Dangerous Prayers – Part 2 Acts 4:1-12 The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

We're really going to start praying a few new prayers, and I want to warn you, these are not easy prayers. These are not safe prayers. These are not benign prayers. We're calling them dangerous prayers, but they're dangerous in a good way. In fact, just know going into them, when you pray these prayers, you're really asking God to do something that will often take you out of your comfort zone.

Sun Stand Still Joshua 10:7-14 7 So Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men. 8 The Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you.” 9 After an all-night march from Gilgal, …

Worship and praise are key to the heart of every believer… It is what we were created to do… and today I want to take the thought on worship and apply it not just to what we do inside the church… but I want to make sure we know that this is what we do outside these walls… I want to encourage you to worship and praise while you are here… but it’s so much more than the building... It’s our lifestyle… So, this morning… I want to preach a message called “Stop Going to Church.”

Worship [Living a Life of Praise] 2 Chronicles 5:13-14 The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, the singers raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.”

We are going to talk about 2 levels of praise this morning...See to me, it’s more than just worship… Worship is amazing… worship is great… worship to me is great because it allows me to just tune everything out around me and just concentrate on Him… but there is more to what we are supposed to do than just worship… we are to praise and worship. The Bible tells me in Psalm Chapter 22 that He inhabits the praises of His peoples… the word inhabit means to live in or to occupy. So, when the Bible tells me that He inhabits the PRAISES of His people… tells me that he wants to reside in or occupy… to live in a place that practices giving Him praise… So, if I want God to inhabit my life and live in me… my life must praise, even during the seasons when I don’t want to… if I want Him to inhabit the church… we must praise.

So in Chapter 1… “God, I don’t understand.” Chapter Two, he goes into what we would call a “season of waiting.” God says to him, “Be quiet and listen. I want to speak.” God says, “Take notes. Write this down, because that way, you can document what I’ve shown you. And then, wait and wait and wait and wait. And even though things on the outside aren’t getting any better, Habakkuk is waiting on God, and in Chapter Three, we are going to see something very beautiful and powerful and that is, even though the circumstances don’t change, (because remember, sometimes God’s answer is wait, or sometimes it’s no, and that’s hard to accept)… even though his circumstance doesn’t change, Habakkuk’s faith and worship of God goes to a new, what I call Chapter 3 level.

Today, if you are facing something and you say, “I don’t understand, God. You could do something about this. If I were You, I would, but you’re not doing anything. I don’t understand.” If that’s the way You feel about any situation today, or maybe one day, then I’m certain the book of Habakkuk will speak to you. The question we are going to wrestle with today is, “What do you do when you’re in this crisis of belief?” It’s called “the dip.” If you weren’t here last week, let me show you what the dip is. Actually, Seth Golden wrote a book called The Dip, and so it looks like this … The Dip. We looked last week at a beginning point, and let’s say this would be someone who does not yet know Christ. They are not in a relationship with God, but yet, someday, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God reveals Himself to someone and they call out on the forgiveness and the grace of Jesus, and spiritually, they are born anew and their whole world, it turns just upside down, or right side up, and they are forgiven. And there is this huge spiritual rush of adrenalin and excitement, and God starts answering prayers. And whenever they pull up to stop lights, all of the stoplights turn green, and God is just smiling upon them and everything’s incredible. It’s the high of the person who just met the grace of Christ. Then, unfortunately, life continues, and after a while, this on-fire, the excited believer may go through some more difficult times and end up right here. Maybe God didn’t answer a prayer, or maybe this person lost their job. Or, maybe they started to struggle with certain sins that came back and wouldn’t leave them alone, or maybe their kids started making bad decisions. Or, maybe there was something that they felt like God could do, that God should do, and everything would be okay, but God didn’t, and all of a sudden, they’re right here going, “Wait a minute, God, I thought You were going to be like this, but now,

You’re not doing what You could.” They enter into what Henry Blackabee calls a “crisis of belief.”

So, as we study the book of Habakkuk, we are going to find that he is asking questions like this, and you may say, since he is asking God and questioning God… “Well, it’s obvious he isn’t a real deep, committed believer like I am because he should never question God.” And what we need to understand… that actually, Habakkuk, the prophet, was incredibly in love with God. He had a very rich faith, but he, like so many people, he crashed head-on into his faith and the law, and the things that he saw didn’t line up with the things that he believed, and it was a very difficult season for him. Many of you may be able to relate.

Prayer literally brings us into the presence of God and it’s in His presence where real life change happens. You begin to desire the things that He desires, love the things that He loves and change the things that He wants you to change. The best types of prayers are honest, humble and transparent. God knows what we go through, but he wants us to want Him more than anything in this whole world. He knows we have it hard sometimes, but He wants us to depend on Him… and why is it that sometimes we have to hit rock bottom for us to realize that we can’t do this on our own.

When we are going through a hard time, we have to realize that he is not doing this TO us, but rather He is doing it FOR us! He is not doing this to HURT you, but rather he is doing this to HELP you! He takes us through a mess so we can have a message.