Here Am I, Send Me Series

Dangerous Prayers Part 8, by Pastor Rob Ketterling

We are continuing our series called Dangerous Prayers. It's interesting, I didn't know there was a book by that title, Dangerous Prayers, until we started preaching this series. And then the pastor that wrote the book saw us hashtagging this, sent me a copy and said, "Hey, I wanted you to have this. I wrote this about praying dangerous prayers." And I read it this past week. It's full of testimony that people that had something they needed to pray, and it covered A to Z. And he just categorized this and said here is how they prayed it, here is what God did, here is how he showed up and here is the miracle. It's full of testimony after testimony. If you're looking for a book to increase your faith, to show you God answered somebody else's prayer, this is that book. I love what he said in there.

He had one statement that just jumped out to me that I agree with wholeheartedly. He said every one of us has a dangerous prayer to pray. I believe that. I believe every one of has a dangerous prayer to pray. I don't know where you've been in this series; if you felt like that was yours already in week one or week three or week five or, you know, you're still wrecked over week four. I don't know where you're at. But I will tell you this, this dangerous prayer today is one that every single one of us needs to pray. Every one of us should pray. This one covers all of us. And I will tell you this, that when you hear this dangerous prayer, everything within your flesh is going to not want to pray this prayer. Okay? I know that's kind of been a theme, isn't it? How many know the dangerous prayers are opposed by the flesh. Therefore they must be good. All right.

So this one is going to really be like that, or you're going to want to pray it with conditions. You cannot pray this one with conditions. You have to pray it as is, all right? So just agree before you even hear what it is you're going to pray it as is. All right? Don't cross your fingers. Nothing, all right? This is for real.

Here is what it is. "Here am I. Send me." "Here am I." Now see, your flesh just riled up; "Here am I. Send them." Don't do that, all right? "Here am I. Send me." And we are going to look at the Old Testament version of this in Isaiah 6. If you have your Bibles, go there. And then we are going to look at the New Testament version which is very similar. So I want to look at an Old Testament passage and a New Testament passage. And although it doesn't say, "Here am I, send me," it's the exact same thought. I believe it is really an Old Testament version and a New Testament version. We will find the New Testament version in Matthew 9 as Jesus is speaking.

But I want to make this very clear why we need to pray this prayer. We need to pray this prayer, "Here am I, send me," because we believe as a church, we believe as followers of Jesus Christ that sin has separated man from God. All of us have fallen short of God's glory. We've all sinned. We are all separated from him. And man tries through all sorts of human efforts to try to appease God or appease their conscience and bring peace. But nothing works until they realize that God paid the price. He sent Jesus to die on the cross, that Jesus was sinless and perfect, he died on the cross and rose from the dead. And now if you ask him for forgiveness, you can be forgiven of your sins. We believe that as a church. We believe that as Christians. And God's plan is for those that have received that grace. You don't do anything to earn it. You receive the free gift of God. His plan is for those of us that have received it to go into the world and share with other people. We are supposed to tell them. They need to hear the same Good News that you heard. They need to know this. And the Bible says they can call on the name of the Lord and be saved. But how can they call on the name of the Lord if nobody preaches? If nobody brings it to them, if nobody talks, if nobody opens up their mouth, they are going to be lost. So we've got to say, "Here am I. Send me."