christians. And what I mean by that is we were Christians by name only. We went to church on Sunday. We owned bibles.
We went to Awana's. You know, we did the things. We kinda checked off the boxes, but there wasn't that living an exchanged life and letting *Jesus* lead every aspect of our life and living a life laid down for him. That wasn't really a concept that I thought about or talked about much growing up. And when I was 8 years old, my parents got divorced, and growing up, I never really had a consistent faith community.
So, when I was with my mom, we'd try out a couple different churches here and there, and then when I was with my dad, we'd try out a couple different churches. But I never had any consistency, and as a kid even, I saw a lot of inauthenticity in believers. So, by the age of 13, I told my parents, you know, stop waking me up in the morning. I don't want to go to church. Like, it just the they profess and how they live doesn't really line up.
It's not really clicking with me. And so, I stopped going to church and kind of put that aside. And it's also about that age, around 13 years old, that I began what became a several years long struggle with homosexuality and addiction to pornography. And during that time, I was so ashamed of what I was doing, but I didn't know how to get out of that lifestyle. And deep down, I knew it was wrong, I knew that maybe it wasn't really who I was, but kind of believed all the things that said, well, you were born this way, and and and it's out of your control.
And and so, I got to a point where I was carrying so much shame and guilt that around early high school, got into the party scene because every opportunity I could, I would just drink until I blacked out. Because that was the only way I knew that I could get a couple hours of reprieve from the guilt and shame that I was carrying. I had heard truths about Jesus growing up, and I never actually stopped believing that he was real or that God was there. I just believed that I was too far gone and that he wanted nothing to do with me, and actually, there were several times where I would say out loud to God, or in my mind, I would say, I don't want to walk with you because I can't face my shame. So even though I had heard conceptual truths about Jesus, there was something that was preventing me from being able to fully accept them and walk with Jesus.
I didn't understand that my sin truly was paid for on the cross, that his blood was enough to reconcile me into relationship with him. So I'm going to pause right there, and I'm going to get into the first kind of sub point of my message, is understanding the fight that we're in. So we're in a spiritual battle, and we have an enemy. And we need to understand our enemy in order to war effectively in prayer. So I'm going to quote 1 of the probably 1 of the most popular verses.
You've probably seen it on like a pillow at Home Goods, but you know, it's popular for a reason. And that's in *Ephesians-6* verses 10 through 12, says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you may take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. We're in a spiritual battle.
And if we don't understand that, we're not going to fare very well. When we think about this and how it plays out in our lives, we understand that there is evil in the world that's around us, that's coming against us. And if we're not anchored in truth and in Jesus and in the truth of his word, we're not gonna win the battle. Now, if you think about an unbeliever, they're losing the battle without even knowing it because there's only victory over sin and death in Jesus. I think it's important to understand what the word says about unbelievers because all too often, we can look at someone's circumstances and get caught up in that and think, oh, they're just too stubborn, and they they just want to choose sin over Jesus.
And while an aspect of that might be true because we have free will, there's more at play than just their will. And I want to read another verse. It's in *2 Corinthians-4:3* and 4 that says, and even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. *Jesus said, you shall know the truth* and the truth shall set you free.
So if a person's mind is blinded from the truth, they can't have freedom. I'm gonna look at another verse here. Romans-6:16 through 17. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the 1 whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves to sin had become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.
And Romans is another book that the apostle Paul wrote, and here he's writing to the church in Rome, and he's teaching them about these concepts of being in Jesus, and as Christians living a laid down life, putting off the old man and putting on Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ in me. But what I want to hone in on here is what he says. He says, he says, you who were once slaves to sin. So if we think about these 2 verses together, we can we can kind of deduce that an unbeliever is blinded from the truth, and they're actually enslaved to sin.
And this is exactly where I was where we left off in my testimony. I was living in an identity that didn't belong to me, and it wasn't in alignment with what God created me to be, but I was blinded from seeing the truth of who he was and what he could do in my life if I just gave my life to him. I was partnering with darkness. And in Ephesians-5, it actually says, before we walk with Jesus, darkness is actually part of our identity. I was darkness, and I couldn't find my own way out.
So in high school, actually, this is where a good friend of mine comes into the story. Her name is Mara. We met doing plays together, and for those of you who know me, maybe me being an actor comes as a surprise, or maybe it doesn't. You might be like, that's on point for Todd. So you can tell me what you think after.
But Mara and I became fast friends, and I was immediately drawn to her because she carried herself with so much joy and confidence. And, she also wasn't shy about her faith, and would often share Jesus with me and invite and invite me to church, to which I would always decline. But, I had also kind of said, well, I know that joy and confidence can't come from Jesus because I grew up in church, and I didn't see that coming from the people that I saw in church. So, it's just her personality. And besides that, despite all of her invitations and telling me about Jesus, I had already made up my mind about God.
And again, like I said, there were so many times in my teen years where I told God, I don't want to walk with you because I don't want to face my shame. What I didn't know is that Mara was faithfully praying for me with her church community and her family. So we're going to pause there again. I want to get into this next point, is understanding our authority in Christ. It's 1 thing to know that we're in a spiritual battle and quite another to know that we've been given authority in that battle.
In the gospels, we see Jesus establishing his authority and also delegating authority and power to the disciples. In Matthew-10, it says that Jesus called the 12 disciples to himself and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits, to heal every disease and sickness. And this is later reiterated in the chapter when he sends the disciples out and charges them to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, and cast out demons. I'm so challenged by the simplicity of these verses because Jesus didn't give any prerequisites to doing any of that. He just said, I've given you authority.
Now, go do it. And, the only prerequisite was follow me. That's right. Come on, Paul. It's good.
So, with that in mind, I want to look at another verse here in second Corinthians again. This is in chapter 10 verses 4 and 5, which says, the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have **divine power** to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. So, wait a minute.
If we look at this and we think about what we read in 2 Corinthians-4, which talked about how the enemy of the world has blinded the minds of believers, but this here is telling us that we have authority over the very thing that's blinding the mind of believers. So the very thing that we're at war with, we have authority over in Christ. This can sound kind of overwhelming, but it only is if you think that any of that authority comes within, you know, in and of yourself. It's only through yielding to Christ and allowing him to empower you with his spirit and live his life and will through you that you can get wisdom to know what is keeping an unbeliever captive. Is it the spirit of anger or depression or addiction?
Whatever it is, Jesus can tell you, and and and you can be empowered by the Holy Spirit to take authority over that thing in that person's life. So back to my friend Mara praying for me. Mara was part of an internship through her church, and every year they did a ministry tour, which this is where they would travel across the country, and they would go to different churches, and they would minister, they would give testimony, they would preach, they would do dances and different things like that. It was the early 2 thousands, so they definitely did some human videos. If you don't know what a human video is, it was it was the rage in the early 2 thousands.
It's basically a skit set to a song, YouTube it after, you'll be blessed. Life house. Life house. Life house dance. That's what you gotta search.
So, Mara invited me to the kickoff night of this ministry tour at her church, to which again, I said no. But, she kinda egged me on a little bit and said, well, it's not really a traditional church service. This is more like She kinda explained what what they were doing, and she said things like, you know, I've been working really hard on these things, and it would really mean a lot to me if you came. So, she's kinda like pulling on the friend heartstrings a little bit, kinda giving me a little guilt trip for not wanting to come. If the Holy Spirit ever leads you to do that, you know, obey, but I'm not saying it's something that you're gonna wanna do every time.
And I thought I was really clever, so I said, you know, I've got so much going on tonight, I don't think I can make it, which really meant I have nothing going on, I just don't want to tell you no. And then I But I did feel like, you know, maybe I should try to go. And me being the clever person that I am, I said, okay, I'm going to give myself just enough time to get there, maybe even a little less time than it should take to get there. And if I get there late, I'm not going in because I don't want to walk into a church service late and like have people looking back to see who's coming in. So, I do just that, I get in my car, I leave with probably a little less time than is needed to get there, and because God is who he is and works the way that he does, there was no traffic and every single light turned green right when I approached.
And I actually got there early. So I thought, okay, I've got to go in now. And the night was as Mara said it would be. They did ministry stuff. I thought, this is great.
I'm glad I could support Mara in her, you know, in her journey. And they did all their things. And then, after a while, the pastor got up to speak, and I slowly was like, wait a minute. He's preaching. This is church.
Like, Mara tricked me into coming to church, and I was super miffed on the inside. I was like, you know, and I'm like in the second row because I'm sitting with her and her friends, so I can't just like slip out the back. And he gets up to speak, and I just kind of slumped down because I'm just like, oh man, here we go, like, I'm in church. But being a good friend, I didn't want to embarrass Mara in front of her friends. So I sat up, and I decided I would pretend to pay attention.
In that moment, I lost awareness that there was anyone around me. And all I could see was the pastor in front of me, and somehow I knew I was sitting with Jesus. And he said, I will give you a **new heart** It put a new spirit in you. And everything rose up within me that said, God, what about the homosexuality? What about the addiction to pornography?
What about the partying? And he said, I paid for all of it. And I said, what about when I rejected you? I told you that I didn't wanna walk with you. And he just said, "come home".
I love you. Every argument and pretension that had set itself up against the knowledge of God had been demolished and I saw *Jesus* clearly for the first time. I ran to the altar, and I gave my life to Jesus. And I stand before you now almost 20 years later, free of any kind of addiction, married to a woman with 4 beautiful children, because God is a God who can radically rewrite stories. And I actually believe that there are this is for some of you in here right now, That there are some of you that came in here today carrying the weight of guilt and shame and maybe doubting that Jesus loves you or that his love is real and maybe you haven't been able to see it clearly and you're ready to be born again.
And what does that mean? That means confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that he's Lord of your life, that you're gonna be done living for yourself, that you're gonna live for him, and believing that he was risen from the dead so that his life could be put inside of you. It's turning away from your old way of life and going towards his regardless of what you think, walking with him regardless of how you feel, not any longer walking your own way, but walking his way. You see, in that moment, I turned away from homosexuality and pornography, and Jesus immediately lifted the weight off of me, of my guilt and shame. And in that moment, he put his *spirit* inside of me to lead me and guide me like a father, and he made me new in that moment.
And he wants to do the same for you. So I'm just gonna ask point blank. Is there anyone here today who's hearing these words? And maybe you're experiencing or feeling the love of Jesus in a way that you never have before, and you're ready to give your life to him. I'm not gonna ask you to come up.
You can just "raise your hand" where you're at. You know, your heart might be pounding right now and I wanna encourage you that if God is calling you to respond. I see you. Ask again, Todd. There's more.
Anyone else? Maybe you've walked with the Lord for a while, and you've "walked away". And you feel like, because I knew better, surely God can't forgive me because because I was with him before, and now and then I walked away. He's here for you. His **radical love** is here for you.
Yeah. I see you. Alright. I'm gonna lead you in a prayer, those of you that raised your hands. And when we're praying, this is not about saying the right words.
It's not about that. It's about an abundance of the heart. So only pray this if you mean it. When you pray this, you are going to feel the weight of your guilt and shame fall off of you, You're gonna feel the tangible presence of God come into your life. So just repeat after me.
*Jesus*, I believe in you. I believe that you died for me and rose again so that I could have your life. I've been living for me. I ask you to forgive me. Right now, I choose to live for you instead of myself.
I give you my life. Holy Spirit, come into my heart, come into my life, and make me new. Father, I just pray over those who just received you right now that your overwhelming love would just fill them. God, your love and your acceptance, that you see them as the righteousness of Christ, that it doesn't matter what sin occurred in the past, in the present, or in the future, God, that your forgiveness will sustain them. God, I pray for a radical love relationship with you to be birthed in them, and that this would be a moment where they're marked, and they always remember that this is the place that they encountered the real love of Jesus.
Amen. Let's hear it. So at the end of the message, we are going to have a prayer and ministry team up here. So if you did just give your life to Jesus, please come up at the end and tell 1 of our ministry team, and they're gonna take good care of you. But I do have a little bit of the message left, and there's some keys that are now really gonna apply to you and the people that are in your life.
So buckle up. Wow. God is good. Amen. Amen.
So before I had this encounter with Jesus, what I didn't know is that there was a day when Mara was driving in her car, and she was probably going just between church and home or whatever, and while she was driving, the presence of the Holy Spirit just fell in her car in such a heavy way that she couldn't physically keep driving, and she had to pull over. And when she pulled over, she was so deeply burdened to pray for me that she just went for it, and she describes that time of prayer as like an "out of body experience". And she just warred in prayer until the feeling lifted. And I believe that it's those prayers that demolished the strongholds and allowed me to have that encounter with Jesus that day. This is really what we think of when we think about intercessory prayer.
And I think that's a term that we throw around a lot, and we usually use it just in general to say it's, you know, it's the term for praying for other people, which is true. But there is more to it than that. There's a definition of intercessory prayer that's "standing in the gap" for someone else. And to illustrate this, we're going to look at a verse in the Old Testament, or a few verses. It's in Exodus-6, and we're gonna start in verse 6.
This is when God is speaking to Moses about his plans to free the Israelites from the Egyptians, and he's telling him what to go do and what to go say. So we'll pick it up in verse 6. It says, say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.
And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord. Moses spoke thus to the people Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.
So the Lord said to Moses, go in, tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the people of Israel out of his hand. So this is a picture of what happens in intercession. So oftentimes, the Old Testament is a physical example of something that we experience in the spirit now. So in this story, Pharaoh and the Egyptians are kind of they represent the enemy, the things that are keeping people in bondage and slavery, and keeping them from experiencing what God has for them in the promised land, which I would equate to having that real deep relationship with Jesus. And Moses here is the intercessor.
He's going on behalf of the people to speak to the 1 keeping them in captivity. And this is exactly what happened with me. I was in bondage to sin. And when I was in a place that I couldn't fight on my own, I needed someone to stand in the gap for me and rebuke the enemy that was keeping me in slavery. So intercessory prayer, it's it's taking on the burden of someone else in prayer as if that burden was your own.
And where we see the ultimate act of intercession is when Jesus died on the cross and bore the cost and and paid the price for our sin on our behalf, stood in the gap for us, did what we could never do to reconcile us back to God. So I'm gonna go through my final point now, so we're getting to the end. But, all of this stems from being deeply rooted in intimacy with Jesus. That's the only way we will ever persevere in prayer. As Christians, we're called to live lives that are laid down for him so that he can live his life and will through us.
We can't muster up enough energy or will in and of ourselves to do anything for God. In John-15:5, Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches. Remain in me and I will remain in you and you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do Nothing. Nothing.
When we pray for the salvation of others, we will only get fatigued if we stop looking at him and we look at ourselves. And when we look at ourselves, we get these weird superstitious thoughts about why our prayer is not being answered like, well, maybe I didn't pray the right words, or maybe I didn't pray long enough, or I was fasting the other week and I forgot and I ate a piece of bread before bedtime, and maybe God didn't answer my prayer because because I did that. It's weird. It's it's superstitious, and it's not how God works. It's not his heart.
It's about connection with him. *Jesus is looking for true worshipers, and a true worshiper is 1 whose whole life is laid down before him, and who's living out that truth* of it's no longer I who live, but Christ in me. So, 1 thing that I want to throw in here as well is that being rooted in him is the only place that our faith will align with his heart for the lost. David preached an incredible message a couple weeks ago about the dream of God, which is to have a family, to have sons and daughters who are in a deep, intimate relationship with him. God isn't interested in nice churchgoing converts with dead faith.
So now that you've heard my story, I want to tell you a little bit about my sister Julie and her story. Several years ago, she was in the throes of serious heroin addiction. I think the addiction specialist said she was smoking enough heroin to tranquilize a horse by the time that we kind of caught up with her. And after I got saved, I was deeply burdened to pray for my sister. And it was a true burden from the Lord, like I felt like I had to, not like out of obligation, but because I was sharing in the Lord's heart for her and what he wanted to do.
I prayed for my sister daily for 10 years. And during that time, her situation got worse and worse and worse. And at 1 point, I think she even told my mom, you know I'm just gonna die. Right? She was blinded to the truth of what Jesus could do her with her, and she was agreeing with death.
And honestly, there were times where I got discouraged while I was praying with her or praying for her. And, I would pray these silly prayers like, God, please just help Julie stop doing drugs and help her get into a nice church community, which is a silly, worldly prayer and it's weak and it doesn't align with what Jesus wants for her. God is not interested in good churchgoing converts. He wants sons and daughters who experience the fullness of relationship with him. And so, God would prompt me then to pray for her with authority, and I would bind the spirit of addiction and prophesy into who he called her to be.
Now, in time, God did answer my prayer, and my sister went to rehab, and she sobered up, and she started attending church, and and showed an increasing desire for God, which at the time was those were miracles in and of themselves. And I was like, praise Jesus, like, this is good, and I kind of thought like, maybe that was it. Like, she's doing good now. She's sober. But God had so much more for her.
So my sister actually got invited to a conference shortly thereafter, and and she hesitantly went, just because she wasn't sure about this thing. She actually called me because she's like, I haven't been in this charismatic circle as long, and I don't know about everything, and I'm like, just go. It's gonna be great. So, she went, and she encountered *Jesus in a way that just completely turned her life upside down. She was filled with the spirit*.
If you ever get the opportunity to meet my sister, which hopefully you will, Julie, visit. Her love for Jesus just oozes out of everything she does and says, and she's "radically on fire" for God. Since then, she's led 2 of her 3 sons to the Lord. Her third is 3 years old, so don't worry, he's got time. He knows the words to Jesus loves me, so he's on his way to the straight and narrow.
I had the privilege of baptizing them at the pier last year. They were actually here visiting. So amazing things have happened. But now, my sister was kind of in the fight for her husband because her husband was not a believer. And and I think for him as well, he had his own battles to face, and he saw the radical change in her.
And, you know, you're living that dynamic. This is something that David preached on a while back too, where if you're married to an unbeliever, and he was questioning, you know, constantly questioning, do you really have to give every aspect of your life to Jesus? Do you really have to bring him into everything? The word says that the way of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, so it does seem a little bit insane if you're not walking with him. My sister, though, would get these moments of panic and, like, have these thoughts, these kind of intrusive thoughts like, you know, what if John never gets saved?
And and what if I have to carry the spiritual leadership in our family for the rest of my life? And and so, that would kind of cause her sometimes in her doubt when she wasn't maybe fully leaning on how Jesus was leading her to not so gently nudge him towards Jesus. Like, hey, I know you're struggling right now, but you know Jesus can help you. And and we can get that way. Right?
Like, sometimes if we feel like God's not moving fast enough, we're like, let me help you, Holy Spirit. But God met her in a moment and spoke to her 1 day and said, I'm gonna save your mother-in-law first. And, this caught her off guard, and it's not because my her mother-in-law was, you know, any farther gone than her than her husband. She just didn't anticipate that God would move that way, but she yielded to what he wanted to do. In that moment, she surrendered her husband to the Lord and said, I'm gonna go where you're going.
And this has been a super impactful story for me because that is just an illustration of I'm gonna be about what my father's business is. I wanna move where he's moving. So allowing him to lead you, and that comes back to that intimate relationship with him, hearing his voice. So my sister relented and she invited her mother-in-law to church, and her mother-in-law encountered Jesus and gave her life to Jesus. And, yeah.
And we've been seeing God move in her family and softening her husband, and we're excited for what he's doing. So Mara persevered in prayer for me. I persevered in prayer for my sister, And, my sister persevered in prayer for her family. And, God moved. If we understand the fight we're in, we will be pushed to persevere in prayer.
If we understand the authority that we've been given in that fight, we will persevere in prayer. And, if we remain rooted in deep intimate relationship with Jesus, he will, through his spirit, give us the grace to persevere in prayer in areas where we never could on our own. I know God has brought me through a process of reengaging in my prayer life over the last couple months. I have 2 brothers who are not walking with the Lord, And I look forward to the day that I can get up here and tell you about how Jesus drew them to himself. Who is God calling you to persevere in prayer for today?
Maybe there's been someone who you have been praying for, and today you just needed that boost of to say, yep, God's still in this. I'm not going to quit. Or maybe you've laid down praying for them for a while, and you've allowed doubt and frustration to come in, and you've kind of written them off. And today, you're gonna pick them up and reengage in the battle. I wanna invite our prayer team up here, and I wanna give you an opportunity today to agree with someone in prayer.
So, who those people are that you're praying with, there's a powerful This is gonna like kick off your reengagement in that fight for the lost. I believe there's gonna be an impartation of faith that marks you, and moving forward, you're gonna be reengaged with the Holy Spirit in praying for those people.