Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen and I am broadcasting from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Sometimes I want to say podcasting.

I’m not sure which is correct. All you millennials are Gen Z out there, you probably know. But anyway, if you ever hear me say podcasting, maybe that’s what I should say.

But it’s great to have you aboard for this podcast, and I trust that our challenge will be an encouragement. Well, I want you to know in the coming weeks, we’re going to spend a little bit of time emphasizing what I consider to be a very important part of the Christian life, and that is prayer. You know, young person, I found something about prayer.

I bet you you have too. And that is my flesh not only doesn’t like prayer, I think I could even say my flesh hates prayer. I suppose of all the things God asks us to do, prayer may be the most difficult.

I’m going to tell you why. Because I believe it’s something that Satan absolutely hates. And since our flesh doesn’t like to do it either, we’ve got a real dilemma.

But I want to challenge you with something tonight that might encourage you. And that is simply this thought. You know, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said something and here’s what he said.

He said, you need to pray this way. And of course, several things he mentions, but right in the middle he says this. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Now, I think if I were to ask you, was God’s will done in heaven today, you would say, well, of course it was. Now, if I were to ask you, was God’s will done on earth today? We’d all probably say, well, probably not perfectly.

Because anytime somebody sins, that’s not God’s will, which teaches us something. Evidently, prayer is a very important part of God’s will. Being done on earth, which means teenager.

No matter how weak you are, no matter how long you’ve been saved, your prayer life is not unimportant. It is very important. And what God wants you to do in prayer is simply this.

There are two big wills out there vying for what happens on planet earth. Of course, Satan’s will and God’s will. And you know that our prayer evidently has a very important part in God’s will being done.

Because the Bible says in First John chapter five, this is the confidence that we have in him. If we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us, and if we know he hear us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. Now there’s three things God says to have confidence in prayer.

Number one, pray according to God’s will. Number two, know you’ve prayed according to God’s will because then you know he heard me. And then number three, know you’ve got the answer.

So praying according to God’s will means it’s a done deal. When you know you’ve prayed according to God’s will, you can claim the answer. That’s why prayer is so absolutely important.

You can pray for Holy Spirit, conviction and the life of somebody not saved. That’s God’s will. Luke eleven thirteen tells us that God will answer that prayer.

You can pray for Satan’s deception to be defeated and the life of someone that is not saved. The Bible says, The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, which is the image of God, should shine unto them. So we know that Satan blinds minds.

And of course, prayer, I believe, can bring that deception down. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

So certainly we can be a part of that resisting and not time to go into all of it. But there are certain things we can pray for, and we can know that’s God’s will, and we can know that God has heard our prayer. Now we’re going to be talking about prayer, because many times we need to be encouraged to do it because we kind of we kind of get, get, kind of get used to defeat.

But let me just tell you, this gang, I don’t know if you play on a regular basis in some kind of organized sports league, but I guarantee you if you do, you’d rather be in the game than on the bench. I know when I played soccer and I played baseball back in high school, uh, we weren’t that great in baseball.