Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #189 - Unleashing the Power of Prayer in Evangelism (Part 2) - With Special Guest Kie Bowman
Transcript
- 0:02In Luke 24, after the resurrection, prior to the ascension, Jesus said,
- 0:07Stay in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high.
- 0:13So, Bill, you know and I know that every Christian has the Holy Spirit living in them.
- 0:19You can't be a Christian if the Holy Spirit hasn't taken residence in you.
- 0:23But I would ask our listeners, our viewers, do you believe that every Christian.
- 0:25Music.
- 0:30You know is clothed with power from on high?
- 0:37Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
- 0:43The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
- 0:53Well welcome to the one cry podcast uh
- 0:56here we are another day and i am with another of my dear friends uh kai bowman
- 1:03kai it is so great to have you you were on our last podcast and it was so rich
- 1:08and uh and thanks for joining us today thank you bill it's a honor to be a part of the one cry podcast.
- 1:16I have tremendous admiration and affection for you as a leader and a brother.
- 1:21So anytime we get to hang out, I always look forward to it. So thank you. It's a good day. Yeah.
- 1:28Kai was pastor for 26 years of a great church in Austin, Texas,
- 1:33which is, you know, it's interesting about Texas.
- 1:36It's a very conservative state, except for Austin, right there at the Capitol,
- 1:42and you and I have talked about this, and my how it needs, and it has in Austin
- 1:49some great churches that God has used.
- 1:53In fact, there's a citywide movement of prayer that you and Trey Kent helped
- 1:58stimulate that is a model for the nation. We don't have time to get into all that.
- 2:04You've written a book about it, and the title of that is City of Prayer,
- 2:07right? Yeah, that our listeners ought to get and read about how united prayer
- 2:14is so critical to the movement of God.
- 2:17But we're talking in these podcasts about a new book that you've written that
- 2:22I just think is one of the most important things we could talk about.
- 2:26It's evangelistic prayer, how to engage the power of God with needy people through prayer.
- 2:34And we don't always get there in our thinking.
- 2:39Many of our listeners are people who love to pray, who think about prayer.
- 2:44They love revival and they long for it.
- 2:47But the fact of praying evangelistically and praying for lost people and the
- 2:56movement of God among lost people somehow escapes us, Kai.
- 3:00I don't know how that has happened. I think the devil is pretty good at clouding
- 3:05our eyes about things, but you wrote this book, and it's causing a buzz and a stir in many hearts.
- 3:14I want to talk about one component of this as we begin, and that's just the
- 3:21role of the Holy Spirit in evangelism and in prayer.
- 3:28Now, that's a big—you could write a book about that, right?
- 3:33But you know what I'm saying?
- 3:38Somehow we just think, well, maybe we just as a church, we get a few little
- 3:43evangelistic methods or we'll have a little night or we'll do this little thing
- 3:47and that's going to get the job done.
- 3:49And we're missing the whole point. Would you talk to us about that just a bit?
- 3:54Sure. Well, uh, I do have a chapter on one of the things we,
- 4:01one of the prayers we need to pray when we're talking about evangelistic prayer
- 4:04is prayer for the power and the power of the Holy Spirit upon our lives,
- 4:09as well as the anointing of God upon our leaders, our pastors,
- 4:13our missionaries, our evangelists, and, you know, others in our church.
- 4:17Uh, you know, when, uh.
- 4:22When Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples had been with him,
- 4:28Bill, as you know, for at least three years, maybe three and a half.
- 4:34And they were with Jesus for every sermon. They saw Lazarus raised from the dead.
- 4:41They saw Jesus walk upon the water. They saw him heal the blind and cause the
- 4:47deaf to hear and feed the 5,000 and the 4,000. I mean, every miracle.
- 4:54In addition, they sat around the campfire with Jesus at night for private instruction
- 4:59where he taught them things that, you know, maybe aren't even recorded in Scripture.
- 5:05In other words, we're told just kind of in gloss that he prepared them to go
- 5:09out and sent them out two by two.
- 5:12So all that to say, when Jesus rose from the dead, he told them,
- 5:18you're not ready to tell the story.
- 5:21Now, think about it. Who in the world would be more ready to tell the story
- 5:27than the eyewitnesses who had been with him from his baptism all the way to his resurrection?
- 5:34Unfortunately, you've had to go to funerals of people you love, and I have too.
- 5:39Unfortunately, you've presided over a lot of funerals for other people's loved
- 5:44ones, and I have too. But we've never been to a funeral where on the third day
- 5:50after the funeral, a knock came on the door and the person we buried was back.
- 5:55But I guarantee you, if a person that we buried at a funeral or a loved one
- 6:01that we stood and watched that casket be lowered, if they knocked on the door on the third day,
- 6:07we would have our phones out and we'd be calling every friend.
- 6:11We'd be texting everybody.
- 6:13We'd be on X. we'd do a Facebook Live, we would be telling the world that our
- 6:19friend was back and we have no explanation for it, but she's alive. He's alive.
- 6:24That's just human nature, right? And nobody would have a better perspective
- 6:30than us because we had been so close to that person.
- 6:34Don't you think the apostles and the early disciples must have probably felt the same way?
- 6:39Like, man, We've got a story to tell here. And Jesus said, hold up.
- 6:46You're not even close to ready.
- 6:49Why? Because you haven't been clothed with power from on high.
- 6:55And you cannot tell this story until you have received the promise of the Father,
- 7:02which I will send you not many days from now.
- 7:06So the early church knew that as much as they wanted to go tell what they had
- 7:13seen, they weren't empowered to do it. They had the knowledge.
- 7:19They had the information.
- 7:21They were eyewitnesses. They didn't have the power to make a difference.
- 7:26And so they went into a prayer meeting that lasted 10 days.
- 7:30And on the 10th day of their prayer meeting, fire started falling from heaven.
- 7:36The sound like a hurricane blew through the
- 7:39room and they started preaching the
- 7:42gospel with so much power uh as you
- 7:44mentioned last week in the podcast people's hearts
- 7:48were so gripped the bible says they were cut
- 7:51to the heart like a flaming spear had been or an arrow had been you know had
- 7:56gone into their heart and they said what are we supposed to do we can't we got
- 8:01to do something and 3,000 people were saved and integrated into their church
- 8:09fellowship that very day.
- 8:11But as I mentioned, I think last week, zero were saved from the resurrection
- 8:18till Pentecost. None were recorded, not one.
- 8:213,000 were saved after they prayed and were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
- 8:28So the dual, or I would say the triplicate theme of the book of Acts,
- 8:36and I've written a book on Acts, but I'm not an expert on it.
- 8:40Many people know more about it than I do.
- 8:42But the triplicate, the three threads that run through the book of Acts are
- 8:48prayer, the empowering of the Spirit, and evangelism.
- 8:52And whenever you see people praying, me.
- 8:56You will always in the book of Acts see a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit
- 9:01and inevitably some great evangelistic effort or move takes place right after
- 9:08it happens over and over and over again.
- 9:11You can't ignore it after a while. So these three go together.
- 9:16That's the heart of it. I mean, like you and every preacher worth his salt who's
- 9:22preached the book of Acts, you know, I noticed one time there,
- 9:25the Holy Spirit is mentioned, prayer is mentioned in almost every chapter.
- 9:30The Holy Spirit is mentioned 59 times in 28 chapters.
- 9:35It could really be renamed the Acts of the Holy Spirit, not the Acts of the Apostles.
- 9:40Because that's the story. And the end result was evangelism.
- 9:45Daily people multiply, the church multiply, the church group. Yeah.
- 9:49Why is it that people are so afraid of the Holy Spirit?
- 9:57The Holy Spirit is God. He's no less God, no different God than God the Father.
- 10:03He's no less God or different God than God the Son.
- 10:08They're one and the same. And now God comes to this new age that started at
- 10:14Pentecost with signs and wonders, just like Jesus' birth had signs and wonders
- 10:19to authenticate, you know, this is from God.
- 10:23And he said, now we're moving into a new era where you will be indwelt.
- 10:28I mean, Christ came and dwelt with us. Now every believer is going to be indwelt with the Holy Spirit.
- 10:36And it uses this little phrase, Kai, that, and you just see it just over and
- 10:42over, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit,
- 10:48and all the people were filled with the Holy Spirit.
- 10:51Can you unpack for just a minute what that means?
- 10:55And take the mystery away from it. It's not something we should be afraid of,
- 11:01and it's something that we should pray for.
- 11:05And it has this—and then I want to follow that up with a second question about
- 11:12what is the correlation between this filling of the Holy Spirit and evangelism? Okay.
- 11:19Well, let me go back to what we spoke about a moment ago in that—,
- 11:25And God's apostles, Jesus' disciples, were not ready to share the story until
- 11:31they had been empowered with the Holy Spirit. Right.
- 11:35Well, 2,000 years have passed since the events of the cross and the resurrection and the miracles.
- 11:41And we have all kinds of books, and we're surrounded by books on that subject.
- 11:48But you and I never saw Jesus walk on the water. We didn't see Jesus transformed
- 11:54on the Mount of Transfiguration.
- 11:58We didn't see him crucified or raised from the dead. We've seen movies about
- 12:02it, drawings. They saw it.
- 12:05They experienced it. They were eyewitnesses. Well, if they were not ready to
- 12:10preach and speak and witness without the Spirit, what makes me think I would be able?
- 12:17Now, I can tell the story, but without an anointing, without empowerment.
- 12:22Uh, so, you know, I tell the story in the book. It's an absolutely true story.
- 12:28Uh, my dad, uh, when Tina and I first got married 43 years ago,
- 12:34uh, we moved back to Alaska where I'm from for brief time before seminary.
- 12:39And my dad drove a brand new baby blue metallic Cadillac with white leather roof.
- 12:46I mean, it was big chrome. I mean, it was a beautiful car.
- 12:51And some of our listeners may think that doesn't sound too great.
- 12:54But in those days, it was about the sharpest thing on the road.
- 12:57That was the top of the top right there.
- 12:59It was the top of the top. So he went out of town. He said, you want to drive
- 13:02my Cadillac? I said, yeah, absolutely.
- 13:04Well, Tina and I just got married. We both had jobs, but I didn't have two nickels to rub together.
- 13:11So I was going to go take Tina to lunch because she had whatever money we had, she had.
- 13:17And she was at her work and I was at mine. I got in dad's Cadillac.
- 13:21Well, that thing was practically out of gas.
- 13:24And so I said, well, maybe I can make it to Tina's work because she's got money. We'll get some gas.
- 13:29Well, I'm driving to her place of business where she worked.
- 13:33And Bill, it's a true story.
- 13:36Bright, sunny day, noon, rush hour traffic in my hometown, on Main Street of
- 13:41my hometown, I run out of gas in a baby blue Cadillac with a white leather roof.
- 13:48And I'm about half a block from the gas station.
- 13:51The only thing I could do was get out and push that Cadillac to the gas station.
- 13:59Can you imagine what people must have been thinking, the memes that would have
- 14:05come out today if somebody would have taken a picture of that. Yeah.
- 14:09I only had about a quarter to get gas. I was so broke.
- 14:15If anything sort of embodies a picture of powerlessness, it's a guy pushing
- 14:25a Cadillac into a gas station.
- 14:27That probably had a 450 cubic inch engine and all the power in the world when it had gas.
- 14:34But I had to push it to the gas station. Well, a Christian without the Holy
- 14:40Spirit moving in a powerful way in her or his life is just like that Cadillac out of gas.
- 14:47We may look good. We may have come from the right place. We may do really well
- 14:53when, you know, under the right circumstances.
- 14:55But if the Holy Spirit's not on us in a powerful way.
- 15:00So let me, like you said, make it more simple.
- 15:04What's the difference between the fact that everybody has the Holy Spirit living in them who's saved?
- 15:11Because, you know, Paul said you can't even name Jesus as Lord without the Holy Spirit.
- 15:18We know that everybody who is saved has the Holy Spirit living in them.
- 15:24But, you know, in Ephesians 5.18, Paul said to the Ephesian church and to all
- 15:29of us, be filled with the Spirit.
- 15:34But Bill, he had mentioned the ministry of the Holy Spirit a minimum of nine
- 15:40other times prior to him telling them to be filled with the Spirit.
- 15:45So he wasn't talking some, you know, new idea.
- 15:51The Holy Spirit wasn't a foreign concept to these believers at Ephesus,
- 15:56nor is the Holy Spirit a foreign concept to us.
- 15:59The Holy Spirit has a lot of ministries within the church that we're very aware of.
- 16:03But Paul said, irrespective of all of that, regardless of all the other ministries
- 16:09that you're aware of, you personally need to be filled with the Spirit.
- 16:16And he uses an analogy, which is kind of a crude analogy on the surface.
- 16:22He says, don't get drunk on wine. That leads to excess.
- 16:27But by contrast, be filled with the Spirit. So it's almost as if he's saying,
- 16:35In a bad way, what alcohol does to a drunk man, in a good way,
- 16:40the Holy Spirit does to a Christian.
- 16:43In other words, the fullness of the Spirit begins to control the believer.
- 16:52Whereas like an alcohol controls a man who's had too much to drink,
- 16:57the Holy Spirit begins to control in a very good way the believer.
- 17:04Don't you think when he says that command to us, you be being filled with the Holy Spirit.
- 17:13It's our responsibility. I mean, it's not like you're going to wake up tomorrow
- 17:18and you're controlled by the Spirit of God.
- 17:21You have to surrender control to the Spirit.
- 17:26In fact, Bill, as you know, and you've probably written a book on this,
- 17:30the verb form, be filled, is the imperative form of the verb,
- 17:36which means it's a command.
- 17:38The Spirit there himself, who's writing the book through Paul,
- 17:42is commanding us to be filled with the Spirit. So it's not an option.
- 17:46It's not just for evangelists or televangelists or seminary professors or the
- 17:51pastor on Sunday morning to be filled with the Spirit. He's talking to a group
- 17:54of believers in Ephesus, one of the wildest, wickedest cities in the whole Roman Empire.
- 17:59And he's saying to this group of believers, I command you to be filled with the Spirit. Now.
- 18:08There's a little passage over in Luke chapter 11. Then I'll just kind of pause
- 18:12and see where you want to go.
- 18:13In Luke chapter 11, Jesus tells us a little story. He says,
- 18:16if you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children,
- 18:23how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask him?
- 18:33So we're not, you know, I've read and I'm sure you have too.
- 18:36I've read where really good pastors and thinkers say, the Holy Spirit won't
- 18:44fill you until you're clean.
- 18:47Stop. The Holy Spirit is the power that cleans us.
- 18:52The Holy Spirit comes to those who ask for the power of the Spirit.
- 18:57He brings the purity, the cleansing, and all the rest. In other words,
- 19:01the mentality that somehow we get almost so perfect in our Christian life that
- 19:08God just almost has to give us the Spirit. We deserve it.
- 19:11We almost earned it. Forget it, man.
- 19:15It is a gift. Just like when my first daughter, I'm thinking about her first
- 19:21Christmas. We were in seminary in Fort Worth.
- 19:24We had a brand new baby. We loved her so much we couldn't see straight.
- 19:28She's a baby. She was born in January, so her first Christmas, she was 11 months old.
- 19:34We bought her. We didn't have any money, but we bought her every gift we could
- 19:39possibly buy her. She was 11 months old.
- 19:42Of course, she liked the paper on the boxes more than what was in the box. She was a baby.
- 19:47But we wanted to give her these gifts. And...
- 19:53God wants to give us the Holy Spirit. Yeah.
- 19:57He wants. Now, it's not that we don't have the Holy Spirit living in us.
- 20:02But Jesus said this to the disciples. And I'm done.
- 20:05In Luke 24, after the resurrection, prior to the ascension, Jesus said,
- 20:10stay in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high.
- 20:16So, Bill, you know and I know that every Christian has the Holy Spirit living
- 20:22in them. You can't be a Christian if the Holy Spirit hasn't taken residence in you.
- 20:28But I would ask our listeners, our viewers, do you believe that every Christian
- 20:33you know is clothed with power from on high?
- 20:40The answer to that is we know that's not the case.
- 20:43So it's not that we're asking for a second work of grace or any of the types
- 20:48of things that this might sound like.
- 20:50We're asking for what God has promised that repeatedly, on a daily basis, even more than that,
- 21:00God will fill us with his spirit in order to use us in evangelism,
- 21:06in ministry, in knowing him.
- 21:08Bill, every morning. And I've been doing this for I don't know how many years.
- 21:15But every single morning when I get up for prayer and I never miss by God's
- 21:19grace, I never miss my morning time with God.
- 21:23The first prayer I pray, I don't know if you know this, the first prayer I pray
- 21:28every morning, God, fill me with the Spirit.
- 21:31First prayer. And in my prayer time, if I get to the end of my prayer list,
- 21:37the last thing I pray, God, fill me with the Spirit.
- 21:41And it's not a one and done deal.
- 21:45It's just like the gas in that Cadillac. You got to keep on filling the tank.
- 21:51And it comes by simply coming before the Lord and say, Lord,
- 21:54I can't do this without you. I am powerless.
- 21:57I'm unable. I need to be enabled. And God's filling the Spirit.
- 22:04And I think, Paul, I think, you know, the connection, we're talking about evangelistic praying.
- 22:11The connection here that is so critical for us to make in our minds is this
- 22:17was the source of power that led to the results of people being saved.
- 22:23I mean, Paul over and over again says, pray for power, pray for boldness.
- 22:27The disciples prayed and the place was shaken and they were all filled with
- 22:31the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.
- 22:34Paul comes and he says, I came to you not in persuasive words of human wisdom.
- 22:39That's what you would do if you don't believe in the Holy Spirit,
- 22:43if you're not praying and asking.
- 22:46But I came in a demonstration of the Spirit of God and his power so that your
- 22:50faith would not rest on me and my tricky manipulative means.
- 22:56It would rest on the power of God. So if you don't understand this, and I want to tell you,
- 23:04and Kai, you and I were talking just off camera about this,
- 23:10that we know and we have watched many, many, many pastors and Christian leaders
- 23:19who, by their own admission.
- 23:23Will say, I'm not filled with the Holy Spirit. I don't know what that is.
- 23:27I don't know how to do that. And I'm not praying.
- 23:31And we wonder why the churches are powerless.
- 23:36So if you're listening today and you would say that testimony,
- 23:42you would say, I don't know what it is to be controlled by the Spirit of God,
- 23:47to yield control to him every day.
- 23:51Then find out.
- 23:54And I want to tell you something. If you want to know how to be controlled by
- 24:00him, he will tell you. He will show you.
- 24:03Search out men and women that you know who walk in the power of the Spirit of God.
- 24:08Neither one would say that's some unusual kind of fantastical thing.
- 24:13It's to be the normal experience of the Christian life, to let God lead,
- 24:20to let him flow through you like rivers of living water.
- 24:24And, Kai, this is so rich today.
- 24:27And we've touched on really the foundational core of this whole matter of evangelistic
- 24:35praying. And there's so much more that is in your book.
- 24:38They're just going to have to get the book, aren't they? They're just going
- 24:42to have to get the book to read it.
- 24:44And they can get it on Amazon or a prayer shop has it, all kinds of different
- 24:49places. Christian book has the book.
- 24:51Yeah. Christian book. Yeah. So we want to encourage them to do that.
- 24:55You can download it on your Kindle or get a literal copy.
- 25:00I want, Kai, for you to pray for the power of God to come upon our people for
- 25:09the purpose of praying aright in terms of evangelistic praying,
- 25:14but also just being filled and God using us in terms of his work in ministry
- 25:21filled with the Holy Spirit.
- 25:23So would you take a few minutes and pray for that for us?
- 25:26Yeah, absolutely. Let's pray.
- 25:29Lord, you sent your spirit in order to empower your church to further the ministry
- 25:39of Jesus until Jesus comes again.
- 25:42You don't want a powerless church You want an empowered church And so God you
- 25:49have Provided your spirit And made your spirit available To us oh God And Lord.
- 25:57Nobody is warmed with a fire that's gone out.
- 26:03So, Lord God, we pray that the fire would burn within us.
- 26:08Lord, if there is a hesitance or a fear that we would lose control.
- 26:17Then in Jesus' name, remind us that our goal is not to be like Bill or I or
- 26:25someone else they've seen.
- 26:27Our goal is to know what it is to be filled with God and let all of God's spirit
- 26:34take control of all of us, our heart, our soul,
- 26:40our strength, our mind, motivated and empowered and mobilized by the power of the Holy Spirit.
- 26:46We can't do what you've called us to do in the power of our networking,
- 26:52in the power of our denominational strength, in the power of an experience we
- 26:56had 10 years ago, in the power of our ingenuity, our scheming.
- 27:02Lord, we need the power of God's Spirit. And God, I'm asking you in the name
- 27:07of Jesus, fill me with the Spirit.
- 27:10And Lord, I pray that if there's one person, 10 or 100 people listening right
- 27:15now, who would say, I don't want to keep going like I'm going.
- 27:20I'm firing blanks in the Christian life.
- 27:23I need power. And I'm asking you now, fill me with the Spirit.
- 27:27So, dear listener, if right now you want to be filled with God's Spirit,
- 27:32just pray something like this.
- 27:34Lord, I believe that Jesus is Lord, and I thank you for saving me.
- 27:40I confess my sin, especially the sin of unbelief and the sin of selfishness.
- 27:48Cleanse me, O God, and forgive me of every sin.
- 27:52But I'm asking you now, Lord God, to come into my life in a powerful way via the Holy Spirit.
- 28:00Holy Spirit, fill me now and use me, O God, however and wherever and whenever
- 28:07you want to. Let me be, Lord, a tool in your hands, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
- 28:15God, I cannot go on until you've empowered me and filled me with your spirit.
- 28:20In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
- 28:23Amen. Amen.
- 28:26I want to tell you something, Kai. If our listeners just got what you just prayed,
- 28:35it would be worth everything we've done today and everything you've written and everything.
- 28:41That's the key. It's the power. I believe that. And listeners,
- 28:45I encourage you to pursue this and to get this book.
- 28:51I'm going to detail in the book, of course.
- 28:54Yeah. Isn't that great? Look at that. I think it's beautiful.
- 28:57It's a group of people out of focus.
- 29:01And that's exactly what it's like, just a mass of people.
- 29:04But man, when we pray, God brings it all into focus and they become individuals.
- 29:09We start seeing them saved.
- 29:11Yeah, that's so beautiful. Well, get the book and more than that,
- 29:17receive and experience the filling of the Holy Spirit and begin to pray laser
- 29:22focused evangelistic prayers every day. and let's see what God will do.
- 29:28Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for being with us.
- 29:32And you're listening to me.
- 29:33Music.