"The Prayers of a Righteous Person"

Pre-Covid, I had the distinct privilege of being able to speak with the Homeless of Orlando.  Here's the message I shared with them, generated from an outline I've created. It won't be word for word verbatim what I said, but it should be similar enough to call the same.

Text: Luke 18:9-14

Introduction: If I were to give this message to you today a title, it would not come from the main text I want to look at today, but from a supporting text I want us to look at right now. One of the principles we should use when we study the Bible is to let one text interpret another. If we have trouble with one text, another can help us understand the meaning of it. In this case, both texts I believe, are straight forward, and pretty easy to understand. One though, does give us a practical example of the other. The first passage I want us to look at is in the book of James chapter 5:13-18:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

I've always wanted to pray powerfully. My understanding of what it means to pray powerfully has changed a little over time. I want us to look at an example of prayer given to us by Jesus, so that we can understand what it means to pray "The Prayers of a Righteous Person." The example is found in the book of Luke 18:9-14:

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

In this parable, Jesus teaches us what it means to be a righteous man praying by showing us an example of a man whose prayers were answered. In studying this man, we will come to see that our prayers are made effective when we first appeal to God for mercy because of who we are. We also see an example of how we shouldn't be. Let's take a look at the people to whom Jesus told this parable.


I. A Parable with a Purpose
 When Jesus gave this parable, he had a specific target audience in mind. These people have two characteristics that we need to look at as a warning. I would even contend that it's very easy to be a person who displays one or both of these traits. In America today, I would say that we even teach people to have one of these traits, and we glorify those who display the other. The text says that Jesus told this parable to people who trusted their own righteousness, and treated others with contempt. Those two ideas kind of go hand in hand. If you trust your own righteousness, you will treat others with contempt. I think that most people will at some point in their life trust their own righteousness. It's what our society teaches people to do. People say things like Find your own path to God. Trust your heart. Go with your feelings. One of the highest virtues our society has is to find our own way, and trust it to lead to our God. Once someone else finds a different way, we will treat them with contempt.
  A. The Parable had a target audience
      1. Trust in Self
      2. Hold others in contempt
  B. Familiar Image: Matthew 6:5,6
  C. Similar message: Matthew 6:7-13

II. The People involved
  A. A Pharisee
      1. Knows his place
      2. Says his prayer
      3. Gets what is coming to him.
  B. A Tax Collector
      1. Knows his place
      2. Says his prayer
      3. Gets what is coming to him.

III. How will you pray today?
  A. Will you humble yourself?
  B. Will you Confess your sins?
  C. Will you call out to God for a clean conscience? 1 Peter 3:21


Conclusion:
Everybody here agrees that prayer is important, and that praying correctly is something we all should strive to do. We want to pray powerful deep prayers that accomplish good. Today we've seen an example of a prayer that gets work done. It's also incredibly simple. It acknowledges sin, and asks for forgiveness. If you want to be a righteous person, I want you to know you can pray this prayer too. You can call out to God for a clean conscience in baptism. It's God's way! Will you do it today?

Here's the sermon video:

"By the way I thought that you would be there..."

Great lyrics!
Did I see you downtown Sunday? Maybe, probably not though. S'kay, cuz I can't make it every week either and I started this work!
Strange eh?

I'll give you strange: So the fishmobile needs a new alternator belt right. It squeeks when it drives, and makes people go crazy. Mainly it could lead to a broken alternator belt, or even a broken alternator. gotta fix it in two weeks. To fix it sunday, I turned the belt around. It kinda worked, a little bit.

So that's goin' on.

We are in the middle of the sermon on the mount. I introduced the guys to "Mr. Anonymous" hehe, doer of good deeds, I could tell you more, but then, well, what would be the point. ;-)

We do have prayer requests!

Craig McGrew: "I pray that my life will find meaning, that I can skillfully manange all that life throws at me, not to lose myself in hopelessness or depression, and my prosperity come and accumulate around me, lifting me up"

Berlin: "Please pray for me for understanding"

Jonathan Jones :"$"

Jaren Whitman: "My girlfriend's cancer, and I find a job"

Duck: "home and a job"

Lawrence J Brown: "Job employment"

Gregory Scott: "Pray that I get a regular job soon."

George Moore: "That my job comes through"

Dwaine McCoy: "Reunite me with my family"

Jack Bishop: "For Everything"

Yvonne Cook: "Pray for everyone we love you thank you all God bless"

These are important! Pray for them. Pray for me.

Later!
G. Brandon Hoyt

Mind Death and the Art of Feeling Numb

There are so many things in this world that keep pulling you down. You got terrorists in Mumbai, poor retail sales on black Friday, gubbmint officials who start lame duck sessions when they are first elected, and who live on a diet of pork and cocktails. I tell you, it's not hard to be apathetic with all the junk that I see people walking around keeping to themselves. At least my kids are still sweet.

So here's what's been going on this week: I got real sick Tuesday, and spent the rest of the week recovering, and dealing with the after effects of being sicky sicky. Thanksgiving was pretty good, but I didn't eat as much as have eaten, didn't want to see it again. Gross, right? I did spend some time trowing balls into trees to recover other balls that thrown into trees. It was a vicious cycle that eventually required the use of a ladder and a polesaw.

The weather and my recover efforts conspired to keep me home yesterday, but Matty, Jess, Rico, Steve, and others went downtown and handed out foodbags or one item to help people get out of the weather quicker. He said there were "Literally 80 people waiting". Now that's odd to me because most of the guys know we can only serve forty. Meh, meet the needs, save the world. Next week hopefully things will be better, we are supposed to get a cool snap this week.

for prayer requests, pray for me, and everyone downtown this week during the weather. I've got some hackin' work to do this week. Lervly lervly.

One last thing, one of my former college room mates has started an outreach to people with HIV, Life with a Vision that I think will be an entirely worthwhile effort!

l8r g8r
GB HOYT, sick and tired of being sick, and tired.

Even When I Ain't there, There you Go!

Yo,
Didn't make it downtown this last week, but God's people did! Jess and Matty took some of the All-Stars downtown to help the homeless, and ministry happened. I love it! We even got some prayer requests:

Michael seaquist> Needs a good job
D.J.> To have others in need given help
jack Bishop> Jobs, Apartment Etc....
Desiree> For Gods will to be done in her life
Alphanso Ellis> Prayer to get off drugs and to be saved
James> Prayer for himself
Gregory Scott> Pray that he finds a full time job soon
Leon Johnson> Pray that he lives a more Christ like life.

Thanks guys for gettin' out there!
I received live updates via my inside man on the streets, and he informed me that everyone was grateful.
Things were well!

GB HOYT

Spot O' Cool Weather

Hello,
I guess the fall is officially here in Florida. It's cold this morning! It was starting to get chilly last night too. My hands actually got a lil' cold. I'm just glad the fish mobile has heat! Took a lil' while to run out of needs lists, i was kinda surprised. The BASIC All star crew took to the streets, and did their work well! Handed out a lot of jackets and other things. We need pants!
Can't get enough pants!
here's some prayer requests!

Stacy => "that I will be found faithful in Jesus Name"
Gregory Scott => "Pray for me that I may find or get a regular job real soon ok"
Stormie Knight => "Help make me a good christian in the faith, amen."
Luther Nelson => "Peace for the hurting ones"
Duck => "a Home"
Jack Bishop => "Pray that I find work ASAP"
James D. Kemp => "For my friend and I to make it to having a house and finally off the streets and stay off drugs"
Tony Wagner => "Oh, no sweat!"


Thank you!
GB HOYT!

"Falling" behind...

Just a lil' seasonal Joke about my updating habits!
So,
This has been an exciting fall if you are involved at all with BASIC! We Have had a lot of help this fall, and I would say, that if we had about $250 more dollars in support a month, we could keep doin' this sort of thing well.

Matt Walters and Jessica Brooks have been helping us out! They are a real blessing. I'll have more to say later, but wanted to post these prayer requests before I got too busy this week.

Prayer requests:

Marlyn Lucas => "Angela Joshua, granddaughter"
Victor Washington => "Prayer for Angle"
Andrew Cook => "For Love"
James Sanders => "Pray to get myself together need a place to rent"
Willie Williams => "Strength"
Leon Johnson => "To let go and let God for work, a good job so I can go indoors to live"
David Truhn => "Job"
Willie Sims => "To get off the street"
Orlando De Jesus => "Family"
Jack Bishop => "Everything"
Danny Paul => "Pray for me to get off drugs and alchohol!"
Gregory Scott => "Pray that I may come upon a regular job real soon ok"
Jesse Morris => "For Protection"

Thanks for praying!
GB HOYT

Yesterday.

Alright,
it's monday and i'm going to post on what happened yesterday downtown, first time all year, just about, hallelujah!

The fishmobile is back in service. Thank God. it's been out for a while now, but we are now using it again, even if it is a little ugly. The volunteers who helped pass stuff out certainly appreciated it, and the guys who received food and clothes, were happy that things went smoothly as well. All in all we had a great experience.

I spake on the necessity of quickly changing, before we are changed quickly, text was from 1 Corinthians 15:50 to the end of the chapter. It's important to understand that we must change to inherit the things that God as planned for us in the future. Flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God.

As for prayer requests, I'll try to post those a little later in the week, the girls are in need of my constant supervision, so it's hard to pay attention to this blog and to them.

on other notes: my personal truck nears death. she ain't runnin' well, because we were just forced to buy another vehicle it will be difficult to replace the ole rabid mosquito, but alas, we still prevail.

So the daily chores call me away, look for another update later this week.
Oh, and if you are a nerd, checkout my latest attempts at being non sequitar: Scattagun experiment...
until then,
weeeeeeeee!
and God loves you,
G Brandon Hoyt

Up WAAAYYYY too Early...

there are certain pitfalls in life. Take this morning for instance, both my girls awoke at 4:30. Now, normally they are up at seven thirty, but today they hate me, so they were up really early. I don't know exactly why either, they just do. On most days that I work, I get off bout 1:30 am and am in bed by 2:30. Last nite i got home early, and went to bed bout midnite, thinking that I could get some sleep. I was wrong, here i am, with the same amount of sleep as normal. The girls are back asleep now, and am trying to do the same, even resorting to typing with my eyes closed. I'm not doing a bad job either from what I can tell. I'm going downtown later tonite, so i'll update later. supposedly i'll have lots of help.
GB HOYT
tired boy...

Extra, Extra Read all Ablog it!

Hello!
This is the midweek news update!!
YEah I did it...
So,
First of all, some personal news: As many of you know, Kelly is great with child, and we've been pretty nervous. I'm nervous at least. I remember when our first daughter was born and how trying of an experience it was, if only because of the nature of the emergency that was involved. Katie was born via an emergency c-section, and that means that little yet to be born Emma will have to be born by one as well. Yesterday, Kelly went to the doctorman again, and he said that they will probably do the surgery October 3. I don't know, but it just seems funny to me that we can plan our Kid's birth. The first birth wasn't planned at all though, at least.
Keep praying for us in this time!
Ok, so, some homeless news:
A lady we had seen from time to time named Venus Martinez was murdered late July. I found out this last Sunday. She was found near the spot we usta meet, as a matter of fact, we *Just* changed where we meet, right after they found her body. Word is that she was raped and strangled. It's been about a month since it happened, and I haven't been able to find any information about any progress in the investigation. I mention it now cause it's news to me, and I did know her...
... also, seems like the powers that be are deliberately focusing on Murdered Homeless People. I don't know this guy, and I don't Stephen King The Person He Murdered or why he was murdered, but I do know there are lots of communities like the one where this guy lived along the I-4 corridor that need some sort of constant community witness to the changing power of Christ.
NOTE: The link for "The person he murdered" contains comments left in Honor of King. It helps to make homelessness something tangible to see the impassioned pleas of people who either knew him, or researched him...
...
A little research can change the hardest hearts.
...
Here's a site with some interesting news about violence against homeless people toward the east coast in Deland: Police search for suspects in beating of homeless man it's good cause it deals with the latest, and it focuses on some of the past crimes in the area.
God please rip the callous off our hearts!

So,
for the 2 coming Sundays I won't be going downtown to do food and clothes. This next Sunday I need to go shopping for BASIC. Hopefully there will be some back to school backpacks on sale! Why not buy two or three and drop them off at the church building? Sunday after Kelly is having a baby shower, and I'm on Daddy duty. So that's the news, I hope you were changed
Now get out there and Love somebody!!
GB HOYT

God Loves You, me, Tina, and Steve!

Back from downtown.
Here I am, I didn't get too worked up, but I did yell. I wonder if you can guess the parts of the sermon that I yelled. I'll give you a hint. I really don't think that some things are fair...
;-)
Anywho. I served about twenty-four people Sunday Nite, me and God, and some of them helped eveyone. Things went really well. I arrived about six downtown, and was done by seven. I call that a perfect plan, even though it rained lightly the entire time. Somehow, the rain was enough to feel appropriate considering the subject matter of the sermon.
Crazy...
Let me give you an interesting God story about today. In my travels, I have to decide by the time I get to the end of my street tolls or no tolls. Paying tolls means I save half an hour sometimes in travel time. Not paying tolls means I save about $3.50. Hmmm. It's not really an issue right now, because I don't have any toll money!!! :-D Hooray for simplicity!
In my simplicity, I prepared to exit highway 98 onto I-4, and I spied some hitch hikers. Two of them to be precise, a man and a woman.
WARNING!!! I am not about to advocate picking up hitch hikers. There are just too many way to creepy Urban Legends to just go picking them up. I knew them both!!! I also knew they were homeless I recognized Tina Bishop right away. She's small... I didn't recognize Steve first off though. They are the ones mentioned in the title of the post. They had come to Lakeland for the weekend to give Steve's Kids some good news and they were on their way back. Well, I was able to give them a ride to Orlando in the A/C. God has great timing.

So: Here are the prayer requests:
Jack Bishop: Everything
Adrian Hendy: Things get better
Cathy: Grandma
John Santrock: My Grandma
Nelson Daniels: Need Job, Place to stay.
Mona Thomas: To fight hunger and pneumonia while it continues to rain.
Steve: That we make it through another day.
David Fahrmer: For my mother and for our safety on the streets.
Robert Duncan: Pray for my mother.

Nearly fifty percent participation this week on the requests! Hey, that ain't bad...
So. Everyone have a good week, I'll have some more news later.
God Bless you!!
GB HOYT

A Wing and a Prayer.

Ok,
So Sunday went well, the youth group from First Christian Church of Winter Park came along with some of our regulars from FCCWP. The weather fussed at us, showering us in some light ran, and forcing us to herd under the bus stop shelter. I briefly spoke about the woman caught in adultery in John chapter eight, and the kids wonderfully helped out and met some serious needs.
Here are the prayer requests we collected Sunday nite:

Debbie Czichos: to have a self life on my trips and journey one state to another
Larry McCoy: For a full time job
Leon Johnson: Pray for my soul to be free from demons and to do God's will
Alan Adkins: Yes have something wrong with both of my eyes.
Thersa McDonald: My brother Bob who was shot in hear Thursday night.
Mona Thomas: Lessen my burden I am not without grief for miscarriages due to untimely betrayal. I pray never to be without them in prayer.
Anthony Smith: Anthony
Campbell Ray: an apartment
Melanie Campbell: Apartment
Jean Weislogel: For everyone to have inner peace and a personal relationship with God.

We served about 26 people total. Many of them were new to me. I also saw some old faces if only briefly. I think the lightening we saw to the south of us was keeping some people away, but I expect we will start seeing more people in the near future.

That's BASIC in a nutshell... We are planning something for labor day weekend called "Labor day of Love" but it's still in the beginning stages, we'll let you know how things go with that.

In Christ,
G. Brandon Hoyt.

Six People, Six Helper, make 12 Together for the Glory of God.

We saw Six people this last sunday downtown. Not too many. We took the time to do a bible study on the book of John. It's three questions long, and you can participate by going to this website: The Pirate Preacher's Discussion on the Book of John Have fun answering the questions. If Orlando is going to change, it is going to change by the grace and power of God as God's people proclaim and act out the word of God.
Some prayer requests:
That we faithfully proclaim the word of God.
That the guys we saw last week get the work they need to find a place to live. Several had work, but needed it to not rain for a few days so they could do it!
Pray we can find a permanent place to meet downtown or in some area where there are homeless people. Also pray that we can find something to do with the homeless here in Lakeland, cause they be here too!!!
Thanks and God Bless,
GB HOYT.

Today and Last Week...

Ok, I feel like I can give an accurate account of my life last week and the few weeks before. On May 21st my wife and I got some scary news. She's pregnant and due early October, and the Dr. said the baby had fluid on her lungs. He said that this could be because of a hernia in her diaphram. Kelly (my wife) and I were scared. We were also prayerful. We decided to tell our family and friends, and soon a lot of people were praying for God's will to be done. I spent some time in God's word, and reviewed the story of the man born blind. The people in Jesus' day wondered at a person's maladies and thought many times that they were due to sin either in the life of the one who suffered or in the life of their parents. This is a common and typical response I think. I know I was kinda feelin' that way. You want to play the "if only" game. Well Jesus' response was interesting, he said that neither this man nor his parents sinned but it happened this way so that God could be glorified. I thought about that for a minute and remembered that in Romans we are promised that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love the Lord (Romans 8:29). These ideas floated around in my head, and I began to become confident that somehow God was going to get a lot of thanks for this, and even if we got bad news, God would work it out to be something good.

We were scheduled for an appointment to see a leading doctor in fetal surgery, and a lot of people were praying for us. Thursday, we went to Tampa to see this doctor, and they took a full sonogram. I didn't know what to expect but I was confident that God would be there, and that he would take care of things. For some reason I kept expecting them to say things looked fine, even though there was no reason for such an expectation, everything I had read about so far suggested that the problem our unborn child was having was a serious problem that would require surgery, and could have some grave consequences. The Doctor who saw us came in, and did little sonogramming. The head guy came in and looked over her shoulder, and then she gave us the good news. There is nothing wrong. There is no fluid on our baby's lungs. Everything is good.
Thank God that He is good!
Your question for the week is, Does God still work miracles?


G. Brandon, Kelly, Katie, and Emma (current working first name for lil' bit)
bid you grace and peace!

Ok, Glad I got In on that...

Journey Christian Church has started an outreach program to downtown Orlando, and I'm glad I got to see part of what they do.I found out about the service through Ron Seiber, a student at Florida Christian College who was required to come downtown with BASIC about three years ago. Glad he remembered who I was.


The outreach Journey is doing is called Journey Downtown, and it seems to be aimed at reaching out to all the people downtown not just to homeless people. They served some pizza to the people at the corner of Jefferson and Magnolia and after that they gathered to worship and hear the word of God. I had to cut out just as they were starting the singing before I turned into a pumpkin. That was about eight o'clock. The funniest thing about going and sharing is that this was part three of a three part trial outreach. Apparently it's going well enough that they are going to continue the services starting in the fall on a weekly basis. At least they did something even if they can't return in the fall.


I also got to ride my bike around a little bit, and that was refreshing. Downtown is changing faster than I can keep up with it seems, and it's getting me a little crazy!
Our summer-through-the-new-year plans will be as follows: Get downtown 2 times month, the idea being that we've got to stay as close into contact with people as possible to hope at having a chance to get people what they need. We're going to raise $6000 for the first twenty weeks of 2008. The idea being starting with the first weekend in the new year, going downtown each sunday for the first twenty weeks without having to worry about having money, raising money, or getting supplies. It's kinda a test. If we can't raise the $6k by the new year, that may change our plans. It's something to pray about. Also keep praying for my wife's pregnancy. Yesterday we found out we're having another little girl, and there seem to be some complications. We go to see a specialist June 7th (unless we can wrangle an earlier date out of them!!) for some more testing and a consultation. Please pray for us, and our baby. There is no feeling quite like the helplessness of not being able to do anything about a problem your child is having. We'll have more updates as they are available.
Thanks and God Bless!!
GB HOYT

Weekend Plans and Prayer Requests...

Haldo!
Got a weekend of downtown activity coming up. I plan on coordinating with Journey Christian Church. They apparently have been doing a once a month thing with homeless people. I didn't know about it, so we will have to see how things are going. Please pray that this will be a chance to learn and to also show what we have been doing.
Also, I've been doing a little websurfing and found a local guy that is off beat to say the least: Captain Lamewad is worth checking out. He is apparently pretty know to the blogosphere, but I think he wants to be a force for good in the local area. Looking at some of his links, I wonder if I know the man, cause we share some similar interests... We will let him remain anonymous for now... I'm not going to look too hard...

GB HOYT Out.

GASP!!! a new Post!!

Pardon my slacking, I haven't known what to say.
Sundays have been weird. The city of Orlando has pretty much determined that we will always have a hard time getting some consistancy in the lives of the homeless because they will always be hurried off when they inconviniance the city council. I don't know what it will take in that regard, other than a permanent meeting space. Until they get their act together though, I'm considering a change of venue so to speak. There are homeless people here in Lakeland where I live, and I think we'll start doing some work with them. I can invest a lot more time with a lot less effort, and if there is one thing that I know makes a difference it is the amount of time you spend with people that matters. The congregation where my wife and I currently worship has a youth minister that seems to be willing to see what happens in Orlando so we can start sometime here in Lakeland, I will keep you posted.

Until then,
GB HOYT

Prayer Requests, Update on People, Future Plans

Interesting Sunday this last week.
Everything went pretty much the same as it's gone since we moved to the general location we are at right now. Only differences, we started a little earlier, and we were back under the bridge and not in the fenced in area. Rafi and I travelled seperately, Rafi to First Christian Winter Park to get our helpers for the week, and I directly to downtown so as to find out where we are meeting. I was on my way to a potential spot, when I thought, "why don't i swing by the old haunts, just for kicks?" Low and behold, there were people there!
For the time being, OPD is letting people sleep there as long as they get out by the morning. We'll see how long that lasts. Something that disturbed me was someone (homeless or not I don't know) had graffitied one of the poles with a phrase that said "We shall not be governed" I don't know what that means... And that bothers me... Does it bother you?

Ok, we served about 50 people.
Here are the prayer requests.

Jack Bishop: "Yes Prayer for an opportunity."
Vincent * : "Strength, Power, Love for God!"
Thomas Tugman : "For Good Health"
Krystal Coleman: "Peace"
Sherri Phillips: "That my husband gets his promotion next month at work."
herbert Freeman: "Yes to lvoe Jesus"
Leon Stephene: "for a job"
Denise Henn: "my health"
John Mizell: "Pray that I have a better life with my new job."
Samantha Howell: "Get off the street."
Dee: "Wealth, Prosperity, Distinctfulness, Knowledge"

BASIC is going to change format soon! It was nice to have almost enough of the most needed things (Pants, socks, hygeine kits) for a change, and even a few shoes. The biggest reason why that was possible was because it's been 3 weeks since we last trekked downtown. That means we had enough time to collect things. Rafi and I have talked about starting a small group, all we have to do is put it together. If you are willing to have your home be opened to such a prospect, lemme know!

Your myspace lamewad (again) positive activist,
GB HOYT