Teen Pathways
Hi! My name is Cheri and welcome to Teen Pathways!
We're getting ready right now to do a scene of a prayer,
I'm not going to even tell you about it. I'm going to introduce
you to the group first, so that you know who we are and where
we've come from and then we're going to do a scene
and this particular episode is going to be about
prayer, it's going to be exciting, it's my favourite
topic. So first of all I want to introduce you to the group,
go ahead, you start.
My name is Karen and I live in Texas.
My name is Jackie Ravine and I live in Washington.
My name is Lori Sproat and I live in Eagle, Idaho.
And I believe that prayer works.
Amen.
My name is Paddy McCoy and I also live for the moment
in Washington and I spend 24 hours a day at Washington
College. I live there.
My name is Cari Chenoweth and I'm from Medford, Oregon.
My name is Jason Henry and I'm from Sweet Home, Oregon.
Thanks for joining us and thanks for sharing your ideas on prayer.
I have to say first of all that I saw this scene and I think it
was in Washington. I saw the scene in Washington and the first
time I saw it, I was just amazed and we'll talk about
your reaction to that after you see the scene.
So go ahead Jackie and Paddy.
No pressure.
Our Father who are in heaven.
Yes.
Sssh, don't interrupt me, I'm praying.
But you called Me.
Called you? I'm just saying a prayer.
Our Father who are in heaven
There! You did it again.
Did what?
You called Me. You said Our Father who are in heaven.
Look, that's just the words to the prayer, ok?
"Our Father, who are in heaven"
"Hollowed be Thy name."
Al right. What exactly does that mean: "hollowed be Thy
name?" Do you know?
Yeah, it means that Your name is..., that...
er, er... You should,
I didn't write it, I just say it, ok, so I...What does it mean?
It means: "honored, holly. wonderful,"
"Hollowed be Thy name." It makes sense.
"Our Father who are in heaven, hollowed be Thy name,
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done."
"On Earth as it is in heaven."
Ok, hold on. Do you really mean that?
Well, yeah. Sure.
Ok, if you mean "Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven," what are you doing about it?
When I say "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven",
I'm thinking that it would be good if You controll things on
earth like You do in heaven.
Have I got controll over you?
I go to church.
That isn't what I asked. A lot of people go to church,
but what I'm talking about, is the type of things that you do,
the books you read, the movies you watch, or how you spend
so much money on yourself and and so little time with anyone
else.
Can You please stop picking on me?!
I mean I'm just as good as the other people at church.
"Our Father who are in heaven, hollowed be Thy name,
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us this day our dayly bread,
and...
And... go on with the next part.
I don't want to go on with the next part.
It's one of my favorites, really, please, just say it.
I know what you're going to say.
I can see that you're maybe a little scared.
Praying is a dangerous thing, you could wind up change???
But go on, I'm right here with you, so just say the next part.
"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
Ok, what about Bill?
I know You were going to bring up Bill but Bill really made me
mad. Bill hurt me. He spread lies about me, Bill took a lot
of my money and I'm going to get even with Bill.
But your prayer. What about what you said in your prayer
"forgive us our debts and our sins as we forgive those who
sinned against us".
I didn't mean Bill.
At least you're honest I guess. But it's not much fun carrying
round that load of bitterness inside, is it?
Look, I'm going to feel a lot better once I get even with Bill.
I have some things that are planned for him,
that are going to make him sorry he ever crossed my
path. So, then I'll feel better.
I hate to burst you a little bubbled hair, but I promise you,
you won't feel any better, you'll only feel worse.
Revenge isn't so sweet. Think of how unhappy you
already are. I can change that.
You can?
Yeah, the answer's easy. Forgive Bill!
Then I can forgive you and all the hate and the bitterness
will be Bill's problem, not yours.
But I can't forgive Bill.
Then I'm sorry I can't forgive you.
I guess that's true, isn't it?
It's more important for me to be right with you than to get
revenge with Bill. You're right.
Ok, I forgive Bill. Be with him and bless him.
Please.
There! Now how do you feel?
Kind of good actually. Not so bad at all.
I'm proud of you. Now go on with the rest of your prayer.
"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Good, good, I'll do just that, but I need your help in this
one. I need you to not put yourself in a place where you
can be tempted.
I don't understand.
Ok, like take some of your friendships.
Some of your friendships need to change, because you're so
called friends are beginnig to bring you down.
And don't use me for an escape patch.
What do you mean?
Well, you get caught in a bad situation,
and you come right to me. How does that prayer go:
I'm sure you'll recognize it, it's something like:
"Lord, help me out of this mess and I promice
I'll never do it again."
Do you remember those promices?
Oh, yeah. I remember those.
Which one are you thinking about right now?
I just remember that one time when I was actually
at a bar, I was too drunk, and I was leaving and my
neighbour saw me and I remember saying:
"Oh, God, please don't let her tell my mom.
And if she doesn't tell my mom, I promice I'll go to church
every week."
Now if I remember correctly and since I am God,
I usually do. You didn't tell your mother, the lady didn't
tell your mother, but you didn't keep your promice.
No, I didn't. I'm sorry.
I forgive you. Now finish your prayer, almost done. Go ahead.
"For Thine is the kingdom and the power,
the glory, forever."
Amen.
Do you know what really make me happy?
No. But I'd like to. I'd really like to.
Ok. What really, really make me happy, is that if people,
like you, truly dedicate it to me. You see, true freedom
comes to people who turn their lives over to my guidance.
Let me take controll for a while, and I can see that
beginnig to happen between us.
Ok, so how about if we see what we can do with me.
That sounds like a great idea.
Yeah, it does. I guess that's good night, then?
I guess so. Good night and one more thing:
I love you.
I know.
That was good. We love that.
And there's a couple of things about that that I think is
so incredible. One is, a lot of times I think that
we don't let God interfere with our Christianity.
And to me it was really watching you guys
is that we don't let Him come in, and when He does, we're
changed, we're just changed. And so that's what I hope we'll
cover today's show is that what do we do when we pray,
and is it real? Do we let God in and can He change us if we do?
Any thoughts about the scene that you just saw?
I just like how easy it seemed like your conversation,
it just seemed you were talking to a friend,
it wasn't like you were talking to this Creator of the universe
it just seemed so simple the conversation and how she just
she was saying the prayer it wasn't any specific recipe
or whatever to hear from God, but it was just a conversation.
I like how simple that is.
Now you know I think it's interesting, because even in the
prayer that was used in the Lord's prayer, as it is so
formalized sometimes and we think that when we talk to God,
it has to this big speech that's been prepared beforehand,
and in my prayer life, I've just gone through a point where
it is like that, where what you're saying it's just
a personal relationship. You're just talking, it's like
He's a friend. And it's funny, because one of the things that
I do, sometimes when I pray, I pray often in the car,
and so I'm driving around and of course people are looking
over and...
And at times I use handgestures a lot when I talk,
and so I would throw my hands around and I remember one time
down the road and I was really getting into it,
and one time I looked into my rearview mirror and
and people in the back are...
But it's free when you're able to talk to God as though He is your
best friend.
Yeah.
Because He is.
I think of David. I think to me David out of propably the mostly
characters in the Bible, there was able to free themselves
up totally, I mean so much so that maybe it's propably even
little scary to think of praying to God the way
David did talk to God that way. I mean David would ask God
wipe my enemies out.
When all the sudden I'm really mad at something,
when something has gone wrong and stuff and I read David,
saying that I laugh, because He was honest, he said: just
cut their head off and when I'm thinking God is so cool,
because He just knows even the times that we're soft and
the times that we're just out of controll and He waits for us
to get through that and says, like he said to David is I love
you, now let's work on that.
He was speaking, like David, it says that he was a man after
God's own heart and yet there was a time where he had
been unfair and did all this kind of things, except I think,
when I think of prayer, like David is the man, like he was
there as far as his communication with God and I think about a time
when I wasn't not walking with God at all. I was diagnosed with
leukemia and I was sitting in my room and it was like
two days before I had my first kemo treatment,
and I didn't know if I was going to live or die still,
kemo works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't and I just sat in my
room and I grew up learning prayers like you pray when
you eat, you pray at thanksgiving,
and for some reason I just sat in my room when I sat there,
I said: "God I want to know if I'm going to die."
And I just sat there and waited. And all the sudden I heard He's
like: "I want you to read the book of Isaiah,
and read a chapter each day and at the end you'll be healed"
And I was like did I just hear or I thought?
The first thing I did I got a Bible, I didn't know how
many chapters was in the book of Isaiah, I was hoping, it was
like two or something,
I ended up there were 66 and then the first person I went to,
was my mom and I said: "Mom, I just heard God tell me this
He said I'm going to be healed and my mom, she didn't question
it. She was like: ok, and I was like so I really I heard
from God and like it was just amazing.
And so no matter where you're at or whatever, like you can
You know, I know your story because for one I'm crazy about,
I just know your story, I've known you for a while
and so in the process you were in the kemo, you lost all your hair,
I mean there were times that it was not, I think
did you experiment all treatments with you at one time?
The whole treatment, that was the first time they did it on anybody
So to me I think about that, in the phase of that you never
question the original thing. That is so amazing.
That is so amazing. Now I think there's different times
that I have had to pray really seriously, I had really serious
prayers where God had to come through and one of them,
I have to share this with you. One of them, I am married to
a wonderful guy, you know my background, I was homeless
for ten years, heroin addict, my parents were 14 and 16
years old, and when I married this guy,
it is a boy scout he was a little older when I
married him, I'm going to clarify that.
He was a boy scout, he was 18 he was my age
when I met him. And so I married him and one of the things he
loves to do, is to show me some normal things,
So every year we would do something, stuff that normal
people do, we went one year to go to see something,
he never tells me he had a time, he plans this whole thing out
and he just cries because he sets it like a gift to me,
I mean it's such an incredible thing that he does.
And so we're on the way, storms come in, and it's blizzarding
and we can't get to this spot that he wants to show me.
And he turns around and he's a new Christian,
brand new Christian, and he turns around and he says
to me, he says: "Honey will you pray?"
And by this time the road has been closed for 3 hours,
due to the storms, we were sitting on the side of the road,
waiting to go off the freeway unto the little road that leads
up to the mountains and I'm thinking: "pray?, I think
we're going to die." And so then he says: "will you pray?"
and I turned around the town, and I say: "Pray about what?"
And he says: "pray that the wheather clear up."
And I say: "do you want me to pray that God clears up the
weather?" And I said that, he started to tear up.
And I thought, and so I turned around and I suddenly said:
"Lord, I was homeless, I was a wreck, You changed my life,
You gave me this wonderful man this child, You fed the 5000,
I've seen Your miracles in Your kids' lives every day,
please, do this for him and I was literally crying,
and it's got to be the same thing when you know you're going
to die, it's just that sense that I know that this is
kind of a life and death thing for him spiritually,
and all the sudden the weather started clearing up,
the blizzard has gone, by the time we got where we
were going, I have pictures of this whole day,
because it was such a miracle, by the time we get to where
we were going, we went to Devil's Tower and the???
by the time we get there, the weather has cleared up
up enough for that we could see some blue skies,
we hiked around this tower, that's just a rockformation
and by the time we came around in the front, the cloud cleared,
and the sun shone on this mountain for 5 minutes.
And I stood there and I think help me to believe in prayer,
help me to believe that You hear us, that You love us,
what is the parable about faith of the mustard seed,
I have a question, though that I want to place before you, guys,
What do we do when the weather doesn't clear up?
When we finish Isaiah, we're not phisically healed, like we
thought it might be.
I think that we need to understand that God's will is not
always what our will is, it's not always what we think that
it should be, that I need to pray for Thy will to be done,
instead of what we want to be done. Because it's not always
the way we think.
And sometimes the answer is not always yes, I mean sometimes
we may want it to be yes from the bottom our heart but sometimes
His answer is no and His answer is not now,
or just wait or hold on.
I think that Cheri and I have a similar experience
our family, my family is not really church background,
not really Christian, I've never gone to church growing up at all,
but when I became a Christian, God started answering my prayers
not with still small voices, but with thunderbolts,
like huge miracles and my family was a part into that,
being able to see that and for a long time I was so excited
that my life could be such a testimony to my family and
and to the existence of God, untill my little brother and
sister learned to pray and they would pray for God to help
mom and dad are fighting, help them to get better, our mom
and dad get divorced and they would pray, we don't have enough
money for our electricity this month and it's wintertime,
and the electricity we get turned off,
and I remember one point, one of my familymember said:
"you taught me to pray, and I wish you hadn't."
I mean not a very scary thing, I think for me when I had to come
to my own life and maybe you guys have some feedback about this,
is that God is God and I am not. And I'm not going to understand
His choices for people around me. And I don't have to justify
His work in my life and I don't have to justify His work
or quiteness in other peoples' lives. I just have to be willing
to say God is God and I'm not.
That's true. We so often think we feel we often have to
wrap or understand around something,
which is really kind of like a controll issue.
Because as human beings, I mean scientists,they have to explain
everything, they can't explain it, they get upset or whatever,
and so we have to. like one, I've heard one pastor say
one time he said, sometimes as Christians we think
that just because like a disaster didn't happen
to a group of people because there were some Christians
is because they were Christians. If a plane goes down, then if
a plane doesn't go down then we think, maybe it's because
there were some Christians aboard and God spared the plane,
it's not always true.
And I think what you said is so true, maybe we should just learn
to resign everything back to God and say
I have to think of the story of Job, because that's where
people were saying to Job, this is a really godly man,
and He all the sudden looses his wife and his kids die and
he looses everything, he gets spoils and his
deffenders were saying: "what are you hiding, what are you doing?"
and he's like searching everything:" I don't think I've
done anything wrong and he finally comes up with the same
conclusion as Jackie, he said: "even if he slay me I know that
You're God and I know You know the bigger picture and so there
are times when you talk about family, my sister right now
who I love, she's 27, her teeth fell out, she's 70 pounds now,
she has A plus leukonomia and because of a drug abuse,
and A plus leukonomia pulls the marrow out of your bone
and then they're going to do bone marrow transplant,
because she's a drug addict and not going to do it, so
I may say that her prognosis is really poor.
And I said the same thing as I say: "you know Lord,
I know You're capable and I don't even understand
why You don't just stand up and, stand up and not only heal
my family, but then chain them to the wall so they can't do
anything.
Sometimes I think I better believe that I would trade than
and that's a lot, all of my miracles were just one whisper
to each one of my family members and they would have some sort
of assurance of believe in God.
As we talked about resigning Yourself to prayer,
and to the fact that God does know more than we know
and we can't always fully understand,
2 verses, pieces of Scripture came to mind,
and the first one is trust where it says in Proverbs 3:5
it says: "trust in the Lord in all your ways."
And acknowledge Him and He'll make your path straight."
and it's the matter of letting going and just knowing
that God does, like you said He knows the bigger picture.
And the other one that I think of, is in the New Testament
Jesus had a man come up to Him and asking for something.
And Jesus said: "Do you believe?" "Do you believe in Me, do you
believe in God?" And the person said: "I believe."
"Help the part of me that doesn't." That part of me
that's week. And what that shout out to me is that a lot of times
we don't even know how to pray. We don't know what to say
and we're not sure if God's going to answer.
But we can also claim the fact that God knows our inmost being,
He knows our hearts and our desires and our fears and our
hurts and our pains, and we have to trust that He is going to make
the best decision for us.
For us and He has given ous free will.
So I may want my sister to trust God and turn to God,
but she is angry of God, she won't even allow Him to speak
with her and so you know, I've got to trust that God
is respectful of all of our free will, whereas I would
just say: don't give him a choice, they just need
You. And so we have to trust You that everybody has freewill
and God is working with that entire picture.
And He wants our hearts. He doesn't want just
our wows.
It's not an obedience thing, it's not a wow thing,
it's a heart thing.
He wants us to choose Him because we love Him
and He loves us for who we are and what you were saying,
it reminds me of Roman, I don't know which verse, but it says
that the Holly Spirit makes intercession for us with cronings
And I just think how many times have I wanted to pray
but I didn't even know how. And that verse comes to me,
because I know that the Holly Spirit comes in and He says
this guy, he doesn't even know what he needs praying for,
but he knows that there's something wrong.
So I'm going to pray for him, and I think and maybe when
I was or didn't even know about God,I think the Holly Spirit
interceded and has looked in my life and saw me searching
meaning and truth and different things and I wasn't finding it,
the Holly Spirit was still there just praying for me,
making intercession for me when I didn't even know
what was up.
I don't know if you've had that experience,where you just
you're feeling so strongly about something,
and you want to talk to God about it,
just going: man, I need something I have no idea what that is.
But you can throw up, I've thrown up a prayer lke that before
and said I just don't know what I need from you right now,
but I need something.
Help me. And at the end of the day, I can look back at that day
and said: oh, look at what happened!
Something happened that day that I really needed.
I had no idea but God did.
We thrown out a lot of ideas a lot of things about prayer,
so one thing I just want to say is that the relationship is the
most important thing and trust God that He knows.
And pray for the people you love. And then the Holly Spirit
will take up what we don't even know,
and I would like to close, first of all I want to say thanks,
thanks everybody for this for sharing your ideas
and your thoughts on prayer and will you close with
a little song?
Yeah.
Ok. Great! Jason, will you play?
What song are you going to sing?
It's called: "Seek Ye first" and there's 3 verses,
I think most of you know it. Ok? So
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness
And all these things shall be added unto you
Allelu-allelujah,
man shall not live by bread alone,but by every Word,
that procedes from the mouth of God, allelu-allelujah,
allelujah-allelujah, allelujah, allelu-allelujah.
Ask and it shall be given unto you. seek and ye shall find,
knock and the door shall be open unto you,allelu-allelujah,
Thanks. I believe that with all my heart is that seek and you'll
find and there's no better ways than to seek God, or get on your
knees or walk around, drive around in your car and just ask.
I love you, please show me who I am, who you are
please help me in this situation and remember you can
ask God for help anywhere and if you don't know
what to ask, the Holly Spirit is kicking in,
and He'll ask. Pray anywhere. All of heaven rejoices when we
turn to God in prayer. Thanks for joining us
on Teen Pathways and see you next time.