When You Pray Talk 4
Jason Kennedy · When You Pray
7 December 2025
https://media.glenabbey.church/talks/when-you-pray-talk-4

[0:01] Great to be with you this afternoon.
[0:04] I'm also struggling a little bit with a cold, so excuse all the coughing and spluchering and wiping of the nose, et cetera, that I do through this, but it is what it is.
[0:12] Yeah, so this is week four of our When You Pray series.
[0:17] So let's just reread the scripture that we've been springboarding from.
[0:23] Again, very familiar words in Matthew chapter six.
[0:27] Jesus is teaching and he says, And when you pray, not if you pray, but when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
[0:42] Do not be like them.
[0:43] And I love this little sentence.
[0:46] For your father knows what you need before you ask him.
[0:50] Pray then like this.
[0:53] Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
[0:56] Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
[1:02] Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.
[1:10] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
[1:18] And this week, as part four, we're going to look at those little phrases around forgiveness and lead us not into temptation.
[1:26] So forgiveness, overcoming temptation, and spiritual warfare.
[1:31] Some light and easy topics for a rainy Sunday afternoon.
[1:35] And we could spend a couple of hours going through these and dissecting these, but I promise I'll try to be concise and keep it to 90 minutes.
[1:46] Spiritual warfare.
[1:47] That's a phrase that sounds very grand, maybe a little bit abstract.
[1:53] may be even a little primitive to us with the hubris of our enlightened 21st century minds.
[2:03] We can be tempted to think that we're above some of those kinds of supernatural superstitions.
[2:11] But the reality is we are in a spiritual battle every moment of every day, whether we realize it or not.
[2:21] Paul writes to the Ephesian church and he closes out his letter in chapter 6.
[2:29] And some of these words will be familiar because there's things that we learn sometimes when we're kids.
[2:35] But there's a couple of verses in here which sometimes I wonder if we skip over them or don't even realize that they're there.
[2:40] He says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
[2:47] Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
[2:53] Now look at verse 12.
[2:54] For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
[3:15] Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.
[3:22] And having done all to stand firm, stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace in all circumstances.
[3:39] Take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.
[3:45] and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is in the word of God, praying at all times in our series of When You Pray.
[3:55] When do you pray?
[3:56] Praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.
[4:02] To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for the saints.
[4:08] Most of us are probably pretty familiar with the internal spiritual battle that we fight.
[4:16] The war between our flesh and our spirit or the old man and the new man, whatever language you want to put around it.
[4:24] Paul in his letter to Romans unpacks, gives an insight to his own inner battle that he fights when he talks about, I do not understand my own actions for I do what I do not want to do and I don't do the things that I do want to do and so on.
[4:41] There is an internal struggle.
[4:44] But we also have to acknowledge and understand that there is a very real, external, spiritual battle that we fight day and daily.
[4:54] And to just reread Paul's words here, against the rulers, the spiritual rulers, the spiritual authorities, because he said this is not flesh and blood, against the spiritual rulers, spiritual authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, which simultaneously sounds extremely intimidating and like something from Lord of the Rings.
[5:21] So in order to ground this a little bit for us and hopefully make it a little bit practical and accessible, I want to look at the first recorded spiritual battle that humans fought in history and lost.
[5:36] And that's in Genesis chapter 3.
[5:40] now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord had made excuse me a second he said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden neither you touch it lest you die.
[6:10] But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
[6:21] So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
[6:33] She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.
[6:37] Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
[6:51] And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
[6:56] And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
[7:02] But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?
[7:08] And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
[7:18] He said, who told you that you were naked?
[7:21] Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?
[7:24] The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree.
[7:31] and I end.
[7:33] Lord, I pray in the moments that we spend around your word today, I pray that our hearts would be open and receptive to your Holy Spirit.
[7:42] I pray that you would lead us and guide us and that you would help us to discern the battle.
[7:52] I pray that you would equip us yes, with tools, yes, with knowledge, but above all with your spirit to overcome.
[8:03] In Jesus' name, amen.
[8:07] So yes, as we mentioned earlier,
[8:11] we have a real enemy.
[8:13] The kingdom of darkness is real and we are in a very real battle.
[8:18] But something else is also true.
[8:21] The serpent has no new tactics.
[8:24] The strategies of his attacks on us follow very similar patterns as were played out in this story from 6,000 odd years ago.
[8:35] And as we seek to equip ourselves, as we seek to prayerfully equip ourselves for this battle, the battle against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, there's five quite simple observations that I want to just pull out of this passage in Genesis.
[8:53] Five things to be on our guard against, to be aware of in the spiritual battle.
[9:01] And by complete coincidence, they all begin with the letter D. So here's the five.
[9:06] I'll give you the five, and then we'll talk about each one in turn.
[9:10] Doubt, distortion, discouragement, distraction, and division.
[9:21] Doubt, distortion, discouragement, distraction and division.
[9:28] Let's look at the first one, doubt.
[9:30] The very first thing that the serpent does here to Eve is to plant a little seed of doubt.
[9:38] And that's what the enemy will try to do to us too, is to plant the tiniest seed of doubt.
[9:43] And for Eve here, the first one is the seed of doubt about God's goodness, about being able to trust God, a seed of doubt in God's character, a seed of doubt in his heart and his intentions toward us.
[10:00] Did God actually say that you can't eat of any tree in the garden?
[10:06] God is so stingy.
[10:09] He's cheating you.
[10:10] He's holding something back from you.
[10:12] He's mistreating.
[10:13] God isn't fair.
[10:14] Look what he's blessed them with.
[10:17] He's making you miss out on something.
[10:20] Adam and Eve had the whole garden,
[10:26] thousands upon thousands upon thousands of trees bearing fruit for them to eat from.
[10:32] And the enemy managed to get them to focus on the one
[10:37] that they couldn't touch.
[10:40] How often do we find ourselves obsessing over, chasing after the one thing we don't have at the expense of being grateful for all of the things that God has blessed us with, all of the things that we do have.
[10:57] We have taken the bait.
[10:59] We've fallen into the trap.
[11:01] We've allowed a seed of doubt in God's goodness to take root.
[11:07] And that makes us vulnerable.
[11:09] But not only did he sow a seed of doubt into their view of God's character, he also sowed a seed of doubt into their very identity.
[11:20] He says, if you eat this, you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
[11:26] But at that very moment, Adam and Eve were more like God than they ever would be.
[11:35] They were made perfect in his image, yet the enemy gets them to doubt it.
[11:42] And you know what?
[11:43] He tried exactly the same thing with Jesus.
[11:46] 4,000 years later, Jesus was baptized.
[11:50] He went into the wilderness and he was tempted by Satan.
[11:55] How did he start?
[11:58] If you're the son of God, turn these stones into bread.
[12:05] If you're the son of God, throw yourself off this building.
[12:12] He tried to sow a seed of doubt into who Jesus knew that he was.
[12:19] And of course he overcame.
[12:22] But Adam and Eve fell because they were lured into doubting God's character and they were lured into doubting their true identity as beloved children of God.
[12:39] What seeds of doubt have we got germinating in our hearts at the minute?
[12:48] What thing or things have we been fixated on that we feel we lack at the expense of gratitude for all that we have been blessed with?
[13:02] The serpent sows a seed of doubt, but then to compound that, he uses distortion.
[13:11] Distortion.
[13:11] And the enemy is always distorting, twisting truth.
[13:16] You know, if he were to tell outright lies, it would be a whole lot easier for us to see through.
[13:23] But he just twists and distorts the truth ever so slightly, but a dangerous ever so slightly.
[13:30] You know, a half truth is often way more dangerous than something that's a full lie.
[13:36] It's the little bit of leaven that spoils the whole batch.
[13:39] Again, he says, you will be like God.
[13:42] They were already as like God as they ever could be.
[13:44] They had been made in his image.
[13:47] had been created and crafted by him.
[13:49] He had breathed his breath into Adam's lungs.
[13:52] He had walked with them in the cool of the evening in the greatest God human intimacy ever experienced on planet earth.
[14:02] You will be like God.
[14:06] Increasingly in the world we live, we are surrounded by distortions of the truth.
[14:15] Not so much just complete lies, but distortions of the truth.
[14:21] And the capacity for this deception is exponentially increasing, particularly with things like generate AI and all that stuff.
[14:28] And it's very scary, and it can be very intimidating.
[14:33] And you can go, I don't know what to trust.
[14:35] I don't know who to trust.
[14:36] I don't know where truth is.
[14:37] I don't know where to stand.
[14:41] But thankfully, Jesus had quite a simple solution for us.
[14:46] for that.
[14:48] When he said in John 8, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
[15:04] How do we prayerfully deal
[15:08] with the doubts and the distortions that the enemy throws at us?
[15:14] We abide in his word and in prayer and in the spirit and we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free.
[15:25] Because the goal of these tactics, the goal of these seeds and distortions that the enemy throws is to get us to this place, the place of discouragement.
[15:40] To discourage us in our relationship and in our walk with the heavenly father.
[15:48] You see, the enemy can't actually defeat us, but he can take us to a place where we defeat ourselves.
[15:58] Jesus has overcome and conquered the kingdom of darkness.
[16:04] He rose again victorious.
[16:07] The only power that the enemy has in the life of the believer is the power that we seek to him.
[16:12] he did not force feed Adam and Eve the fruit.
[16:15] He didn't tie them down, open their mouths, and shove it down their throat.
[16:19] He didn't even pick it from the tree and peel it for them.
[16:24] He just sowed enough doubt, distorted enough truth, got them discouraged,
[16:33] and they did it to themselves.
[16:36] When we are discouraged, we are very vulnerable.
[16:40] We are weaker and we're much less resilient to temptation and we're much more prone to give up and give in.
[16:48] And it is so true, not even just in the realm of temptation, but in so many areas of life.
[16:54] We don't give up on things because they get hard.
[16:58] We give up because we get discouraged.
[17:03] Relationships, a job, a business you're trying to run, church, relationships within church, home group, serving God.
[17:14] When we're encouraged, we can climb any mountain, we can face any fear, we can overcome any obstacle.
[17:19] But when we are down and discouraged, even the smallest obstacle, the smallest difficulty, the smallest molehill turns into the biggest mountain that we just want to give up and throw in the towel.
[17:35] A classic example of this from the scripture is Elijah, who just won this huge battle on Mount Carmel against 400 prophets of Baal.
[17:44] Miraculous intervention from God.
[17:46] And five minutes later, he gets discouraged and a letter from the queen makes him lie in a heap and want to end it all.
[17:54] David experienced it.
[17:56] Job experienced it.
[17:57] Joshua, Paul, Peter, the list goes on.
[18:00] When they got discouraged, they got vulnerable.
[18:06] The word encourage literally means to put courage into.
[18:15] Who do you need to reach out to later today and encourage?
[18:20] To put courage into.
[18:23] Don't leave it unsaid.
[18:26] Maybe it's your spouse, your son, your daughter, parent, sibling, friend, boss, employee, elder, team leader, team member, home group leader, whoever it is, if the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do it, be obedient, do it, pray for them.
[18:46] You have no idea the impact that that could have on someone's life.
[18:52] Someone on the edge of giving up, yielding to temptation, a word of encouragement spoken to a soul in crisis could be life-changing.
[19:05] In fact, it could be life-saving.
[19:10] Truett Cathy, who was the founder of Chick-fil-A, everybody's stomach's rumbling now.
[19:17] He said, how do you know if a man or woman needs encouraged?
[19:22] If they're breathing.
[19:26] But then there's sometimes when we just can't afford to sit around and wait for somebody else to come and pat us on the back and encourage us and give us a word of scripture.
[19:38] Another story from David's life this time that I love, and I mean, the stories in the Old Testament outrank any Netflix drama you get these days, but David, at this stage of his life, he was on the run from Saul and he had put together a band of brothers and they were actually, ironically, living with the Philistines and they were fighting for and with and alongside the Philistines at the time.
[20:03] And they had gone out to battle, but the Philistines decided, hold on a minute, I don't really trust this lot.
[20:08] So they sent David packing and said, no, we don't want you to fight with us.
[20:12] So we had to march back to where they were staying.
[20:14] It was a place called Ziklag.
[20:16] And when they arrived back there, they discovered that it was either the Amorites or the Malachites, can't remember.
[20:22] But they had come and they had raided the place.
[20:25] They had burnt it to the ground and they had carted off all their wives and children.
[20:31] And so David is standing there in a moment when he's lost his family.
[20:36] He's lost everything that he had.
[20:39] And the Bible says that everybody around him was looking at him and wanted to stone him to death.
[20:47] And then there's this little nugget of scripture in 1 Samuel 30.
[20:52] And it says, but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
[21:01] He encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
[21:06] This was more than just positive thinking.
[21:09] This was more than a cliche and a self-help book.
[21:14] It was David delving deep into the presence of God.
[21:20] In the darkest of moments, when everything and everyone around him was against him, And he found strength and courage in the Lord his God.
[21:34] He encouraged himself in the Lord.
[21:39] A little while ago, I stumbled across this fascinating character called Dr. James Gills.
[21:46] He is a hugely successful cataract surgeon and businessman in Florida.
[21:51] But he was also a big fan of the Ironman events.
[21:55] In fact, at one stage, he bought the Iron Man franchise, ran it for a number of years, and used the profits to fund the building of over 8,000 churches in the developing world.
[22:09] But that's not why I'm telling you the story.
[22:12] He was not only a fan of the Iron Man events, he partook in them.
[22:18] And in fact, he is the only human being alive to have completed six double Ironman triathlons.
[22:30] If you don't know what that is, it is in one day, back to back, a 4.8 mile open water swim, followed straight after by a 224 mile bike ride, followed straight after by a double marathon.
[22:47] Yes, that is a 52.4 mile run.
[22:52] I'm tired just saying that.
[22:55] The last time he did his sixth double Ironman, he was 59 years old.
[23:03] Why am I telling you this story?
[23:04] Well, he was being interviewed for a magazine one time and the interviewer was talking to him about this and asking him, how on earth did you do that?
[23:15] How on earth did you get through the training?
[23:17] How on earth did you get through the pain, the discouragement, the difficulty?
[23:22] I mean, it's mind-blowing what he put himself through and what he was able to get through.
[23:29] And this is what he said.
[23:32] He said, I've learned to talk to myself instead of listening to myself.
[23:39] He said, I've learned to talk to myself instead of listening to myself.
[23:45] What a piece of advice that is.
[23:48] David encouraged himself in the Lord, his God.
[23:56] Let's not let the sun go down today.
[23:58] Well, not that there is a sun today, but you know what I mean.
[24:02] Without encouraging somebody,
[24:07] without encouraging ourselves in the Lord, because the discouraged soul is very vulnerable to this fourth one, distractions.
[24:21] Distractions.
[24:23] Eve saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes.
[24:33] When we're discouraged, we make very bad decisions when distractions come along.
[24:40] We think the grass is greener in a relationship, in a marriage, in church, in a job.
[24:48] And we end up making a decision that is way outside what God would have for us.
[24:53] Because in a moment of doubt, a moment of discouragement, a shiny distraction comes along.
[24:59] And like a moth to a light, like a fish to a lure.
[25:06] There's momentary distractions like this.
[25:08] Distractions that are designed to get us to make those decisions that are going to cause us pain.
[25:13] That are going to have massive consequences in our lives that we become so vulnerable to in those moments of weakness and discouragement.
[25:21] But there's also long-term distractions.
[25:26] Distractions that have us burning years chasing after things like wealth, cars, houses, sex, power, significance, praise.
[25:40] At the expense of seeking first his kingdom.
[25:46] And you know, as with distortions, the day in which we live, we are bombarded by distractions.
[25:54] not least by this crazy machine that lives in our pockets.
[26:01] From the constant ping of notifications to the bombardment of everybody else's highlight reel, living their best life, so it seems.
[26:15] There's no greater antidote
[26:19] to the bombardment of distractions
[26:23] than doing as Jesus did and going off to a quiet place to pray.
[26:33] The serpent sows doubt.
[26:35] He distorts the truth.
[26:37] He discourages us.
[26:39] He bombards us with distractions.
[26:42] All with the goal of getting us to the place of division.
[26:49] Adam and Eve were spiritually separated, divided from God.
[26:58] And immediately they were filled with fear, filled with shame, and they tried to hide from him.
[27:07] The root word for the word anxious literally means divided, pulled in different directions.
[27:21] And that's where the enemy wants us.
[27:24] Anxious, full of fear, separated from God, separated from other people,
[27:34] isolated, divided.
[27:38] And not only in that moment where Adam and Eve divided from God, a wedge of division also came between them.
[27:50] That woman you gave me, she gave me the fruit.
[27:55] I ate it.
[27:58] And it only took one generation of that intra-human division to escalate to the point of murder when Cian killed his brother, Abel.
[28:13] And humans have continued to cause untold damage.
[28:18] generation after generation, because we're divided.
[28:25] Divided from God and divided from each other.
[28:33] But, thank God, that's not where this story ends.
[28:41] I said, thank God, that's not where this story ends, Because even there, in that first garden, where at a tree it all went wrong,
[28:58] God didn't come in judgment.
[29:01] He came searching for his lost children.
[29:07] Where are you?
[29:10] And he saw their poor, fickle, frail, pitiful attempts to cover their own shame and failure.
[29:23] Trying to deal with their own mess, with their own efforts, and a few fig leaves.
[29:33] And even then, he stepped in and sacrificed an animal to make them coverings.
[29:43] foreshadowing what would happen 4,000 odd years later in a garden and then on a tree
[29:53] when Jesus bowed to the Father's will and became the ultimate sacrifice once and for all to pay the price for our forgiveness.
[30:07] To make a way to heal the division and to unite his people to himself and to each other.
[30:18] His passion, his desire was that humanity would be redeemed back into the relationship with him that was severed in that first garden.
[30:30] That the division would be healed and relationship restored.
[30:38] There's a story in the New Testament, which we don't have time to read, but you can look it up yourselves later.
[30:43] It's in Matthew 21, also is recorded in Mark 11.
[30:48] And it's Jesus in the last few days before he is crucified in Jerusalem.
[30:56] And he does something which on the surface seems extremely strange.
[31:03] He seems to be random and it seems to be for completely no reason.
[31:07] He's walking down the road and he curses this poor, innocent little fig tree and it withers up immediately and it dies.
[31:21] What are you doing?
[31:23] Why have you done that?
[31:26] And there's lots of writings, there's lots of commentaries and theories, and I'm sure all of them are brilliant and true, and lots of things can be true at the same time on so many different levels.
[31:39] But I have a thought, too.
[31:41] And it might just be me, so feel free to take this, feel free to scramble it up in a ball and throw it in the bin, okay?
[31:49] But I wonder.
[31:52] I wonder, while Jesus was on his way to the cross, to be the sacrifice for our sins, to pay for our forgiveness, to redeem us back into relationship with God.
[32:10] I wonder when the shadow of the pain and the suffering of the cross loomed just over his horizon.
[32:21] I wonder if right in that moment, he curses the thing which represents our efforts to do it ourselves.
[32:34] He curses our fruitless fig leaves.
[32:40] The fig leaves that we try to stitch together to cover our own shame and nakedness.
[32:52] he curses our attempts to earn his love to earn his forgiveness our attempts to cover up our own shame and nakedness and brokenness our attempts to earn his acceptance our attempts to be good enough to save ourselves.
[33:12] Because it's only by his grace, it's only by faith, it's only by trusting in him, it's only by receiving his forgiveness that we can be set free from this division that sprouted in the first garden and to be restored into relationship with him.
[33:38] In the light of God's grace and mercy, in the light of his sacrifice, our fig leaves, our attempts to do the work that Jesus has already done, is actually offensive to God.
[33:58] In fact, he tells us as much in Isaiah, he says, our attempts at righteousness deeds are like filthy rags.
[34:08] to try to make our own covering by stitching together some fig leaves is an offense to the grace of God.
[34:20] Maybe today you're far from God.
[34:24] Maybe you're separate from him.
[34:28] Divided.
[34:30] The very purpose for which Jesus came to this earth was to unite us back to the Father.
[34:35] to unite us to each other as well in him because we couldn't do it ourselves, just like Adam and Eve couldn't.
[34:45] And I just want to take a moment to say that if you're listening to this today and you have never opened your heart to Jesus, never opened your heart to receive his love and his forgiveness, you can right now.
[35:02] He wants to have you with him in eternity.
[35:05] He wants to restore and heal and remove that division.
[35:11] All we have to do is respond.
[35:14] Two things, repentance and faith.
[35:18] What does that mean?
[35:19] Repentance means I'm going to turn in the other direction.
[35:22] I'm going to stop trying to do things myself.
[35:25] I'm going to turn from my sin.
[35:27] and I'm going to put my faith, my trust, my entire hope in Jesus and make him not just my savior, but also my Lord.
[35:39] You can do that in your chair this afternoon, but if you want some help, we will have team available with lanyards on.
[35:47] We have a prayer room at the back corner, or you can come and speak to me if you want.
[35:52] I don't mind.
[35:53] But do not leave this place of the Holy Spirit is drawing you to that place of salvation.
[36:01] For those of us who are already believers, I have two final thoughts on forgiveness and they're brief for us to meditate on as we close.
[36:12] And these are a big part of our study questions that we have for home groups this week.
[36:19] And hopefully you can discuss these a little and unpack them further.
[36:22] But even more importantly than that, I hope you can spend some time in prayer together through these things.
[36:30] First one is this.
[36:33] Do you fully grasp that as a Christian, as a child of God, as a believer, as a person who's saved, whatever language you want to put on it, do you fully grasp not just in your head, but also in your heart, that God has forgiven all your sin.
[37:03] Past, present,
[37:07] future.
[37:10] You are completely forgiven in the blood of Jesus.
[37:20] Are you still trying to earn it?
[37:23] Are you still trying to deserve it?
[37:27] Are you still trying to stitch together a few fig leaves?
[37:34] You don't need to.
[37:37] And here's the second one.
[37:40] In response to the lavish forgiveness that God has bestowed upon us.
[37:50] And these are easy words to say.
[37:53] They're not easy words to do.
[37:57] Is there anyone this morning that the Holy Spirit is prompting you
[38:04] to forgive?
[38:08] Let's pray this morning and the band will join us.
[38:15] Lord,
[38:18] in these moments of peaceful reflection, we acknowledge the presence of your Holy Spirit.
[38:28] Lord, I pray for us as believers this morning.
[38:35] Lord, I pray that we would not just know theologically in our heads the concept of forgiveness, but I pray that we would know it experientially in our heart.
[38:50] Lord, thank you for your lavish grace,
[38:56] for your undeserved forgiveness that you bestow upon us.
[39:03] Lord, I pray that for those of us struggling with shame and battling regret and all of those things, Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would heal and restore that right now
[39:17] with your peace and with your forgiveness.
[39:20] Lord for those of us who
[39:25] are battling those painful memories of hurt and betrayal and abuse and all of those things God that were wrong and that we were wronged with but yet Lord I pray again in the light of your grace and your mercy that you would give us the empowering grace to forgive.
[39:53] Lord, I pray that you would set us free from that.
[39:57] That you would heal and restore us.
[40:00] And Lord, I pray as we go into the rest of our days and weeks and months ahead, Lord, I pray that you would make us prayerfully aware of the attacks and the schemes and the wiles of the enemy.
[40:14] But Lord, I pray that you would give us discernment to smell it to see it to know it and to stand firm Lord with your armor on
[40:28] yes with the knowledge in our heads but Lord with your anointing spirit in us and on us and so bless us now as we worship you in Jesus name
[40:44] Amen