Maintaining Your Prayer Fire Part 2 by Pastor Philip Olubakin: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

A Word to Men

We need men in our societies. Over 90% of crime has been traceable to fatherlessness, and that is how critical fathers are. The greatest enemy of the devil is the seed, and the man is the bearer of the seed - that is why the enemy has always targeted the male. In the days of Pharaoh, he killed the male children. In the days of Herod, he killed the male children. In our day, he has turned many boys into something less than the strong, masculine men societies were built by, because it takes the strength of a man to build nations.

1. Your identity is not in your performance. You are not worth what you can provide. Any woman who follows you because of your money has not found a wife - she has found a prostitute.
2. True strength is found in servant-hearted sacrifice. To be the head is not to be served, but to sacrifice, the way Ephesians 5 calls a man to love his wife as Christ loved the church.
3. Your emotional honesty is not weakness. Men cry. Men can be weak. One of the great problems among men is that we hide our weaknesses instead of finding community, and over 70% of suicides today are taken out by men because men cannot open up.
4. You are not alone in this battle. Isolation is the enemy's weapon. Find a community of men to help you grow strong in finance, health, and family.

Your presence is more important than your provision. Children remember more when you showed up than when you paid up. Do not sacrifice your presence for provision - take your kids to school, know their friends, be there, create memories rather than just paying for things.

Fire Upon the Altar, Fire Within

Leviticus 6:12-13 says the fire upon the altar shall be burning; it shall not be put out, and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning. There is a fire upon, and there is a fire within. There is a fire you catch in the atmosphere of a gathering, and there is a fire generated from within that the wind cannot quench - in fact, the more the wind blows on it, the hotter it burns. It is your responsibility to start a fire of God in your life and keep it burning, because fire that is fed can burn forever.

Rebuild Your Altar

1 Kings 18:30 - Elijah said to the people, "Come near unto me," and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.

The first key to keeping your fire burning is to rebuild your altar - to go back to what worked. You do not need a new estate, a new Bible, or a new phone to have a prayer life. Elijah did not build a new altar; he found the one that had been broken down and rebuilt it. Go back to the songs that brought tears to your eyes. Go back to the sermons that moved you. Go back to your morning devotion.

Joseph and Mary assumed Jesus was with them, only to discover after three days that he was not. They went back to where they last saw him, and that is where they found him. Where did you see Jesus last? What were you doing when you saw him last? Jesus has not left - he is right where you left him.

God does not speak to an inattentive audience. In Exodus 3, God spoke out of the fire only after he had caught Moses' attention. Go back, repent, and return to what Elijah built.

Protect Your Altar

1 Kings 18:32 - Elijah built an altar in the name of the Lord and made a trench round about the altar. It is your responsibility to build protection around your altar.

Sin and Compromise

Sin is a fire extinguisher. Compromise is what leads to sin - it is touching things you would never have touched before, telling yourself that because you are more knowledgeable now, the old boundaries no longer apply. Most of what we do to cover an external appearance is a sign of a vacuum on the inside. Psalm 1:1 says, "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful."

People Whose Fire Has Died

The fastest way to kill your fire is to hang around people whose fire has died - people in church, gossiping, whose spiritual experience with God is all in the past. When that man's axe head fell into the river, the Bible says he cried out, "Alas, master, for it was borrowed," and he cried out to Elisha, not to a colleague. To get your fire back you need transparency and accountability - be honest about who you were with and what you were doing when your axe head fell.

Distractions and Worldly Cares

The devil's strategy is to throw distractions, especially the moment you decide to take your walk with God seriously. Satan knows the greatest way to deceive you is to disguise a distraction as an answer to prayer - we do not know a door is from God by its outcome, but by who opened it.

Rachel could not have children while Leah was bearing them, and in her distraction she told Jacob, a man of destiny and purpose, to go and sleep with her servant Bilhah. A man in whose life God had committed a generation was distracted from destiny by impatience. Build a trench round your prayer altar. Nothing should come close to it.