Text: Mark 7:31-37

Topic: How to bring your requests to God and experience his miraculous intervention in your life

Introduction:

• The Jesus who performed miracles then still performs miracles today.

• Everyone is in need of God's intervention in some area of their life.

• Mark 7:31-37

• Prayer works best when it is a group effort.

• Matthew 18:19

• Mark 7:32

• Mark 2:5

• This helps not only because there is power in numbers, it helps because there is also wisdom in numbers.

• God is pleased with unselfish prayers.

• Mark 7:33

• Illustration: May tells the story of a man who challenged him to discern between asking for a miracle and asking for a spectacle by using this benchmark: "When God answers the prayer, who will be the center of attention?"

• Mark 7:36

• Our motive for asking, and our motive for telling others, needs to be something other than our own glory.

Get ready for him to do it his way.

• Mark 7:33

• Jesus healed this man this way, with this ceremony, because this is how the man needed to be healed in order to fully understand God's power.

• The purpose for the answered prayers in your life is to strengthen the bond of your relationship to God.

Conclusion:

• Big Idea: God answers our prayers in order to strengthen the bond between us and him, in order to help us grow deeper in our walk with Christ.