Entering Into Authentic Prayer | Authentic Prayer

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Paul said, “God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” And so once again, authentic prayer. How do we enter in? We're continuing today, a series that I'm calling authentic prayer. When I say this to you, I'm speaking it, beloved one, from the bottom of my heart. Knowing how to pray has very little to do with authentic prayer. Because authentic prayer begins with simply talking to God, just like you would talk to your most trusted friend. I'm not going to go into that today. I covered this in great depth on the last broadcast, the first part of this series. I want to move on today. I'm going to the Gospel of John, chapter number 11. I want to read a very profound, a very simple but profound statement that Jesus made. He was just about to raise Lazarus from the dead. He lifted his eyes to heaven, and then he said this, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.” Now he hadn't said anything yet. All he had done so far is he had communed with the Father in his heart. So there was no preceding prayer. It wasn't like Jesus had been speaking out loud in prayer. It was just that Yeshua always had an internal dialogue in his soul going on with the Spirit. Jesus walked continually in an internal, silent dialogue with the Father. Now when I say it was a silent dialogue, I don't mean that there were no words or emotions or feelings being expressed between Yeshua and the Father. What I mean was, it wasn't out loud with his lips. It was going on deep in his soul. So he walked in a continual state of fellowship. So once again, getting back to the text, John 11:41, Jesus said this, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but because of the people standing around, I said it, so that they might believe that you sent me.” What's going on here? Jesus is saying, “Father, I'm speaking out loud to you now, with my audible voice, with my vocal cords, in the natural, so that everybody around me will hear that I'm talking with you.” And then Jesus said, “Lazarus, come forth!” And we know the rest of the story. Lazarus, bam, rose from the dead. The point is that authentic prayer involves a continual internal communication with the Spirit. It doesn't have to be out loud. We're praying when we're simply reaching out to God, whether it's simply in our heart, whether it's in our mind, whether it's our focus. When you're directing, we call in Hebrew *kavanah*. That's the Hebrew word for your focus. When we're directing our focus toward the Lord, when we're desiring him, that's prayer. Because prayer is most simply defined as a reaching out to God. We're stripping away all the religion, we're stripping away all the pretext. We're talking about authentic prayer. Where is it founded? Where does it begin? It begins, like I said last time, in believing there is a God. You're not going to pray to someone you don't believe exists. Secondly, authentic prayer takes place when we have enough faith that we believe that if we speak to him, he's going to answer us. Now obviously, that doesn't mean that every time we ask God for something or talk to him, we're going to hear a voice, or we're going to see something happen immediately, because God's ways are not our ways. And a thousand years to us is like one day to the Lord. So he answers in his own way and his own time. But authentic prayer happens when we believe that he is and believe that he does respond. And we keep trusting even when we don't see the response immediately. And then we're saying, as we've begun this episode, beloved children of God today, that authentic prayer does not have to be out loud. Whenever you're reaching out to God in your heart, in your thoughts, or out loud with your lips, that is prayer. And so that's what we just saw illustrated in John chapter 11. Before Yeshua raised Lazarus from the dead, he said, “Father, I thank you that you hear me. I knew you heard me, I know you always hear me, but so that these people around might understand our relationship, the dialogue that we have, the communion, the relationship that we're in, I'm speaking it out loud so that they know that you answer me, and we speak in continual states.” And then Jesus said, “Lazarus, come forth!” I want to encourage you to trust that God hears the most subtle inclination, the most subtle movement of your soul. He hears you always. You don't have to pray to a God that's out there somewhere. You don't have to project so loud with your vocal cords all the time thinking that the louder you are, or the more eloquent your words are, that he'll hear you. No. Know that he already hears you. The Bible says that when we have a full revelation of the Lord, we're going to realize that he answers us before we even speak. He answers, beloved, before we even speak. So I want you to walk in the state of knowing. Jesus said, “Father, I know that you hear me. I knew that you heard me already. But I'm saying it out loud now that these around will know that you hear me.” We have to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you've already received it. Believe that you've already received it, and you'll have possession of that thing that you're hungering for.” It kind of is driving to the same depth. We have to know that we're already in communion with the Lord, that he already hears us. We don't have to go out there somewhere to connect with him. God is in the center of your heart right now, and he wants you to know he already hears you. You don't have to fear that he doesn't hear you. He hears you. He hears you. Now, I'm going to transition. I want to go to Psalm number 51. We're talking about authentic prayer. This is one of the most authentic prayers in the Psalms. It's a prayer that the greatest king of Israel wrote, David Melech, King David. So we're going to go through Psalm 51. We're going to kind of take it apart verse by verse, because it has a lot to say about what authentic prayer looks like. So David begins in Psalm 51 and he says in verse one, “Be gracious to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness.” So the first thing that David does is he appeals to the God of grace. You know that Paul in the New Testament, Sha'ul began every one of his letters by saying, “Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” So the same one that David was appealing to when he said, “Be gracious to me, oh God,” the same one that David was appealing to in Psalm 51 is the God that Paul was in relationship with. And so what is grace? The Bible says in the book of Ephesians chapter 2, “By grace you've been saved.” What is grace? Grace is many things, but grace is God's undeserved love and empowerment to be accepted by him and to be in relationship with him and to know him. Grace is God's love extended to us. It involves both forgiveness and empowerment to supernaturally walk with him and know him. And so David begins by reaching out to a God that did not reward him according to his sins, but a God that he simply knew was a God of love. And so once again, “Be gracious to me, oh God, according to your what? Your loving kindness.”
Dustin Roberts: You're listening to Discovering The Jewish Jesus, and before Rabbi Schneider continues his teaching, he has a special message to share with all of us.
Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Greetings in Messiah. One thing that perhaps some of you have thought about but never taken action on is creating or updating your will or trust. I want to encourage you, go to our website. We have a free tool there. Just hit wills and estates, and we can help you update or create your will or estate trust gift. Listen, God bless you. I love you. Many of us have honored the Lord why we're living with our finances. Let's carry that over and remember the Lord with our finances when we pass by creating a will and estate so that finances can go to the work of the Kingdom.
Dustin Roberts: What a meaningful way to honor God with our finances this year. And if you feel the Lord leading you to create a free will, visit us at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. It's free for you whether you support us or not. Now, let's return to Rabbi as he continues his teaching.
Rabbi K.A. Schneider: So I want to just stamp this truth on your heart right now. Who is God? He's a God that loves you and accepts you for who you are, right where you are, regardless of who you are and where you are in your life. This is why the Bible says, “We've been accepted,” in the book of Ephesians chapter one, “in the Beloved.” God accepts you right where you are. Whoever you are right now, if you will look to Jesus, remember that old song? “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full at his wonderful face. We turn our eyes to Jesus, and the things of the world will grow strangely dim, in the light of his wonder and grace.” So David begins by having confidence in this being, in this Creator that's a God of love. Now, listen, David was not perfect, right? He had sinned with Bathsheba, ordered the murder of Bathsheba's husband. I mean, that's pretty, how much worse does it get? But yet he still had confidence that his God loved him. And so that's a lesson for you and I. Paul said that he was the chief of sinners. Paul was out to, you know, arrest and brutalize any Jew that believed in Jesus, but yet God intervened and saved him. And Paul said that the fact that God saved him, who was out there arresting Jewish believers and putting them in prison and beating them, Paul said, “If he saved me, then he'll save anybody.” So know right now, I don't know what you did last night. I don't know what you did this morning. I don't know what fight you might have got in with your spouse, the words that might have been said. I don't know what addictions you might have. I don't know if you're an alcoholic, a drug addict, a sex addict, a television addict, I don't know where you're at, but you know what? Jesus came, and it's a trustworthy statement that Christ Jesus came to save sinners, that's you and I. You can turn to this God of love and grace right now, and if you look to him in Jesus' name, he will receive you. Come boldly before the throne of grace. And then David continues in the second part of verse one, once again, “Be gracious to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgressions.” I mean, think about it. You know, a lot of the world, they consider themselves spiritual, right? They think believing in Jesus, that means you're one of those dinosaur people. You're one of those haters if you believe in Jesus. You're one of those narrow-minded bigots if you believe that Jesus is the only way. But you know what, beloved, there's no other name under heaven by which men can be saved but the name of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. So David could pray, “Blot out my transgressions.” Through Jesus' blood, it doesn't matter what you've done. Your sins are forgiven. Again, I was getting back to the world today. They think that people like you and I, that believe that Jesus is the only way to the Father, that somehow we're archaic. You know, that the world no longer has a place for us, but the Bible teaches that the only way for forgiveness to be granted is when blood has been shed. It's a blood atonement. That's the only way sin can be forgiven. This goes all the way back to the Hebrew Bible. Some even trace it back to Adam and Eve when God made them clothing after they sinned with animal skins, that the blood of the animal had to be shed. But this goes all the way through the revelation in the Torah, whether it's Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, where the High Priest took the blood of the bull and the blood of the goat into the Holy of Holies, that was first in the Tabernacle, later in the Temple, and when God saw the blood there over the Ark of the Covenant, he said, “The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I've given it to you on the altar for the atonement of your soul, for it's the blood by reason of its life that makes atonement.” It's only through blood that we can come to God, and he can blot out our sin. David understood this. And you and I, no matter what you've done, the blood of Jesus has efficacy to remove your sin. So you can be happy right now that regardless of what you've done, regardless of what guilt you're carrying, like David that had just got done sinning with Bathsheba and ordering the murder of her husband, he came to the Father, and he said to him, “Blot out my transgression in your compassion.” It's okay. You're going to be okay in Jesus. You know, think about this. You know a lot of people, I know a lot of people, they consider themselves spiritual, they consider themselves to be at a higher spiritual level than people like you and I that believe in Jesus. They believe in karma. You know, karma is an Eastern term, you know, from the Eastern religion. Most of you know what karma is, you know, like, whatever you put out there is going to come back to you. And in some of the Eastern religions, they believe that, you know, if you're good in this life, that when you come back in the next life, this is not what we believe, this is what Eastern religion believes, some of them, you'll come back in your next life as something like, you know, at a more higher level. But if you're bad in this life, as a human being, you know, you might come back as a turtle or a frog or who knows. You know, it's a cool thing to think. You might have done a lot of bad things in your life. But you know what? Through the blood of Jesus, the karma is broken. Isn't that an awesome thing? That through the blood of Jesus, your karma is broken, that you don't have to receive back the consequence for all the evil and the sin that you've done because Jesus took your sin and my sin in his own body on the tree. He broke the karma, and he delivered us from the torturing power of the enemy, through whom we opened the door to him in our life because of our sin. Blood of Jesus cuts off his accusation, and now we simply enter in to the crucified one, the risen one, and now we're called into a life of blessing. And so Paul introduces Jesus by saying, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” the book of Ephesians chapter one, “who has blessed us,” not cursed, not all your bad karma coming back on you. Jesus stopped it. Jesus put up a blood wall of your sin. No, Paul said, “God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” And so once again, authentic prayer. How do we enter in? We enter in by asking the Lord to cleanse us and forgive us, knowing he's a compassionate and a loving God. So David said, “According to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgressions.” And then David continued, verse two, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” I don't know, I have a deep cry in my heart for the Lord to wash me and cleanse me. Prayer isn't just about asking God to do things for us. It's not just asking him to bless us with some type of prosperity blessing. You know, God's a good God, he blesses us with great gifts, but that's not all there is to this by any stretch of the imagination. Prayer begins with repentance. Repentance means that we recognize our sin. So David says in the next verse, “For I know my transgressions.” Listen again, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me.” Remember John the Baptist's first words? “Repent,” he said, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” What were Jesus' first words? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” We believe God's a loving God. We believe that he's a God of grace. Then we come to him, according to Psalm 51:1-3, confess our sin, asking him to take our sin away as David did, blotting it out, and then we say to him, “Father, and wash me from the defilement that my sin has defiled me with.” It's sanctification. And so, Father, we ask you today to wash us and cleanse us of our sin. We ask you to rewire our soul and our mind and our heart, to bring us in to alignment with your holiness. Father, we want to walk with you. We want to know you, and we want to love you. I hope you've noticed that when it comes to raising finances for the ministry, so that we can continue to proclaim God's word around the world, I really strive to not manipulate and to be clean. So the truth is today that it costs us a lot of money to be able to broadcast on television and all the other media outlets that we're releasing God's word through, as well as the traveling that we do around the world. And I can't do it, beloved ones, without your continued help and financial support. This is the way God ordained it to be. John said in one of his letters that men that are preaching the truth are worthy of the support, the financial support of the church. So I want to thank you for sending me out, and I also want to encourage you, beloved, to know that when you support the Gospel with your finances, there is reward that will come back to you because everything that we sow into the Kingdom comes back pressed down good measure and running over into our lap. Thank you for your love and your financial support.
Dustin Roberts: You can give to Discovering The Jewish Jesus by visiting us online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And if it's easier, just give us a call at 800-777-7835. And now I'd like to remind you about our self-deliverance teaching bundle. We're about to replace it with a new one, so this may be one of your last chances to get it. It's an engaging resource. It includes Rabbi Schneider's step-by-step PDF guide that explains how to recognize spiritual footholds and also close open doors to the enemy through scripture. You'll also receive an MP3 audio file with prayers that you can model to help you walk in lasting freedom in Messiah. Claim your free self-deliverance bundle right now, just by visiting myfreegift.com/freedom. We're able to offer these resources because of our friends who support this ministry with their financial gifts. And we can't cover the cost of producing Rabbi's teaching and sharing it online without you. So if you've been blessed by Rabbi's teaching, or even our social media platforms and our free resources, would you go online and give? You know, you're helping place these messages before people all over the world, in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and so many other places where the Bible can really make a difference. Donate or become a monthly partner at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Now here's Rabbi.
Rabbi K.A. Schneider: The Aaronic blessing in the book of Numbers chapter 6 is not a blessing that comes from an impersonal being out there somewhere in the heavens. This special blessing comes from a person, Yahweh God Almighty, our Creator and Maker. So receive God's blessing into your life right now. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with his countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, his peace. And now in Hebrew. *Yevarechecha Adonai V'Yishmerecha. Ya'er Adonai Panav Eleycha V'Yichuneka. Yissa Adonai Panav Eleycha V'Yasem L'cha Shalom.* God bless you and shalom.
Dustin Roberts: I'm your host Dustin Roberts, and this program is produced and sponsored by Discovering The Jewish Jesus. Join Rabbi Schneider tomorrow when he reveals how to be content and satisfied no matter your circumstances. That's Thursday on Discovering The Jewish Jesus.