Letting Christ Lay His Burden on Us — Santosh Poonen

The Mind Set on the Spirit

If you've been following along, the primary class is going through Romans 8. And so it's a wonderful chapter just to see, for example, last week when through their memory verse they taught us that the mind set on the flesh is not even able to please God.

If you're trying to please God and you find that you're not even able to do so, a big reason for that may be because your mind is set on the flesh. Let's look at that. I'll begin there. Romans chapter 8, Romans 8 verse 6.

The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. There's only two ways to live life, either set on the flesh or set on the spirit. There's no in-between Christian life.

Now, in Christendom, you'll hear that you say a prayer and repentance is not preached. Daily repentance after you're born again is not emphasized. And so you end up with a lot of people who think they're Christians, but their mind is still set on the flesh.

And they think they have life, but they don't because Romans 8, 6 says the mind set on the flesh is death. But the mind that is set is set. That means it's a continual being set on the spirit is life and peace.

Because the mindset on the flesh is actually hostile toward God. If you're thinking about yourself and how you can make it in this world and how you can provide more for yourself and that preoccupies your mind in an earthly centered, self-centered way, you're an enemy of God.

That's what Romans 8, 7 says. For it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so. And it's no wonder then that you end up with people who say a prayer, perhaps sincerely, and come to Jesus, ask for him to forgive their sins, and he does.

And he wants to have the Holy Spirit grow within them, but their mind is still set on the flesh. The mind is still set on themselves and the things of this world. And they find that after they've said this prayer, they're not even able to please God.

If you come across such people, whether they call themselves Christian or not, I pray that our lives will be an example, say, we're not doing it perfectly, but we're learning the secret of Romans 8, 6, and 7, which says that if I set my mind on the spirit, it's life and peace.

And the more I draw my mind away from the flesh, from the things of this world, I will find that I'm able to do so, to please God. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Prayer as Continual Communion with God

We'll keep that in mind. I'd like to speak today about prayer, and I've been meditating on this for a number of months now, just prayer, the mystery of prayer. I'll be honest, I can't wrap my mind around how prayer works.

It's a mystery. It really is a mystery to me. And the more I've looked at the word of God and examined what the word of God has to say, the more I've walked with God and gotten to know him, it's even more of a mystery.

I'll be honest with you. But it's as mysterious as the resurrection. There's no explanation for how God can allow somebody to die and then raise them back to life. There's just no logical explanation for it.

There's no scientific... You can't go into a medical book and figure out how a dead person can somehow come back to life. They have no ability to come back to life, and yet they do. There's no medical explanation for it.

And I find prayer is a little bit like that, that it's a mystery. And it's... I think of it like what Jesus said, I praise thee, Matthew 11, 25, Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and reveal them to babes.

And the goal of my message this morning is that if you find that your prayer life is lacking in some way, I'm not talking about coming to the prayer meetings, which I hope you do, or praying when we're here together.

I'm talking about a continual praying without ceasing, where throughout the day, there's a communion between you and your Father in heaven. And if that's not there, don't be discouraged, don't walk away from this meeting or from this message beating yourself up that it's not there.

I pray that you'll have hope and children for you from the youngest, however old you are, however young you are, that you can learn that Jesus wants to be your friend, for you to communicate with him, to have fellowship with him, to talk to him, to hear him in a real way.

And I pray that we will all experience that. But it's revealed to babes. And so children, you actually have the potential to come into a true prayer life more easily than us adults, because God has hidden it from us.

We're more intelligent than you. Now actually, I think some of you kids are probably more intelligent than us, but we've been trained in the things of this world a little too much, a little bit more, and we have to unlearn that.

And so children, if you're six years old or five or something like that, and you haven't really, you're not even in first grade yet, you have an advantage that we don't have. You can remain a babe. Jesus said, Matthew 11, 25, I praise you, Father, let's look at that verse very quickly so you know it.

The things of heaven, God has hidden from the wise and the intelligent and revealed to babes. In fact, Jesus was so excited about that, that he said, I praise you. I praise you, Matthew 11, verse 25, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things.

This is an intentional act of God. It's not just accident. God sees a wise, intelligent person trying to find an answer to some spiritual thing, and God says, no, I'm going to hide it from you. Do you want to be such a person?

You're playing hide and seek with God. I'm not trying to be silly. Please understand. If you're playing hide and seek with God, you'll never find him. If God is hiding himself from you, you'll never find him.

It's impossible to find him. And if God has hidden these things, the only way to find him is to forsake our wisdom and intelligence, our reliance on our own intelligence and understanding. But he's revealed them to babes, so the babes don't even have to try.

He says, here, let me show it to you. It's like somebody playing hide and seek again, to use that same analogy, and says, here I am. You can find me. I'm not even going to try to hide myself. You see the opposite here?

God hiding himself from some and revealing himself to others. And you'll see that if you observe Christians. There are some who are extremely smart, extremely wise and intelligent. They might have bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, PhDs in the things of this world, or even in theology.

They go to seminary and think that's where they will find God, and they don't. Because God has hidden these things. You could read the Bible with all your wisdom and intelligence and God says, it's just a book for you.

And then some other child who can barely read, or somebody, and I've met some godly men who are illiterate, or can barely read, in whom I see God has revealed truths. That's beyond the written pages of this book, and that's what I long for.

Oh, I thank God for this book. It's more and more precious to me. But I never want to read it with my wisdom and intelligence. And I see that the people who have blessed me the most by their life and their teaching have been the ones who have come to God, whether they're intelligent or not.

You can't help it if you're intelligent. If you are, that's fine. God will use it for the things of this world, and he can use it for the things of the kingdom as well. If you forsake your confidence in that intelligence and say, Lord, I come to you as a babe.

Living and Walking as Jesus Walked

So I want to be such a person. You know, we believe that every Christian, anyone who calls himself a Christian must live as Jesus lived, must walk as Jesus walked. That's 1 John 2 verse 6. And we say that often in this church, but one of the things the Holy Spirit has been impressing on my heart is to not just say that verse and say, yeah, I want to live as Jesus lived.

I will be conformed into his image. But to more and more examine the life of Jesus, not only the facts of his life that we know from the Gospels, see in the Gospels, you see the facts of Jesus life and his teaching.

But then in the Epistles, we see more of his nature. What was the inner life like? I look at the Epistles as revealing what the first 30 years of Jesus life was like. What does it mean to be Christ-like in nature?

And that actually comes first, as we heard last week. Let's pay attention to our life. Let's pay attention to the life of Christ in us and then to our teaching. So the life of Christ comes first, which is probably why it's good that there's 23 books on the life of Christ, the inner life of Christ, and then four books about the ministry of Christ in the Gospels.

But if we really believe that, this is what the Holy Spirit has been impressing on my heart, that if you really say that we must live as Jesus lived and walk as he walked, then if we see that Jesus did certain things a certain way, we say, well, that's how we must do it, too.

For example, you look at how Jesus preached, and then you look at how most preachers in Christendom preach, you'll see a difference. If you look at how Jesus did miracles, how he cast out demons, and he told them, don't say a word about it, he never bragged about the miracles that he did, and yet you'll see almost every preacher who thinks they've done miracles talking about it.

And they'll say, oh, I did this, and God used me to do this miracle. Again, most of it, I believe, is not true at all. You look at how Jesus prayed, and what Jesus told us about prayer, and that's how we know what real prayer is.

As you've heard Zach say often, Jesus is our dictionary. It's not a concordance, it's not an earthly dictionary. If you want to know humility, if you want to know grace, if you want to know peace, if you want to know joy, if you want to know love, if you want to know prayer, you don't go to Oxford or Merriam-Webster dictionary and say, what is prayer?

You don't do a concordance search. Well, you can do a concordance search on where all prayer comes in, what does it mean, and get some theological answer of prayer. You look to the life of Jesus, and if the Holy Spirit is within you, he will reveal to you the prayer life of Jesus in a way that's not even recorded in this book, and you get to know.

It will be confirmed by the things in this book, but the Holy Spirit will teach you how to pray. So you look at John 11. Here's a phrase that Jesus said about prayer that has become a challenge for me.

If I want to live as Jesus lived and walk as Jesus walked, I ought to increasingly come to a place where my prayers are becoming more like the prayers of Jesus, not necessarily in the words that I say, because we're not praying in Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus used when he was here on this earth.

So to be more Christ-like in our prayer doesn't mean that we learn Hebrew or Aramaic. It means that we learn the spirit of Jesus' prayer and pray the same way. And we look at the fruit of Jesus' prayers and say, Lord, Father, if you heard Jesus' prayer and it was answered in this way, and you tell me now I ought to pray as Jesus prayed, 1 John 2 verse 6, so then, Lord, you must do the same for me.

And if I don't see the same outcome of my prayers as Jesus had in his prayers, who's my foremost example, then I don't just say, well, it was Jesus. He's the Son of God, and so he's a little bit special.

Yes, he is the Son of God. He will never not be the Son of God. But the devil wants you to think that the fact that the Son of Man, who also Jesus was when he prayed on this earth, was somehow different than you and I, sons and daughters of men and women.

So you look at John 11, 41, just before Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Now I want to emphasize that our calling is not necessarily to do all the things that Jesus did. You and I may never raise somebody from the dead.

If God wants to, he'll use you. That's fine. You must have the faith for it, that if there's ever a situation where it's impressed on you that the Father is going to lead you very clearly and specifically to raise somebody from the dead or to do anything, that you'll do it in the grace and the power of God.

But here's what I want you to see. More than even the physical fact of Lazarus' resurrection, look at what Jesus said. So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me.

I thank you that you have heard me. He's not even said the prayer yet. He says, Father, I thank you that you've heard me. He's giving thanks before he's actually asking the request. And then he says, I know, I knew that you always hear me.

I knew that you always hear me. And then he says, but because of the people standing around and for Santos' sake in 2022 and all these other dear brothers and sisters, so they would know that the Father always heard Jesus.

For their sakes, I have said this out loud so that they may believe that you sent me so that you too would have faith that the Father wants. I ought to be able to say that the Father always hears me. Let me ask you, dear brother, dear sister, and even dear children, do you believe without a doubt, without a shadow of doubt, that when you pray, the Father is listening to you?

Don't imagine it. Don't just say, well, of course, yeah, I said it out loud, so he must have heard me. No. Do you know in your heart he heard you? It's sealed. It was recorded in heaven. He wrote it down.

Oh, how it will change the way we live our lives when we say, Father Jesus, I want to start praying as you prayed. So that I too can say, I knew that you always heard what I said. In John 8, he says, I know that you are with me because I only do the things that please you.

I only do the things that please you, Father. So you're always with me. I mean, I, I, I have that relationship with my wife. I know that she always hears what I say. And that's that bridal relationship that God wants to have, that Jesus wants to have with us.

Prayer Invites God to Act

And I said it's a mystery, but, and still we pray. Let's turn to James 5. The mystery for me is that God knows the future. He knows exactly what's going to happen. He knows the end from the beginning, we are told.

And how do you go to somebody who knows the end from the beginning and then say, I would like you to do something, or I would like you to change a particular circumstance. That's the mystery. I can't explain.

And I don't believe I ever will be able to explain it with my human mind. That the God who knows the end from the beginning invites us to move his hand. The God who knows the end from the beginning invites you to move his hand.

You'll see that throughout scripture. When Hannah, 1 Samuel, the very first chapters of that wonderful book, had no child, she prayed and she cried out and she couldn't care less who was listening to her.

Didn't care that the priest who was supposed to be in touch with God wasn't in touch with God and thought she was drunk. But she was crying out to God. She forgot about everybody else. She had such a need, such a desperation within her heart.

And then God answered her prayer. God specifically gave her a child after she prayed. Now you can, the intelligent one will say, well, God knew he was going to give her a child anyway, right? So what was the point of her prayer?

And let me tell you this. I believe with all my heart that if Hannah had not prayed, she would not have received a child. That I believe. Because we're commanded to pray. And let the intelligent and the wise people say, well, what's the point of prayer then if God's going to do whatever he wants to do anyway?

If my children are going to end up in heaven or in hell, what does it matter if I pray? Oh, I tell you, if you leave it to the devil to determine the future of your children or their self-will, I don't know what will happen.

But I pray for our children, my own children, but for every child in this church. I want you to know that. Not to be impressed with me, but God has given us as elders a burden. And I hope all of you adults, you have a burden for the children in this church that not one of them will be lost.

And I'm praying in faith that God will do that. Now you might say, well, is God going to overpower their self-will, their free will that he has and all that stuff? I say, I'm not going to try to explain that.

I don't know. I believe in free will. I believe God will never take away our free will. But I also believe in the power of God. And I don't know how these two mix. That's all I can say. But I say God wants me to pray.

And I'm not going to stop praying for my children, for our children, until Christ comes. And I believe that the prayers I pray, like you've heard me say often, will outlive me. Like they did for George Mueller, who prayed for specific people and long after he died and was in the presence of Jesus, God answered his prayer here on this earth.

Because we serve an eternal God. He's not limited by the fact that I'm here on this earth for a finite amount of time. And so if on your deathbed you think, well Lord, those prayers that you laid on my heart to pray, you haven't answered.

But I'm going to pray. My last breath will be, Lord, answer my prayer. I'm going to charge the gates of hell praying that way. And then I see Jesus face to face and I'll see clearly, no longer dimly, and I'll see how he will answer that prayer.

And I will be at rest. James 5, we're told, verse 13, is anyone among you suffering, then he must pray. Prayer is a command. Don't try to figure it out. Don't try to analyze it. Pray. And if that suffering continues for a year, pray.

If that suffering continues for five years, pray. If it continues for 10 years, pray. You must pray if you're suffering. Dear brother, dear sister, dear child, if you're suffering, whether it's a physical ailment, an emotional ailment, a spiritual ailment, if you're suffering, you must pray.

Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. That's why we have prayer and praise in our meetings, because there are some who are cheerful. Sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him.

Please do that. We invite you. We don't have a time where we do it publicly, but according to this verse, we see that you can call for us elders and we'll meet you and we can anoint you with oil if you'd like us to.

And we'll pray over you and for you and with you and we'll continue to pray. Let him call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Now, this is a question we ask if we've ever prayed for you. You know that we ask you this. First of all, have you committed any sin? There are some sicknesses that are a result of sin, according to this passage.

So we'll ask you, first of all, is there unconfessed sin in your life? If there is, all our laying on of hands and anointing of oil will be of no use because you haven't forsaken that sin. But if you forsake that sin, confess it, it will be forgiven you.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. As you've heard us say often, the context of confessing our sins to one another is here in the context of elders praying for a man or woman who is sick and that sickness is because of sin.

And he says the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. And then he talks about the story of Elijah. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, which means that he too had this logical mind.

That's one way that I think about Elijah having a nature like ours. Elijah, when the Lord told him, go and pray that there will not be rain, he didn't sit there because he had a nature like ours. He didn't sit there and think, well, Lord, if there's not going to be rain, what's the point of my praying?

You're not going to give the rain, right? And nothing would have happened. Elijah could not have been used by God. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and yet he prayed earnestly that it would not rain.

God told him to pray, and he didn't just say, okay, Lord, let it not rain. You see, see the spirit that Elijah had. God told him, go and pray that it would not rain, and he prayed earnestly. There was not, well, Lord, okay, I'm just going to record the prayer because you asked me to pray.

Pray for your children that they will all be disciples of the Lord Jesus. Say, okay, Lord, I pray that all my children will be disciples of Jesus. Check the box and then go on with not praying for them anymore.

Look at the prayer of Elijah for the thing that the Lord told him to pray for. Even though the Lord told him to pray, Elijah prayed earnestly. Are you praying earnestly for your children? Earnestly. Lord, I'm teaching them, I'm giving them your word, we have the memory verses and all that.

Pray earnestly. Oh, pray earnestly, brothers and sisters. Our children is just an example. There are many other things God wants us to pray for, but he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months.

Then the Lord told him, okay, now pray that it will rain, and he prayed again, I believe earnestly. Lord, don't, let it rain now. Let it rain now, Lord. You've said, you've put this burden on my heart, you've spoken to me, now he prayed earnestly.

Oh, I want to emphasize here that Elijah prayed earnestly for the thing that the Lord told him to pray for. It wasn't just a ritual prayer. Now think about it, dear brothers and sisters. When we pray before the meeting, we meet at 10 -15 for 15 minutes or so, we pray before the meeting.

Oh, Lord, bless this meeting, let it go. Is it sort of just a casual, yeah, Lord, thank you for this day, and bless the meeting, we're here. Heal all those who are sick. Now, I'm not trying to mock any prayer, please understand, but is there an earnestness?

Whether it's manifest in how you pray, the fervor, the zeal with which you pray, and I'm not talking about an emotional stirring either, but is there a burning, is there a fervor, is there a zeal, is there an earnestness within your heart for what you're praying for?

Oh, then God will answer. And then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain, and the earth produced its fruit. So the mystery is that God knows the future, and yet he asks us to move his hand as we see here.

Learning to Pray by the Spirit

Let's go back to Romans chapter 8, and one of the first things I'd like us to see is that we don't know how to pray. If you think you know how to pray, think again. You actually don't know how to pray.

The disciples realized this because, see, the disciples at the age of, when Jesus was 30, so they would have been in their late 20s, I believe they were all good religious Jews who were raised in the law of God.

They were law-abiding Jews, otherwise God would not have picked them. They had their flaws, of course, but they honored the law of God. The Jewish law of God. And so I believe they would have all been raised in good homes where they were taught to pray, and they would have gone to the synagogues where they would have seen people praying, the Pharisees especially.

Long prayers, religious prayers, prayers full of language. And that's what they saw. But then they saw Jesus praying, and that's when they go to Matthew 6 and they said, Lord, we don't know how to pray.

And you could have said, well, didn't you watch the Pharisees? Yeah, we can say the same words, but you're praying differently, Jesus. There's something about, have you thought about it? When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, they already knew how to pray like the Pharisees, like a good Jew.

And the parallel for us today is that you probably know how to pray like a good religious Christian. How to say the right words. You start with, Father, this, and you end with, in Jesus' name, amen, and you ask for certain things.

There's a format. Use those words. And then when you see a man or a woman who knows how to pray, or more than that, you say, Lord Jesus, how did you pray? And then it'll change the way you pray. You say, Lord, teach me how to pray like you prayed.

I want to pray like you prayed, Lord. Not even like so-and-so man of God, George Mueller. Yeah, he's a wonderful example. Hudson Taylor, wonderful example. All these men of God, I hear about how they prayed and you answered their prayers.

That's great, Lord, but you are the greatest example of all. How did you pray? Have you heard from Jesus? Have you learned from Jesus how he prayed? I hope after this message you will. That the essence of what you get from this message will be, Lord, I want to learn from you how to pray, and it will change the way I pray, and you'll start to answer.

Because in the same way that the Father always heard Jesus, you will also hear, always hear me. Little child. It's wonderful. Romans 8, we read in verse 26. In the middle of verse 26, it says, we do not know how to pray as we should.

Very, very important to remember. Very, especially important for those of us who are raised in Christian homes where we heard prayer, and we hear prayer all the time. In a quote-unquote Christian nation where they have prayer in the White House, and prayer in the Senate, and all this stuff, and there's, prayer is used as a common word.

And then we say, Lord, I see a lot of prayer, but I don't even want to devalue the word prayer by using it in that context. Teach me how to pray. Is the cry of your heart, dear brothers and sisters, what it was for the disciples in Matthew 6?

Teach us how to pray? Or it was in Luke, I think, that he says, teach us how to pray, and then he teaches them this prayer. And it's not just reciting that, what they call the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, and you recite it like a ritual.

No, sadly, many Christian denominations have missed it, where they just recite that prayer as a ritual. I never pray that prayer, honestly, just reciting it as a ritual. I pray every part of that prayer in faith, and I use my own words.

So we don't know how to pray as we are, but what does it mean then? How can we really pray as we should? And I believe you see a few things here in Romans 8 that would be good to look at. First of all, what you see in verse 15, Romans 8 verse 15, you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father.

The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. So first of all, we must see that we're praying to a daddy. You're talking to a daddy. Dear children, when you pray, I love it actually that you all children, when you pray in this church and I listen to your prayers, I see that you're talking to a daddy, a heavenly father.

You call him father. You call him father. He says, heavenly father, my heavenly father, my daddy in heaven. You receive the spirit of adoption if you just pray like the rest of the world does, or even the rest of Christendom does, without having received this spirit of adoption within you.

When you're truly born again, the Holy Spirit comes as a seed within you and it changes the way you pray. That's one of the first thing that happens. So remember you're praying to a daddy. Let's go down to verse 22 now.

And then he talks about how the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. So there is a groaning and a pain within creation. It might look like the trees are blossoming and the mountains are full of the snow and all this, the rivers are flowing, but there's a groaning within it.

If you know the spirit, if you're in tune with the spirit, you will hear the groaning of creation where, not in the wind whistling in the trees, but within you. That creation that's there. Even when you see death in creation, you'll say, that sounds familiar.

There's a groaning within me. Verse 23, and not only this, but also we ourselves have the first fruits of the spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see with perseverance, we wait eagerly for it. In the same way, the spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we do not know how to pray as we should.

But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So what the Holy Spirit is teaching us here is that in order for us to pray as we should, there must begin with a groaning within us.

And I'll tell you, this is my honest testimony, over the last number of years, three or four years especially, I would say, there's been a groaning within me. And that groaning within me has transformed my prayers.

I'll tell you that groaning has come from seeing my own unchristlikeness, from having an honest agreement with what God has shown me about my unchristlikeness. When I speak to my wife or my children in a harsh tone, I don't just sort of shrug it away.

It results in a groaning within me. When I have a negative reaction to the driver who cuts me off because he's driving in the slow lane at 40 miles an hour, that results a groaning within me. It says, Lord, I don't want to be that old person that I used to be.

I want to be like you. There's a groaning within me. There's a groaning within me. And that groaning transforms our prayers. The only way we can know how to pray as we should is if there's a groaning within us.

It's born, born, that means carried or born also you can say, from a groaning for a redemption of this body. I see this wretched flesh that I still have. I see unchristlike still coming out within me in moments where I blurt out something or I react in an irritable way.

I say, there's a groaning within me. I don't want to be that person anymore, Lord. Help me. And God hears the cries of such people and he sends the Holy Spirit within us to help our weaknesses. He pours out the Holy Spirit within us.