Learning How to Pray

The Christian’s Work: Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Romans 1:9, this is the verse we have reached in our study of Romans and you see it is the final part of the clause, “That without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” “That without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” We served for a while in Donegal which is the northern tip of Ireland and it was in a rural district and we had just one more example of this. A mother discovered her 19 year old son had cancer and had it very, very badly so they x-rayed him and they prepared to come out and they gave him as much x-ray as they could and finally they said, “Well, we can do nothing.” And then came this old comment that you meet again and again with people who say they are Christians and the mother said, “Well, the doctors can do nothing. There’s nothing left now but prayer. There’s nothing left now but prayer.” And you can see the fallacy of it but how often we have said it in our own lives. We come into a certain situation, we try everything else and then we say, “Well, there’s nothing left now but prayer. There’s nothing left for it but to trust God now.” Now do you see that this was absolutely contrary to the spirit that Paul expressed in this Verse 9? He says, “For God is my witness, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” And it’s contrary to the whole biblical attitude. Old Elisha didn’t say, “Well I’ll try this method. Okay I’ll set a light to it and see if I can overcome all the water that I’ve drenched that thing with.” And he didn’t try cutting himself with stones and with swords. He didn’t try everything else before he got down on his knees and said, “Oh Lord God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob show these people that thou art God in Israel.” In other words, the biblical attitude is that prayer is the immediate answer. Prayer is not the last thing you try. It’s not the final resource that you try after you’ve tried all the normal methods but prayer for the Christian is the normal method. So you can see this if you really begin to do a little general analysis on that Verse 9. If you’re like the Americans that I teach you can’t do general analysis but I hope you can. Will you look at Verse 9 dear ones, “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” Now this is the verse you remember, where Paul talks about the ministry of a Christian. He says, “A Christian is one who serves God and not man.” He says, “A Christian is one who serves not with his intellect or with his emotion but who serves with his spirit.” But do you see that that important statement which we have spent three Sundays expounding is only the relative clause in this verse? Do you see that? That’s only part of the subordinate relative clause, the subordinate relative clause, “Whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son.” All of the ministry of a Christian is inside a relative clause but the main clause, the principle clause is, “For God is my witness, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” In other words, Paul is saying the important thing that I want to get over to you in this verse is God is my witness that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers. All the things that I’ve said about the ministry of a Christian are subservient to the work of a Christian which is prayer. Now really dear ones, the primary work is not to get into the Black ghettos. That is part of the ministry and sure we should do that. The primary work is not to try and transform society by being a social worker that is part of your ministry that is part of your ministry. If God has called you to be a social worker that is part of the ministry that he wants you to perform. But the work of the Lord is prayer. In other words, the primary work of all of us who are Christians is prayer. This is what God sets in the forefront of the ministry of any Christian it’s the work of prayer. Paul does not say, “God is my witness that I’ve been stoned for you people, I’ve been buffeted for you people, I’ve been imprisoned for you people, and I’ve been shipwrecked for you people.” Paul does not say that. Paul does not say, “God is my witness that I’ve worked with my whole hands tent making so that I could serve among you people and help you to know Jesus.” Paul says, “God is my witness that without ceasing always I have been making mention of you in my prayers.” In other words, Paul is saying, “My primary work for you is my prayer to God on your behalf.” Now why is this so? Because prayer alone enables God to operate in a uniquely Jehovah fashion. Prayer alone enables God to operate in a uniquely Jehovah fashion. In Elisha’s day there were Baal gods that claimed to be god. There was Jehovah that claimed to be God. They needed final proof that one of them was God. Elisha prayed and the fire came down, that proved that he was God. Today, there is humanism parading in the name of Christianity. You know how it goes, what is a Christian? A Christian is one who loves everybody else. Well, that’s not Christianity. It’s humanism parading as Christianity. There is psychology parading as Christianity. What you need is more peace, you need an integrated soul and then you’ll feel the harmony of God in your life. And what we need in these days is a unique operation of God in people’s lives that will declare what real Christianity is. Prayer alone brings that. Dear ones, the psychologist can imitate the impression that you make on people’s personalities in the universe. The psychologist can imitate that. Anything you can do by your friendship for someone else in your life the psychiatrist or the psychologist can imitate that. Only God can do a unique work in their heart that no one else can imitate. That’s why prayer is the unique work of the Lord. When you are praying you’re really doing the work of God because you’re enabling him to bring about his inadmissible results in people’s live but only by prayer are you doing that, anything else can be imitated. You may say, “Oh well, now does it matter too much? I mean, I’m witnessing as well as I can and I haven’t much time to pray for these people but I tell them about the books you’ve recommended and I try to bring them to church and I try to discuss Christianity with them. Now it will surely have some effect on their lives eventually.” Yes, but on the final day it will show up in its true colors. On the final day shallow prayerless witnessing or preaching will show up in its true colors. The church could be packed Sunday after Sunday. We could be moving into the basement. We could go like that for 20 years and on the final day God would reveal whether that was prayer work or whether it was the work of man. You know the passage I’m referring to, would you look at it in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15. Paul has just said you remember, that the foundation is Jesus Christ and then in 1 Corinthians 3:12 he says, “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones,” that’s prayer witnessing, prayer preaching, “Wood, hay, straw,” that is prayerless witnessing, prayerless preaching, “Each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” In other words, the work may look good at the moment but on the final Day of Judgment the prayer work will remain the prayerless work will be burned up. Now what kind of prayer is Paul talking about here when he calls this the work of the Lord? Well, would you look first of all at the very words of the verse and you can see plainly that it is first of all prayer for other people, “For God is my witness that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” It is intercessory prayer. Now you know that there are four other types of prayer that we should deal with in a mid week series either this quarter or next. There is prayer of adoration, there is prayer of thanksgiving, there is prayer of confession, there is prayer of petition but this is the prayer of intercession, this is praying for other people. Now does the verse say anything more about this kind of prayer? Well would you look dear ones at the verse itself? Paul does not say, “For God is my witness that when I get up in the morning and I’m on my way to university I mention you to God.” Is he saying, “For God is my witness that sometimes I mention you in my prayers.” Is he saying, “For God is my witness that I have a prayer list and I go down the names and I quickly say, ‘God bless this person, bless that person, bless the other person.’” He is saying, “For God is my witness that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” Now the translation there is not the best one of the Greek words. The Greek words are “pos adialeiptos”. And “pos” can mean “that” or it can mean “how”. “Adialeiptos” means without ceasing or unceasing. Now when you have “pos” with an adverb you translate it not “that” but “how”. In other words the real translation is, “For God is my witness how unceasingly I mention you always in my prayers.” What Paul says is the kind or prayer that brings results in people’s lives is prayer that is unceasing and another word is “pantote” always. In other words he says, “God is my witness how unceasingly I mention you always in my prayers.” Now that’s the kind of prayer that brings results in your witnessing life or in your own life in the university. It’s prayer that is unceasing and that is containable. Now you may say, “Well, what’s the significance of that?” We were married I think about six years ago and I remember, my wife is sitting here so I better watch it, I remember putting it down in my diary and unfortunately she saw it one day, the 28th of December, marry Irene. And I had trouble getting over to her that it was just a joke that I really didn’t need to be reminded that I was marrying her on that day. Now you can see that you just don’t think of having to note down that kind of event. You live the previous week, the previous months in the spirit of anticipation that that’s going to take place. That’s why prayer that brings results must be prayer that is without ceasing, that is continual. You don’t have to note down names of people that you’re really concerned about. Now dear ones, I’m not knocking the prayer list but I’m saying that if we need a prayer list maybe we’re not loving them sufficiently. That prayer that is continual and without ceasing is prayer that is the real spirit of our life. It just purveys our whole life and that’s the only prayer that will bring answers. Dear ones, this prayer that we do will not bring answers. It’s no use you saying, “Oh I prayed and I prayed and I haven’t gotten an answer.” And all you’re talking about is ten minuiters before you rush out in the morning or five minuiters before you go to bed. That is not the prayer that the bible says will bring results from God but it is prayer without ceasing and that is continual. It is prayer that is the whole spirit of our lives. Now you can see this in this little book. Unfortunately, we haven’t too many of them but if you want one you can put your name down and order it on the bookstore. But in this book you read some of the lives that had that spirit of outcome. Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer. He began at four in the morning. Of him, one who knew him well wrote, “He thought prayer to be more his business than anything else and I have seen him come out of his closet with a serenity of face next to shining.” John Fletcher stained the walls of his room by the breath of his prayers. Sometimes he would pray all night always frequently and with great earnestness. His whole life was a life of prayer. “I would not rise from my seat,” he said, “Without lifting my heart to God.” His greeting to a friend was always, “Do I need you praying?” If you check the back page of the bulletin you’ll find the same truth expressed five lines, well the first four lines, “The men who have most fully illustrated Christ in their character and have most powerfully affected the world for him have been men who have spent so much time with God as to make it a notable feature in their lives.” Charles Simeon devoted the hours from four until eight in the morning to God. Then if you look at the second paragraph, “Arch Bishop Leighton was so much alone with God that he seemed to be in a perpetual meditation. Prayer and praise were his business and his pleasure. Bishop Cane was so much with God that his soul was said to be God enamored. He was with God before the clock struck three every morning.” Bishop Ashbury said, “I propose to rise at four o’clock as often as I can and spend two hours in prayer and meditation.” And so it goes on. Where men have been used mightily by God it has been because their prayer has been without ceasing and has been continual and has pervaded the whole spirit of their lives. Dear ones, these are men who have spent eight or nine hours in prayer each day. Men like Martin Luther have said, “I am so busy I cannot afford to spend less than three hours a day in prayer.” Now you see, we say, “Ah, but he only brought about a Reformation, I have the final tickets.” You see dear ones, the more you have to do the more you need to pray and the reason why you’re not seeing mighty results through your witnessing in these days is because it’s prayerless witnessing. You’re trying to substitute the power of your own personality for the work that prayer alone can do. In other words, you’re not in Paul’s position where you can say, and you could say to the people to whom you are witnessing, “You have someone in your heart now, haven’t you? If you’re a Christian no doubt you have someone on your heart at this moment whom you want closer to God.” Now can you say to them, “God is my witness that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayer.” Can you say that? And can you say that that’s the spirit of your life, that your whole life is pervaded by that spirit? Another reason for Paul putting those words in is that you’ll really have to want the thing when you pray like that. You know how it is, if you really want something you can be doing all kinds of things during the day but that’s the one thing you’re thinking of. So if it is marriage you’re thinking continually of the wedding. If it is the final you’re thinking continually of the final. What you’re really concerned about you think of all the time and that’s the prayer that God answers. So there’s no point in you coming to church on a Sunday and saying, “Lord, make me holier in my life.” When the real desire that God sees in your spirit is, “Make me successful in my examinations and give me a good job, and a good home, and someone good to live with.” You fathers and mothers it’s no use praying once, “Lord, make my boy Christ like,” if your spirit is really praying, “Make him successful financially.” It’s no use us praying here at church, “Bring us a revival Lord, to the campus so that Jesus may be glorified,” if our spirit is really praying, “Lord, fill the church and make us successful.” Why Paul emphasizes prayer that is without ceasing and that is always going on in our lives is that that is the prayer of the spirit. And one of our problems is we offer to God the prayers of our souls. We offer up the prayer of our intellect. We say, “Now this is prayer time. Now I should pray for the people that I’m supposed to be witnessing to. Now Lord, would you work in their minds and make Jesus real to them.” And we pray with our intellect. But what we’re thinking about all that day is how am I going to get through the day successfully? What are other people thinking of me? What kind of impression am I making on the others? What kind of grade am I going to get at the end of this day? In other words, God answers the prayer that you really pray he does not answer the prayer that you pretend to be praying. You remember there’s a piece in Proverbs 20:27 where this is emphasized that it’s necessary to pray in the spirit for a certain reason. Proverbs 20:27, “The Spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all his innermost parts.” In other words, it’s your spirit that is God’s lamp and by which he searches your innermost parts. He doesn’t look at your lips when he wants to know what you want he looks at your spirit and sees the whole direction and attitude of your own spirit and that’s the prayer that he’s answering. Psychologists have gone very near to this, they has said that parents always get the children that they deserve. And while that may be harsh, perhaps in a deep way it’s true, that we produce either by reaction against us or by people who are too like us, we produce replicas of ourselves or replicas of our own inner beings. But this is true in the spiritual realm, God answers the prayer that you really pray and the problem with many of our unanswered prayers is that we don’t realize what is really the desire of our spirits, we’re pretending so much of the time. Dear ones, there’s so much more to be said and I believe that we should continue with it next Sunday. And I’m sorry, but it seems that God has so much to say to us in these days that I only get half of the verse done and I think it will take us about 50 years to get through Romans. So let me finish just on that dear ones, have you that kind of concern for the dear ones to whom you’re with? Have you? Are you praying for them in that way? Now just let me apply it strictly to the fathers and mothers. Fathers and mothers are you praying for your sons and daughters like this? You young men and woman, are you praying for your fathers and mothers like that? Are you praying for your brothers and sisters like that or are you offering short prayers as a compliment to God? Can you really say, “God is my witness that without ceasing I am always making mention of you in my prayers.” Next day I’d like to deal with unanswered prayer and I hope to convince you that there’s no such thing and that there is a way through. There is a way through to an answer to all your prayers and you can know it next day in your own life. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the plain truth that your word teaches and we thank you that you have called us not to a vague life where things are uncertain but you have called us to a definite victorious life of discipleship where we see fire coming down from heaven and purifying the hearts of those dear ones whom we love. We thank you Lord Jesus that your promises are given to us and we have only to sign our name to them and expect the answers. Amen.

The Key to Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Prayer: Father, I trust that you will mediate to them what is the key to their own prayer that they’re praying now and to their prayer life so that Jesus would be glorified by the answers. Amen. Do you know what your ministry as a Christian is? I think if you’ve been here the past few Sundays you have some idea. Your ministry as a Christian is not to serve society but to serve God. So your job here is not to go out and fix up all the ghettos and all the slums, that’s your secondary job. Your primary job is to serve God. Romans 1:9, also says you’re to serve him not with your clever intellect and emotions. You’re to serve him with Spirit. You are to allow God’s Spirit to use that intellect and emotions so that you won’t use it but God will use it. The Bible says you remember, in Romans 1:9 that the Christian’s ministry is to serve God with his Spirit. Now that is subservient to your work as a Christian. Your work as a Christian is more important than your ministry as a Christian. This is the meaning of the subordination that Paul shows us in the glamour of Romans 1:9 for he says, “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit.” No, “For God is my witness who incidentally I serve with my Spirit and the gospel of the son, that without ceasing I mention you all within my prayers.” In other words Paul said the primary work of a Christian is to pray and we believe that is referring today to praying for others, to intercessory prayer. That is your prime work as a Christian. You may come to me and say, “No, you’re wrong. I have a stimulating personality that really gets people in touch with Jesus. Now that’s my chief work. I am to keep on smiling so that people can see Jesus in me. That is my primary work. I can understand you saying that if someone doesn’t have a personality. Then, they should pray for all their worth because that’s all they’re worth. But my job is to save them, or to smile, or to argue, or discuss.” Dear ones, it doesn’t matter what talents you believe God has given you, your primary job as a Christian is to pray for others. There’s a reason for this. Prayerless witnessing can be imitated by the world and by false religion. Prayerless churches can be imitated by the world and false religions. Prayerless healing can be imitated by the world and false religion. Prayerless counseling can be imitated by a non-Christian psychiatrist. But prayer filled witnessing, prayer filled churches, prayer filled counseling, prayer filled healing releases the unique and powerful work of God. In other words, when you pray God does the unique work that no one can imitate and everyone knows it’s of God. That’s why your chief work as a Christian is to pray. Anything else you do as a Christian can be imitated by Buddha or imitated by Muhammad. You can bring great enthusiasm to someone with low enthusiasm for Jesus and you’ll find a Buddhist that is equally enthusiastic. You bring healing into someone’s mind by auto suggestion or by the power of the tranquility of your own life and you’ll find that there’s some psychiatrist who can imitate that. But if you pray for a person, God can do such a miracle in their life regarding their healing, regarding a change in their morals, regarding a change in their personalities that no one else can imitate. This is why the chief work of a Christian is to pray. It’s because it brings forth a unique, inimitable work that cannot be imitated — God alone can do it. Here are some examples of it. Would you turn with me to Exodus 15:24? Now, I think you’ll agree it would take a great deal to imitate this. It’s in Exodus 15:24-25, and let’s read verse 23 first. “When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” And he cried to the LORD; (prayed) and the LORD showed him a tree, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. That is an inimitable work of God that you with 10,000 pounds of cash could not have imitated. God wants to produce unique, inimitable works that people can attribute to no one but him. God wants us all to operate by the powers of the Holy Spirit. He wants the whole world to run by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Devil wants to find substitutes. That’s why a tranquilizer is a substitute for the peace of God. It’s why the nonconformist life that has become the conformist life of the hippy is an imitation of the free exciting life that you get when you really go out on limbs with God. The Devil is anxious to suggest substitutes for the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer brings forth the unique work of God for which there can be no substitute. That’s why prayer in Christian’s life is his primary work. Let us look at some of the other examples, though the Bible is full of them. Judges 6:39-40, “Then Gideon said to God, ‘Let not thy anger burn against me, let me speak but this once; pray, let me make trial only this once with the fleece; pray, let it be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.’ And God did so that night; for it was dry on the fleece only and on all the ground there was dew.” We keep trying to substitute other methods of guidance. We sum up all the advantages we have in our education, we sum up all the particular abilities of our personality and we put them all into this brilliant computer and turn out six possible different ways to do something. Eventually we take the one that leads us to the girl that we like or that we happened up against that day. Now God has a way of making decisions that comes through prayer that is inimitably his work and we can experience that also. Let us look at just one more example in 2 Chronicles 18:31. “And when the captains of the chariots saw Jehoshaphat, they said, ‘It is the king of Israel.’ So they turned to fight against him; and Jehoshaphat cried out, and the LORD helped him. God drew them away from him.” The Bible is full of that kind of instance. The only way you get rid of it is by an inconsistent, higher textural, liberal attitude to the Bible by which you go back and say those things that were said to happen by the historians 1900 years ago did not happen. I say this because I know I’ve lived a whole 30 years and have full knowledge of the past 1900 years. Well, you take that kind of unintellectual, proud attitude. If you accept at its face value the history of the Bible you have to see that it is full of situations where God does a unique work of delivering people in answer to prayer. What we need in our lives is more of this kind of unique work, not our own substitutes for it. This is why prayer is important in the lives of all the people that God has used mightily. Here are some of them. One of holiest and most gifted of Scottish creatures says, “I ought to spend the best hours in communion with God. It is my noblest and most fruitful employment and is not to be thrust into a corner. The morning hours from six to eight are the most uninterrupted and should be thus employed. Six until eight. After tea is my best hour and that should be solemnly dedicated to God. I ought not to give up the old habit of prayer before going to bed but God must be kept against sleep. When I awaken in the night I ought to rise and pray. A little time after breakfast might be given to intercession.” This was the praying plan of Murray, (Robert Murray McCheyne) a man that was used most mightily by God in his time. This memorable Methodist man was praying shamelessly from four or five in the morning at private prayer. From five to six in the evening he also had private prayer. Dear ones, the reason why your study life is not successful, the reason why your witnessing life is not successful in college is because you will not put prayer first in your life. You give all the arguments that I used at the same time. We say we don’t waken up quickly enough in the morning. We pray better at night so we leave it to night time and we pray on our way into bed. We argue, “Prayer isn’t necessary for my type. I’m the kind that can pray as I walk along the street.” But people have to concentrate. We use all the arguments that the devil gives us to stop us praying. And those are all the reasons why our life is fruitless in God, and why we’re not seeing miracles performed in our families. Why we’re not seeing miracles performed in our own student life. John Welsh, the holy Scottish man, thought the day ill spent if he did not spend eight or 10 hours in prayer. He set the blanket so that he might wrap himself when he arose to pray at night. His wife would complain when she would find him laying on the ground weeping. He would reply, “Woman I have the souls of 3,000 to answer for and I know not how it is with many of them.” Every time God has used a man or woman mightily in this world it has been because that man or woman regarded his chief work as the work of prayer. Is this why the apostles said, “We must give ourselves to administration, to taking telephone calls in the office, and to counseling?” No, it’s, “So that we might give ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” It was this giving of themselves to prayer that enabled the Holy Spirit to start the church in the first place. It was this giving of themselves to prayer that dominated Jesus’ life. You and I so often say you, “Jesus didn’t have to pray because he was the son of God. He knew what God wanted him to do. He didn’t need to ask him for direction.” Well let’s look at Jesus’ own life dear ones. Look at Mark 1:35 and see the part that prayer plays even in the life of the one who was God and man. Mark 1:35, “And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed.” Do you see that Jesus needed to rise way before the dawn broke in order to pray? Dear ones, you know I love you because I know that so many of you are stumbling over the same hills that I stumbled over when I was at college. But that’s why your lives are not fruitful. You who believe that Christianity is all up there – in the mind– you’re right, it is all up there. It’s all bluff without prayer. I agree with you. All this is just bluff without prayer. All this is a joke if there is no prayer. I agree with you, it’s meaningless. But with prayer, it is the very power of God to change the world, to change the campus, to change your whole life, and to change the lives of your people at home. Dear ones, the reasons you have not power in your witnessing, the reason you have not victory and success in your life as a student is because you will not pray. It’s still a litany of “God bless this, God bless that, and God bless the brothers and the sisters.” And then, “Holy Jesus meek and mild….” and then the Lord ’s Prayer. Dear ones, that isn’t prayer. It’s mumbling like the Buddhist and the followers of Muhammad do but it isn’t prayer. The reason why you’re not having victory in your lives is because you won’t pray. The reason why the churches are not successful in the way God wants them to be is because they won’t pray. Prayer is hard work. It’s two or three hours of hard work a day. It’s certainly not less than a half an hour. Dear ones, you’re not a Christian if you’re praying less than half an hour a day. Alright, you can say you’re a Christian but you know the results in your own life. How many healings have you seen in your family? Dear ones, “these signs will follow them that believe”, it’s God’s promise. How many have been converted in response to your witnessing? It’s because you’re doing too much talking to them and too little praying. Dear ones, the secret is prayer. Jesus’ life was full of these records. Here’s another one you can check in the gospel of Mark. It the time you remember, where the disciples attempted to cast out the demon from the boy and they couldn’t do it. They asked Jesus why and he said, in Mark 9:29, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” And he implied to them that the reason they had no power over the demon was that they did not pray. We get around it another way when we say, “That’s out of date. There are no demons today. There are only psychological problems and we send those to psychologists. We give them medications, meaningful work and other things to do and we give them shock treatments. You don’t need to be able to cast out demons today.” You won’t set face to the fact that we don’t pray sufficiently to be able to cast out demons. That’s what our problem is. Throughout Jesus’ life, prayer was the main work that he had to do. Now, there are many things that we could talk about today. We could talk about the times for praying, the method of prayer, and the different levels of prayer. I would like to talk about those in the mid week services on witnessing starting the following Wednesday. But for today I’d like just for a few minutes to deal with what is probably our main problem. You say to me, “Listen, I agree with what you say and I pray. I prayed for my mother for three years and nothing happened.” Or you fathers say, “I prayed for my daughter for a year and nothing has happened.” Or you dear ones say, “I prayed for someone time, after time, and nothing has happened.” Now dear ones, it’s not because God won’t answer it. You may say, “They’re just unanswered prayers.” There aren’t. There is no such thing as unanswered prayer. God may answer yes, he may answer no, or he may answer wait but he will answer one of them to you and he’ll explain it to you. How many of us take the attitude, “I haven’t gotten some answers to prayer before so God must have answered no.” If God is not going to answer, he’ll explain to you that you ought to change your prayer or change yourself, but he will answer. There is no such thing as unanswered prayer because the Bible is full of promises that when you cry to him he will answer you. Look at Psalms 91:15. “When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honor him.” Now we cannot set our faulty experiences up against a promise of God and say, “No, I found that when I call to him he doesn’t answer me. He is not with me in trouble, he does not rescue me, and he does not honor me.” You see, we’re pitting our own faulty personal experience against the promises of God. The answer when we come up against a promise of God that is not applying to us at the moment is to find out why it doesn’t apply. In other words, why is God not answering your prayers? What is the key to prayer? The key to prayer is this; God wants to reveal himself to you and he wants you to become like him. That is the true full key to prayer. God wants to show himself to you and he wants you to become like him. He wants to reveal his own nature to you and he wants your nature to change and become like his. Now what I’d like to do in the few minutes that are left is to take the second part of that key and explain it briefly to you. Then next Sunday I’ll explain the main part of the key, how God wants to reveal his nature to you. First of all, God wants our nature to change. So whenever there’s something in our nature that is not like his that prevents our prayers being heard. Will you look with me first of all at James 4:3? This is part of the key to prayer that concerns the need for our own nature to change and become like his. So whenever God comes up against something in our own natures that is not like his own nature then he refuses to answer our prayers. James 4:3, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. “ And I believe the King James’ version explains it, “To spend it on your own selfish passion or your own selfish desires.” Often God does not answer our prayers because we’re asking from the wrong motive. We’re asking for success in the examination so that we will become successful people, and financially prosperous. Or, we’re asking that God would lead some guy to Jesus so that we can marry him. Or, we’re asking that God will lead some girl closer to Jesus so that we can marry her. Or, we’re asking God to make us more like Jesus so that we’ll be more attractive in other people’s eyes. Here’s a hard one dear ones, because I came up against this myself in Ireland last year. We’re asking that God will deliver our mother from cancer so that we will have her to be with us for more years to come. That’s a selfish reason. Or, we’re asking that God will heal our dear ones so that we will not lose their company, their friendship, and their love. Those are selfish reasons. Or, we’re asking God to bring revival to the campus so we Christians will no longer be in this terrible minority that we’re in and we’ll be part of the popular. But the Bible says, “Whenever your prayer is dominated by a selfish motive God is unable to answer that prayer. That’s because he knows it will only encourage you in your own selfish nature.” He’d be encouraging you to develop that selfish nature further. His desire is to make your nature like his. That’s one of the reasons why God won’t answer our prayers. Would you like to look at Isaiah 59:1-2? This is another instance that occurs in many of our lives and prevents God from answering our prayers. Isaiah was answering people that were saying, “God is no longer answering prayers these days.” And Isaiah says, Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear.” Would you look at that second verse, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear.” If there is some sin in your life that you are not prepared to have done with, that sin will prevent God from answering your prayer. So our first responsibility when we begin to pray for someone that we love dearly is to say, “Lord, show me if there’s anything in my life that is disobedient to you.” Dear ones, God will not answer your prayer while you’re still walking in disobedience. Do you see why? It’s because you get all proud when he answers your prayer. You get all proud and you think, “I must be dead right with God. I must be right in the center of his will.” And you keep walking that way. If you regard iniquity in your heart, that is, if you look at something that God shows you is wrong in your life and you keep it there, God will not answer your prayers. Do you see why a preacher cannot be powerful in the things of the spirit unless his life is consistent with what he preaches and what he prays? God will not answer your prayers unless your life is clear from the sins that God has shown you. First, you have to get rid of the sins in your life. Would you stop saying, “Lord, you’re no longer answering prayer.” And would you start saying, “Lord, what in my life is preventing you answering my prayers?” All God’s promises to answer prayers are conditional on these things here that we’re reading about. Let’s look just at one more and you’ll find it in 1 Peter 3:7. It applies particularly to those among us who are married. 1 Peter 3:7, “Likewise you husbands live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor on the woman as the weaker sex, since you are joint heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers may not be hindered.” Many mothers and fathers are praying for their sons and daughters but their prayers are not answered because their own home life is not in harmony. It’s because the man lords it over the woman or because the woman uses her stronger emotional apparatus to run cold wars on the man and keep him under control. And God is not able to answer a prayer because their own married life is not right. Now dear ones, as many of us that are married, let us examine our own relationships together that we may be sure that there is nothing there that is preventing God answering our prayers. In other words, God will answer our prayers if our own natures are free from any stain or sin that he has revealed to us. But if we are walking in known sin God will not answer our prayers. That’s the first part of the key to prayer, that God answers our prayers according to his purpose which is first to show us his own nature and that we’ll deal with next Sunday. Secondly, it’s to make our own natures like his. In accordance to his purpose, God will answer every prayer. God still answers prayer and he is witnessing to this. So, let’s begin to pray without ceasing. Let’s give up this whole business of sending up prayers because we’re supposed to and let’s start expecting the answers this very week. Let us pray. Father, we trust you by your Holy Spirit to work this into the very heart of our lives and to enable us to go to our knees today with new excitement and new anticipation knowing that you are going to answer the prayers that we pray in your name and according to your will. Amen.

Meeting God Daily in Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill I think a lot of you have come quietly into a real relationship with God. A lot of brothers and sisters come to me at the office and they explain that they had no belief in God for years and years and stopped going to their own church completely. Then they started to come to the theater and they have begun to take God more seriously. And so I think there are a lot of us here who are beginning to really grasp the idea that there is a loving Father and that he actually does know us, he does know you and he’s interested in you. I think a lot of us at school have begun to enter into some freedom from that old desire to prove ourselves to our professors, our peers, and our parents. We’ve begun to really believe that Jesus did die to justify us and God regards us as justified whatever anybody else thinks. I think a lot of us have begun to come into that. I think a lot of you too have started to come into a real experience of control of your temper — indeed even freedom from temper, irritability and freedom from sarcasm. And I think a lot of you wonder, “Well, yes I am in a different position from what I used to be.” But you never say, “Okay, all those who want to give their lives to Jesus come up front.” You never have a Billy Graham kind of appeal or altar call. God guided us loved ones not to do that. God showed us that too many people, especially on campus, can misunderstand that. They can go up and make some kind of outward profession but it doesn’t reflect a real change in their lives. And so we purposely don’t do that. What God wanted me to share is what you do to declare to him that you have changed your way of life. Here it is. Every morning pray to him. That’s it. Every morning pray to him and read a bit of the Bible. Now, a lot of you who are Christians may say, “Oh, that’s just too simple.” Loved ones, that’s a better declaration that you’ve changed your way of life than coming up and saying, “I accept Jesus as my Savior.” Start meeting God every morning yourself. Set apart some time every morning before you get out at all, before you even eat breakfast, when you can be quiet with God and you can talk with him about the day. Now brothers and sisters, that’s a far better declaration to your Maker that you’ve changed your way of life than anything else. Moreover, I’d go further than that. If you’re not doing that, whether you’re Christians or not, you’re just bluffing. If you’re not doing that you’re just bluffing that you’re a Christian. And I think a lot of us are involved in all kinds of big talk about baptism with the Holy Spirit, justification and born of the spirit and we’re not doing the ordinary little thing that anybody would do who wanted to be friendly with another person. They’d talk to them. That’s just a normal thing to do if you want any kind of relationship with a person. You have to at least speak to them. It’s extremely difficult to be a friend of a friend without ever talking to him or her. That’s it dear ones, if you want to be real with your maker, or you want to communicate with him, or you want to live with him day-by-day loved ones, you have to set aside some time at the beginning of each day when you pray to him. I think that’s why a lot of you know everything. A lot of you could preach the sermons as well as I could at times. A lot of you know it all, and you’ve read all the books. But do you see that God looks down at you each morning and he sees you grabbing the orange juice, grabbing the toast, hitting that road at 60 miles per hour and while you’re going down the road saying, “Lord, keep me safe.” The Father knows. God is a good, sensible, wise person. He knows that you do not care anything for him because you talk longer than that to an acquaintance let alone to your best friend. And so brothers and sisters you can’t keep on saying, “Oh Lord, I believe in you. Father, I want to give my life to you. Lord Jesus, baptize me with the Holy Spirit.” You can’t keep on with that kind of stuff if you’re not at least spending 15 minutes or half an hour with him each day. In other words, he says, “I hear you, I hear you — ho-hum, I hear you.” God knows. Loved ones, God isn’t mocked. You can’t pretend to him. He knows when a person really wants to get to know him and when a person is only professing it to others to try to persuade themselves. A lot of you have real trouble with what does God want me to do in life? Who does he want me to marry? What am I going to do about the state of my finances? And you’re asking everybody else about these things and you’re saying to everybody else, “Oh, I’m trusting the Lord and I’m asking God.” And you don’t spend half an hour with him each day let alone really ask him what to do about those things. Now brothers and sisters, God impressed this upon me strongly last night as I was preparing, that I had to share with you what I once shared in an evening service. A lot of you are having a great deal of frustration in your relationship with God, all of you at various stages. Some of you are old skeptics and agnostics. Some of you are born of the Spirit. Some of you are filled and baptized with the Spirit. Some of you are walking in the Spirit. But a lot of you are having a great deal of frustration, and trouble, and unreality in your life with God because you don’t do the one simple thing that the Sunday school teachers taught us to do, pray and read the Bible every day. And you keep on talking about it but if I ask you, “What’s your devotional like life?” you’d think of the best day that you ever had in a devotional life and you’d say, “Yes, I usually spend 20 minutes with God in prayer.” And you’re not being honest or real. Or, I ask you, “How’s it going? Do you pray every day?” And you look back to the last week where you prayed four out of the seven days and you say, “Well, sometimes I miss.” You actually missed the previous three weeks and you prayed one day before that. And so there’s a great deal of dishonesty in all of us about it. I think you’re not giving God a chance. So here’s what I’m saying to you, “If you really are interested in getting in touch with the Maker of the world, and you believe a lot of the things that we’ve shared here in the theater, will you begin to get up a little earlier than you normally would do?” So if you have to hit that road at seven o’clock and you normally take half an hour to get ready, then instead of getting up at 6:30AM will you get up at 6:00AM? 6AM (or whatever time is quiet in your dorm) gives time to relax before him and wait. You need to be sensible about it. Don’t get up while she’s banging away at the frying pan and you can’t hear anything. Don’t get up when there’s chaos in the dormitory. Loved ones, there’s a beautiful quiet time in all our homes before anybody wakens. Now, that’s the time to get up and just have a little time to be quiet before your Maker, to look out at the sky and think, “Lord, that’s your sky and you can see me at this moment. And you can see into my mind and you can hear what I’m thinking.” Give yourself a half an hour so that you’re not getting into a 15 minute lecture of God. I think a lot of you maybe are giving him 15 minutes at the beginning of each day but it’s a 15 minute lecture time. “Lord, I’ll tell you what I want to do for my parents, I’ll tell you what I want you to do for me, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do for the missionaries in the other part of the world.” And the Father never gets a chance to speak and you never listen. Loved ones, that’s why I say leave a half an hour. And if you say to me, “Well brother, how do you get awake?” Loved ones, you have to beat that wakeful business. There’s no point in rolling out of bed onto your knees so that it’s as much like sleeping as possible. No, then you sink into the guru stuff. That’s what happens — you sink into the guru transcendental meditation. That’s what it is because your mind is almost as passive as it was when you were sleeping. Your mind is just floating around there in the unconscious. And what is happening is that while the Holy Spirit will not blast in on you, the spirits of Satan will. That’s why so many of you have trouble with unclean and wandering thoughts in prayer. Because, when you don’t get the mind active you slip out onto your knees and you sink into a kind of coma in which your mind goes passive, your feelings get the better of you and your body becomes utterly dominate. And so it’s just a dreamlike experience where in fact spirits of Satan get in on you and drag you into spiritism and you’re not actually praying at all. So loved ones, be sensible. Get out, do any kind of exercises, open the window, breathe in, do anything to get the body and the mind working. Do it — force yourself to it. The Father just beat me over the head on this until I really responded to him and saw – the only way I can do it is to do exercises and get my body operating before I go to prayer at all. But do something like that so that you actually go to prayer using your mind as well as your spirit. I think it’s a help to use the Bible. It’s no use this kind of prayer (I’m not knocking the boy), but you remember Malcolm Boyd with the cigarette out of the corner of his mouth saying, “Are you running with me Jesus?” It’s interesting but it’s not really prayer. “Lord, my mouth feels so sticky this morning and it feels so cold this morning but I’m glad you’re with me Lord.” No, you can’t be wrapped up in self loved ones. Don’t get up thinking of how you feel or all concerned with the way your body feels. Prayer is looking out to God. So it’s helpful at times to use a Psalm out of the Bible. Read it and then maybe have a verse and repeat that verse to the Father. And just repeat it to him, “Thou art my rock and my fortress. A very present help in time of trouble. Father I thank you that you are that.” Look up and out to him but get out of your own subjective experience. Now loved ones, honestly if you’re really interested in having a relationship with the Maker of the Universe you have to do that at least. And could I speak to the Christians, all you miserable bluffers who think you have a relationship with the Father and you hit it every other day. Dear ones, do you see why God can’t do anything in your life? Do you see why you’re not giving him a chance? You’re not even being as regular and faithful to him as you’re being with your employer at work, that’s the problem you see. If you made an appointment with Nixon or the Queen of England, or with somebody important you would be there on the dot. Now, the problem with us all is we’re saying, “Father I’ll see you in the morning at six o’clock.” We don’t go. If you don’t go either you don’t believe that there’s a God, so you don’t believe you made a promise to anyone, or you believe that that God is not worthy of you being there and he is really some kind of servant that ought to wait upon you. Now do you see that God will treat you as you treat him? That’s it. If you love me you won’t just look through me, you won’t just ignore me, you’ll treat me in a certain way. You won’t treat me as your son, you won’t treat me as your brother, you’ll treat me in a different way because we have a certain relationship with each other that is different from the relationship that either of us have to anybody else. Now when you treat me that way and I treat you that way then there’s a relationship between us. Do you see it’s the same with God? If you don’t treat him as your Creator and you don’t meet him each day in prayer then he realizes and knows what you really believe. So loved ones I just knew I should share that strongly and firmly with you this morning. I feel that many of you know all the stories, you’ve been to the Bill Gothard seminars, you’ve been listening to the preaching, and many of you have made all kind of moves towards God. But, God will take you seriously when you begin to meet him every morning and you begin to meet his mind before you meet other’s minds. Just one other thing. I used to find I could study better late at night and used to have great times until two o’clock in the morning studying for the next day. And probably a lot of us are like that. And so I said, “Lord, Jesus may have been good in the mornings and many other men may have been good in the mornings but I’m better at night.” Eventually God would not take that anymore and he kept showing me places in the New Testament like Mark 1:35, “Jesus got up a great while before day and went into the mountain to pray.” The Bible talks continually about the morning hours, the morning watch. Eventually God showed me, “It’s the morning. It’s the morning. Before you hit the bitter, miserable critic at your work, before you hit the burnt toast, you come to me and you meet me so that you allow your mind to be filled with my mind and my thoughts and then you go out to the rest of the world.” So dear ones, all I’m really saying is that if you’re serious about God you’ll do this, you will. If you’re not serious about God then I think you’ll have to carry on with a dilettante kind of attitude until eventually God persuades you and delivers you from yourself. Any questions dear ones? It’s Noon now so maybe a minute of questions. It’s not a very complex message is it? Will it show itself in your life? Now loved ones, it just becomes obvious immediately. When you don’t get to God in the morning you’re starting from behind the eight ball throughout that day. You have nothing positive going from you at all. All you have is influence from your environment. Brother I find it just changes your attitude. You hit the day on the run instead of stumbling into the day, stumbling into atmospheres and environments. It just makes a difference. Husbands and wives, if you have the difficulty that we had getting started to it — get it going someway or other. It doesn’t matter how you stumble into it. It doesn’t matter if you would hate him to hear you praying or if you would hate her to hear you praying, stumble into it someway. Get it going someway or other. A possible way, if you don’t like him preaching at you, (my wife doesn’t like me preaching at her), is to use a book like “My Utmost for His Highest” which is by Oswald Chambers. “My Utmost for His Highest” has one verse and then a page of a comment. So one of you can read that and read the comment and nobody is preaching at anybody. You’re both suffering under Oswald Chambers. So that’s one way to do it. Use a book like “My Utmost for His Highest”. If some of you have difficulty with reading the Bible and getting something out of it, a book like “Search the Scriptures” is good. It covers the Bible in three years and gives maybe three questions a day that lead you deeper into the intellectual understanding of the Bible and deeper into its application to your own spiritual life. And a book like that is good, “Search the Scriptures”. “My Utmost for His Highest” or “Search the Scriptures”, any I think of Stanley Jones’ books “Conversion”, “Abundant Living”, “Mastery”, any of those books are good. They’re just books that take you out of yourself and set your mind on some definite thoughts. If you have difficulty, don’t get into the business of wondering, “What do I do for devotions? I’ll just leaf through the Bible. Wherever the book opens I read.” No, be definite about it and set something up. If you love God then you’ll be concerned to do it in an intelligent way. Let us pray. Dear Father, I would trust you for my brothers and sisters that you would show us that the most real way of declaring to you that we are serious about you is that we take notice of you each day in life. And that no day passes without our speaking to you and giving you time to let us know what your mind is for us that day. Because Father, we know you put each one of us her on the earth for a definite purpose. We know that it is from you that we are to get our orders and directions each day. So Father, I trust you to help us to see that a great deal of the vagueness in our own lives about our future is caused by our never spending any time with you and never allowing your mind to become clear to us. Father, we would commit ourselves, those of us who do want to begin to believe in you and begin to take you seriously, we would commit ourselves to giving you that first half hour each day and to plowing on with that as the years pass until our whole lives are lived in the light of your presence and in the glory of your optimistic mind. We commit ourselves to you for this purpose in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Function and Authority of the Intercessor Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill First of all I’d say this brothers and sisters, there is no job more vital to the work in which we’re engaged than your own. I know it sounds as if I’m trying to emphasize it (intercessory prayer) because I want to emphasize everything, but brothers and sisters there is nothing that is more important than interceding in prayer for the work of Jesus. I hope to show that in the study that we’ll share in the next 15 minutes. But can I just say that again the preaching is unimportant, the singing is unimportant, the meetings don’t matter, the ownership of the bookshop or Ashland House is unnecessary. But what is vital is that we have men and woman who are praying, because that’s the work of the Lord. If there’s to be anything more than just hay, and stubble, and wood that will be burned up on Judgment Day, if there’s to be any solid work built on the foundation which is Christ Jesus, if there are to be any precious stones or anything that will last when Judgment Day comes, it will be only because some people have labored in the spirit in prayer to bring forth real children of God. And that’s why Paul said to those people, “You have not many fathers in God though you have many teachers.” Now loved ones, the teachers will come forth but we need fathers and mothers who will labor in spiritual prayer to beget children of God on the campuses. Loved ones, believe me, everything depends on your faithfulness in this ministry. Now having said that, could I just say this one thing? It’s vital that you do receive the burden of the ministry from Jesus. That’s right, it’s vital that you’re here tonight because you sense a real conviction within you that this is what you should be doing. It’s vital that you do it because it’s a burden that Jesus is placing upon you. I would think that’s why you’re here because it’s not the kind of job that attracts people unless Jesus really constrains them to undertake it. So with that preamble could I mention to you some good books? First of all there is the booklet by MacMillian called The Authority of the Believer. Then there is the booklet called The Authority of the Intercessor by MacMillian. Both of those are in the bookshop. Then there is the book The Intercessor which is really a biography of Rees Howells, a Welshman who founded the Bible College of Wales in Swansea and was taught many great lessons about how to take the position of an intercessor through obedience. Then there is the book by Arthur Wallis Pray in the Spirit. Then there are several books on spiritual warfare. There is one by Michael Harper called Spiritual Warfare. There is one by Jessie Penn Lewis called War on the Saints. There are also some books by T. Austin Sparks Spiritual Warfare and Battle for Life. These books are good and will teach you how to undertake your ministry of intercession. Now could I share with you just a few pointers from scripture? The function and authority of the intercessor, why is intercession necessary? The answer is in Ephesians 6:12, “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Now brothers and sisters the battle is not against the agnostic or atheistic students on our campuses, nor is the battle really against the dear ones who run the commercial world, nor against the dear ones who run the mass media world, nor is the battle really against the drug addicts, or the alcoholics that we may see on Cedar Avenue. The battle is not against flesh and blood. Those dear ones are only slaves of powers that are above them. They need to be set free from those powers or otherwise they are not free or at liberty to respond to the call of Christ. So the battle is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities, and against the powers. MacMillian has said, “The principalities are mighty princes. Those principalities include large areas of the earth with authority over the nation included in them.” There are indications in the Old Testament that there are different angels of Satan who rule over different regions and territories in the earth. The principalities and the powers — the powers are probably their ministers, inferior to them in position but associated with them in this government that Satan exercises over the whole world. You remember Jesus clearly acknowledged that this was the world of Satan. There was a prince of the air that ruled over the world and Satan was that prince. “Against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness.” Darkness suggests a ministry of deception, keeping in darkness the minds of men and especially the leaders of thought. And MacMillian suggests that these are the rulers who blind the psychiatrist, and the psychologist, and the philosophers, and the educators. These are the rulers who blind the presidents of the universities, the presidents of the nations, who blind the politicians and deceive them so they cannot see what is right. These are the rulers who bring out doctrines of demons to people that involve them in things that bring not release but in fact bring slavery, — “Against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” And MacMillian suggests that this is an enumerable body of demons to whose close connection with mankind is due to grosser sin and deceptions, stirring up the animal passions and incitement to all men who have sensual and sensuous desires. These are the beings that are present in the spirited séance impersonating and deceiving people of strong intelligence like the well known leaders connected with cults today. These beings are also at hand in religious gatherings and are a source of peculiar danger especially when the emotions are deeply stirred. Many earnest souls who have been urged to entire surrender open their beings with the upmost abandon to whatever spiritual force approaches them unaware of the peril of so doing. Such yielding often provides an opening for the entrance of demons who under some pretext gain control of the will. Now that’s a spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places. That’s part of what you war against each Sunday morning in the worship. Dear ones, who will come to that dance theater or to that Lutheran church (places where Campus Church was meeting), will be under the influence of many powers that will try to pervert and deceive so that they don’t understand what is really being said. They will misinterpret the love that they see among us. Those powers are active every time we come together in Jesus’ name. They’re active, determined to destroy. Now that’s why a ministry of intercession is needed brothers and sisters. If some of us do not undertake this ministry then the body is left like a flock of poor little weak, defenseless lambs. If we don’t exercise authority and exercise our ability to war against these spirits and to resist them, we will be slaughtered by the powers of Satan. This is why it’s so necessary to get a great number of us who are true intercessors. That’s the reason for the Bible. Now you may way, “Who is able? Who is able to stand against these things? Surely no one can war against these powers. They are powers that exist in the heavenly places; we are only human beings here on earth. How can we war against these powers?” Dear ones we could not at all if it weren’t for one thing — somebody already fought them and destroyed them. That’s our position of authority. Now that is stated plainly in Ephesians 1:20-23. But you remember that God is saying plainly that there is an immeasurable greatness that you see in Verse 19, “The immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might…” The same power that worked this miracle is available to us according to the working of his great might in Verse 20, “Which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” And then here’s the part, “Made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places.” Where in regard to our enemies? Well in Verse 21 it says, “Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” Above the principalities and powers? Yes, “above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” “Above the world rulers of this present darkness?.” Yes, above every principality, power, authority and dominion. “Do you mean against the powers, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places?” Yes, “Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” That is not only in the age that is to come after this present one but in this age also. “And he has put all things under his feet.” “What Satan?” Yes, Satan. “The power of deception?” Yes, the power of deception. “The power of sensuality?” Yes, the power of sensuality. “And has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.” Now do you see God has made Jesus a head over all things for the church? In other words, we have a dear Savior who has been made head over these principalities and powers. For who? For us. He has been made head over all these things for the church which is his body the fullness of him who fills all in all. Now you are Christ’s body and your head has been made head over all things for you and for me and that is our position. You may say, “Oh, is it our position? No, it’s Christ’s position.” No, dear ones, it’s our position. Look at Ephesians 2:6-7. And God, “raised us up with him,” — that’s with God — “And made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Now there’s no mistake about that. That doesn’t mean we are made to sit with Jesus. It says, “And made us sit with God, in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.” In other words God is there, at his right hand is Jesus and in Jesus we are sitting. Now that’s why Watchman Nee says, “We sit, walk, and stand.” We sit in that place in Christ Jesus. Why? In Verse 7, “That in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” That’s why we’re placed there, that we may begin to see the immeasurable greatness of Jesus’ power in the coming ages. That’s in this present age, warring and bring to naught the powers of Satan. Why? Because they have already been destroyed. In other words all the Holy Spirit is doing through us is making actual what has been potentially done in Christ. He laid death under his feet and destroyed death. And with death he destroyed sickness which is only a lesser degree of death. And with sickness he destroyed sin which was the cause of sickness and death. And with sin he destroyed Satan and his power. That’s our position, that’s your position as an intercessor. In other words you’ve to take authority over these things. Authority is delegated power. A policeman stands up in the middle of a street, puts up his hand and the traffic stops. Why? Because the cars and busses are afraid of his hand? No, they could run him over hand, and body, and legs. But his hand signifies delegated power. It signifies the power of the law. Now when we exist in and abide in Jesus, and obey him, and submit to him, we represent the delegated power of Christ. Now that is our position as intercessors. We have no need to fear any power or spirit that works against the body. Now that’s our position you see and we need to take that position. Loved ones, if you try to pray up from way down here you’ll have no power in intercession. You need to take that position by faith you see. Now this is what Jesus meant when he gave the disciples power. You remember, Matthew 10:1 and I’ll just talk for a little while, while you find that. You remember, Jesus gave to the apostles and therefore to the apostolic church (which we are), he gave certain authority. And this is why he could give it. He knew that he himself in the mind of God had already destroyed Satan and would in actual fact as far as people were concerned be raised to God’s right hand after his crucifixion. And so in Mathew 10:1 he gave them this retroactive authority, “And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.” Now that is the authority that we have. It’s authority you see in Verse 8 to, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.” That’s the authority that we have been given as intercessors. Now it is important to see that it’s authority, not just the right to pray and plead with God. It’s actual authority. And so you find in Matthew 17:20 that there was a boy who had an evil spirit or an epileptic spirit and the apostles were not able to heal him. Then you find in Matthew 17:20, that Jesus tells them that this authority that they’ve been given is not something that they plead for but something that they exercise. So in Verse 20, “He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith.’” You could cast these demons out. “For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.’” Now do you see Jesus did not say, “Plead with my Father to remove this mountain?” Jesus said, “Take your position in me and speak to the mountain. Say, get out, move mountain, in Jesus’ name move.” And then not only say that but stand in that position of faith and praise God that this mountain is moving however long it takes the symptoms to appear or disappear. You take that position by faith and just stand against that mountain. “What mountain?” The mountain of prejudice that would prevent us moving into the Marshall High School Auditorium if that is God’s will. The mountain of disobedience that would prevent God bringing enough money for us to buy a Christian center on the campus ourselves. The mountain of satanic and spiritualist activity that would keep brothers and sisters from coming to the Minnesota Dance Theater who should be there every Sunday. The mountain that would try to bring disruption into our meetings through spirits of evil and deception moving in dear ones. We actually speak to those mountains and we stand against them in Jesus’ name. We exercise authority. Loved ones, your position as intercessors is mighty. It is a mighty position of authority. Now how do you exercise that authority? Because you may be sitting there feeling pretty excited and yet pretty miserable thinking, “Boy, I don’t have that authority. What do I do try to auto suggest it, build it up? Do I say, I have authority, I have authority, I have authority?” No, you allow the Holy Spirit to bring you into that position of authority. You allow him to bring that conviction that you have that authority, and he will bring it about inside you. Only a conviction wrought by the Holy Spirit will stand so your job is to allow the Holy Spirit to bring that conviction. Well, how does he bring it? Well the problem that the disciples came up against with this boy was an evil spirit and they couldn’t do anything. They couldn’t cast it out of him. And you get the story in Mark 9 there if you’d like to turn to it. They draw Jesus aside and then in Mark 9:28 it says, “And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’” You may be in that position you may be thinking, “Well I know that by faith and by the statement of the word of God I have this position of authority but how do I actually enter into it?” Well, Mark 9:29 tells us. “And he said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’” And you see a footnote j that says, “And fasting.” And really there’s no reason from what we see of Jesus, his fasting and praying in the wilderness, there’s no reason for not facing the fact that that is a legitimate addition, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” And maybe in some future meeting you’ll want to discuss among you the position of fasting. But do you see the way to enter into your authority is by prayer? In other words, our task is to go before the Father in prayer and plead those promises that we shared together about our position of authority, study them and meditate upon them. Ask the Father to reveal to us if there’s any reason why the Holy Spirit cannot bring in us a conviction that that is our position. Now you may be open to coming into that conviction, maybe all you need is to study those passages, mediate upon them and the Holy Spirit will lift you into your position in Christ. Then of course, he will lay certain burdens on you in prayer and you will simply stand against these, pray and bear them up until they’re released from you by the Holy Spirit. He will teach you how to do this. On the other hand, you may meditate upon these passages and you may have a great difficulty in feeling that you’re in that position. You may feel, “Well, no I believe it and yet I don’t sense I’m in that position.” Then ask the Holy Spirit to expose any disobedience to you. You see, because you can only abide in Jesus at God’s right hand in that position of authority if you’re abiding at this moment in his words by perfect obedience. So ask the Holy Spirit to expose to you in any way in which you’re not walking in perfect obedience. And that is a good thing to do each time you kneel down to begin your ministry of intercession. Ask the Holy Spirit first to expose to you any disobedience. Then wait before the Lord Jesus and allow the words of scripture to come to you. Come first into a place of perfect obedience. Then exercise faith in your position. Thank the Father for it, speak to God, speak to God from your position — not from all the way down here in the world but right next to him. Just whisper to him, you’re close to his ear, you’re at his right hand, his right hand isn’t far from his face. You’re at his right hand with Jesus. You just have to speak to him calmly, quietly, and intimately. Just speak to him, thank him for your position. Thank him that you’re above all the enemies, all the powers and the principalities. Then just trust him as you praise and thank him. Trust him to bring certain burdens upon you. Now here’s the beauty of it. If you ask him to expose your disobedience, and thank him for your position, then, as you’re thanking him the Holy Spirit will lay on you the burdens that you’re to bear. He won’t lay the same burdens on all the intercessors. He won’t lay the burdens on you that I see. He will lay the burdens on you that he sees need to be lifted if the body is to move forward gloriously and according to God’s timetable. So listen to the Holy Spirit, let him lay on you a burden. Maybe he’ll lay on you a burden of a certain person. You need to bear and pray through that burden until it lifts. Don’t pray through – don’t leave off praying until it lifts. The Holy Spirit will lift the burden off you when he knows that you’ve raised it up to the Father in the right way. And the Holy Spirit alone can teach you that. I know you’ll ask, “Well, how do you bear a burden?” Only the Holy Spirit can teach you how to bear a burden. But you can know when a burden has been lifted. I’ll try to talk more about it Sunday evening, but you can know when a burden has been lifted. Then let him lay another burden on you. Now just one last word brothers and sisters, be free of your own burdens so that you can be free to receive the burdens the Holy Spirit gives you. Be free, walk free of burdens about your own worry, your own life, your own career, your own money. God will look after that. If you take care of the ministry of intercession that he has given to you he will see that you don’t starve and you don’t fail miserably. So be free of your own burdens, lay them aside, come into a real death to self of your own burdens and then bear the burdens that Jesus gives you. The last word is this, release the burden. Pray through and get rid of the burden. If you don’t, then burden will pile upon burden until the Holy Spirit can give you no more. Finally you just end up useless — burdened with burdens that are the Holy Spirit’s will but that you’re not bearing up to God. So bear up your burdens as the Holy Spirit gives them to you and then you need to share with me the guidance that the Holy Spirit gives you as intercessors. But that’s the ministry of an intercessor, your position of authority and the exercise of that authority. Your position of authority is revealed to you by the Holy Spirit if you’re walking in perfect obedience. And if you’re meditating on the words of scripture that will assure you of your authority. And your authority is exercised through prayer by bearing and releasing the burdens that the Holy Spirit lays upon you. I praise God for you, I tell you that if anything mighty is going to come of our body here it’ll be because of you dear ones who are called to be ministers of Christ in this way.

Prevailing Prayer 1 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Prevailing prayer is prayer that is answered. It is mentioned very clearly in James, if you’d like to look at it now. James 5:16b, “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.” In the King James Version it says, “The prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” And that is prayer that is answered. And there’s an example of it you see in the next verse, “Elijah was a man of like nature with ourselves and he prayer 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 the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit.” Now that is the kind of prayer that is called prevailing prayer and obviously it is the kind of prayer that God wants his children to use, and is the kind of prayer God wants us to progress in our lives. And part of the reason we have such problems in our lives is we’re trying to do things that can only be done supernaturally by prayer. We’re trying to do them so often by psychology or even by just our jobs, or by politics. And of course it is God’s will that he should do these things supernaturally in answer to prevailing prayer. And that’s why goodness or the Spirit of Jesus seems to be making little progress in the world compared with the size of the world because so few of us are actually involved in prevailing prayer which is really God’s will for us. You remember, that he stated that very plainly in 1 John 5:14-15 where God points out that this is the kind of prayer that he wants us to have. 1 John 5:14-15, “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” And obviously that’s the kind of prayer that God wants us to experience. It’s totally different from the kind of prayer most of us experience. Most of us have a piecemeal experience of answered prayers. Sometimes he answers, sometimes he doesn’t. We try to rationalize it by saying, “Well, sometimes God answers yes, sometimes he answers no, sometimes he answers wait. I guess this is one of the times he says wait.” And we just wait. And eventually brother and sisters that though we keep trying to wait in faith, at last our prayers to deteriorate. They deteriorate until we begin praying that old prayer, “Lord, do this if it’s your will.” And we keep on adding that at the end of our prayers. Now that has a real difficulty in it if you pray like that because you remember, what God said in James 1:6 about prayer. It’s a statement that utterly contradicts that whole attitude that we have when we say, “If it’s your will.” James 1:6-7, “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord.” Now brothers and sisters it’s a little difficult at times to pray, “Lord will you do this in my dormitory if it’s your will.” It’s a little difficult to pray that with firmness and with confidence. And you know that most of our prayers deteriorate into this kind of prayer. We ask doubting and we’re like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. We ask and then he doesn’t seem to answer so we’re not really sure whether it’s God’s will or not. So we try it one more night and nothing happens so we sort of back off from it. Then we see the person again and we get all inspired and we start praying again and then God doesn’t seem to answer so we’re not sure whether it’s his will or not. And we keep tossing back like a wave of the sea. Now brothers and sisters you can’t pray if it is your will at the end of every prayer and yet pray in absolute faith and confidence. When Jesus prayed that prayer he knew what the two possibilities were and he said, “Listen Lord, if this is your will I’m going ahead with it.” It was that kind of positive thing, “Nevertheless, if this is your will then your will be done.” Jesus already saw in his mind what God’s will was and he was saying, “If this is your will let it be done.” But do you see so often we have brought this into our prayers and we have said, “Well, I’ll throw the prayer up to God let him do what he can with it. And if it’s his will he’ll answer it, if it isn’t his will he won’t answer it.” You can see that by that kind of prayer life we come into a very uncertain attitude to God. And prayer eventually becomes a kind of superstition that we throw in for good measure when we’re in a difficult spot. So many of us come to this place we say, “Oh yes, of course I prayed about it. I’ve done lots of other things but of course I prayed about it. As a good Christian I ought to pray about it and I always pray about everything.” And I throw that in as well. Or we say, “Oh, there’s nothing left to do but pray. I’ve tried everything else but there’s nothing I can do now but pray.” Now brothers and sisters that is an attitude to prayer that brings pain to the Father’s heart and brings defeat in our own lives. It is God’s will that we should pray with assurance and confidence. It is God’s will that we should pray prevailing prayers. We should go before God and ask for things definitely and believe in him to bring them about. Now you may say, “Well, how do I do that? How do I approach God then in a certain situation?” Well, there are several things to remember. I think maybe the first key is this, when you go to God about a situation remember that he has already a plan of deliverance mapped out. There is no situation into which you or I have come that God does not understand fully and out of which he has not already planned a way of deliverance. There is nothing brothers and sisters that you come into that God does not fully understand and out of which he has already planned a way of deliverance. Calvary didn’t come to the Father as a shock and surprise. God foresaw Calvary and knew what he was going to transform Calvary into. Now, it’s the same with our situation. You come into a situation, you failed all the exams and you don’t know where to go next. Or, you’ve been going with this girl for a while and you really don’t know whether that is the one or not. Or, you don’t know whether to take this job or not. Or, you don’t know whether to go into this new dormitory or not. The first thing you need to remember when you go before the Father is, “Father you know all about this. You’ve already made out a plan for me.” A lot of us have the feeling that we’re God’s eyes. We see the situation, we analyze it and then we go to him and we make our recommendations to him. Now, that’s not it loved ones. God doesn’t need your eyes. He can see directly. He can see the situation; he already has a plan made out for you. He has it made, he has it all organized and he’s just waiting for you to discover it and to ask him to bring it about. But a lot of us you see go to him and we go to him with recommendations and suggestions. God doesn’t want that. He wants us to come before him saying, “Father, you know this whole situation and I know that you have an answer for it.” Now loved ones, you can see the reason for saying that in Ezekiel 36:37. You remember we looked at it briefly last Sunday. You remember Israel was devastated. It was the time of one of the enslavements of Israel by her enemies and then in Ezekiel 36:37 it says, “Thus says the Lord GOD: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” Now, it didn’t require Ezekiel to go up to God and say, “Lord, would you think of increasing your men like a flock?” He didn’t have to say it; God had the plan already made. God knew what he was going to do but he said there, “I will let the house of Israel ask me to do this for them.” Now that’s a rule and a principle from the Father. He sees what to do to redeem the whole world but before he can take any action in redeeming the whole world he has to put it into one of our hearts or wills to ask him to do it. Otherwise you see it just becomes a mighty God using us as robots. He could fill China with missionaries at this moment; he has no difficulty in doing that. He could make missionaries and send them to China, but do you see God will not overrule the free will of mankind because eventually he wants free willing spirits to love him and worship him. And so he will do nothing to redeem the world until you or I get the message and ask him to do it. And so when we go to God we should go saying, “Father I know you have a will for this situation, I know you have a way out of it. Now Father, I’m just going to wait before you and trust you to reveal it to me so that you can let me ask you to do this for me.” But do you see that’s the spirit he wants. You don’t go to the Father all fretfully preoccupied with the situation, “Lord what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Where will I live this coming year? Where will I live? Who will I marry? What job will I get? Where will I get the money for this situation? How will I manipulate the finances?” Loved ones, that’s not a spirit of faith. A spirit of faith is coming before the Father on the basis of this kind of promise and saying, “Father I can see right throughout history you’ve always had an answer for every situation men have gotten themselves into. Now Father here I am. I have $75 in the bank account and you know what you’re going to do. Now Father, will you reveal to me what you want me to ask you for?” But brothers and sisters it’s always that. Dear ones, those of us involved in teaching and involved in getting teaching jobs it’s no way to go before the Father and say, “Lord, you know I have to have a job. You know I need the money. You know I’m in trouble financially. You know I have bills to pay. You know I have that loan to payoff.” Loved ones, do you see that’s just getting deeper and deeper into Satan’s circumstances and it’s not a spirit of faith. You go before the Father and say, “Father you put me on this earth. You’re my Father, you know about this whole situation and you have a plan for it. Now Lord I’m waiting before you and I’m going to worship and adore you until you reveal to me what you want me to ask you to do.” And that’s the spirit you see. You’ll see it in Exodus 14:10. You’ll need to really try and put yourself in the place of the Israelites because to them this was an impossible situation. Exodus 14:10, “When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them; and they were in great fear. And the people of Israel cried out to the LORD.” Now we see what their attitude was and that’s often our situation. We look at Pharaoh coming after us and we think, “Well, nobody knows this but us. We better inform somebody. We better call them up and let them know.” Well it isn’t necessary to do it. If you look at Verse 15-18,”The LORD said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go on dry ground through the sea. And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts, his chariots, and his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.’” And God had the whole thing arranged. Now brothers and sisters if God had all that arranged for the Israelites for a huge mass of people with the greatest enemy in the world coming after them, surely he has plans for your job. Surely he has some place in his mind to make plans for your job, or your marriage, or your finances. Now do you see we go to God in a spirit of faith believing that he already has an answer? That’s the first key to prevailing prayer. We go saying, “Father, I know you have an answer. I’m not going to get disturbed by looking at the circumstances. I’m going to look to you, put my faith in your faithfulness and believe that you’ve already an answer for me. Now will you let me know what that answer is so that I can ask you to do it?” Now that’s the first key. Now some of us say, “Well, do you just kneel before God and adore him and praise him and then an answer comes?” Well, really you do but there are some indications as to what God will do in a situation and how he will answer. God will always answer a situation in order to reveal more of his character to you or to the other people involved. God will always answer our situations and our problems in order to reveal more of his nature to us and to the world. Now you can see that in that passage in Exodus that we just read. You can see that was at the back of God’s answer in Exodus 14:18 when God said, “And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.” Why did God answer? Was it to save the Israelites? No, it was to reveal to the Egyptians that he was God; not their queens, not their ancestors, not the spirit that moved the bush at the end of the road but that he was God. He was the Creator of the universe. Now God will always answer our prayers in order to show forth a different part of his nature to us or to others. Do you see that’s why at times God heals and at times he doesn’t heal. At times he heals this moment, at times he heals three weeks later because it’s all bound up not in providing everybody in the world with perfect health but with God’s primary purpose for himself and for his creation to make himself more known to the people that he has made. And God will always answer our prayers in relationship to that. You can see how small minded we get. We get all preoccupied with this little financial difficulty. We get all preoccupied with this little relationship difficulty, and God himself has a far greater purpose for that situation than just fixing up the relationship. God will always answer our prayers in relationship to the nature and the part of his nature that he wants to reveal to others. Now you can see it if you follow through any of the records of his answer to prayers. You can see it there in 1 Kings 18 that we read earlier in the service. And you remember what the result, the final result of the event was. 1 Kings 18:36-37, “And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, ‘O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant.’” “Let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that I may be seen to be a great prophet, that I may be seen to be a great magician, that these people may be turned back from wanting to kill me, that my finances may be increased.” No. “Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that thou, O LORD, art GOD, and that thou has turned their hearts back.” Now brothers and sisters, God is preoccupied with that and part of the problem in our own lives is that we aren’t preoccupied with that. So often we haven’t come to the point where we are preoccupied with God and with him showing his nature to mankind. So often we’re preoccupied with other things. But those are two keys dear ones. Next Sunday I’ll try to deal with the two last keys to prevailing prayer but those are the first two keys. First of all see that God has an answer. Don’t go to him with all the worries. Some of us go to him and you’d think we were instructing God how to do it. We tell him in detail all the situation and then we tell him exactly what he should do. Dear ones, go before the Father in faith, “Father you know the situation.” I’d love to know what your situations are but I can guess that some of you men and woman are concerned about where you’re going to live this year. You are concerned about whether you’re going to live in a Christian house, or in a room, or a dorm, or what you’re going to do. And some of you men must be concerned at this point in the economy with jobs and what you’re going to do for a job. Now, go before the Father and say, “Father, I know that you have an answer to this.” Brothers if you’re sitting there and you’re saying, “But, I’m not sure,” then read the bits of the Bible that tells you that’s so. Allow him to build up your faith by hearing the word of God until you come to an inner assurance, “Yes Father, I know you have an answer to this.” That’s the fight of faith loved ones. We are fighting against Satan’s temptation to be preoccupied with the problem and instead looking to the Father who is the answer to every problem. Not looking at your own scarcity and your own lack, but looking at God’s fullness and God’s complete supply. It is not a matter of bringing Jesus down to earth because you cannot do that. You lift yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to lift you up from the midst of your difficulties into the full supply of God. And loved ones, when you dwell there at his right hand there is no shortage of money, or health, or jobs, or happiness, or peace. Everything is there. And that’s the fight of faith seeing that God is the answer. The second step is, “Father, I want your character to be revealed in this.” And that means dying which I’ll talk a little about next Sunday. That means dying to your own consciousness of your own intense need. That means saying, “Father, I don’t care what happens to me but I want your character and your nature to be revealed in this.” Then brothers and sisters, God is in a position to reveal to you what he is going to do so that you can ask him to do it and he does it. And that’s it — really. The answer comes just like that as soon as you get his will. Loved ones, I know it in my own life and others have known it down through the years. When you get God’s will for a situation you ask it, and it’s done. That’s it. The fight of faith is fighting against the tendency to be preoccupied with the problem and fighting against the tendency to have your need answered above everything else and instead rising into God’s complete supply and wanting his nature to be revealed. Now brothers and sisters I’ll try to share more next Sunday morning about prevailing prayer. But would you begin to move that way? Would you? Would you stop getting down into the midst of the problems? Would you start looking at God and think, “Maybe if his thoughts are bigger than your thoughts, then just maybe he has had time to think about your problem already?” And it is probable that he has an answer for them. Let us pray.

Prevailing Prayer 2 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill This will be the last study on answered prayer as we’ve been talking about answered prayer for the past three Sundays. That’s as opposed to the kind of prayer that at times is answered and at times isn’t answered — the kind of prayer that many Christians experience throughout their lives and many non-Christians too. Whereas the kind of prayer that God wants his children to experience is prevailing prayer, prayer that is answered continually and repeatedly so that we can actually speak to a man and say, “Rise and walk”, and then know that he will rise and walk. We know that the mighty God in heaven will not be let down, or exposed, or disrepute brought to his name because we have prayed a prayer that we were not sure he wanted us to pray. And so we believe that it is God’s will for his children to pray prevailing prayers or answered prayers. We believe that this is what brings glory to God. And you find that mentioned you remember in James 5:16 if you’d like to look at it. James 5:16, “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” And then the second part of the verse, “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.” Or the King James Version says, “The prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Now here’s an example of prevailing prayer (or answered prayer) in James 5:17. “Elijah was a man of like nature with ourselves 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 the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit.” We’ve been saying that God wants us to ask for definite objects and not pray like this; “Father somewhere in the world I pray it will rain today.” That’s because, it probably will. And not, “Father I want you to bless all the missionaries throughout the world.” That’s because, God probably will. And not, “Father I ask you to bless my family this year.” That’s because God wants to bless them. But when you ask for definite objects, the answering of that prayer brings glory to the Father. Now who suggests the object? Usually we look at our situation at college this year and we think, “Well Lord, I need this. I need so much money for this and I certainly need books for that. And this time next year I’ll need this kind of a job.” Or we’re in a certain situation with our families and we try to psychoanalyze all the children and decide what they need. Then we say, “Now, Lord this is what I recommend and I suggest that you do this for them.” Now dear ones, that isn’t the way to answered prayer. The key to answered prayer is to let God do the suggesting. Now, this is what you find Elijah doing in that story we’re referring to. It’s in 1 Kings 18 and you find that after the rain had stopped then Elijah didn’t start thinking, “Now, when would it be a good time for it to start raining again?” Or, “Do I think these people have had enough and should I ask God for rain?” No, it was God himself suggested it. 1 Kings 18:1, “After many days the word of the LORD came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, ‘Go, show yourself to Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.’” Do you see it wasn’t Elijah’s thought that it was time for it to rain? It was God who said, “It’s time to rain.” This is the first key to answered prayer, that you let God do the suggesting. You go to God believing that he knows what is the right answer to your present situation. It’s not that you go to him with all kinds of suggestions and ideas of your own but that you go to him believing that he already knows what to do in that situation. Now you remember the other reference we looked up, it’s in Ezekiel 36:37. There’s another indication that Israel was in trouble, God already had the answer all planned and he didn’t need suggestions from them. In Ezekiel 36:37 the Israelites were again in one of their terrible national disasters. They were in exile and God knew what he was going to do. And so he knew what he was going to allow the people to ask him about. Ezekiel 36:37, “Thus says the Lord GOD: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” Now God knew what he wanted to do for the people but he could not do it until they asked him and that’s why he says, “I will let the people ask me to do this. I could do it without them asking but then I’d turn the whole world into a great robot that did what I wanted it to do whether it wanted to or not. But I will let them ask me and when they have asked me I can do what I intended to do.” Now that is the way to answered prayer dear ones. God already knows what he wants to do in your life in every little difficulty but he cannot do it until you pray it. God can do nothing against your will. He can do nothing against his own will but he can do nothing without the cooperation of your will. And the first key to answered prayer is believing that God has an answer already for you. And therefore, our task is really to find out what that answer is. Now you know that that’s completely different to the way we go to God. We go to God with all the problems of the world on our shoulders and all our possible answers filling our heads. Then we go to God and throw the whole lot out hoping that he’ll answer one of them. Now dear ones, that isn’t God’s plan. God’s plan is that we should go to him and listen. You remember the way it was with Samuel, he came to Eli and he said, “Did you call me?” And Eli said, “No, I didn’t call you go back to bed.” And then Samuel came back and said, “Listen, I heard you calling me. You called, ‘Samuel, Samuel.’” And Eli said, “No, no, that is the Lord calling you. Now go back to bed and when he calls you tell him, ‘Here am I and I am listening to you. I am your servant.’” Now brothers and sisters that needs to be out attitude with God, “Lord God what is your will for this situation? I’m looking to you now what are you going to do about it? Will you let me know?” And that’s the first key to answered prayer that you don’t pray up your own ideas or your own suggestions. You go to God and say, “Here am I Lord, for your servant heareth. I’m listening. Now Lord you let me know what you want me to pray for you to do in this situation.” Now you remember, last Sunday we also shared that it wasn’t just a matter of going to God and looking at him and seeing what he was thinking and listening to him. There was another key to answered prayer. God always answers a situation in order to reveal his own nature. You see, we tend to go to God preoccupied with a human need. Many of us go to God with a sickness and we go saying, “Lord God, the greatest thing in the whole world is that you should heal this sickness.” And you can see how miserably self centered that is. It’s like saying, “Lord God we’re having a picnic lunch today. We need sunshine whatever the farmers need, we need sunshine.” And you see God can’t run the universe like that. God always answers prayers in order to show forth his own nature in some way. And so we must always go to God on that basis. You remember, Sodom and Gomorrah and the problem there. God had determined to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and he told Abraham this. Abraham knew that his nephew Lot was in Sodom and Gomorrah and would be destroyed with the two cities. Now Abraham didn’t go and say, “Lord, I want you to save my nephew Lot. I want you to save him. I want you therefore not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.” Do you see that Abraham looked into God’s eyes and saw what God’s nature really was? Now here’s what he really saw and you can look at it yourselves in Hebrews 1:9. This is what Abraham saw was God’s true nature. As Abraham kneeled before him and said, “Lord, look at this situation what do you want to do about it?” Then God showed him, “This is a vital part of my nature that I must show forth. Hebrews 1:9, “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness beyond thy comrades.” Abraham saw that God loves righteousness and hates lawlessness. He loves righteous men and he hates lawless men. Now, do you see the way this affected Abraham’s prayers? Look at Genesis 18:23 and 26, It really surprises us the apparent impertinence of Abraham to try and persuade God. But Abraham was going to God with what God had already shown him of his own nature. He knew that God was a God who loved righteous men and hated lawless men. Genesis 18:23, “Then Abraham drew near, and said, ‘Lord don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Please don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Please don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.” No, He didn’t. “Then Abraham drew near, and said, ‘Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?’” Now do you see that Abraham went to God on the basis of God’s own nature? God wants us to take him seriously. There is a time when you can get hold of God in prayer. Now, you do not like to be ignored yourselves. If you do not like going to cowboy movies, then you don’t like your friends always telling you about the latest cowboy movie that is on. You don’t like them telling you, “Listen there’s a good one on TV tonight, will you come?” You feel like yelling out at them, “I hate cowboy movies. Don’t ask me to come.” And you feel that they’re not taking you seriously. You feel they’re just ignoring you. Now do you see loved ones that God is the same? God loves to be taken seriously. He loves to find a man or a woman who really believes that he is the kind of God he says he is. And you can see that Abraham pushed this to the very limit with God. Look at it in Genesis 18:23, “Abraham drew near, and said, ‘Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?’” Imagine saying this to the Father, “Far be it from thee to do such a thing.” You see, it’s not you saying, “You shouldn’t do that.” But it’s saying, “I know Lord that this is not the way you deal with your children. I know this is far from you to destroy righteous men with lawless men and to save the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” And Abraham was beginning to see into God’s heart and see God would not do this. And that’s what prevailing prayer is. It’s seeing through all your silly little ideas for the situation, and seeing into the very heart of God and what he wants to do in that situation. But Abraham kept on, “And the LORD said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.’” And you remember how it goes on through verse 32, it’s incredible. We would normally be afraid to speak this way to God but God is glad when his children believe in him. Verse 32, “Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’ And the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.” Now brothers and sisters that’s the key to prevailing prayer, believing that God has an answer and then going to God on the basis of his own nature. Now loved ones, do you see it changes this whole attitude to sickness. We are silly little naïve people when we say, “Oh why did God heal that person and not heal that one?” Do you see that the Father is interested in something more than a sinful world full of healthy people? Sickness itself is an indication to us that things are wrong, that there’s something rotten in the whole situation. And so God is certainly not intent on healing every person at this moment. But God’s will for us is health and if he can reveal his nature by healing a person then he will do that. Now loved ones, it’s the same with your situations; your jobs, your homes, and your families. We have to start getting out of this position of being a little fly. Think of a little fly sitting on a platform saying, “Turn off the lights. Turn off the lights, they’re blinding me.” And I’ll say, “Listen fly, there are a whole lot of other people that need the light. You think you should want it out to suit you?” Now loved ones, do you see God is in the same position? We have to start looking at it from his angle. “Father, what is your intention for this world? What is your intention for my home? What’s your intention for my job? What’s your intention for me?” And brothers and sisters as we begin to try and find out what God wants to do we’ll begin to enter into prevailing prayer. Now you see a lot of say there are pressing situations where you can’t do that. You just have to ask him right away?” No dear ones, let’s look at what’s a pressing situation which none of us have been in up to the moment. It’s in Acts 7:54-60. Some of us never get out of the fox hole type of prayers. Well there is no situation so pressing that you cannot look up to the Father and preoccupy yourself with what he wants to do. Here we see Stephen, and you haven’t been stoned to death have you? Okay, so you haven’t ever faced as pressing a situation as this. Acts 7:54-56 –“Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth against him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.’” Loved ones, do you see we’re too often in the position, “Lord save me from the stones, save me from the stones. Make their aim bad.” That isn’t the way God wants us to pray. He wants us to pray as Stephen prayed, “’Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.’ But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together upon him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Now that’s always the key to prevailing prayer. Looking into the Father’s eyes and saying, “Father, I forget these things that I need. Lord, what do you want to do in this situation? Whether it means that I am full or empty, what do you want to do in this situation?” And the key to prevailing prayer is finding out what God intends to do. Then you ask him to do it and he does it. Now some of you are saying, “Oh but brother, how do you ever find out what is God’s will for a situation? How do you ever find it out? How do you know it’s God’s will and not your own ideas, or your own mind, or the wisdom of your own thinking? How can you be sure it’s God’s own will?” There’s only one way dear ones, you’ll see it symbolized there in 1 Kings 19:11-12, “And he said, ‘Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.’ And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him, and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” We get into a situation where we don’t know what job we should take. And there comes the earthquake of financial needs and it storms our mind and preoccupies our whole thinking. And we go to God with this earthquake of financial needs rocking inside us. We’re all preoccupied with our finances, and preoccupied with where to get the next dollar. And when we go before God it is impossible to hear God’s voice. You can’t for the earthquake of financial need is too strong. That’s the only voice you’re hearing. And every prayer that you offer will come out of the earthquake of your financial needs. Loved ones, the voice of God is not in the earthquake. Or, you go before God and you don’t know which job to take. The fire of selfish personal ambition is burning inside you and that fire is burning so loudly and strongly that you can’t hear God’s voice. You’re burning up inside and you’re saying, “Lord God I want to be successful. Give me a job that will make me successful.” Dear ones, do you see that until we die to the earthquake, and the fire, and the strong wind of all our own desires you cannot hear the still small voice of the Father. How do you know God’s will and when you’re not listening to your own will? That’s it. You know God’s voice when you’ve died to your own voice and when you’ve stopped listening to all the voices of your own needs — your own personal and material needs. And then the still smaller voice of God comes through and says, “I want you to have this.” And here’s the beauty of it, when you go God’s way all the other things are added unto you. Believe me. It is true. If you only step back from those pressing needs, and step back from the earthquake, wind, and the fire, then you’ll let that still small voice of God’s spirit come through. Now loved ones, some of you have gone through agonies on the boy and girl friendships just because of this, you know it. It’s the prayer that Moody says somebody prayed, “Lord, will you give me Rachel as my wife? I’m going to have her whether you give me to her or not.” Now do you see it cannot be that way? There has to come a death to that girl of yours, or that boy of yours. It has to come to the point where you say, “Father I am willing not to be married or to be married as you wish. I am willing for it to be this person or any other person.” And then loved ones, the voice of God begins to come through and he just comes through so beautifully that you know it’s him. You have no doubt. And you can pray that prayer up to him and know that it’s going to be answered. But brothers and sisters if you were to ask me this morning, “What more than anything else prevents us praying prevailing prayers?” Loved ones, it’s our own wishes, our own desires. We’re always offering up to God our own desires. We’re always in the midst of the earthquake, the wind, and the fire. We’re never at that point of neutrality and that’s where the Father wants us to be. He wants us in that point of neutrality where we’re gentle, we move easily in his hands. We move this way or that way just as he wishes and then his voice begins to be heard within us. And so really, the key to prevailing prayer is looking to God and believing that he has an answer. Then it’s believing that he is going to show forth his own nature in that answer. Then it’s dying to your own desires for the situation so that you can at last hear his voice. After that it’s walking in absolute faith that God is answering your prayer. You walk in absolute faith never considering that he might not answer. You walk in absolute faith and confidence that he is answering. Now brothers and sisters it is possible to walk in that kind of prayer. Believe me. I walked in that other stuff and it’s miserable. You’re just walking like the non-Christian, offering up 10 prayers and if he answers one, then we say God answers prayer. Loved ones, God doesn’t want us to play games like that. He wants us to take him seriously and to begin to get from him what he wants for a situation. Now brothers and sisters I’d ask you this morning, would you do that? Would you choose some situation that you’re in, some need that you have or somebody else has this morning, and would you begin to approach God in that spirit? The first thing would be to say, “Father, what is your plan for the situation? What do you want?” And maybe you begin to come up against the view that you don’t really want what he wants. Do you see that that’s where you have to wrestle like Jacob? You have to wrestle with that and allow the Holy Spirit to mold you and melt you until you want what God wants. Only then will you begin to enter into this prevailing prayer. Do you see we can pray for rain and it’ll rain? We can pray that the rain will stop and it will stop. God is still doing that kind of thing. And brothers and sisters, I would share with those of you who are interested in going out with Christian Corps to transform this world for Jesus, going out among those 2.5 billion who do not know him, do you see we’ll need those kinds of prayers to do that? We’ll need a God who can stop rain, and can stop riots. You can enter into this kind of prayer. It is God’s will for you. So I pray that he’ll help you this coming week because I think it’s ridiculous for us to be wandering around as milk and water Christians; sometimes he answers sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he says yes, sometimes he says no. No, the Father always answers the prayer or explains what he wants you to pray for. He doesn’t leave you in ignorance and in uncertainty. I pray that you’ll experience some of it this week. Let us pray. Father we know that it is bringing you no glory for us to be sending up these continual lists of requests and counting it better than average if you answer two out of three. Father we know this is not the way you want us to deal with you. Lord God, we commit ourselves today to beginning to pray prevailing prayers, to begin looking to you Father and believing you have an answer for the situation. And then looking to you again and trusting you to show us what part of your nature you want to reveal so that we may approach you on the basis of that nature. Then Lord, we trust you to give us the wisdom and the insight to die to all our own wishes for each situation so that we can hear your still small voice bringing your will to us and dwell in that point of neutrality. Then Father, will you give us grace to begin to walk in absolute faith that the prayer will be answered knowing that it was a prayer that came from you at the very beginning. So Lord, we commit ourselves to you for a good week lived in your world subduing the world in your way by the power of the Holy Spirit through prayers that prevail and that are recognized and heard by you. We commit ourselves to you for this purpose. In Jesus’ name amen.

Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Imagine one of those cold mornings and the theater (where church is held) is locked when you arrive, so we’re all standing outside freezing. Then somebody comes and opens the door. But, you all stand there freezing and saying, “That’s great, the door is open. Isn’t it great the door is open? We could go in if we wanted to and it’s great the door is open.” Now, an hour afterward you’re all standing out there freezing and saying, “It’s great the door is open we could go in if we wanted to.” Now that’s the kind of irrational situation many of us have got into with God. Many of you have come Sunday after Sunday and you know fine well that the door is wide open and that God really does love you. He is your Father, and because of Jesus he will give you anything you want or anything you need in your life. And yet, you have a tendency to be standing outside freezing, lacking all kinds of things and saying, “Oh it’s great that God’s my Father. God’s my Father, he’ll give me anything I want, he’ll help me, he’ll do whatever I want him to do in my life.” Yet you’re standing out there and not approaching him at all. Now brothers and sisters that isn’t what God wants. God wants you to live by the power of the Holy Spirit that flows from the tree of life. He wants you to have the power of the Holy Spirit bringing about results in your life that you cannot bring about yourselves. And when you don’t use that power then your lives become very slow, cumbersome, clumsy, frustrating and very dull. And that’s the reason so many of our lives move so slowly. We are trying to bring about things in our lives that only the power of God’s Holy Spirit can bring about as a result of our praying to him. One of the big problems with many of us is that we really don’t know too much about prayer and it’s prayer that makes all these things real. Brothers and sisters do you see I could explain all the beauties of the abundant life in Jesus Sunday after Sunday until all of us die and you wouldn’t experience any of them unless you approach God yourself for them in prayer. Loved ones, it’s prayer that makes it all real to you. It doesn’t matter what you do, or what you hear, or what you study, or what you read, or how hard you try. If you never approach God in prayer yourself God will never make any of those things real in your life. Now loved ones, you know that we are a counseling mad generation, aren’t we? We’ll go to anybody for counsel. We’ll go to anyone but we will not go to the person who made us and who knows what the whole problem is anyways. So many of us spend a great deal of time frustrated. We spend hours in midnight conversations because we do not approach God in prayer. Now loved ones, that’s the way God wants us to live. He wants us to live in a relationship of prayer with him so that his Spirit can be given to us in our lives and can bring about changes in our world. Brothers and sisters you can protest like mad about the bombing (in Vietnam). I’m with you that it’s a mess. All you can do is respect the man in the White House for standing up for some principle. And whether you understand the principle or not, at least he’s standing up for the principle of standing for principles. And that’s something right now. I mean, the people at the other end of the fulcrum are just as bad. They’re saying, “No, no it doesn’t matter don’t bother about anything, let’s just get out for peace sake.” Well, that’s just as wrong as going the other direction. I’m as baffled as you are by what exactly we’re doing, but brothers and sisters it is no answer for us to just protest about that. Now, I praise God that he has delivered us from marching up and down negatively protesting against things. But do you see what God wants to do is have a group of his children in a place like Vietnam praying the power of the Holy Spirit through their lives so that Vietnamese North and South can see the beauty of a life that is lived in God. That is the only way peace can come to a place. Everything else is superficial. Until we get onto God’s method of bringing the world into submission to his will we’ll continue to use our own methods. Loved ones don’t knock the B52s (bombs) because your lives are filled with B52s. Our lives are filled with B52s, our rooms are filled with B52s, we have our B52 method to bring about what we want in our life and it isn’t God’s way. God’s way is through prayer. Now here’s an example of it. Here’s a big problem. Moses had a mass of people behind him and suddenly found himself confronted with this problem in Exodus 15:22-23. You remember the Israelites had just come out of Egypt — over the Red Sea and into the wilderness of Sinai. Exodus15:22-23 – “Then Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur; they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter.” So there he was with men, woman and children behind him and the only water that they could find was bitter, “Therefore it was named Marah.” And the people murmured against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ And he cried to the LORD,” —- that means he prayed, he went to God himself. “And he cried to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a tree, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.” Now that’s the way it works. You pray to God and God actually affects the situation in which you find yourself. Now, that is God’s will. Now I’m with you that there are times when you have to do something. There are times when you have to throw the tree into the water. There are times when we have to do what God tells us. But the power to effect the change in the situation is brought by God’s Spirit through prayer. And brothers and sisters I’ll push you on it, have we achieved very much by our own efforts in our society? Have we achieved much by our own efforts? I think you have to answer no. Anything that has been achieved in society has been achieved because hearts of people seem to have been changed in certain attitude to things as obviously wrong as slavery. Even our attitude to things that are obviously wrong socially, even those have been changed not by men moving masses of people but by some other spirit changing the hearts of people. Now loved ones that’s the way God wants us to work in our own lives. He wants us to work through the power of prayer releasing the Holy Spirit to work in our own situations. The reason your situations get more complicated is because you try to do it on your own. We decide, “Okay, what we need in our dorm is a sensitivity group,” and before you know it you’ve had the sensitivity group and everybody has shared everybody else’s sins. Then everybody else is gossiping about everybody else’s sins and the last state is worse than the first. Or, at home we can’t get on with our mom, we can’t get on with our dad, or our brother, or sister so we go in with our B52s and we decide, “We’ll sort this one out with all the psychology that I understand now through that first course in psychology at the University. I can deal with this situation.” And so we go right in there and make a mess. And then we don’t go home for another two quarters. Now brothers and sisters do you see that God’s way is releasing his Spirit of life through our prayer. And I read that most obvious example to you to show that this Spirit of God’s life achieves not only spiritual changes in people’s personalities but it affects the physical situation. It can deal to some extent with the pollution situation. Obviously, not while we’re continuing to sin and to pollute further but it alone can affect the physical situation. And what God wants us to do is to begin to deal with him through prayer. Now that’s really what it is. A lot of us have misconceptions about prayer. A lot of us think that prayer is a kind of auto suggestion. You auto suggest yourself into believing that the thing is going to come about and the sheer power of your auto suggestion affects some of the psychological laws of the universe and brings it about. Loved ones, it’s not auto suggestion. It isn’t a matter of psyching yourself up to believe that God could do for you what he did through Moses. It isn’t that at all. Prayer is a very logical thing that you do on the basis of the truth that you know about God. In other words, prayer is a rational thing. It’s based on empirical evidence that we have that there’s a God on the other side who can hear us. That’s what the Bible says. It says that before you approach God in prayer you must settle certain beliefs about God in your own head. If you look at it it’s in Hebrews 11:6. Prayer is not mysticism or auto suggestion. Prayer is an action that a person engages in on the basis of certain evidence that he has about God. Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” So if you say, “I’d like the power you’re talking about. I’d like to pray to God like that.” Brothers and sisters you can’t do it unless you do study the empirical historical evidence of the kind of person that God is that we have in this history book (the Bible). Unless you study the evidence of history and come to certain conclusions about God you cannot pray. If you say to me, “Well brother I don’t really believe there is a God.” Then loved ones you can’t pray. Prayer is not mysticism. Prayer is not uttering some thoughts up into darkness and thinking they’ll come back down in a meaningful way to you. Prayer is treating the person of God in a certain way because you have found in history he is that kind of person. So first of all you ought to settle what you believe about God. You really need to decide is there a God and if there is a God is he like Jesus? Is what is said in the Bible true or is it not true? Is Jesus real or is he not real? Are the documents behind the Bible reliable or are they not reliable? Did Jesus rise from the dead or did he not rise from the dead? You have to settle certain beliefs about God. Now when you settle those, then you’ve to approach God on the basis of the kind of person he has shown himself to be in the Bible. One of the best ways to begin a prayer is to look at a piece in the Bible such as a Psalm. The Psalms are good because they are prayers that other people prayed to God and they reveal the kind of person God is. Take a psalm and read it first. Then take one verse that talks about God. For example Psalm 103 — “Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who heals all thy diseases, who forgives all thy iniquities, who delivers thy life from destruction.” Now it’s good to take a few of those verses and memorize them. Then close your eyes, or keep your eyes open, but treat God as that person. Don’t go by feelings. If you say, “What do you do when you go to prayer? Do you try to feel God’s presence?” No. That’s irrelevant because that’s in the emotions. It’s not in the emotions that you communicate with the Creator it’s in the spirit by faith. So you approach God as the God who heals all diseases, and who forgives our iniquities. You go to God like that and you say to him, “Lord God, I know that this is the kind of person you are.” You treat him like that brothers and sisters. You know that before you would ever talk with Nixon (President of the U.S.) you would know the kind of person he is, and you’d know the kinds of things that he does. We haven’t the exact details of his breakfast the way we used to about LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson) but we have some details about Nixon and you know the kind of thing that he is interested in. And so you go to him and you treat him like that. Now that’s what prayer is, you close your eyes and you speak to the person whom you see delineated in the Bible. You treat him as a person who does forgive your iniquities and who does heal your diseases. Of course you don’t need to yell at him or shout at him. You don’t need to bargain with him because he’s a God that delivers your life from destruction. He’s a God who loves you, who restores your soul. And speak to him in the character you see designated in the Bible. Now, if you say to me, “Do you talk to him with your lips, or do you talk to him in your thoughts, or do you talk to him in your emotions?” Loved ones, honestly it really doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t even matter if you close your eyes. The big thing is to turn your eyes away from the world around you which you’ve been accustomed to communicating with all the time throughout your life. Turn your eyes or your senses away from that and turn to God, the God who is designated here. It doesn’t matter whether you speak out loud. Some of us speak aloud to God because it helps us to overcome the noise in the next room, or it helps us to overcome the music that we hear from the TV set. Some of us just think thoughts up to God. Some of us don’t think thoughts at all because we’ve got to the point where we can communicate with him just in our spirits. So there are levels of prayer loved ones and it’s not important which level you’re on because God will listen to you. If you start on some level just being honest with him he’ll deal with you on that level. Even if you just start praying the Lord’s Prayer to him, God will respect you for that. If you begin to read the lives of the Saints you begin to find that mental prayer deepens into spiritual prayer. Verbal prayer tends to be where we all start, then we go onto thought prayer where we think thoughts up to God, and then we go onto spiritual prayer. This is where we just have an inward sense with him in our spirits which doesn’t involve the psychological part of us at all. So that there can come a time when electrodes would measure nothing going on in the brain at all and a person could pray at that level. It is on that level you remember, that Coleridge said, “Prayer is the deepest function of which a human being is capable.” It’s not so important how you pray but that you look up to God. That’s the second thing, start by looking to God. Here’s one of the problems a lot of us have. We get down and say, “Lord, I’d like to talk to you about my home situation. It’s miserable Lord, as you know.” And you start outlining to God what he should do about the home situation. And as you outline all the details and all the gruesome facts about your home situation so your mind comes off God completely and gets on to the home situation and you finish the prayer convinced that nobody, not even God, could do anything about that home situation. So don’t pray about the problem. Don’t keep praying yourself deeper and deeper into your problems. Look up to God. Look up to God. Now if you tell me, “It’s hard brother. There doesn’t seem to be anything there.” Loved ones, when you haven’t been doing it for years, you haven’t done it throughout your whole life; it’s going to be hard at the beginning. It’s going to be hard to look up to someone whom you cannot see in spite of the fact that you obviously talk quite happily into a thing called a telephone and you can’t see anybody. You’re used to that but you haven’t been used to talking to this person (God) so it’s going to be hard at the beginning. The important thing is to get your eyes off yourselves and off your own problems. Look up to God and be interested in him. There’s a verse in the Bible that says you know that in Colossians 3:2. I say this loved ones, because a lot of us turn our prayer into a conversation with ourselves. We just turn it into an introspection exercise. We’re just looking into ourselves all the time instead of looking up in faith to God. Colossians 3:2, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” So God says, “Look up to me. Look at me.” Now that is faith, looking up to him. That is believing that he is there as he says he is in the Bible. That is what faith is. Now I think a lot of us are concerned about what we do after that. Well, it’s not important what you do as long as you’re honest. All kinds of things result when you really look at God. Some of us begin to want to just look at him and converse with him. Real prayer is just conversation with God. It’s just talking with the Creator. It doesn’t matter how you do it. It doesn’t matter what you’re saying or what you’re asking. It’s conversation with him so some of us will just look at him. When you’re with a girlfriend that you really love, often it’s just enough to look at each other. And when we do that with God it’s called adoration. That’s what many of the saints spend a great deal of their prayer time doing. As you get to know the person more and more it’s enough to just be with them and to love them. So maybe some people will just love him. Maybe you’ll want to thank him for some of the things that you’ve got and so you just thank him. But you do whatever the spirit inside you wants to do because God gives you the spirit to help you pray. You’ll find that if you begin this way by reading a piece of the Bible, memorizing a verse, and then looking up to the person who is there, (who is like the person in that verse), then the Spirit will begin to pray through you and will probably begin to make you want to thank God. Then maybe you’ll see some beauty of his and you’ll see how patient Jesus was. It will stab you to your heart that you’re not that patient. You’ve just been impatient with your roommate a few minutes before and you’ll want to confess that. So sometimes it’ll drive you to confessing. Sometimes it will drive you to asking him for something that you need. Sometimes it’ll drive you to asking for somebody else and interceding. But prayer is a natural thing brothers and sisters. You shouldn’t get all caught up with flowery words and with trying to do it right. Prayer is just honesty. It’s just an honest desire to God. Now I think I should stop at that point to allow you to ask any questions. And I think we need to talk more about it in on other Sundays. Are there any questions? That’s just beginning the surface but I feel a lot of us here have very little idea of how to pray. I’ll try to deal next day with things like unanswered prayer. But are there any questions on just that how to begin or how do you pray? Now, don’t sit there and say, “My questions is a stupid one.” No. Probably 20 other people are thinking the same question. QUESTION: Could you give any insight into what do you do when you find it hard to have faith in prayer? ANSWER: Normally brother we have difficulty holding on to faith that God will answer when we’re immersing ourselves more in the problem and the difficulty than we are in God. What I have found is that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I found that the more I read this book (the Bible) and thought of God as really being like that, the more my faith that he could do everything was built up in me. And so I think that’s one way. In other words, build up your faith in God rather than your concern for the circumstances. I think that’s one answer. I think another reason is that some of us are still trying to bring about the answer ourselves. We’re trying to mix our own methods with God’s method and so he pulls away our faith in that situation. Now if that isn’t answering your question will you push me? Wring the answer out of me if I don’t say it. QUESTION: How often should we ask God for something? ANSWER: I’ll try to deal with this in regard to unanswered prayer but it seems that many of us think God is deaf. “Lord, will you heal my mother? Will you hear my mother Lord? Lord, will you heal my mother? Lord, heal my mother.” We think the Father is a bit dumb and just can’t get the message the first time. It seems to me that’s repetition, empty repetition. It seems to me we should approach God as we would approach an ordinary person. If I ask Pete to do something and he didn’t do it the first time I wouldn’t keep saying, “Pete, will you do it, will you do it?” I’d eventually say, “Pete, why will you not do this? Is there some reason why you won’t do it?” And it seems to me loved ones we need to go to God that way. “Father, why are you not doing this?” Then God will have the opportunity to show us something in our own lives that is preventing him answering or some reason in his own plan for us or for the person involved that prevents him answering. Or, he will show us some condition that we need to fulfill for him to answer the prayer. But it seems that’s the approach. I have a lot of references here that we just haven’t time for this morning. But that’s the approach that the men used in the Old and New Testament. We shouldn’t just keep trying to brain wash God or bore him into answering. I really think we insult the Father. I think we insult our God. We treat him like a slot machine. God is a dear person who understands you and who loves you. He really knows you and believe it or not can carry on a sensible conversation with you. That may be amazing to you because you’re so brilliant, but he can. You can see how we’ve got such a terrible idea of God and such a miserable idea of prayer, haven’t we? We thought of something and then just repeat it and repeat it. No, you converse with a dear person who knows you and loves you. QUESTION: Can you ask for something specific or just general guidance? ANSWER: I will try to deal with this next Sunday in greater detail, but yes God says, “Ask and it shall be given you.” The important point is that God knows what you need at certain times and yet he can’t bring them about unless you ask him. So it’s very important to ask God, “Lord, what do you want for my life? What do you want for my family?” As the Holy Spirit brings about certain petitions within us then we should ask. And If there’s a brother and sister sitting here saying, “Well, I haven’t gotten to that level of surrender.” Well loved ones, probably first of all you need to get to it but secondly then ask for what is on your heart. When God doesn’t answer ask him, “Father, I know you’re listening to me. Will you either answer my prayer or change my prayer?” I think that’s the way to deal with it. I have asked for many definite things and God has given them. Other times I have asked for things and he has not. He did not give me a BSA250 (a type of motorcycle) when I asked for it. I was nine years old. But still, I had my mind set on it. So it seems that we should ask but it’s as God reveals to us what we need. Don’t just sit there doing nothing. Ask for something rather than sitting in a vacuum. God wants to talk to you. God wants to communicate. That’s the whole reason for all that we’re preaching. That’s the whole reason for the Bible. It’s the whole reason for everything, that you would get in touch with the one who made you. I could take one more question. QUESTION: How do you know when you’re asking God for something that you’re not trying to tell God what he should do? ANSWER: That’s where I think the Holy Spirit comes in. Paul says, “The Holy Spirit will help us in our infirmities because we do not know how to pray as we ought and he will pray within us with sighs that are too deep for words.” It seems that the Holy Spirit will let us know if we really are submissive to him, when we’re trying to push God and when we’re trying to express what the Holy Spirit is saying. I could give you an example that some of the brothers and sisters have already heard. My mom was dying of cancer in Ireland and I was here in the states. At that time I was in a difficult time financially and didn’t have the money to fly across to Ireland. I didn’t really know what to do. They said she would die before Christmas and I got the word in November. I began to pray for her that she would be healed. I would have said that I prayed with strong spiritual groans and urgings that she would be healed. But, she just got worse. Then God gave me the money to fly. I flew back on one of those excursion fares for two weeks and stayed with her but she got worse and worse. I came back to the states and I prayed for her that night. At one o’clock in the morning there seemed to be – brother it was incredible, there seemed to be a voice inside me that said, “Will you die to her as your mother? Will you stop asking for her to be healed so that you may be able to make up to her for things that you failed to do in during your past life or so that you’ll have her as a friend or so that you won’t be lonely and you won’t be without her? Will you die to her as your mother and pray for her as my child, as your sister in Christ?” I changed my prayers and prayed that way. There came a different sense inside me, a conviction that said, “I have borne her sicknesses and carried her pains.” My mother was healed. It was a different voice; it seemed to be the Holy Spirit praying the prayer of faith through me when I gave up praying my own prayer for my own reasons. So it seems to me the answer is the Holy Spirit will show you whether your prayer is God’s prayer for you or your own.

Unanswered Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill This is the story of Jericho and I used to wonder did God think we were really dumb to simply keep repeating the thing. Then I realized when I started to try and pray myself that I was really dumb and I didn’t understand how much God wanted to do things by his own power. Probably most of us would have been under the walls with dynamite trying to help ourselves. And it’s just a good teaching of how God wants to do things through his power and by us obeying him — doing things that are apparently irrelevant like walking around city walls seven times. It seems as if that would have nothing to do with the walls falling and yet God wants us to obey what he tells us to do and he will bring the walls down in his own way. So it’s really a good teaching on that. It’s Joshua 6:1-8 and I’ll try to choose versus that will lead us quickly through it. Josh 6:1-9 – Now Jericho was shut up from within and from without because of the people of Israel; none went out, and none came in. And the LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have given into your hand Jericho, with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; and on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. And when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up every man straight before him.” So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the Ark of the Covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD.” And he said to the people, “Go forward; march around the city, and let the armed men pass on before the ark of the LORD.” And as Joshua had commanded the people, the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the LORD went forward, blowing the trumpets, with the ark of the covenant of the LORD following them. And then Joshua 6:15-16; on the seventh day they rose early at the dawn of day, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times: it was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And then Joshua 6:20; so the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And we have the archeological evidence that those walls fell down outwards, not inwards as in a siege. We have actual photographs of it even at this time. And God can help us do the same kind of thing in our lives. Amen. If you have suffered through Hamlet you know that there are six soliloquies and the most famous one you know, “To be or not to be that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.” And it’s famous because it expresses the whole problem of the play. A man of action is required and Hamlet is in fact, a man of thought and meditation. That’s why presumably Shakespeare is able to speak to so many of us because we often find ourselves in places where a man or woman of action is required and we want to just think, and think, and think until eventually the ghost of our father comes up and forces us to some action which is so rash that it brings about nothing but chaos. Now that is so often the situation with us academics in regard to God. So often we spend our days thinking, thinking, thinking, considering where Metternich was right or where Garibaldi was wrong, or deciding where Roosevelt was right or where he was wrong and we spend all our days thinking and meditating upon what other people have done. Or, we think perhaps from time-to-time about what we may do when we get out into the great big world ourselves. We tend unfortunately, to carry that whole attitude over to Sunday. It’s very easy for you to listen to me saying again, and again, “Look, God is good. He loves you and will give you anything that you really need and that is really good for your life.” And it’s easy for you to sit there and say, “Yes, I believe God is good and I believe he is generous. I believe he’s friendly. I believe it. I believe it.” But you never try him out for yourself. It’s very easy for us to do that. It’s very easy for us all to be involved here in a consideration of the situation such as Hamlet gave and think, “Well maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not true,” but never actually tasting and seeing that the Lord, your God is good. That’s why I thought it would be good to spend at least two Sunday mornings talking about prayer because prayer is the method by which you taste and see that God really is your Father, that he really is good, he really will give you things, and he really will do things in your life. And if you never engage in prayer you’re never going to find that out. You’re always going to be in the position of the guru meditating on the possibility, thinking about it and saying, “Perhaps it’s true,” but never knowing for yourself that it is true. Now loved ones, the way to get into touch with God’s reality is through prayer and sooner or later you have to pray if any of what we say these Sundays is going to become real for you. That’s why last Sunday we talked about prayer and I tried to show you that it really is a power by which God brings about physical changes as well as spiritual changes. For instance, look at Luke 1:13. You remember that Elizabeth had no child and her husband Zechariah prayed. You remember it says in Luke 1:12 that “Zechariah was troubled”. This is Luke 1:12, “And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.’” And that actually happened. In other words, God through prayer was able to affect what was going on inside of Elizabeth’s body and was able to affect whatever the problem was between her and Zechariah and was able actually to bring about a real human being. So through prayer God was able to affect a physical change. Now, he’s able to affect psychological changes also. If you look at Acts 4:31 it’s perhaps more the kind of position (in these overpopulated days) that we face rather than Zechariah’s problem. It’s the whole problem of fear and loneliness. The disciples felt they were being opposed on every side, they felt there was no hope for them. They were timid and had locked themselves in the upper room but they began to pray. Acts 4:28-31; And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thou stretchest out thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of thy holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness. And God is able to bring about confidence in the midst of fear and timidity. He’s able to bring about a freedom from worry in the midst of worry. Now brothers and sisters, God wants to change the world through releasing his power, his Holy Spirit, to do this kind of thing in response to our prayers. That’s it. That’s really God’s plan. God gets no glory from you dynamiting the walls of Jericho yourself. Do you see that? But then you just go set up a shop selling dynamite. “Okay, you want any walls dynamited? I have dynamite.” But you become the important person in the whole business. God does not want to achieve things in the world through you doing it yourself. He wants to bring it about through the power of his own Holy Spirit in your life and through your life. God wants to bring the world back under his control through our prayers. The problem is not Brezhnev or Moa Zedong. The problem is not the political system. It’s not about the miserable state of the democrats. Those aren’t the problems. The problems are that we have never had any contact with God in real prayer that is answered. Therefore God is not able to release the spirit of his life into our lives and into the life of the world. Now many of you may say, “Well, it sounds good. I’ve tried it. I’ve prayed for lots and lots of things and have never got them answered. And so what do you do with the whole problem of unanswered prayer? How do you answer that?” Well first by saying that there is no such thing. There’s no such thing as unanswered prayer. God can answer, and I’ll explain in a moment. So don’t get too cynical right off. God can answer yes, or he can answer no, or he can answer wait, and you can know which he’s answered. You don’t just sit there and say, “No answer, he must be saying wait.” No, God can let you know through his Spirit how he’s answering but there’s no such thing as unanswered prayer. There are unanswered prayers when you treasure God’s gifts above God. Then your life is filled with unanswered prayers. As long as you treasure God’s gifts more than you treasure God himself then God will flood you with unanswered prayers. But as soon as you begin to treasure the giver more than the gifts then you will begin to find your prayers being answered in a flood. Now I really mean that. I’ve found the difference in my own life. I’ve sat like many of you and heard them talk about answered prayers and I couldn’t put my finger on one that had been answered. Then I began to get things right with myself and God and he began to answer my prayers. So God answers prayers on the basis of certain principles. What are the principles? Well 1 John 5:14-15, “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” Now do you see the principle stated in verse 14? “This is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” God has a certain will for each one of us and for each one of our situations. God doesn’t ask you to work it all out by yourself. We have a tendency to say, “Well now Lord, about Vietnam you could perhaps abolish the demilitarized zone, or you could influence Chu Van Tan that he’d resign or retire in France, or you could influence the North Vietnamese.” And we have a tendency to suggest to God about half a dozen alternatives and say, “Okay, would you like to pick which one you want?” Now loved ones do you see God is a good and a wise Father and he has a purpose for every situation in which you and I find ourselves? If you’re sick God has a certain will in that situation. If you’re facing an impossible examination God has a certain will in that impossible situation. If you have a difficult family situation God has a certain will for that situation. And if you ask according to his will then he is able to bring that about. Now if you say to me, “Do you mean he can’t bring it about unless I ask?” That’s right. If God brought about his will apart from our wills then we would be simply robots. Do you see that? If he looked at a difficult family situation that you had and cured it without you asking or knowing what he was doing he would be treating you as a robot. He would just be running around the world fixing things as he thought best. But God will not act apart from your will and mine. That’s why we pray dear ones. You may say, “If God has a certain will for every situation in my life why do I pray?” Because the bible says God knows what you need before you ask. Well, you pray because he cannot act unless you ask him to. If he acts apart from your asking then he is acting as a deist God who acts apart and overrules people’s wills. So God has a certain will for every situation in your life but he can only act in that situation if you will discover that will of his and ask him to act. Now you find the teaching of that in case some of you haven’t heard it before, in Ezekiel 36:37. The Jews had just passed through an experience that reduced their numbers tremendously through exile and the nation obviously needed to be increased again if it were to continue to survive. Ezekiel 36:37 and this is God speaking, “Thus says the Lord GOD: this also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” Now do you see God says, “I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” Now if he knew that the men needed to be increased why didn’t he just do it? And the reason is that God cannot act against his own will but he will not act apart from your will. Now what is God’s will? Because a lot of us have a tendency to think, “Well, I’ll pray whatever prayer I think is good and then I’ll ask if it be your will.” Now loved ones, do you see if you pray that way it’s impossible to pray in faith? You can see that, “Lord, I’d like you to make Susan fall in love with me if it’s your will.” Now he probably will have difficulty making Susan fall in love with you anyway but if you ask, “If it’s his will,” then you’re not asking with nothing wavering. And that’s what Jesus says, “If you want a prayer answered you have to ask in absolute faith, nothing wavering, for anyone who hesitates will get nothing from God.” Now you cannot pray without hesitation if you add to the end of your prayers, “If it be according to your will.” So do you see our problem now? God can only answer prayer that is according to his will but how do you ask according to his will? Well, you find out what his will is. That’s your first job in every situation, to find out what God’s will is in that situation. And God has three great principles really that he uses in answering our prayers. The first great principle is his primary purpose for us and that’s fellowship. Now you see that in 1 John 1:3. That’s the first principle that God uses when you study the answered prayers in the Bible. 1 John 1:3, “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” God wants most of all to have fellowship with us and that’s the primary purpose of prayer. Often he will hold back from answering a prayer to draw you closer to himself. Now really, God does that. You may think it’s unfair, but God knows what is the best that you can possibly have. He knows that his fellowship and the reality of his person in your life are more precious to you than all the answers and all the money in the world. And so he will often hold back an answer to a prayer to draw you closer to himself. It’s like you probably have done with some little child. You wanted him to sit on your knee. He asked you for something and you said, “Okay, come over here.” Then when he came right over you popped him on your knee and you gave it to him. Now the Father is like that. The Father wants fellowship with you more than anything else. So often he will hold back on an answer to a prayer to draw you nearer to himself. If he gave you the answer right away you would go off and treat him as a slot machine that gave answers to prayers. So that’s the first principle that God uses, he wants fellowship with you and me. The second principle is that he wants the world to see him through you and the world to get to know himself through you. You find that in John 17 and Jesus states it very plainly. John 17:25-26, God’s first great desire is to fellowship with us and then the second desire is that the world may actually see him and get to know him through us. John 17:25, “O righteous Father,” Jesus is praying to God, “The world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Now God will answer our prayers on the basis of that principle, that through our characters and through our actions he may make himself more known to the world. Now dear ones, at times that will come about through him healing you of cancer. But at times that will come about through him giving you grace to live in the midst of the pain and have absolute peace and confidence. At times the world will get to know God through you best by him giving you success in the examination. At times your roommate will get to know God better by you experiencing failure in the examination. But God governs the answers to your prayers on the basis of that principle. He wants to make himself known to the rest of the people in the world through you and through your actions. That’s why loved ones God says so often, “My hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor my ears heavy that they cannot hear, but your iniquities have hidden my face far from you.” Often God will not answer because you have some blatant disobedience in your life that is obvious to all your friends and relatives. That is in no way revealing God to them and God will not move on an answer to pray until you deal with that situation in your character. Now again on the positive side, often God will only answer when you discover what part of himself he wants to reveal to the world. That’s a difficult principle so I’ll repeat it. Often God only answers your prayer when you discover what part of his nature he wants to reveal to the world through that situation. Here’s an example. You remember that Abraham had a nephew called Lot who was in Sodom and Gomorrah. And Abraham discovered from God in prayer that God was determined to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of the sin in those cities. Abraham was faced with the problem of how to pray for his relative Lot. Now the tragedy with most of us is we would have reckoned that God was just a little slow on the uptake. We would have kept repeating, “Lord, don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Lord, don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Please, don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.” Now that isn’t the way to pray. The way to pray is to find out from the Father, “Lord, what part of yourself do you want to reveal in answering the situation? What part of your own nature do you want to reveal in answering the situation?” And here’s how Abraham discovered it. He knew the part of God’s nature through prayer that is outlined in Hebrews 1:9. Maybe you should look at it and then I can show you how it was applied in the prayer for Sodom and Gomorrah. You can only discover this in conversation with God. “What part of your nature Father, do you want to reveal?” Hebrews 1:9, “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.” And Abraham realized in prayer that’s the part of God’s nature that he wants to show forth. He loves righteousness and he hates lawlessness. And then Abraham began to approach God on the basis of his own nature. Look at Genesis 18 and you’ll see what we often think of as virtually impertinent prayers. They are so bold, so outright and brazen. You can see how confidently you can approach God once you discover the part of his nature he wants to reveal. Genesis 18:23, “Then Abraham drew near, and said, ‘Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?” Do you see what he said? He said, “Lord you are a God that loves righteousness and hates lawlessness, are you going to destroy the righteous people with the lawless people?” So he approached God on the basis of his own nature and he appealed to God on behalf of that nature. Now brothers and sisters, God loves to be taken seriously. God wants you and me to treat him seriously. He wants us to treat him as a real person, one who has real desires, real wishes, and real preferences. You’ll see how much God puts up with for the sake of that. I would have thought God would have struck Abraham dead long before he got to the end of this prayer. Wait until you hear, “Then Abraham drew near, and said, ‘Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?’ Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee.” You see he appealing on the basis of God’s nature. “Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Brothers and sisters, God loves you to come that way to him. He wants you to take him seriously, he wants you to take his character seriously and appeal to him on the basis of it. We tend to think that is a ridiculous rebellious prayer. It isn’t. God loves you to take him seriously. And then Verse 26, “And the LORD said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.’” And then I don’t know how this man had the courage but, “Abraham answered, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five,” he was a subtle businessman, “Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Wilt thou destroy the whole city for lack of five?’ And he said, ‘I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.’ Again he spoke to God, and said, ‘Suppose forty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of forty I will not do it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.’ He answered, ‘I will not do it, if I find thirty there.’ He said, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’” It wasn’t the numbers, it was the principle involved. Now brothers and sisters God will answer you as a real person. God will deal with you as a real person if you’ll only start dealing with him as a real person and stop treating him as some kind of impersonal slot machine. The Father is good and kind and there is reason to the way he answers our prayers. It is something you can know. You can know when he’s answering a prayer. But it depends on you taking seriously his will which is to fellowship with us and to let the world see him through us and through our actions. Now dear ones, maybe we’ll have two or three minutes for questions. Question: How do you explain God’s sustaining grace? Answer: You know there are two graces that God makes available; redeeming grace to bring us to Jesus and then preserving grace. Now preserving grace is that power of the Holy Spirit by which he holds all the atoms and all the nuclei together. He holds the whole world in place and keeps it regular in its orbits, and keeps the sun rising. And God stated that principle clearly when he said, “He makes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” He has promised that harvest will not fail throughout the life of mankind on the earth. He has promised that that preserving grace of his will be available whether we pray for it or not. Preserving grace continues to be activated whether we pray or not. It keeps the breath in our bodies, and it keeps us living. He has promised that it will be available whether we ask or not. He expects us to thank him for it, but whether we ask him for it or not it will be available. But it’s redeeming grace, the grace that brings us to himself and that makes available the healing properties of Jesus to our bodies and our spirits, that will only become available if we pray. So I’d make a distinction brother between the preserving grace of God and the redeeming grace of God. The redeeming grace comes only when we ask. The preserving grace is available apart from our will. Question: If you’re praying for guidance and you seem to get a definite answer but things don’t seem to be working out that way, what do you do? There are two possibilities. First of all, you may not have got guidance but because your own wishes may have been strong in your mind that’s what impressed itself upon you. So first of all, God is good in that he never lets you go astray in guidance. He will ensure even by the very circumstances that you go his way if you really ask for it. So first of all there’s the possibility that you didn’t get the right guidance and God is simply showing you that. But secondly brother, it is important what you’re pointing to. You must be prepared to walk in faith not by sight and to walk often against a storm of obstacles. Often God will ask you to walk on in faith. That’s another principle of prayer that we didn’t really have time to deal with. You need to walk in faith that your prayer will be answered and to walk expecting it to be answered. There’s no point in you praying for a good day, praying that there’ll be no rain and then going out with the umbrella in your hand. You have gone out with no umbrella in your hand believing that God is going to keep the rain away. So it is important to be prepared to walk in faith. I think it is important too brother to be able to have the spiritual insight to see where the difficulties are concerning God’s guidance to you and where there are simply a few obstacles on the way. There is no question; there will be an overall flow to God’s will. It won’t all be easy but there’ll be an overall flow to it. We could tell you that we know we should produce decoupage in Fish Enterprises but oh we have had incredible trouble with our sanding machine and the adhesive that we use. So there are some obstacles always on the way to God’s will but there is a general flow with it. Question: How do you know whether it is or isn’t God’s will? If you’re bent on looking at the circumstances, comparing the ten obstacles to the five favorable circumstances then you’re lost. You’re playing a mathematical game and you’re lost if you’re trying to decide that way. It has to be what Jesus said, “My sheep know my voice.” It has to be a going back to God with a gentle spirit saying, “Father, if this isn’t your will, will you convince me inside that it isn’t?” The guidance should come inside in the intuition of your spirit and you should stay with God until he confirms or denies that guidance. I would have walked both ways. I would have walked at times through a mass of opposing circumstances and at other times walked with very favorable circumstances. And both the situations were God’s will. Question: What does it mean to wait on God? At times I’ve got down and tried to pray to God and at other times I’ve felt maybe it was just right to say nothing. Answer: It’s very important to see that waiting on God is an act of adoring him. It’s an act of thinking of him, an act of loving of him, and worshiping him. It has nothing to do with the passive meditation that the gurus or the spiritualist use to open themselves to evil spirits. No, waiting on God is always an active cooperation of the mind, the emotions, and the sprit in worshiping and loving God. So brother it’s always an active thing but it is a waiting on him in a sense of conversing with him until he lets you know what his will is in a certain situation. And that’s why all the old saints that you read about spent so much time in adoration of God, in just looking at him. It is a bit like you do with your friend, “Would you really like to go to that movie?” And you just have to look at her face and you can tell. The little fellow looks up at the face of the father to see if the father really wants to do that or not. Now, it’s like that you look up into the face of the Father. Why? Because God said, “I will guide you with my eye.” See, “I will guide you with my eye. You’ll see my eye moving and you’ll know which way I want you to move.” That’s why it’s necessary to spend time actively loving God and looking at him. How to Pray by Torrey is a good book. Also, Power Through Prayer by E.M. Bounds is the best value in Christian publishing. It’s a great book that will really encourage you in praying a little longer than five minutes.

Exhortation to a Deeper Life of Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill I really think Jesus is telling me to just lead us in a few thoughts and then into prayer. Next Sunday I’ll speak on the spiritual man. Will you look at Ephesians 6:18? That is the verse I felt I should share on and then we should worship the Father. Ephesians 6:18, “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” That’s the reason Jesus, who was closer to God than anyone else, got up a great while before day and went into the mountain and prayed. And he would often pray all night. That’s because the only way you can touch God is by praying to him yourself. I just want to share briefly tonight that it’s very easy for everything to go dead on you if you personally do not have a daily time of prayer. That sounds a bit like some mystical stuff but that’s the source of all deadness in your life. Either that or known disobedience. If you don’t have a set time of prayer then this teaching that goes out to you on Sunday evening is just poison to you. I’m going to stop right there. If I were to ask you to stand up this moment and say honestly when you pray and how long you pray, how would you answer? And I don’t mean your best resolutions, or your most ideal plan that you’d like to fulfill. I don’t mean this kind of answer, “Well, I’m planning to spend an hour each morning in prayer and I’ve been planning that for five years now.” Do you see that all the teaching, all the spiritual teaching in the world is just poison and death to you unless you’re touching God yourself? And eventually of course the whole body becomes moribund. The whole body becomes poisoned with death if it has a great many people who are seeking knowledge, knowledge, and who think they can get into the baptism of the spirit by understanding it better. Do you see that you can receive the baptism of the spirit without understanding anything, but just by wanting Jesus and hungering for him? You don’t need to know all the things in these diagrams. If you just hunger for Jesus and want him above everything else, enough to get up at five o’clock, or four o’clock, or six o’clock, or whatever time will give you that quiet twilight zone along with God. I mean, that’s what you need. If the house wakens up at 6:30 you need to get up at six. If the house wakens up at seven, you can afford to get up at 6:30. If the house wakens up at six, you’ve to get up at 5:30. You have to get that time when there’s quietness and when you and God can be alone, leisurely alone not pushing or rushing. God will not yield to your deadline loved ones. Those rushed prayers may as well not be said. Those prayers where you get down and give it a 15 minute burst are no use. God does not yield his secrets to those who demand that he fits into their schedule. He yields his secrets to a man or woman who is prepared to be sufficiently disciplined to set their alarm for a certain time in the morning and get up at that time. In order to do that you need to go to bed sufficiently early the night before. Don’t you see it yourself? If you were in love with a girl and you didn’t have enough discipline to arrange your schedule so that you could meet her at the time you said each night, then the girl would justifiably doubt if you really loved her. Now God is just a dear, plain, straight thinking person. He judges your love and mine by our plain keeping of a promise to meet him each morning. Now if you say to me, “Well is it alright in the evening?” Yes, except that many of us have found when we’ve pushed it to 10:30, or 10:45, or 11 o’clock at night we’re worn out and we’re not giving God our best time. If I asked you how many of you are baptized with the Holy Spirit I know a lot of you would say, “I don’t know.” And a lot of you would say, “No.” And some of you would say, “Yes, I am.” Now let me push you a little on it. Don’t you see that it’s a shame that that should be the kind of answer you give because you know that we preach about the Holy Spirit? We’ve preached now for three years. We’ve had seminars on it and we’ve read books on it. Loved ones, the truth is there’s only one who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and that’s Jesus. And he’ll do it when you’re prepared to give him enough time for him to get to the bottom of your heart. But you know there are half a dozen things in the back of your mind that you intend to surrender. There are a half a dozen things of obedience that you intend to enter into but you’re always intending. And all the intentions bring nothing from the Father and you cannot bring Christ down. You can only allow Christ to baptize you with his Holy Spirit and raise you up into himself. But how many of us are still struggling with bad temper, anger, and envy? And we’re still saying, “I know pastor shares that you can be free. I’m getting free and I will become free sometime.” Or we keep on arguing, “Yes, some people get baptized with the Holy Spirit but they aren’t free of those.” Loved ones, God has shared a lot of light with us over the evenings and the mornings. Now is he not able to give us the life to walk in that light? Of course he is. I honestly think that what is most needed in our body in these days is more of us seeking God privately in prayer so that we would come to the service this evening prayed up and praising God. Then it seems to me that you would expect healings to take place as we worship the Father. In the past when Jesus has prompted me to speak like this it has been for a purpose and it’s hard to get me off my scheduled preparation because I was trying to stick with what I prepared. So it’s usually because Jesus is very anxious for some of us to come into line on some of these issues. So I push you again, is it getting a bit dry for you? Is it getting a bit cold and a bit dead for you? Well, it’s because you’re not seeking Jesus and you’re not seeking his mind. You’re seeking him too much for what you want from him. Maybe you do want a victorious life, maybe you do want power. Jesus wants you to seek him for himself, to seek his mind. Loved ones, you’ve only to look at the chaos in our own society let alone in the world to see that there’s tremendous need for a small body of people who would know the mind of God. Not people who would know what God’s mind was for Moses, or people who would know what God’s mind was for Paul or Peter. But, people who know the mind of God tonight for their life. How many of you wonder about what you’re going to do? Every time there’s vagueness or doubt in the guidance of God’s people, it’s because God’s people are not looking directly into God’s face because God said, “I will guide you with my eye.” So Hank is looking at me and when I look over he looks over because he sees my eye moving. And God says, “I’ll guide you with my eye.” That means you have to have your eyes on God’s face. You have to be looking at him in prayer. When we bow our heads you have to lay aside even the request that the brothers and sisters make for intercessory prayers and you have to get hold of God. And there’s no way to get hold of God but to hunger for God with all your heart. And if you say to me, “Is there some easy way that you know of?” There is none. In the darkness you cry out to the Father and you cling to him, you hunger for him, and you picture him there looking down upon you. You see Jesus at his right hand and you reach out to them with your whole spirit, mind, and emotions. You forget all the lectures on the difference between soul and spirit and you go for God with all your being. Loved ones, that’s the only way I know how to get through to God. It means you have to be desperately anxious to get through to God. It means if you’re satisfied with stones then you will not go for bread. If you’re satisfied with the crumbs that fall off the tables from other people’s revelation you will not go for the master who sits at the head of the table and breaks you his own personal body and gives it to you. Unless you get through to God personally it’s always going to be what the psychologists call a second hand experience. You’re going to listen to someone up here and you’re going to say, “Yes, I feel something like that.” You’ll try to stretch the imagination and exaggerate and make excuses for the difference between your personality compared with his and you’ll try somehow to believe yourself into thinking, “Yes, that’s what I’ve experienced.” But there’ll always be a great doubt at the bottom of your heart. Loved ones, the only way to get rid of it is to get hold of God yourself in private prayer. So I’d just push you on it. What is your daily prayer schedule like? Now you who say you’re seeking God with all your heart, you who feel that you’re a little deeper, a little more serious than most church goers or most Christians, you who even think that God has called you to full-time service, or has called you to go out with some missionary organization of some kind, how long do you spend with your Lord who gave his life for you each day? How long do you spend with the one to whom you’re looking forward to spending eternity with? You’re looking forward to spending eternity with this dear person. Now, how long are you with him each day? I honestly think that discovery in our own lives of Jesus face-to-face in our private prayers would begin to move towards revival. I think that if we just repented on that area alone that would be a bit move forward. And everything else stems from that. When you break before God as far as honesty about your own prayer life is concerned, then the Holy Spirit is able to breakthrough that hard crust of ice and get down to all the other things that are wrong. It might be good now if we would seek the Lord. It’s just an old fashioned saying that I’m not very fond of but it seems to express what you’re to do. Seek God, get hold of God, look to God, and look at God tonight in this time of quietness. Pray if the Holy Spirit guides you to. Confess if he guides you too. But don’t let’s be concerned with a good prayer meeting, or a good prayer time. Don’t let’s be concerned with a good praise time. Don’t be burdened with making it good. Kneel if you want to on that hard stone floor.

Prayer and Warfare Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill I would like to talk for about 25 minutes or half an hour about prayer and spiritual warfare. And I’d like to point out that one of the things we do before we’re baptized with the Holy Spirit is try to fight spiritual battles with the forces of our own personality. I’m preaching to myself tonight as I share this with you because I see how often God still has to pull me up as I try with even a joke to put something right that needs to be put right by prayer. And often, (more often before I was baptized with the Holy Spirit) I was tackling spiritual problems with the forces of my own personality. I would try and change my wife, or change someone else by either criticism or what I thought was a very gentle and kindly hint but what was just a big sledgehammer to the person listening. And so when you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you die to your own ability or power to change anything permanently inside people and you really do realize that. You begin to realize that by the force of your own personality you can only make temporary, superficial changes in people or in situations and so you determine from then on to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit. One effect that the baptism of the Holy Spirit has is that it gives you discernment into the real problem behind the apparent problems. And so when you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you get clarity of spiritual vision. You begin to deal with the spiritual realities rather than just the superficial symptoms. There is that verse in the New Testament that illustrates it in a symbolic way and it might be worth looking at it. It’s in Mark 8:23-28. Even though it’s just an illustration, I think it does bring the point home in a graphic way. Mark 8:23-25, Jesus you remember came to Beth-saida and they brought a blind man to him and then verse 23-24, “And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ And he looked up and said, ‘I see men; but they look like trees, walking.’” The first time Jesus lays his hands upon us in the new birth for forgiveness of our sins we do see something spiritually but we see them like trees walking. We don’t see them too clearly. We sense that there’s some reason why our mom is at critical as she is, we sense there’s some reason behind the boss being as sarcastic as he is, but we just sense it as trees walking. We don’t see it clearly. When Jesus gives us a second touch with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, “Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and saw everything clearly.” And it seems that the baptism of the Holy Spirit brings a very clear spiritual insight so that you really do see the issues. Of course, one of the results of that is it brings much more peace to yourself and to others because you don’t end up in those traumatic arguments or those traumatic emotional crises that you caused in the past with your words used wrongly. I believe that’s something we still learn after being baptized with the Holy Spirit but that’s certainly a big change that the baptism of the Holy Spirit brings. He enables you to see the battle for what it is, a spiritual battle. When we produced our first Dunamis Magazine/Newspaper we covered the back page with a picture that had come from the World Liberation Front in Berkley. It was a picture of a rural countryside with little church spires and farms. The greater part of the picture was the top two thirds and it was filled with all kinds of demons fighting against angels. And of course, the message was clear. Down below the thing seemed quiet and peaceful but up above there was a tremendous spiritual battle ranging. Now in the trouble that you have in the office, or the problems that we have in our homes, or the difficulties that we have in school, or with our roommates, or in our houses, that is the situation. What you see is only part of the battle. The real battle is going on in the heavenlies. You get a picture of that battle if you look at Daniel 10:10-14. “And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees.” (Obviously an angel), “And he said to me, ‘Oh Daniel, man greatly beloved, give heed to the words that I speak to you, and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you.’ While he was speaking this word to me, I stood up trembling. Then he said to me, ‘Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days.’” The angel is saying this, “The prince of the kingdom of Persia,” and obviously not a physical prince because this is an angel from the spiritual realm saying this so there must be in the spiritual realm a, “Prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, so I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia and came to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come.” So there is a glimpse into the spiritual battles that go on in the unseen world. Now when you enter into the baptism of the Holy Spirit a great sense of discernment inside comes to you brothers and sisters so that you see those battles more clearly. The Father is good and he allows us to see just the battles he believes we can take part in but he does allow you to see those battles. It is a great relief. For one thing, it is much more economic of your personality powers, much more economic of time, and it is much easier on other people because what we’re often involved in is fighting the wrong enemy. Satan loves to create a disturbance and then step out and let the two adversaries beat each other to death which is often what we end up doing in roommate situations, in house situations, and in work situations. When you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you have great spiritual insight into those things. If you ask me why we don’t have it before I’d say I’m not absolutely clear. Except that I think before you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you want to depend on your own power. You have a great sense of pride in your own ability to achieve things. You tend to want to look at the things that you can deal with and you tend to be too proud to depend on an invisible counselor like the Holy Spirit to show you those things. So undoubtedly the baptism of the Holy Spirit brings a great deal of power, light and insight. Now the warfare is fought with one chef weapon that is mentioned in Ephesians 6:18. I think we have looked at that verse before but it would be good to settle it in our hearts. This is the weapon, the chef weapon that we use in spiritual warfare Ephesians 6:18, “Pray at all times in the Spirit.” That’s it, “Pray at all times in the Spirit.” The reason is in Ephesians 6:12, “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Therefore pray at all times in the Spirit. How does praying in the Spirit differ from praying with the best intentions of our mind and the strongest feelings of empathy that we have in our emotions? It does so in several ways, but one of the chief is that you determine that God alone knows the particular enemy at that moment and God alone knows what you should pray for at that moment. That’s one of the chief differences of praying in the Spirit and praying with the mind or just the emotions. Praying with the mind and the emotions is like scattering shot all over the place. It’s like putting a shot gun cartridge into the gun and splaying the shot all over the place. You may hit something but you’re just having a go at a general area. Prayer in the Spirit is carefully aimed and directed prayer. It’s directed by the Father himself from a position where he can see everything. Now, prayer in the Spirit, or a prayer of faith, is a prayer that comes from God’s mind to your mind and you pray it. So you have three people in an argument in your office, and you’re always seeing it from your view point. You can’t see clearly which one has to be dealt with first by God but the Father can see into their hearts and their spirits. He knows you’ve to stand against Satan in a particular way. God gives you that knowledge, you take the stand and that’s the first step to the resolution. Now prayer of faith or praying in the Spirit is prayer that is directed by God. That’s why it’s so important to allow God to make the need known to you before you pray. So the chief weapon in spiritual warfare is prayer but it’s praying in the Spirit. And praying in the Spirit is prayer in which God makes the need known to you. That’s why prayer in the Old Testament involved a lot of listening. You get that plain teaching in Ecclesiastes 5:1-2, “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools.” So, to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools. Often we babble away to the Father immediately when we come into his presence and we’re just offering the sacrifice of fools. We’re often offering wishful thinking, prayers that we would like to see answered but that aren’t what he wants to do, so they aren’t going to be answered. Our job is to find out what God sees as the next move. “To offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few.” So praying in the Spirit involves a great deal of waiting before the Father, loving him, and looking into his mind. This is so that he can give you his mind on a certain issue so that you can pray in the Spirit. Pray according to the need that God has made known. It’s also not only praying according to a need that God makes known but praying according to the burden that God plants on your own intuitive spirit. In other words, it’s very difficult to pray in a way that is effective in spiritual warfare unless you have a burden in your own spirit. God will lay that burden upon you if you’ll only come before him and spend enough time with him. Often we do not pray as we should. It’s not because we do not know how to but because we have not a burden on our own spirits. We are simply deciding we better pray a little for this so we pray a little for that but not with a great sense of burden. Then we wonder how long should we pray? Well if we had the burden of course, that would tell us how long we should pray. If we had the burden in our spirits we wouldn’t need to be taught words to pray, we would pray because we had a burden. Now the heart of receiving a burden is back to the first step, spending time before the Father and determining, “Lord, I won’t make a move until you show me what you want me to fight for in this battle.” So he gives you a burden. You’ll find that teaching in Galatians 4:19, “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!” And that’s the indication that though all is well inside a person who is baptized with the Spirit yet they do know travail, laboring, and toiling spiritually. And Paul says he is in travail until Christ be formed. So often the reason why our prayers are not answered is they aren’t prayers God wants us to pray. They aren’t needs he has made known to us, and they aren’t burdens that he has planted on our own spirits. They’re just things that we have taken up and decided to pray for. All those prayers do is discourage us from ever praying again. That’s because we pray, we don’t get much sense of dealing with God over it, and we get no answer. The prayer just becomes a trial rather than a joy. But this other way, where you seek God, allow him to let the need be known to you, and receive a burden in your spirit, then you begin to pray with a sense of achieving something. Then of course it is possible to pray until the burden lifts. Unless you take this route you know nothing of burden lifting at all and you’re just baffled when somebody shares this kind of truth with you. If you say, “Well, what’s the burden lifting?” Of course if you haven’t had a burden in the first place you won’t know what it is to have it lifted. But you can pray through until the burden is firmly settled on Jesus and you sense that that is the end of your prayer. That’s another lesson that God teaches us, that we ought not to let the prayer exceed our burden. We ought not to pray longer than the burden is resting on our spirits. This would save us from a lot of depression and pain that we get ourselves into. I remember a brother or sister coming up and being concerned about praying for some spiritualist. It’s very important if you’re going to pray for a spiritualist, or if you’re going to pray for someone who is in trouble, that you pray for them as long as the spiritual burden is on your spirit. If you pray beyond that point you will begin to be involved in their problem and their trouble. It’s very easy to go out in naïve soulish philanthropy and say, “I must pray for those people they really need it.” If you pray without a burden, and especially if you pray beyond the burden that God has placed on you, then you are going beyond what the Holy Spirit wants and you’re going outside his protection. It’s a little like going beyond what the General of the Army tells you to do. He guarantees you protection up to that point but withdraws it after that point. It’s very easy, for instance, to empathize humanly with someone in trouble too much. Now you may think, “Oh no brother, that’s love.” But loved ones, it is possible to use your imagination to become too involved in someone’s difficulty, especially the difficulty of a loved one. It’s possible to get so involved in their difficulty and so borne down by their problem that you are of no value to them at all. In fact, you lose out yourself on it. So it’s vital only to intercede, or to pray, or to stand against Satan as long as the burden is on your spirit inside. Beyond that, the prayer itself becomes rather dead and you yourself begin to move into dangerous places. Now at the same time I think there’s another truth, it’s important that we don’t miss burdens through carelessness or through our own unnecessary burdens. That’s where it really is important to be baptized with the Spirit and to experience a real death to self. If you die to self then you’re no longer burdened down with all your own worries, and all your own troubles. And so your spirit is light and airy, able to receive someone else’s burden. The truth is that God has taken all our burdens upon himself. He has determined to look after our career, to look after our bank account, to look after our friends, to look after our bodies so that we can be free to bear other people’s burdens up to him. It’s so vital to be free of our own burdens and it’s vital to be careful that we don’t miss other people’s burdens through carelessness and through simply not paying attention to the Holy Spirit. Now, there is a verse in Psalms 37:5 that we need to walk in, in order to be in the position where we can receive burdens. Unless we do this with our own burdens we will never be able to be in the place where we can receive burdens from God himself. Psalms 37:5, “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.” It’s really important to learn that verse and commit your way to the Lord. Once you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you have signed on in Jesus’ service. Your job is no longer primarily taking care of yourself. Your job is no longer primarily making yourself successful in this world. All of that you commit unto God and accept that that is part of the “all other things” that will be added onto you. Now you’re in the King’s service and you commit all those things unto the Lord and trust them to God as you set about Jesus’ service. And so a Christian is meant to walk free of his or her own burdens so that the Holy Spirit will be able to lay on him or her burdens from other people. That is a glorious and a free way to walk and it’s the way God means us to walk. Now if you say to me, “Do you not often find your own burdens falling back upon you as you’re trying to lift other burdens?” Certainly you do but that’s why God gave you a mind. It’s so that you can turn your thoughts from your own burdens, take your stand again and commit it unto the Lord. If you say to me, “Brother, do you not find that as you’re trying to bear a burden in your spirit for somebody else a whole mass of private messes clatters on the top of your head?” Yes certainly, and at that moment you’re meant to rise up, get your head erect and throw all those things onto Jesus so you can walk in the burden that he’s pressing upon you. So will power and a direction of the mind is needed because you can be assured that once you begin to fight in spiritual warfare Satan will be intent on distracting you from the battle. Now there are just another couple of things that it would be good to share. You may say, “How do you pray this way in the Spirit?” I think there’s great truth in this, as your daily walk is so your prayer life will be. If you walk in the midst of your emotions your prayer life will be an emotional prayer life. If you walk every moment with just the intellect and the shrewd cleverness of your own mind then your prayer life will tend to be the same. You can’t walk one way for13 hours of the day and walk another way the 14th hour. As your daily life is so your prayer life will be. If you walk primarily depending on your physical powers in your ordinary everyday life so you will walk that way in your prayer life. Now I think that comes again in Galatians 5:25. It is important to walk each day in the Spirit if you hope to pray in the Spirit. There’s no mystery about walking in the Spirit. It’s walking with your eyes on God. It’s considering primarily him and what he’s thinking and what he’s surrounded with rather than the visible things that you can see. So there’s no need to get complex and esoteric about what praying in the Spirit is. Praying in the Spirit is not being preoccupied with the things that you see. Walking in the Spirit is not being preoccupied with the things that you see. It’s being preoccupied with the Father and with looking at him and with what he’s thinking. So Galatians 5:25 says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” Here’s the mistake that many of us make in regards to this. I think many of us receive prayer burdens from Jesus. We receive insight into other people’s lives and instead of receiving them as prayer burdens we dissipate them by sharing them with other people. I think that’s why many of us don’t have a living prayer life and a living intercessory life. As soon as God shows us something about somebody else we’re sharing it. It’s in confidence of course, but we’re sharing it with someone else, or we’re sharing it with the person themselves. And so as we go before God we’ve dissipated all the burdens that he gave us for the person. In other words loved ones, many of us lack prayer burdens because we do not have a private interior life with God on our own. You can tell what we are by listening to our tongues. We’re nothing more than that. We never keep anything to ourselves. We never keep anything between ourselves and God. We receive an insight into someone’s life, we don’t realize it is a prayer burden, and so we go and tell them about it and try to put it right. Or, we go to a friend and tell them, “I think I know what so and so’s problem is.” Loved ones, usually when God gives you a private insight into somebody’s life, that’s a prayer burden for you to take before him. If you’ll take it that way he will answer it and use it to change the person’s life. If you dissipate it by sharing it with somebody else, or sharing it with the person themselves, you just lose everything. Nothing happens except frustration alone. So I think brothers and sisters that praying in the Spirit will come if we will begin to have a private negotiation with God about other people and about their lives. I think if you pray in the Spirit this way, if you cultivate an interior life with God then your spirit becomes more and more sensitive. It’s really just a rule. It’s a psychological rule as well as a spiritual rule that if you use your mind a lot then your mind will become very effective and very powerful. If you use your emotions a lot they will become very effective and very powerful. If you use your spirit a lot it will become very effective and very powerful. And so the secret of praying in the spirit is in our own private lives to walk in the Spirit more often. Begin to look at situations and ask God to show us, “Lord, what is behind this situation?” Begin to ask the Father to show us, “Father, is there something spiritual behind this? Lord, if there is will you show me it?” Instead of reacting against the human situation, begin to look for what God is showing you about the spiritual problem behind it. In that way you begin to walk in the Spirit. If you begin to walk in the light of invisible things more really than in the light of the physical and visible things that you see, then you will begin to come into prayer in the Spirit. Prayer in the Spirit, while it has burdens and travail, is a life of peace compared with the prayer burdens that we engage in. You know how our intercessory prayer often weighs us down instead of raise us up to the Father. Loved ones, I should stop. I think I should keep my word. Are there any questions? I’m going to continue to speak further about that next Sunday evening. Question: How do you stand against Satan? Brother if you would be patient enough to wait until next Sunday I’d like to share about standing against Satan and I will try to be specific about it. Question: When waiting upon God to wait for his mind to come to you, where should our minds be? Answer: You remember my sharing a couple of Sundays ago that our minds certainly should not be passive. Waiting on God is not passivity because if you simply make your mind blank and wait for God to write his words upon that blank slate then you engage in transcendental meditation. This is just what brings the eastern religion practitioners into contact with evil spirits. So it is not a passive mind. It seems to me “thou will keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee”. It seems to me you stay your mind on the Father. I do it every morning and I did it this morning again, I read the first verse of Psalms 104 and I used that to stay my mind on God so that my mind would not be on the responsibilities of the day, or on how I was feeling but on God. So I would use the spirit a great deal to actually set my mind on God or whatsoever things are lovely and true and of good report. Think on those things. I would think on those things. Now with anybody here who says, “Brother is that not soulish prayer?” No, the mind can be used to aid the spirit. I agree with you, that the Spirit has to take hold of your spirit. Then you can rest it in the Father where thoughts begin to fade away and you aren’t conscious of thinking specific thoughts. But it’s good to prime the pump by thinking specific thoughts in the beginning so that your mind is cooperating with the Spirit rather than just lying passive. Question: And so do you usually us scripture to move into the realm of the Spirit? Answer: That’s what I do. You can read a verse of scripture that sets your mind on the Father. I think a mistake that many of us make is that we don’t do that and therefore sink into our own subjectivity. Or, we do it in a purely soulish way and never expect the Spirit to take fire and lift us beyond that. I agree with anyone here tonight who says, “The Spirit does lift your spirit and lift you beyond thoughts.” I agree with that and that’s what he will do if we set about it with a mind that is active. Question: Is using a prayer tongue praying in the Spirit? Answer: It’s very important to see that praying in an unknown tongue is praying in the Spirit but that is not the only way to pray in the Spirit. You see that when you study the verses that are used by Paul. He says for instance, “Pray in the Spirit,” and it is a capital S in Ephesians. That’s what he commands us to do, pray in the Holy Spirit. Whereas when he talks about, “What happens when I pray with a tongue, I pray in the spirit,” he uses a small s and he says, “Then I’m praying just in my spirit without praying in my mind.” So it’s important to see that the command to pray in the Spirit is to pray in the Holy Spirit and that can be done either with an unknown tongue, or it can be done in our own language with our own words. Maybe I could do a small commercial for tongues. One of the advantages is that it does lift you above just the thought life and the preoccupation with thoughts and lifts you definitely out of the soulish realm. Now there’s no question you can be out of the soulish realm simply praying in your own language but that is one of the values of the tongues, especially to a person just beginning to learn to pray in the Spirit. Question: I’ve been using the recommended technique but it isn’t producing results. I’m getting up in the morning and using a verse of scripture to keep my mind on God but it doesn’t seem to be making prayer real and I’m not getting thoughts from God. Answer: It’s very important to see (and that’s why it is good to laugh about those things), that every Christian operation that Jesus has started has always drifted into soulish techniques or methods and we thought that they were the answer. And that’s why I think it’s very important to see that the teachings that we share on Sunday will of themselves achieve nothing. They are only guides to us as to how we might get in contact with God’s Spirit. I think only the Holy Spirit can make prayer real and can bring you into a real and living prayer life. Any of us that are having difficulty entering into a real prayer life ought to look again, even those of us who say, “We’ve been baptized with the Spirit.” We should look again and ask, “Holy Spirit, is there something else you can do in my spirit to make me more alive and to strengthen my spirit in the inner mind?” I think that it’s a question of the Holy Spirit showing you what it is in yourself that is still involved in perhaps soulish prayer. Question: What is meant by praying soulishly? Answer: I think a number of us would differ on just what we mean by soulish. But, in the teaching that Jesus has made real in my life the soul would be the “pseuche” or the psychological part of the mind, and the emotions, and the will. And it would seem that many of us have failed to see that there are levels of the personality at which we exist. I’m certain with anyone that says you can’t take the soul out and say that’s it, or the soul goes to heaven. I agree that we’re a unit. But we exist at different levels of a personality and the spirit is the level at which we contact God. So that’s it brother, I’m trying to make a distinction of just praying with the mind, the emotions, or the will and praying in the spirit. It seems that many of us are involved in this kind of soulish prayer that is really almost the reflex reaction of our own thoughts and feelings. It’s not really getting through to God at all. Now I do agree with you that the only way to pray in the Spirit at all is to believe God to be working in your spirit and making your spirit alive. But those of us who have come into some awareness of spiritual prayer do know a very real difference between praying in their Spirits and praying in our souls. With prayer in the Spirit there’s a reality and a sense of being hand-to-hand in touch with God and face-to-face with him that there isn’t in soulish prayer. There’s also a great restfulness about it and a real sense of knowing what you’re doing whereas in soulish prayer you’re hoping that something is happening.

Spiritual Prayer with Questions Matthew 6:5-8 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill I’m sure you can feel it yourselves that God is beginning to make us surprisingly strong as a group. That’s exciting in one way but in another way there’s a threat to it. I think it’s the old threat that is the strength of Mormonism and of other sects. Their strength is a kind of soulish herd instinct by which they draw the power from the group itself. And really they are utterly laid open to the skeptical psychologist who says, “All you’re doing is reinforcing each other psychologically.” Whether we like it or not, as soon as God begins to make a group of his people strong that becomes a very real temptation. And it’s for that reason that God cut down the numbers of Gideon’s army so that there might be no question in their minds that the victory came by the power of his Spirit and not by their great numbers. I really do believe that’s often why God has to cut a body down mercilessly at times. They get proud and complacent in themselves and begin subtly to depend on each other so much that the only way God can save them from hell is simply to cut the feet under them and bring them back down to small numbers. So I know beyond all doubt that our only safe way here is to make absolutely sure that we are not feeding on each other. It really is such a subtle thing, because we can talk about the body of Jesus, and how great it is to be in the body, and it’s really the members of the body that mean so much to us. Then we protest, “Well, we are justified in having each other’s love aren’t we?” Yes, we are but we’re to love the Creator rather than the creature and our love for each other and our enjoyment even of each other’s love is always to be something that we can do without. We are always to be in the position where Jesus is most precious to us. It’s interesting that a body where the members listen to the head has a beautiful harmony and cooperation that is spiritually vital. But a body that look at each other and try to work with each other, and try to cooperate with each other, and try to fit in to each other’s personalities becomes a miserable, boring, stereotype group of conformists. So there is a vast difference between a body of Jesus where all the members draw individual strength and life from the head, and a body of Jesus that eats off itself. It eventually consumes itself. Loved ones, that really is important. I didn’t plan to say all that tonight so I would imagine that God does want us to listen to it and take it to our own hearts. And I would really encourage those that come into the body at this time to be really sure that you’re dealing with Jesus. In a way we who were in the body at the beginning were safer. That’s because there was nothing there but a few people meeting in an old dark theater. There wasn’t too much in it to attract you. In fact, there was no beauty or comeliness that we should desire him. And so that was good because we came only because of Jesus and because of his Spirit. He was the only one that kept us. Now, it becomes just a little trickier because there are a lot of exciting things, (I think you’ll agree), happening among us. And you are beautiful people — you are. I think you are a lot of rats who need to deal with God, but you are a beautiful people. You are just dear people. You’re winsome and enjoyable to be with. If I had to choose who I would live in heaven with I would choose you. And I’d imagine you’d choose all the rest of us. But because of that loved ones, it is doubly important to really be sure that it is Jesus that is the reason for our coming and for our remaining. That’s why I’d like to share very briefly these few evenings some subjects that we won’t be able to deal with when we get into the normal pattern of Sunday evenings which will presumably begin in October. I’d like to share a little tonight on spiritual prayer. I’d point out to you first of all that if Jesus really is more precious to you than everybody else then you’ll want to spend more time with him than everybody else. And you can only keep protesting so long, “I love you Lord, but I don’t have much time to spend with you,” before Jesus begins to say, “Ho hum, I hear you.” So really a test, in a sense of Jesus’ place in your life, is how much time you just spend with him in prayer, and how much time do you spend with the Father? It’s very difficult to have Jesus more precious to you than everybody else unless you spend considerable lengths of time with him. I’d just point out to you the sheer human difficulty in it. If we are with each other hour, upon hour, upon hour enjoying each other’s company, and talking with each other, and preoccupied with each other’s personalities I’d put it to you are we not bound to begin to regard each other as more real than Jesus or our Father? It’s just a sheer human psychological practice you’re up against in that situation. And so I’d ask you to think first of all before you think of praying in the Spirit or praying in some other way, just think of praying. I put it to you again, how much time do you spend talking with the Father? This Tuesday, we’re going to begin a new practice in Fish. We’re going to stop all the work at two o’clock and we’re going to pray from two until five, for three hours, every Tuesday afternoon. I know that some of us think, “Three hours? I’ve managed one hour once, but three hours?” And really isn’t it true that many of us respond that way because we say, “Oh, that will be glory for me, glory for me, in the sweet by and by. We’ll meet God and we’ll spend eternity with him. But three hours?” And really there is some kind of problem in many of our lives just around that issue of prayer. We talk about spending eternity with the Father but we really have problems lasting one hour with him in our present everyday life. And one of the reasons we’re going to go into that in Fish is that one essential of praying spiritually or spiritual prayer is time. Now I agree with you that time is not an absolute measure of the depth of the spirituality in the prayer. I agree with that. And I agree with you that there are dear saints who have spent hours, and hours with God in prayer and then because of that can send up an ejaculatory prayer to God in a second that he is able to answer. But loved ones, it’s usually because of the long hours that they have at some time or other spent with the Father. It just is a fact that it is very difficult to pray spiritually unless you’re prepared to give some time to the Father. That’s part of what it means to pray in the Spirit. And you remember the verse occurs in Ephesians, “Pray in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication.” Praying in the Spirit does demand time. One of the reasons it demands time is this. You come in from driving the car home in the rush hour traffic and however controlled your mind is if you haven’t really begun in deep long spiritual prayer to walk in the spirit then your mind is still whirling around with all that traffic. And it continues to be preoccupied with that four, five or 10 minutes. And then you either switch the TV on, or somebody else comes into the room and your mind begins to be preoccupied with them. And so your mind jumps from one thing and one person to another thing and another person and the mind is active whirling around all the time. And when the mind is active like that it’s very difficult for the spirit to really dwell in the Holy Spirit at all. In other words, when your mind is active and restless it’s very difficult for you to live in your spirit at all. Now it is possible after your spirit begins to get control of your mind. But before you’ve come into that place where you’re able to walk in the spirit like that it’s very difficult for you to switch from an active, worrying, frenzied mind to a quiet spirit in God. And so it really takes some time for the mind to run down. And if it takes time for the mind to run down think of the emotions that are so taken up with how the body feels, that are so taken up with half a dozen years of relationships with people that govern your emotions so that your emotions are able to keep on bleeping away long after the mind has stopped. And so the emotions keep surging, and surging, and surging. And it takes a very long time for you to realize that the emotions are active at all. Your mind and your emotions go on for a long, long time after your body stops. That’s why somebody has said if you start an all night prayer meeting at nine PM in the evening, about Midnight people have at last run out of their own prayers and are beginning to listen to God. Then about two o’clock God’s Spirit begins to be able to pray through their spirits. Really, it just does take time. Now I’m with you, time is not an absolute measurement of a spiritual prayer but it has something to do with spiritual praying. There is some reason loved ones, why the revival came down upon Ireland in 1859 after six men had prayed all night Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for six months. There is some reason why every time of revival such as the one that came down in the Hebrides in the 40s and 50s of this century, came after a group of men and women had prayed for a year in a similar way. It has something to do with length of prayer. And I would suggest to you that it has something to do with the depth of your own spiritual life and with your independence of the other members of the body and your utter dependence on the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of God. And you’ll find yourself getting very dry and very empty here in the body if you don’t begin to engage in some kind of spiritual prayer. And that really means prayer that has some time given to God that can be called time. Now loved ones, I would just push you again then to be absolutely down to earth and honest with yourself. I don’t think I have any illusions about you no more than I had about myself before God impressed this upon me over years of just agony and hardship. I would imagine there are surprisingly few of us here who spend more than an hour a day in prayer and I would image most of us are talking in terms of 15 minutes. Now could you take it from me who love you and whom you’ve trusted in the past, and whom you’ve been able to check up on in some other things, it isn’t enough loved ones. 15 minutes gets over to God the things that you want to say to him and it begins to touch a little those unpleasant silence periods when you’re having difficulty thinking of what to say to him next. You just begin to touch those periods at 15 minutes. But it really takes an hour before you’re beginning to run out of your own ideas and then begin to wonder, “What am I doing sitting here? Is there a God? Well, I’ve been here an hour and a half now he must at least know that I’m serious about the thing.” And then about two hours you begin to realize, “He knows I’m serious otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here wasting my time.” Then after about two hours you begin to sense the activity of God the Father. But loved ones, it’s honestly like that. You really only begin to sense the activity of God the Father and his Spirit coming through to you whenever you have at last run down. And it takes the soulish mechanism, i.e. the mind, the emotions, and the will; it takes them a fair time to run down. And then after that it takes your spirit just a while to begin to sense God coming through. Now, don’t make the other mistake that you now go home tonight and you say, “Well, I can expect nothing for the first hour.” No, the only way to pray in the Spirit is to go forward in full faith believing that the Father is listening to you and that he can obviously come through to you at any moment and you can come through to him in a moment. And that’s his will after you’ve begun to engage in some kind of deep prayer life. I’m just saying that many of you are having difficulty with your prayer lives because you’ve kept trying to go on the 15 minute thing and you’re wondering now why it’s not as good as it was in the beginning and the reason is that the Father was kind and gracious to you as a little baby at the beginning. And so he blessed you with some intuition as to what he was thinking of you. He blessed you with some sense of his presence at the beginning. But he wanted to draw you on and so like a dad does he walked away a wee bit so that you would walk after him and begin to be interested in knowing him and knowing where he was going. But you have sat back there saying, “15 minutes and if you don’t produce then that’s it.” And so the Father has no chance of coming through to you deeply and will have no chance loved ones, until you really begin to say to yourselves, “Lord, I know you’re there as you were in the beginning when I first started these prayer times. Father, I know you want to come through to me and so Lord I’m anxious. I want you to know that you’re the only one I’m interested in contacting and I’m prepared to stay here as long as is needed.” Loved ones, there’s something that happens to you when you get down content to stay there for two or three hours. I don’t know what it is but there’s something that happens in that person’s spirit when you get down there and say, “No, it’s not an hour Lord and then I have to rush out to work. It’s not an hour and then so and so is calling for me whether you’re coming through to me or not.” There’s something that happens when you get down and say, “Father this is your time. This afternoon is given to you and I give it to you Lord. I give this day to you Father.” There’s a quietness that comes into your spirit. I’ve often thought of it as the experience I had when I first tried snorkeling. It was incredible the way the sea was so windy, and so upset, and so rough on the surface. And then you go down underneath and it’s like a different world. The plants just go like that; it’s just peaceful and quiet. Everything is so soft, and easy, and flowing. You can’t imagine what it’s like above it all. Now loved ones, that’s what you get down to when you begin to pray in the Spirit. There’s a place where you begin to leave the rough and tumultuous nature of your mind, emotions, will, and your body all striving and crying — and the earthquake, the fire, the thunder, and the lightening — and you get down to a quiet place in your spirit. And it’s there that you begin to find a face begins to reveal itself to you through that water and through those waves and you begin to see a face that you’ve never seen before. You begin to sense the very appearance and the very character of your Father. You begin to sense a closeness and an immediacy to him that you’ve never had in all the attempts that you’ve made at memorizing scripture to get your mind off the job, and all your attempts you’ve made at singing a chorus softly to try to begin to sense God’s presence. There’s something more real and deep that comes into your spirit when you begin to give yourself to the Father. Loved ones, I really believe it’s vital to do that if you’re not to become a casualty of a strong body. That’s because there are many casualties in strong bodies. There are many dear ones that are really casualties simply because of the sheer strength of the body of Christ in which they live and in which they minister. They begin subtly to dwell on the other members instead of in Jesus. And that is what makes a body dead and what lays us open to every cynical, skeptical psychologist that wants to accuse us of spiritual or moral reinforcement. Now there are some basic things that I should share about praying in the Spirit besides those. First of all praying in the Spirit is not necessarily praying in tongues. Perhaps you’d look at 1 Corinthians 14:15 and maybe you’d look at Verse 14 just before that. 1 Corinthians 14:14, “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.” Now keep your finger in that place and look at Ephesians 6:18, which is the command in scripture to pray in the Spirit. Do you see the difference in those two verses? Ephesians 6:18 reads, “Pray at all times in the Spirit.” In Greek it is “the Spirit” meaning the Holy Spirit and that’s why they have a capital S for Spirit in Ephesians 6:18. So God says through Paul, “Pray at all times in the Spirit,” that is the Holy Spirit. That is God’s Spirit. Now back in 1 Corinthians 14:14 Paul is saying, “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.” And it’s a small s. Now the spirit that Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians is our own spirit. He’s saying, “If you pray in a tongue, your own spirit is praying.” But that doesn’t mean that you have to pray in a tongue to pray in the Holy Spirit. You can pray in the Holy Spirit and by the guidance and by the power of the Holy Spirit in a tongue, or you can pray in the Holy Spirit in your own language. But when your own spirit itself prays and only your own spirit without the use of your mind or emotions, then you will be praying in a tongue. It’s important to see the distinction. Some people say, “To pray in the Spirit is the command of God and he says back here that if I pray in the tongue I’m praying in the spirit.” No, you’re just praying in your own spirit. When you pray in a tongue just your own spirit is praying and your mind isn’t being used. That is your mind isn’t being used to form words like, “Oh lord, I praise you,” or, “Oh Lord, I thank you.” Your mind is not being used it’s just your spirit. You can pray in the Holy Spirit either by praying in a tongue or by praying with your mind. And of course that’s what Paul recommends there in 1 Corinthians 14:15, “What am I to do? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also. Otherwise, if you bless with the spirit,” (that is without using the mind), “How can any one in the position of an outsider say the “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?” That’s just a very practical reason why in a fellowship like this it’s important to trust the Holy Spirit to really get such control of your mind that you can express yourself to God using your mind so that others can take part and can share. So praying in the Spirit is not necessarily praying in a tongue. Now I think many of us would testify to a real freedom that has come into our own prayer lives because of tongues. And so I think, all of us would agree that this is a gift from God and that it is really a blessing in our own prayer lives. All I’m saying is to pray in the Spirit you don’t need to pray in tongues. Let’s get rid of that thought so that Satan doesn’t use it to make the thing difficult for you. Praying in the Spirit is not a self conscious determination to pray spiritually. That gets pretty wild in a prayer meeting, “I want to pray spiritually Lord. I want to pray spiritually. They say he (Pastor) prays spiritually so I’m going to try to pray the way he prays. Now which word did he use? Okay, I’ll use that.” Or, “So and so prays with a quiet voice and they’re spiritual so I better pray with a quiet voice.” That is madness, and a falling back into the whole thing that Jesus was pointing out with the Pharisees in Matthew 6. Maybe you should look at it just to shock you out of it thoroughly. Matthew 6:5-8, “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” I’d just notice that a number of us are so anxious to really please the Father and to really grow spiritually that at times we take teachings on spiritual prayer and we make them legalistic regulations for ourselves. So that’s why I’m saying to you that praying spiritually is not a self conscious determination to pray spiritual prayers. It is not a matter of observing how other people pray and copying them. Nor is it at the other extreme a shutting up so that nobody will see how unspiritual you are. That’s just fear and love casts out all fear. If you love the Father you don’t care how unspiritual the rest think you are. So praying spiritually is not arrived at by a self conscious determination to pray spiritual prayers. Nor, is it on content. I think a number of us have a feeling, “Oh well, you said once that praying spiritually is praising God. That the closer you get to him, the more occupied you get with praising him. So I better praise God and if it ever crosses my mind to pray for my mom I better not do it because that’s not a spiritual thing to pray for.” Well do you see that that gets you into bondage, impossible bondage? Then we come into prayer times and we all sit around dumb and God just looks at us with tears in his eyes because all of us are bound up and won’t pray because we’re all anxious to pray spiritually. Loved ones, you pray at the state you’re in. That’s what Luther meant when he said, “If you sin, sin boldly.” Be what you are. Be what you are and pray out loud, and pray as you are and at least be yourself and be honest and then God will be able to lift you to the next stage. But if you’re never going to be honest with him, and if you’re never going to be yourself in front of your brothers and sisters then you’re just going to get more and more twisted up and entangled. So it’s really important to see that to pray spiritually you have to pray. You can’t sit around there working out, “How am I going to pray a spiritual prayer?” You’d better get in there and throw yourself into it. Plunge in up to your neck and just pray and let God take it from there. Now there are some clear marks of what spiritual prayers is. You could find one of them if you look at what the Holy Spirit will do when he comes among us. It’s in John 16:14 where Jesus says, “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” “He will glorify me.” And in John 15:26, “But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me.” So one thing that praying in the Spirit will be clear of is a preoccupation with whether you’re getting through to God or not. It’ll be free from looking into yourself and deciding, “Am I really praying spiritually? Am I really in touch with God’s Spirit?” It will be free from all seeking after visions, all searching after warm glows, all seeking after exhilarations and revelations. It’ll be what the Holy Spirit is, preoccupied with the Father. Now loved ones, if you’re praying in the Spirit it will be like Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” It will be free from this whole temptation that we face to look in and see, “Are we really spiritual? Am I getting revelations? Am I getting tongues? Am I getting interpretations of tongues? Have I laid my hands on anybody in this prayer meeting? Have I seen Jesus? Is he speaking to me? I can’t hear you Lord, are you speaking?” It will be free from that whole preoccupation with ourselves and what’s coming through to us. That’s a subtle thing because many of us have said, “We know that prayer is not feeling. It doesn’t mean that you have to have feelings. We get over the idea, “Do I feel joyful? Do I feel happy? Do I feel peaceful?” But then we take another step and we say, “Yes, but your spirit should be experiencing some things.” And we begin to try the impossible task of looking into our spirits which we can’t do because we’re looking in with our mind and our mind can’t see our spirits. But we begin the impossible task of looking into our spirits and trying to see, “Am I getting something from God?” Loved ones, how often are we just miserable, selfish, parasitic little beggars who are asking God to give us more feelings? Have you ever thought how often in our prayer times after we’ve said, “Father we want nothing, we want nothing. You have given us everything that we need.” How often in our prayer times do we end up wanting crumbs from the table, “Well, I want the feeling Father. Well, I want to know that you love me.” I mean, he’s given his dear son to die in blood and sweat on the cross there should be no doubt in our minds. But we say, “No, give me an assurance Father. Give me an assurance.” Loved ones, how often are we like the little children pulling on their dad’s coattails, “Give me, give me, give me. You’ve given me everything that I have but give me more, give me something today. Give me a sense of your presence Lord. Give me a vision, give me a tongue today. Give me a revelation.” Loved ones, I think the Father comes hoping that we will love him and that we’ll fill our minds with him, and that we’ll be preoccupied with expressing our love to him and our praise to him. But so often he finds us trying to drain him again of something for ourselves. Loved ones, praying in the Spirit is Thomas, “My lord and my God.” It’s a preoccupation with the Father. It’s a being taken up with him. It’s a freedom from that miserable, — there’s something so degrading, and so undignified about princes and princesses of the Father going to him wanting more and more feelings. “Not feelings Lord, but spiritual assurances. I just want spiritual assurances.” Loved ones, would you be prepared to go before God and stay with him for three hours whether you feel anything in your feelings or sense anything in your spirits or not? God wants such to worship him. Those who worship him in spirit and truth, who don’t worship him in the midst of their feelings and in the midst of the little things that they want from him but just worship him – who go before him in faith and obedience. That’s what praying in the Spirit is, going before God in faith and obedience, “Father I believe you’re there. I believe you love me with all your heart. I believe your word. Father, here’s my response to you.” And that’s really praying in the Spirit, with an obedient life behind your words, with a life that is consistent with your own conscience. Praying in the spirit is beginning to get to know the Father himself. Maybe a good verse to look at is in 1 John. I think I can find it. I think it’s 1 John 2:12. 1 John 2:12, “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his sake.” That’s the first step; the little children in God know their sins are forgiven. That’s the basic step. They know that God has forgiven them and they know they’re going to go to heaven. And you know how much of Christendom is preoccupied with just that fact. This is part of the reason why God isn’t able to move in his world as he wants to because so much of Christendom are just at the stage of little children. That’s all they know. Then verse 13, “I am writing to you, fathers,” why? “Because you know him who is from the beginning.” And really that’s what praying in the Spirit is about, knowing the Father, and knowing his mind. You remember, the whole promise of answered prayer is based on this. “This is the confidence that we have, that if we ask anything according to his will we know that he hears us and if hears us we know that he’ll answer us.” So the whole confidence that we have that God will answer prayer is based on the fact that we know God’s will. And how can you know a person’s will unless you know him himself? And the only way to know a person is to look into his face and to see what he’s thinking and what he’s feeling. And you remember God says, “I will guide you with my eye.” Unless you look into his face and seek his face you’ll never see where his eye is pointing and you’ll never know what his will is. And if you don’t know what his will is how can you pray according to his will? You’re back into the old fleshly and soulish prayer, “I ask this Lord if it is your will,” which is no prayer at all. It’s no prayer, “If it is your will.” How can you pray that way when God tells you to pray with absolute firmness because anybody who wavers will receive nothing from the Lord. And so most of Christendom knows their sins are forgiven and wavers praying, “If it is your will.” What God desires is men and women who are so interested in finding out his will that they’ll spend time before him getting to know him himself so that they’ll begin to sense what he wants them to pray. And I think we’ve often touched upon that. God knows what all of us need. He knows what needs to be done in Moscow at this moment. But God cannot do it until one of us realizes exactly what he wants to do and asks him to do it. That’s the basic key to prayer. God knows all that is needed. God knows everything that’s to be done with your mom and dad and with all our relatives. But God refuses to ignore our free wills and come down and do what he wants to do. He requires somebody here on earth to sense what he wants to do and ask him to do it. This is new to some of you so maybe you should look up Ezekiel 36:37. Many of you know the verse by heart because it is the key to answered prayer. I think many of us don’t realize that. Ezekiel 36:37, “Thus says the Lord GOD: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” Now God knew they had been diminished in their numbers by the exile. He knew he had to increase their number if they were to survive. But he says deliberately, “This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them and until they ask me to do it I cannot do it.” That’s why it’s so vital for us to be prepared to pray in the Spirit, to spend time before God getting to know his mind so that we will then be able to pray according to his will. Loved ones, it’s really impossible to do it unless you begin to engage in spiritual prayer and that really does take time. There’s just no other way. It takes time and a determination to get to know your God personally and a readiness to stay with him. When I went to London I knew Jesus didn’t want me to give all kinds of talks or presentations. And so I explained the first day what God wants us to do is to settle down to prayer at two o’clock every afternoon and pray until five. The first day was hard for some of us. The second day was good. The third day we wanted to do twice as long in prayer. And by the fourth day the Holy Spirit had sorted out all the relationships. Loved ones, there’s something that God is able to do in spiritual prayer that he cannot do any other way. And he’ll do it for you, because none of us are experts at this kind of prayer. But this is the kind of prayer that God yields to. This is the kind of prayer that moves the mountains that will need to be moved in the era in which we live. And it really is a deep, spiritual prayer that is not filled with all kinds of antics. It’s prayer that is seeking God and then if a tongue comes forth it’s from the Father. It’s not a tongue to prove that we’re praying spiritually. It’s a tongue that comes from the Holy Spirit. If a revelation comes it comes from God. I think a lot of the circuses that we go through in what we call charismatic and spirit filled prayer meetings are just circuses because we’re not long enough on our knees before God to ever stop our own activity in time for him to come through to us. And a lot of what we’re producing is just imitation of his gifts. And really loved ones, there’s no way to get through to God but to be prepared to give him some time. So I’d really encourage you to at least make a start. If you’re on 15 minutes then you don’t go for a three hour stretch on your own, okay? No, because you’ll sleep half of the time and the rest of the time you’ll think of the last TV program you saw. So you don’t do that. You go 15 minutes and then you go half an hour, and then you go 40 minutes, and then you go 50 minutes. And you do it sensibly as you would do anything that you do in athletics or anything in any other type of activity. You increase it gradually. But you do set your face steadfastly towards Jerusalem and say, “Father, I’m staying with you. I’m staying with you. All I have time to do in these 15 minute bouts is give you all my troubles. All I have time to do is preoccupy myself with all my troubles by repeating them all. All I have time to do is get further bogged down in the circumstances that surround and drive my life. So Lord, I’m going to stop this kind of playing with you and I’m going to set my face steadfastly towards some kind of prayer in the Spirit and I’m going to move in that direction.” And loved ones, if you have difficulty on your own then come and join us in Fish Enterprises on Tuesday afternoons in the prayer room. Also, nine o’clock to Midnight on Friday is open to everyone. And even if you don’t spend the whole time spend part of the time. Now part of my concern of course is if you don’t begin to get down to spiritual prayer. Forget the time of it, I’m not saying a three hour prayer, but if you don’t get down to a spiritual prayer of some length then we will become just a psychological reinforcement group. We’ll just become a kind of soulish mob that enthuse each other and whomp each other up with songs and little talks on Sundays. The only way that we’ll continue to be the body of Jesus is if you individually link up to the head. I think I’ve talked rather long but maybe if there is anyone that is very anxious to ask anything then I give you 30 seconds. Q: What do you experience with concentration as you pray for three hours? A: You either concentrate or you go to sleep. Undoubtedly God comes down and fills your whole mind with himself but I think brother at the beginning you have to be prepared to set your mind on God. And undoubtedly I would agree that as you do it, certainly as we did it, at least after the first two days, then it became just a very natural thing and a thing we looked forward to so much. But I don’t think you could underrate the concentration that is needed. That’s part of the battle I think. You must admit loved ones, that it’s a battle of the mind. Even our educational system is planned so that we can get something on the way past as we go to something else. And so few of us have ever really bent our minds into discipline. Therefore, for many of us it is a real exercise. Q: Which is better morning or evening? A: There’s a grave danger of getting into purely physical circumstances that could vary with the person. It seems to me that if a person is on an ordinary job situation where they’re working during the day time that it’s very difficult to get away from the example of Jesus. Again, and again you read that he rose a great while before day and went into the mountain to pray. Or before dawn broke he went into the wilderness to pray. I tried to get around that for years and convinced myself that I prayed better at night. But sooner or later you have to deal with a thing called an alarm clock. You have to set that alarm and get yourself out of bed. There’s just no other way. Sooner or later you have to say, “Father if I have to leave this house at seven AM then if I’m going to have an hour with you and have half an hour to at least gather myself together then I need to get up at 5:30 AM. So I have to set the alarm for 5:30.” And that means going to bed. If you need seven hours of sleep, then seven hours before 5:30 AM you go to bed. The Father isn’t bluffed by you saying, “Oh well, I was so sleepy.” He knows fine well that you could go to bed earlier the night before and that that is part of your commitment to him. It’s no use saying, “Well I love him so much in the morning that I want to get up early but I don’t love him enough at night to go to bed earlier so I can get up in the morning.” So it seems to me just a matter of logistics that one ought to settle calmly and quietly and then commit yourself to it. It seems to me Jill you’re talking about morning. I’m sure it varies from person-to-person as you get into night work and that kind of thing. Q: If you’ve a prayer burden what’s the importance of persistence in prayer? A: It seems to me it’s that whole parable that Jesus told of the neighbor who came looking for bread and kept on knocking and knocking until his neighbor came down and gave him something for his guest. Or, the same parable with the woman who kept on asking and even the unjust judge got fed up with her asking and God says, “So how much more will I give you…..” It seems to me the Father is often looking upon us to see, “Are you really serious?” And if we give up after the first two years, three years, then okay he knows. George Mueller in a particular instance always struck me. He’d been praying for a man for 40 years and the man was converted a week after Mueller died. Q: I’m a mom and have a lot of trouble rationalizing that I can pray all through the day as I do things. A: I think a lot of us say, “Well, we have the house to ourselves, we have the apartment to ourselves and we can run our time as we want.” But it’s amazing how the baby keeps occupying us even though we say we can run it according to our own plan. It seems to me that those who pray ejaculatory prayers, (just prayers that you cast up to God as you’re doing things) are possible only if you have set time apart for God himself. It seems to me that God will listen to all our high and holy intentions and all our very dignified and elevated statements of our love for him but at the end of the day he knows that when you love a person you spend time with them and you set time aside for them. Now it seems to me that somehow the Father is able to come through to a person that will set time apart for God alone. Well you know it yourself. As Scott said, “Will you marry me?” You say, “Well, I don’t know. What did you say? Well, yes, I’ll marry you. Okay.” The Father knows the way we think of ordinary relationships and he knows fine well that our relationship with him is on something of the same basis as far as the value we attach to it is concerned. We have enough exciting things going on here that we could just blast away at them. We could almost run without the Holy Spirit now and that’s the danger. Those who are in business know that with the business you get to a point where it takes you to be pretty silly to make a mess of it because it just keeps going. And it’s the same whether we like it or not with a body (church fellowship) like our own. There comes a time when success breeds success. That’s why it’s vital loved ones for us to get down to giving God his place. As soon as we stop giving God that high and holy place and giving him the time that he requires then he stops pouring his life into us and it becomes just a soulish operation. Q: Can the Bible be used to get through to God in prayer? A: It seems to me brother that reading the Bible is in a sense communion with God because it’s communing with the words that his Holy Spirit has written. I think where we get into real difficulties is when we set aside an hour for Bible study and prayer and we end up with 15 minutes of prayer and three quarters of an hour of Bible study. That’s I think the problem. It’s different when we use the Bible study to create in us a preoccupation with God in our own minds and our spirits. That’s good, and then we give ourselves to prayer. But when you occupy the greater part of the time with Bible study, then no you’re not getting through. And maybe I could go further because I sense you’re asking more. If some of us are thinking, “Can you not commune with God through Bible study?” Not in the same way as you can commune with him in prayer. No, prayer is a deeper communion with God. It’s more direct — face-to-face. It’s a freer relationship than the Bible study is. But the Bible study is a real help to prayer. And I think most of us have found that using the Bible sometime during a long prayer time is good, especially using the Psalms, “Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me.” Psalms of praise are good. It is no more a substitute for prayer than “talking with another Christian is prayer”, (a quote by Bishop Robertson). It seems to me it’s a rationalization. Prayer is talking face-to-face with God, your spirit with his. Q: What about reading the Psalms in prayer? A: It seems to me they’re just a blessing. But again, they are an aid to prayer rather than a substitute for prayer. I think every morning at eight AM here on Sunday mornings one of us reads a Psalms of praise of some kind so that we set our minds away from the kind morning it is and whether we’re tired or not. It helps us to set our mind on God. Q: What is the difference between mediation and prayer? Well I’m sure only the Holy Spirit can really tell each of us the difference. You could make a definition that meditation is thinking of truths about God whereas prayer is talking to God directly. The distinction is clear intellectually but it seems Jim that only the Holy Spirit can show each of us when we are meditating and when we are really dwelling upon God himself. But the intellectual definition would be meditation is meditation on truths, or things, or facts whereas prayer is speaking directly to the person. We have to be very careful that we do not find ourselves utterly taken up with meditation and not praying at all. But that would come out in your prayers. It would be obvious by the way you express yourself. Q: Is there a definition of prayer? I wouldn’t have any trouble with that. Prayer is talking to God. Q: Can meditation be prayer? No, I think prayer is talking to God directly. I think meditation is just an aid to prayer in the same way Bible study is. I’m sorry. No, I don’t think mediation is prayer if that’s what you want. I think it’s an aid to prayer. Q: How then can meditating on scripture be used in prayer? A: That’s probably what I would mean by using the words of scripture, “Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me. Bless his holy name.” You’d be meditating on a piece of scripture and it would be drawing your mind up to God. Q: Won’t meditating on scripture keep us from transcendental meditation? A: I’m with you in that I think the Bible is the only safe guard against being led away by evil spirits and spirits of error in prayer. It’s the Bible that will keep us from transcendental meditation and from wrong ideas of what God is like. I agree but I also think it’s important for us not to rationalize ourselves into substituting bible study for prayer. Q: How do we exercise our spirit in prayer? A: It does seem that it involves certainly the distinction between praying in the soul, praying with our minds, praying with our bodies, and praying with the Spirit. And the Holy Spirit does need to make that distinction for us. But I really think that exercising our spirit could be put very succinctly by saying it’s praising God. It’s praising God and being preoccupied with the Father. And it seems to me probably we’re exercising our spirit most strongly when our body is worn out because we really have to exercise the spirit to hold on to God. And it seems to me we’re exercising our spirit most strongly when the wandering thoughts are most difficult. So often God allows some of those things to come into our body and our soul so that we will exercise our spirits strongly. But on the whole it seems that exercising our spirit is praising God. That’s the danger about meditation. It tends to be an exercise of the mind on certain facts and thoughts. Now the Bible should be more than that but often we read the Bible primarily with an intellectual content and it takes a little while for us to learn how to eat God’s word, how to feed on it in our spirits. You need to start praying because at the end of the day that’s the way you learn. And if you regard yourself as a child of God, ask yourself, “How long can I take fellowship with God at this present time? And I wonder how I’ll get on in heaven?” I think you should ask that question honestly. If you’re a child of God do you enjoy being with the Father? And are you able to be with him for a period of time? And I think if you answer, “Well no, pastor I’m not.” Well probably it’s partly because of lack of usage and lack of custom and you should just start it. But it could be also because there’s something deep down independent inside you that you need to deal with. So I’d just remind you loved ones, of the prayer time on Tuesday afternoons from two until five here in the prayer room and then on Friday night nine until Midnight. And then eight o’clock each Sunday morning we pray for an hour from eight until nine. You don’t need to stay the whole time. You can come and go. It’s not something that you commit yourself to for the whole time. You can come in at anytime. Really the important thing is that you need to start praying. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the joy of looking to you. For the joy of being able to look into darkness and know that you’re there whether we feel you or not just because you’ve said you’re there. Father, we thank you for that. We thank you for being alive. We thank you Lord that we can really talk to you and treat you as for real. And Father, we thank you that it does please you when we set time aside for you. And Father, we thank you for Luther’s words, “I’m so busy that I cannot afford to spend less than three hours a day in prayer.” Lord, we know that the busier we get the more time we have to spend with you to keep balanced and sane. And so Father, we would commit ourselves to setting time aside for you. You are the Creator of the whole universe and we want to spend time with you. May God give us the grace to do that starting tomorrow morning.

Intercessory Prayer 1 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Dear ones, what I would like to do is share at least the introduction to this study this evening. One of the books that I would suggest you should buy if you’re interested in interceding in prayer is Rees Howells Intercessor. He is a Welshman who died perhaps 30 years ago, and the book is: Rees Howells Intercessor. Particularly during the battle of Britain there was an incredible change that took place when the Luftwaffe (Aerial warfare branch of Germany during WWII) ruled the skies. It seemed as if undoubtedly an invasion would be launched. And this man had his Bible school in Swansea, Wales, and he was interceding for that very issue. They interceded night and day over a period of months and there was an incredible change in the whole turn of the war. The invasion was never launched you remember, because the weather was impossible for Hitler to get the things off across the Channel. The Channel is of course maybe 20 miles at most so it was an incredible answer to intercessory prayer. And so Rees Howells mentions other things like that but it isn’t the answers that are important it’s the whole teaching regarding intercessory prayer. That’s what I’d like to share a little bit about tonight and all I’ll have time for loved ones is maybe about 10 minutes. Intercessory prayer is praying for another person. And such people are called intercessors. They are interceding in prayer for another person. I suppose inter is between and cedo in Latin is to yield or to go between. And so an intercessor is going between God and another person. There is one principle that rules God’s actions with us besides the principle that he will not act against his own will. That is the principle that God will not act and cannot act against our wills, or apart from our wills. So God cannot act apart from our wills. In other words, God cannot save a person despite the person. God cannot save the world despite the world. God cannot do anything in you against your will and he cannot do anything anywhere apart from the positive operation of our wills. Now, that is indicated if you’d like to look at it in Matthew 9:29, “Then he touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’” That’s the principle. Be it unto you according to your faith. If you don’t believe then it can’t happen, or if someone doesn’t believe for you it can’t happen. God has refused to come down and arbitrarily apart from your free will work miracles on your behalf. He has refused to do that because he refuses to manipulate us as robots. So God will not act apart from our wills. You get it again in Matthew 7:7-8, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” But it won’t be opened unless you knock, and it won’t be given to you unless you ask. So God will not act apart from our wills. And that brings up a problem. How are non-Christians saved? How do people who don’t care about God come to be concerned about him? Because God isn’t going to just choose and say, “I’m going to make that person concerned about me.” He will not act apart from that person’s will. Now there is one way, there is general grace. The person is always seeing the order and design of the universe; he’s always seeing signs of justice that the evil are punished in the world. He’s always sensing his own conscious so there is something in general grace or general revelation that makes him aware that there is a God. But he has no touch at all with God’s redemptive grace unless some human will is exercised on his behalf. So I remember one of the old saints said, “No one is saved unless somebody prays for him.” No one is ever saved unless somebody else prays for that person. So I remember a brother coming to Jesus here in the body who had very little touch with God in his own home. I wondered how he had come to Jesus. Then a number of weeks ago I met the two people who were praying for him who were neighbors. There is no one saved and no one comes to God apart from the exercise of their will or somebody’s will on their behalf. Now, you get that teaching in John 17:9. Somebody must bring the man and let him down through the roof to be healed. Some friends have to exercise faith on behalf of their sick friend. John 17:9, “I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are thine.” Jesus himself was praying for special people. In verses 15-17 he says, “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; they word is truth.” Would God not keep them from the evil one without Jesus asking? No, he wouldn’t. God cannot act in a redemptive way unless somebody prays for someone. Now you get this great need then set forth in Ezekiel 22:30-31. It’s the need of the whole of Christendom and the reason why Christendom is defeated at times or movements within Christendom are defeated. It’s the greatest need easily of our body here. Ezekiel 22:30-31, “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it.” Now that’s interesting. “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; their way have I requited upon their heads, says the Lord GOD.” And God could do nothing but that because he couldn’t find a man who would stand in the breach for the land. Loved ones, that’s the whole truth. What is most needed in the body here are intercessors. If there’s to be real spiritual work done among us and not just a lot of excitement intercessors are needed. Men and woman who will quietly pray and who will learn how to pray. I’d like to talk next Sunday evening about how to intercede, but what is needed are intercessors. The money’s good and we give the money anyway out of obedience to Jesus, quite apart from whether money is needed or not. The preaching is alright, and the singing is alright, and the building is nice. And we’re all nice people. But loved ones, there’ll be no work of God done among us unless there are intercessors. About 70 or 80 years ago when revivals would sweep through a local church you’d find a dear old lady or a dear gentleman who had interceded for years for that church. That’s always the answer. There is no mighty work of God unless there is intercession. All this preaching that goes forth; it will do no spiritual work unless there are men and woman who intercede. That’s why you cannot say that any work of God depends on a man or depends on the people up front. The people up front are the least important people. They are God’s mouthpieces. But the important people are the people who spend hours on their knees in prayer for different people in the body. And what is most needed are intercessors. And when intercession stops in this body we go the way of all flesh. And no doubt eventually that will happen. We’ll go the way of all flesh and we’ll be a byword among the nations. But that can be prevented as long as there are people who will intercede. So I’d just ask you point blank how much time you spend interceding for others? And how many problems have you worried about, thought about, or argued about and you’ve never interceded for them and you’ve never prayed for them? And how many people have you criticized and run down and you’ve never prayed for them? Loved ones, the secret is intercessory prayer. That’s the secret. Any questions loved ones, because I think all we can do is introduce it? Q: Will God always give us what we pray for? A: Rick it seems to me that he cannot refuse to do the very best to work all things according to the counsel of his will. So he cannot refuse to answer the prayer in some way. But, he certainly will not tie himself to give a less than the best answer. So I think you can see that. You’re right he cannot resist the positive will but because he loves us he will give us a better answer than we ask for if he sees a better answer. So he is not at our mercy but he is limited all the time by us human beings. Q: With Jesus or the Holy Spirit interceding is it always for non-Christians? A: That would be when the Holy Spirit would intercede through one of us or when Jesus was interceding there. It seems to me that Jesus was saying that on the occasion he was interceding for the disciples because that was the responsibility that God gave him at that time. There’s no question that at this moment Jesus is interceding for the entire world. And if one of us intercedes for a non-Christian it is only because Jesus himself is interceding through the Holy Spirit in us. So our intercession would gain nothing. It’s because we voice and agree with the intercession that Jesus is offering to the Father. It’s really only Jesus’ intercession that is answered and we’ll get into that time – i.e. the importance of who to intercede for and what to intercede for. Dear ones, prayer is the key to everything it really is. Power Through Prayer by E. M. Bounds is an old, old book on prayer. He says, “Prayerless preaching is killing preaching. Prayerless singing is death dealing singing. Anything that is prayerless brings death with it. It may appear to bring some light at the time but it will really bring death. But anything that has intercession behind it has the touch of God’s life upon it.” Of course it’s obvious why. God’s whole teaching is to teach us that without him we can do nothing. So if we try to do something on our own then he is committed to destroying it. But you can affect others immensely by interceding for them. I cannot explain to you the lifting in a person’s life through prayer. I think I’ve told you about the situation of a friend of mine. Some of you may know him from the OMS, Oriental Missionary Society. He was in India when he went out on a motorbike with his little son on the back to distribute tracks. He went down close to the Ganges River and the pilgrims were all washing themselves in the holy river. At a certain moment a great surge occurred in the crowd. The whole crowd began to panic and there were thousands, and thousands of people. And it was dangerous because nothing could stop them and they surged right towards him. He took the motorbike and the little fella back as far as he could. They withdrew right to an electrical panel. He climbed up a little on the panel and the crowd stopped at that panel. On that same day, he discovered two years later when he came back to the states, a woman here in America had prayed all night for him (as it was night time here). So loved ones, prayer works miracles in the spiritual world, and that’s where everything comes from. That’s where all the power comes from – from intercessory prayer. Anything that God has achieved here among us has been through prayer. The first thing we started was an eight o’clock prayer meeting. The second meeting we ever had was at Valley Pizza and it was an eight o’clock prayer meeting. That was the first thing we organized, intercessors within the body. So anything that has happened has come by prayer and it’s through prayer that it will continue. Anything that fails, fails not through organization. God blesses our miserable organization and has done so down through the years. He has blessed all kinds of ridiculous judgments all down through the years. He has overruled all kinds of foolish decisions in response to people’s prayers. Now, that’s no argument for making these decisions or for badly organizing. But it is true that it is only God’s sheer grace that moves his people forward. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for telling us very plainly that if there’s to be any blessing it can come only from you in response to our prayers. And that you will not act apart from our wills, and you cannot touch our sons or daughters unless we are interceding for them. You cannot touch the brothers and sisters here unless we’re interceding. You cannot touch our dear friends on the campuses, unless we’re interceding for them. Father, we thank you that you have said, “Be it unto you according to your faith,” because it means that you respect our free wills. And Lord, we know that was the reason for the whole plan of salvation because you would not overrule our free wills. And we see that you refuse to overrule them in prayer. So we thank you Lord. We apologize Father for the lack of prayer, for lack of interceding for our friends. We apologize Lord, for those million times we’ve criticized individuals, organizations and movements. Instead of talking to you about them we’ve talked to others about them. Father, we apologize to you and we would commit ourselves now to making room in our daily prayer lives for intercession. We know Lord, that you will make the whole desert blossom as a rose. If we think we see blessing and success at this present time, we have no idea what the fields can look like when you touch them with your long reign of the Holy Spirit. So Father, we would begin to commit ourselves to this task and to being used by you. We trust you Father, this coming week for grace and wisdom to intercede that we may begin to see the changes even now. We ask this in your name and for Jesus’ glory. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

Intercessory Prayer 2 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill When it comes to intercessory prayer the truth is that the Holy Spirit will not knock the door down, he will not. The Holy Spirit is a dear gentleman. He says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my voice and opens the door I will come into him and will supp with him and he with me and I will tell him what the mind of Jesus is for that dear one.” But he will not knock the door down. And so often our door is tightly closed. We have settled what we’re going to do for you Lord. We’ve settled moreover that we can’t do it in this class or in this situation because we’ve other things to attend to, and we are not open sensitively to the Spirit of Jesus. Now loved ones, the first need for an intercessor is a real sensitivity to the Spirit of Jesus. Norman Grubb wrote this book that I’ve referred you to called, Rees Howells Intercessor. Rees Howells was a Welshman and Norman Grubb says this about Howells, “But before he can lead a chosen vessel into such a life of intercession, he first has to deal to the bottom with all that is natural — love of money, personal ambition, and natural affection for parents and loved ones.” You can see why he has to deal with that. Otherwise, because of our natural affection for parents, we may be so strongly determined to pray for them for a purely natural reason that we cannot hear the spirit of Jesus prompting us to pray for somebody else who has no blood relationship to us. “The appetites of the body, the love of life itself, and all that makes even a converted man live unto himself for his own comfort or advantage, for his own advancement, even for his own circle of friends has to go to the cross. It is no theoretical death but a real crucifixion with Christ such as only the Holy Spirit himself can make actual in the experience of his servant. Both as a crisis and process Paul’s testimony must be made ours, ‘I have been and still am crucified with Christ.’ The self must be released from itself to become the agent of the Holy Spirit.” That’s the first condition loved ones, for being an intercessor. That’s a big one, a real death to your own concerns. Jesus walked through the world thinking only of us. He never thought for a moment of himself and the first step for us to become his interpreters and representatives is for us to come to the same place. So really to be an intercessor in the scriptural sense means coming to a real identification with Jesus, a real sense of oneness with him in his crucifixion and his resurrection. And you can see how that applies in the instances I shared in the class because you cannot receive the sensitive guidance of the Spirit of Jesus if your own mind is filled with your own plans and ideas. So just repeating that illustration in the Old Testament, if the earthquake of your self interest in somebody else in the class is trembling and shaking your whole personality, if the fire of your own ambition is governing the way you think of your friends at work, then you’ll never hear that sound of gentle stillness that is the Spirit of Jesus saying, “My Father wants to do that in this person. Will you pray for that?” And only then will you be able to pray according to God’s will. And of course only then will you be able to release God’s will into his people. Interceding for God is not persuading God to do something that he doesn’t want to do. It’s not persuading God to do something that you think he ought to do. That’s the ridiculous little creature trying to run and dictate to the mighty Creator. But it’s discovering what God himself wants to do in your situation and you offering that up as a prayer to him. And that’s what real intercession is. And therefore it’s quite a peaceful thing. When you at last know what is Jesus’ will in a situation you simply spend time thanking God that he’s bringing this about. That’s why George Mueller could pray for a person for 40 years. He just thanked the Lord that he was going to bring this person to himself and it was 40 years later, indeed after Mueller’s death that it took place. But Mueller did not pray continually day-after-day, “Lord, will you, will you, will you?” Mueller was so dead to himself and to all his own interest that he had received that message from Jesus’ Spirit and he knew God was going to do it. So a true intercessor does not battle to persuade God to do something. An intercessor only battles to come to the place of freedom where his own spirit is really free to receive the Spirit of Jesus. Now once that happens loved ones, another thing follows. A deep identification takes place with the people for whom you’re interceding. A real deep sense of identification takes place because you begin to love them with this love of Jesus. And the love of Jesus took him to a cross for us. So you begin to love these dear ones with a supernatural love to the point where you would rather be lost than that they be lost. Now, that is wrought by the Holy Spirit and it is very important for us not to play games with that. A lot of us would think, “Oh, one of the rules of intercession is identification with the people that you’re praying for. I must imagine myself in their position.” And all you get is a psychic experience, or a sense of soulish empathy with them. Only if you put your identification with Jesus first and your death to your own self interest can you be filled with the Holy Spirit’s love of these dear ones. But you do get that if you look at Romans 9:3. Paul had this sense of deep identification with those for whom he was praying. Romans 9:3, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race.” Now that is a supernatural conviction wrought in its intensity, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren.” Loved ones, that’s wrought by the Holy Spirit and it’s really important that you don’t play games with it because it’s too holy. Don’t try to persuade yourself that you are like that; otherwise you then come into all kinds of problems with Satan. You begin to experience all kinds of problems from other people and you say, “Oh, I’m experiencing it because I’m so identified with them.” Now the identification that the Holy Spirit brings about is a safe one for you. It enables you not only to suffer but to carry on interceding and walking in victory even though the travail is strong. So if you manipulate yourself then you’ll end up in all kinds of problems. You’ll begin trying to identify yourself with somebody who is having emotional problems and then the emotional problems will come upon you. And then Satan will persuade you, “Now you are completely identified.” But you’re so identified that you’re no earthly or heavenly use to either you, or them, or to Jesus. The identification with the Holy Spirit works within us. It is one that certainly experiences the agony of the other person but it experiences it in such a way that you are free to continue to walk in victory and ministry. You don’t walk around with sack cloth and ashes on your head saying, “Yes I am really in victory but I’m just under it for this person.” No, you’re in victory even though you agonize for them. Now you find it in Moses’ life if you just look at Exodus 32:32. Verse 31 gives the continuity better. Exodus 32:31-32, “So Moses returned to the LORD and said, ‘Alas, this people have sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, it thou wilt forgive their sin—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.’” Now that can be only said under the anointing of the Holy Spirit otherwise it becomes a sin. And so we need to see that the first condition of being an intercessor is an absolute identification with Jesus in that death to your own self concerns so that the Holy Spirit can begin to give you the desires of Jesus. The first thing to fulfill is that readiness to say, “Lord Jesus, I want to live only to receive your intercessions for your world. That’s the only thing I want. I want to be free from my own self interest at every opportunity so that I can receive your wishes.” You remember how your dad used to say when you were sick, “Oh, I wish I could suffer it for you.” And that’s real love. “I wish I had the pain and not you son,” or, “I wish dear that I had the pain and not you.” Now that’s what an intercessor experiences. It’s Jesus in him expressing that and that’s the first step loved ones. So do you see it’s not a crude thing? It’s not just picking anybody and everybody to intercede for. It’s receiving the mind of Jesus. You could go round each one of your houses, and your jobs and offices, and you could apply it to each situation. Those of us who are in offices, I’m sure you could name about 10 things right off that need to be done in those offices. But do you see that there is a certain order that the Father has and he knows what is best? In engineering jobs there’s something that you have to do before something else can be done. There’s an order that you follow. Now there is an order in the application of Jesus’ atonement to our world and the Holy Spirit can reveal that to us. And that’s why people get answers to prayers. You’ve maybe wondered, “How does this person talk about the continual answers to prayers that they get?” I’ll tell you why. It’s because they care about nothing but Jesus. They don’t care about themselves. Now that’s true loved ones, they care about nothing but Jesus and his glory and therefore they begin to receive the mind of Christ. Now we have two minutes left. Are there any questions? There’s more to talk about as we’re just beginning. Question: What is the highest goal for intercessory prayer? It seems Rick that the one thing that you come against in doctrine and theology is that God himself is the one self existent being in the whole universe and our finite minds cannot go beyond him. There can be no greater motive or purpose in the universe as far as our finite minds can understand. We do believe that our finite minds understand it as it is eternally, but there can be no higher purpose than God himself. And that’s what we end up with; that the glory of God is the highest thing for which one can do anything. Now it is a dangerous situation when the little creature says, “You’re not perfect Lord, because I can think of a higher standard by which you could govern things than that.” It seems to me that we simply find ourselves in the position where we see that God has created the whole universe, that he is bigger than the universe itself and that it is a higher motive to do things for him than for the universe. And we believe that he is an utterly wise God and that we will find our fullest completion and our real fulfillment in doing things for him. So even though I agree with you, it is Jesus at the right hand of the Father, then us down here on the earth and the Holy Spirit working through us. He brings the love of Jesus through us by the Holy Spirit and then back up to God and then God to Jesus. You can say that’s circular but then one could say it’s a beautiful circle. We could say that it’s certainly very fair or round. Now if one charges God with unfairness and wanting his own glory I do think that it helps a little if you see that God, when he talks about glory does not mean, “I want you to praise me, and say I’m a good God and make me big. I am big. I am the greatest one of the universe. I want you to see my glory by simply seeing me as I am.” And so when God talks about us seeing his glory, or glorifying him, he simply means, “See me as I am, that’s all I want you to do. Then you will glorify me.” Berkhof might help, and Systematic Theology chapter two I think. Question: Are we not belittling or limiting God when we say that he cannot do anything apart from our wills? I’m sure we ought not to go too deep into theology, but it’s the whole distinction between the idea of omnipotence which is omnis potens in Latin, all powerful and the idea of – “pantocrator” which would mean the ruler of all. This means God can do anything. This means God rules all and can do anything he wishes. So it is true to say that God is capable of anything as long as it isn’t against his nature. But it is his nature to preserve our free wills and so God cannot commit himself to anything that would work against our free wills. So I think it’s not belittling God but it’s recognizing that God’s nature is to preserve our free wills. And so he “will not” rather than “cannot”. He will not do anything that opposes or contradicts our free wills. You see, the idea of omnipotence held in it the concept that God could sin if he wanted to, you see. God could do anything. He can sin. Well God cannot. Omnipotence is really a questionable concept. All one can say is not that God can do anything but God can do anything as long as it is according to his nature. And it is his nature to preserve free will. Loved ones, I think that maybe in fairness to us all we should stop and we’ll continue next Sunday evening on intercession. Let us pray. Dear Father, we thank you as we come nearer to you and see you more truly as you are, that we see how magnificent you are and how great. Father, how you the Lord of all have contracted yourself to a span and become a little baby and limited yourself in so many ways. And then Father we thank you how you have begun to release us into your infinity. Father, we thank you for the respect that you give to us. We thank you that you have tied yourself to our willingness so that we may not become robots or unknowing morons. Father thank you that you have required us to cooperate with you. Lord, we want to become men and woman who know your will and with the Lord Jesus can intercede and fill out the fullness of your sufferings. Lord Jesus, you have done all the hard suffering for us. All we have to do is stop being wrapped up in ourselves and instead become wrapped up in you. And that Lord Jesus is such an easy thing compared with your death on the cross. Lord, we want to do it. We ask you Holy Spirit, in the office tomorrow and in our houses tonight, and in our classrooms tomorrow to show us where we’re too taken up with our own interests. Lord Jesus, we want to see our friends at work as you see them. We want to understand them as you understand them so that we may ask your Father to do what he has planned. Thank you Holy Spirit that you will be faithful to lead us into this work and ministry. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and throughout this coming week. Amen.

Intercessory Prayer 3 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill There are two ways in which God communicates knowledge of his salvation to all men and women. One is through general revelation and the other is through special revelation. Now some people have called that by other names and you’ll see the reason in a moment. Some have talked about preserving grace of God and the redeeming grace of God and that God has made both of those kinds of grace available to us. Now perhaps it would help you if we looked at the Bible references that point those two doctrines out clearly. The first one is in Romans 1:19-20, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” Actually the Greek is not the preposition “to” but “in”: “Has shown it in them.” The general revelation referred to there is the one outlined in Romans 2:14, “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them.” So part of the general revelation that God gives to all men is that of conscience. And everyone, even those who have no contact with the Bible at all, has conscience. There are all kinds of things that we all sense we should not do. No one agrees that you should be a coward. No one thinks it’s right to do harm to your friends. There are certain standards of conscience that apply even to the most primitive tribe. So conscience is part of the general revelation of God. Then Romans Chapter 1 verse 20 says: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” That points to the order and design of the universe which is available to all men to show them that there is a mind behind the universe. That’s why Paul says in Verse 20b, “So they are without excuse.” It is, I think, one other part of general revelation that is available to all men because most nations have had some contact with the Israelites or the Jews, and most nations have within them the memory of God’s dealings way back in the Garden of Eden. Even if they come down to them as they do to the Babylonians through a corrupted version, yet all men have some sense of that revelation of God. God says, “They are without excuse because they do have that revelation.” This ties up with a question that George put to me: “Is it possible that there would be people who would be condemned by God simply because someone did not pray for them?” Now the general revelation or the preserving grace of God is available to all men. It’s the rain that comes on the just and the unjust, and is independent of whether people pray for them or not. God implies that it is possible for a man or a woman to respond to him in a confession and repentance of sin that would enable him to forgive them even through general revelation. So I think that helps to deal with that fact that it seems that people are without excuse in God’s eyes — because of the general revelation that has come to them. Now the special revelation is mentioned in Hebrews 1 verse 1: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets.” So the first part of the special revelation or the redeeming grace of God is that found in the Old Testament’s special revelations of God to his people. “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” Jesus is perhaps the central part of that special revelation, and then following Jesus the writings of the New Testament, and the dealings of God with the early church. Now this is a conditional revelation that comes on certain conditions. Those conditions are the ones that we referred to before – in Matthew 9:29: “Then he touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’” This special revelation comes on the condition of our faith or of someone’s faith. The other verse that refers to this is in Matthew 7:7-8: “’Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.’” Now this revelation is conditional upon asking. That is the redeeming grace of God that we are talking about in connection with intercessory prayer. Would anyone like to ask questions at that point? You know I’m not claiming to be able to explain fully the infinite mind of our Creator, but I do think we should in some sense try to see what sense we can in the revelation. [Question inaudible] No, there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved — except Jesus. But it does seem obvious, Tom, that Jesus was the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. It is because he was slain in the heart of God before the foundation of the world that God was even able to offer forgiveness to the Old Testament people. That he was even able to offer a covenant of grace to Noah. And so it does seem that it’s because of Jesus that the forgiveness is offered. Now the issue therefore is not whether God is ready to forgive someone who confesses and repents and believes that he is a forgiving God. But the issue is: can they know that God is like that? Now, they can certainly know that he is a god that exists, that has a mind, and that is personal since he has made persons. They can certainly know, and you can see that in the sacrificial systems of primitive tribes, that he hates evil. They can sense that he is a just God, and that something needs to be done to enable them to be forgiven, and for God to deal with them with justice. Now in some of their histories they have all kinds of contorted versions of a Savior. Whether that is clear enough or not for them, no one can say for sure. But it seems that if God says they are without excuse, then he means that they are without excuse in so far as they might say, “We didn’t know God was a forgiving God.” He can’t imply that they will be saved by total obedience, because no man can do that without the Holy Spirit. So it seems to imply that in some way they may be able to glimpse away at the back of history that someone has done something tremendous to enable their Creator to forgive them. And there’s no question that even those of us who have studied Greek and Latin myths know that there are hints of some Savior. So that’s I think where we’re left. We’re left with saying, “God says that they are without excuse. So surely that must mean they have a light — however faded it is — and they’re responsible for responding to it. I would say that God will always give to those who ask. I would say that God teaches us through Jesus that he is a Father that gives good gifts to those who ask. Now we all differ, undoubtedly from denomination to denomination, but even from person-to-person sitting in these seats on this. We all differ as to whether a person can come through to a bright and living knowledge of Jesus as Savior without ever having heard of his name. Or, whether we can come to some awareness of God’s forgiveness, and then after death we will meet Jesus and deal with him. I’m sure we all differ as to what we say there. But it does seem that God will deal with people according to his promises in the Bible. You know without me saying that this is one of the most difficult areas in theology. So you have to take what I say and be gracious to me as I try to explain what I believe is the truth. I’m very open to anyone who can see it more clearly. But really all I want to share tonight is the importance of seeing that there is a revelation that comes to all men unconditionally. That’s the heart of that verse, “God rains his rain on the just and the unjust without them asking for the rain or without asking for the sunshine.” But there is a redeeming grace of God that is conditional upon asking. Either upon us asking — or as we’ve begun to talk about intercessory prayer — upon someone asking on our behalf. {Question from the audience} In what way can we pray for a person who has set his will against God? If God wants to preserve his free will can we really ask God to overrule his free will? We cannot, loved ones. All we can pray is that the Holy Spirit will give light. Enlightenment really is the technical word I think that would be used in theology rather than revelation. We can pray the Holy Spirit will bring enlightenment to the person so that they will see the truths that are set forth here in a real and living way, and will have an honest glaring opportunity to accept or reject Jesus. Obviously, too we can pray a great deal that the Holy Spirit will enlighten their spirits to be able to see clearly Jesus in their friends and in other things, so that they will have a full opportunity not to be blinded but to see everything in balance. But then it is theirs to accept or reject. We cannot overrule that. “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord,” means not that the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord as far as his salvation or his condemnation are concerned — but that God will allow the king to do unto his children only what he enables his children to bear. That’s why we can afford to submit to those in authority over us, because God himself will prevent them from doing anything to us that God will not give us grace to bear. I suppose I have to say that God’s word speaks to it and on that I base my belief. Does history speak to it? I’m sure it’s like asking a scientist who says, “I haven’t found God anywhere in the universe.” You ask him, “Have you looked everywhere?” It’s a bit like that when you ask me does all of history speak to that. I would have to say that by my faith in Jesus as the revelation of God as he really is, his word speaks to it. And I can think of many instances in history that testify to it. [Question inaudible] It seems to me that that’s true. But I do think you have to ask according to God’s will for God to answer the prayer. But the heart of it is: what is his will? His will is never to overrule an individual’s will. His will is always to make the choice absolutely clear to an individual. [Question inaudible] That’s right. Maybe I can take that, Diane, and begin — because I know that it’s hard to continue just with questions at the beginning. It does seem vital that we see then that the redeeming grace of God is the application by the Holy Spirit of the truths that have been revealed in the Old Testament, in Jesus, and in the New Testament. And the Holy Spirit applies these truths to people’s spirits by enlightenment as we ask God. Now the Father knows which of these truths a person has to see at a certain time. So many of us, for instance, have gone to churches that have offered gospel, gospel, gospel. We didn’t even know we needed gospel. Yet they were preaching gospel to us and all we got out of it was, “Oh yeah. God’s willing to forgive me. That’s very nice.” But we didn’t feel we had anything to be forgiven for. What was needed was someone to preach law to us to enable us to see what state we were in in relationship to our Creator. Now you can see that very often we are not only giving the wrong thing to people at the wrong time, but all of us are involved in praying for the wrong thing for people at the wrong time. So the Holy Spirit is not able to do what he wants in revealing the appropriate truth to a person at the right time. So very often our dad is just absolutely against God and against religion. And we think that he’s against it just because of the things he says. He says, “Oh, I was brought up and forced to go to church every Sunday, and I just hated it. I’m not having anything to do with those hypocrites again.” We take that as the reason, and we keep praying, “Holy Spirit, will you show my dad that there are churches where there are not hypocrites and where people are real?” When really what is holding our dad back from seeing God is that he has some habit in his life that he is not willing to give up, and that he keeps rationalizing as being right for him. What the Holy Spirit really wants to do is show him that. And what we should really be doing is praying on the other hand not that our dad will come upon the right group of people in church, but that he will deal honestly with something that he has been questioning in his own behavior for years. Now loved ones, many of the situations that we come up against are very much like that example. The fact is that the only way that the Holy Spirit can reveal the appropriate truth to the person at the right time is by some of us asking for that. We mentioned that in connection with Ezekiel 36:37. That is the verse that teaches the key to prayer clearly — that God is tied to our prayers before he can do anything in connection with the special revelation that he has given us in the New Testament in Jesus. Verse 37: “’Thus says the Lord God: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock’.” And God says, “I want to do this. But unless the house of Israel asks me to do it for them — I cannot do it.” And it is so with us. None of our relatives and none of our friends can receive a living revelation of these things. They can have an intellectual understanding of them and that’s usually what kills them and chokes them. They have an intellectual understanding of these things that would put anybody off. But what is needed is an enlightenment to see the inner meaning of these things. That comes only as some of us intercede and pray for them. Now of course the real problem with most of us is that we do not know the particular truth that God wants to reveal to our mum or dad, or to our roommate. The reason we don’t know that is usually that we’re really not too interested. We’re not too interested in getting to know God’s mind well enough to know what he wants to show our friend. Watchman Nee puts it like this, “There’s a dad comes into the garden to his little son and his little son is playing in the sandbox. And he says, ‘Son will you come and hold this for me?’ And the little boy says, ‘No, no, I’ve something in my hand. I can’t do it at the moment.’” And Nee says, “That’s so often the way God finds us.” At a certain moment in the office, or a certain moment at school, or a certain moment in the apartment, the Holy Spirit wants to give us a revelation of a need that a certain person has. But we are busy with something in our hands. We are busy either trying to give them what they need or what we think they need, or we’re busy with our own concerns and what we want to do. That’s why we said the heart of being an intercessor is coming to a place where you forget your own concerns. Leave the things out of your own hands, begin to trust the Father for your financial prosperity, begin to trust the Father for your family, and for your future. Leave those things aside and say, “Father, you will take care of those things for your intercessors. I’m going to concentrate on you and what you want.” That’s the first step in becoming an intercessor — a real identification with Jesus in his death to his own things and his own concerns. Now I really think that a lot of us kind of listen to this intercession stuff and we all think, “Oh it’s great. I’d love to be an intercessor.” But we want to do it as an extra with all of our own things that we want to do. We don’t want to leave aside our own concerns and our own preoccupations in life, and concentrate on God’s mind and on God’s mind alone. See — many of us here tonight are really desperately anxious to know what God is thinking at this moment. Well, that’s what God wants. God wants children who are always looking up into his face to see, “What are you thinking, Dad? What way are your eyes looking? What do you want to do?” As they do this, then he begins to guide them with his eye and to show them what he wants them to pray for. That is the way into real intercession. And so in a group like this tonight, what would happen is the Holy Spirit would be imparting to someone over here what someone over here needs. The Holy Spirit would be impressing upon some brother back there what some sister here needs. Some brother back there would be sensing what some couple needs. That would be what is happening if we were real intercessors — if we really came in here tonight not all preoccupied with what we were going to get out of the service, not all taken up with whether we were going to enjoy it or not, and not all taken up with our relationships with each other — but all taken up with God and his mind. Loved ones, it honestly is possible for the infinite mind of God to impart to all of us little people what his particular mind is for us and for our prayers. It is possible. That’s God’s plan. His plan is that we would be in direct contact with him all day — the way it works with a computer firm where you can link up with any computer in New York, in Carolina or anywhere in the world. You can link up to any computer. The Father is a massive infinite mind who can see all the needs in the whole universe. He cannot only see the needs in your home with your mum and dad, but he can see the order in which those needs have to be met for them to see Jesus clearly. He can impart that to your mind. But it requires us to be preoccupied with God’s mind. You know how we are. We’re preoccupied with all kinds of manipulation of the things of his kingdom and all kinds of battles that we’re having with each other. We’re preoccupied with anything other than with the great mind of God. And really, it is possible to get to know a person’s mind. You know it with your friends. I see husbands and wives sitting here. You know I could ask your wife if she’d like to go to this or that, and you could answer for her because you know her mind so well. And some of us who have roommates know what they’re thinking. It’s possible to get to know a person’s mind just by traveling with them for years and years. Now, it’s possible to do the same with the Father. It’s possible to know his mind. But you can see what he’s facing. It’s like a great telephone exchange and we’re all busy dialing like mad and calling him up and saying, “Rain over here.” This one is saying, “Sunshine over here.” And this one’s saying, “Convert my father,” and this one is saying, “Convert my mother.” This one is saying, “Heal my brother.” All kinds of a weird cacophony of requests are coming up to God which have nothing to do with his dear will. If he did answer them, the entire place would blow up in chaos and anarchy — because everything would be happening in the wrong order. And don’t you see that it’s not simply a matter of getting the benefits of Jesus’ atonement down to us men and woman any old way? There is a certain order in which these things have to come. You know that from ordinary experiences here in our own lives. Any engineering project has a certain order that has to be followed. Otherwise it’s chaotic. Learning a language, there’s a certain order to it — otherwise it’s chaotic. Doing anything requires that you do certain things in a certain order. So it is with the application of the benefits of the atonement. And what God most yearns for is a people who would be preoccupied with his mind, rather than with their own needs — or even, strangely enough, with other people’s needs. That they be preoccupied with God’s mind. “Father, what is your mind for my roommate?” That means first of all you have to be dead to the unpleasant affects of your roommate upon you. Otherwise you’ll be asking, “Lord, deal with their temper. Deal with their temper.” But you’ll be asking purely for a selfish motive. So you can see it’s very necessary to die to a lot of the effects that other people have on you, in order to pray for them according to God’s will. Now what this brings then is a real sense not only of identification with Jesus, but a real sense of identification with the people. Jesus loves us so much that he feels everything that we feel. Jesus knows what you’re thinking tonight. He knows every feeling that you have at this moment. He knows every worry in your own mind. He knows every resentment in your heart. He knows you. He goes through all the agonies with you. Now if we are to be intercessors we need to let Jesus come in and be like that through us to other people. It means identifying yourself with the people for whom you are praying. It means really feeling with them, going through their agonies with them, and really loving them. Empathizing in the sense of being with them in the midst of the thing. In other words, you can’t intercede for somebody unless you feel deeply for them. Many of us have talked kind of glibly about healing. Healing only comes out of a deep, deep love for a person. It only comes out of a deep compassion in your heart for a person. Interceding is not just wrapping a word off or interceding and saying, “Lord, deal with this person.” Interceding is a deep identification with people, and therefore it really does involve an agonizing. It really does involve an agonizing. When Jesus was on the cross he had one hand up to the Father and he had the other hand around us. We with all our sin were pulling ourselves away from God, and Jesus was trying to pull us to God. And the tension and strain of that was what he suffered on Calvary. Intercession is doing that. Intercession is making a bridge between God and the people that are stretching away from God. Therefore there is an agony in intercession. There is a deep sensing of God’s agony when he looks upon a dear one who is drinking himself into alcoholism. There’s the agony of God that you feel when you think of a person who is in that situation. When you think of a couple who are about to break their marriage up, there’s the agony of God as he looks upon something that started beautifully at an alter — with them promising never to part from each other until death parts them. You feel the agony of that. Only if a person senses God’s agony at what someone else is experiencing — only then does he begin to be an intercessor. That’s what you find in Romans 9:2 — the sheer agony that there is in real intercession. Verse 1 gives the completion of the sentence: “I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” So this was Paul who said, “I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me.” This was Paul who said, “Rejoice. Again, I say rejoice.” But when he was interceding for others he experienced that sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart. That’s really what heals relationships. I think often you and I have a broken relationship with someone, and we feel it’s going to be healed by running a sensitivity group session with them. Or, we sense it’s going to be healed by thinking, “Let’s just be honest with them. Just be honest. Tell each other how we really feel.” And it’s just so crude. Really, many of the relationships that are broken and strained among us will only be healed if we have great anguish for that dear one and love them with all our hearts before God, and if we are in anguish and sorrow before God on their behalf. Only if you really sense an agony in your own spirit that they are in this kind of situation in regard to God — only then does the Holy Spirit begin to intercede. You find it in Romans 8:26: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not known how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” The King James Version says, “The Spirit intercedes with groaning that cannot be uttered.” I think many sons and daughters receive revelation by the Holy Spirit because of moms and dads who just have a deep heartache before Jesus. Not for their son or their daughter, but for this child of God — primarily because of God for God’s sake. So often your spirit can yearn without words and often the works that take place in a body like this take place because some dear ones are having that groaning in their heart that they cannot express. And yet, it is very important to have that — the expression of the agony in God’s heart when he sees two people not getting on together, when he sees one person who is not trusting God at all, or when he sees another person who is being harsh to a friend. It’s God expressing that through a human heart that begins to make intercession possible. You find the same truth in Galatians 4:19. It’s this that would bring white hairs to saints. Saints really would not have white hairs if they had only themselves to get to heaven. Galatians 4:19: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!” So it’s like travailing and laboring as a woman does when she’s about to deliver her baby. It’s like that for any new births. So you can kind of sense that most of the work of God is invisible work like that. And if this body ever fails to come into what God wants for it, it will be because of lack of that kind of intercession. You and I know it. You and I know that what we’re most discontented with and dissatisfied with is the shallow gospels that so often come over to us in our churches. We so often go to churches and we don’t receive anything and nothing touches us. It’s not because of the preachers. We are foolish — we think it’s because of the preachers. But a miserable rotten preacher can be used by the Holy Spirit to reflect Jesus if there are mighty intercessors in the body. It’s that kind of agonizing that brings about changes in the body. So when we get to heaven, really it will be some people here who are not even known by many others that God will draw out and say, “It was through you I built this work,” or, “I built this ministry in Amsterdam,” or, “I built this ministry in Campus Church.” There’s no question of that. It will not be through those of us who are visible and who are seen and heard. It may be through some of us if we are true intercessors. But it will be essentially through a lot of intercession that is never seen or heard of. Because what happens is a whole congregation senses the yearnings of the heart of God. See you think of the times you’ve offended your dad or mum. Think of the times you’ve hurt them deeply, and you looked into their face and you saw all the hurt, and all the agony. That’s what drew you back. It’s when you sense the aching of a heart that loves you that you draw back to that person. And that’s why God wants some of us to agonize with the same pain that he has in his heart — because that begins to be made known through the Holy Spirit and begins to be used by God. I’d like just to mention one other thing that can be talked about in a very brief time. We’ve talked about the importance of identification. You’ll see these things more clearly taught and fully expounded in the book Intercessor by Rees Howells. We’ve talked about the importance of agony and then the importance of authority. You cannot really intercede for someone if you’re interceding up hill. And that’s the way most of us are trying to intercede. We’re preoccupied with how the people are themselves, so we’re preoccupied with the problem. So we’re kind of praying up from the bottom of a deep pit: “Lord, I know this is going to be difficult to do, but Lord, will you touch this person?” There’s only one place in which we can intercede, and that’s shown in Ephesians 2:6. You get the continuity of the sentence if you look at Ephesians 2:1 and then go down to Verse 6: “And you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” And Verse 6: “And raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Now the only position in which you can intercede with authority is in that position at the Father’s right hand. That is not just an intellectual idea. You do not sit in your room at home and say, “Ah, I’m really at God’s right hand. That’s it. I’m really at God’s right hand. Yeah, I’m at your right hand, Lord. Alright, I imagine you and I imagine myself here at your right hand.” There’s only one way to God’s right hand, and that’s the way Jesus got there. So Jesus was walking on the earth, then he came to a certain place, and then he went into a certain tomb. And from that tomb he was resurrected and ascended to the right hand of God. Now there’s only one way to the right hand of God — and that is through death with Jesus, and the Holy Spirit making real to you your ascension with him. All I can do tonight is to testify that it is possible to experience that. In other words, it’s possible always to be praying down. That’s the position of authority. You know that some of us have hard times in the office because the atmosphere is just so sharp and so poisonous that we cannot possibly believe God could do anything about it. Now you cannot pray from the middle of that situation. You have to die to that whole situation first, come into that tomb with Jesus, and allow the Holy Spirit to raise you to the right hand of the Father. And from that position, you can intercede for that office. Now all I can share tonight — it’s such a deep truth — that all I can share is that it’s possible for the Holy Spirit to make that real to you. It’s no imagination, and it’s not the power of positive thinking. It is possible to allow God to raise you to the right hand of the Father where you know that’s where you are. The last thing I want to share is what Howells talks about, and loved ones, you really need to deal with this just very carefully. Howells then talks about the position of intercession — that there is a position into which God can lift you for intercession for certain things. So you remember he shares that he had laid on his heart the position of the tramps in his hometown. The tramps, the down and outs, the skid row people. He had laid on his heart those people. And God began to show him some of the obedience’s he had to come into in order to enter fully into that tomb, and be lifted to the right hand of power to intercede for those down and outs. Now he pointed out that he then reached a position where he could intercede for those people. And he called that the grace of intercession. The gain position of intercession or the grace of faith. He pointed out that there were other people who could at times pray for down and outs, and sometimes their prayers would be answered and sometimes they wouldn’t. So they were receiving the gifts of faith. But he pointed out that there was a position that the intercessor could come into in which he experienced the grace of faith on all occasions for those people. He mentioned George Mueller, who had come into this position of intercession and this grace of faith for orphans. Mueller had built lots and lots of orphanages. And through obedience and all kinds of dealings God had with him over his money, his position, and the way he operated his own work and his life, he came into that position of intercession for orphans so that he could intercede for orphans and God would deal with them at that very time. Now on occasion he prayed for people to be healed, and on one occasion a person was raised up from a sick bed. But at another occasion he prayed for a person to be healed and they weren’t. There he was experiencing the gifts of faith in connection with healing. Howells gives another instance of Pastor Blumhardt in Germany, who came into a position of intercession for sick people. I’ll read it to you in Howells’ words: “He prayed through, and God did open. Not only were hundreds blessed, but he raised the standard for the church. After the final victory he gained such ease of access to the throne that often when letters came asking for prayer for sick people, after just looking up for a single moment he could find God’s will as to whether they were to be healed or not. The sufferings of others became so painful to him that he was pleading for them as if for himself.” That was intercession. So it is possible to come into a position of intercession that is mighty to the pulling down of strongholds — just by a word of prayer. But, that is a deep place to come in and you come into it through individual dealing with God. It’s not a thing to be played with — you can see that. They aren’t ideas just to be shuttled back and forward. They are truths that only the Holy Spirit can really make real. Maybe let’s have about two minutes of questions loved ones, if that would help. The truth is that most of us try to pray up, and we’re always looking up, and we’re always looking up to God. In actual fact Ephesians 2:6 says, “God has already raised us up and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Now the reality of that position can be actually made so real to you that you know you’re in that position. You just know you’re in that position. You feel it, your whole being testifies to it, and then you’re able to pray down to the situation and say what Jesus said: not, “Lord, will you move this mountain,” but, “Mountain, be removed and cast into the sea.” So you’re able to pray down with authority commanding the thing to be removed. Loved ones, I would just remind you that really I’m not trying to frighten you. But these are holy things and difficult things and things that only the Holy Spirit can make real. So don’t play with them. Even the way I’m explaining them is pitiful compared with the realities themselves. But I want you to at least sense that there are high and powerful positions of intercession, that unless we get into them, we will have nothing but tragedy for the first group of us that gets across to India or into China {as missionaries}. Unless some of us come into mighty positions of intercession we’ll have countless deaths, imprisonments, and failures in our own group — because only this kind of intercession will enable us to touch places like China and Russia. In answer to your question, it seems that we all should see our responsibility that God set before us that we should pray for all in authority. We should intercede for kings. You remember the way God gives general command to us that we should intercede. We all should be involved in intercession. Some of us will be given special ministries, and we will know that when the Holy Spirit sets it before us. But, all of us should be involved in intercession. I really think the work of God goes forward on the basis of intercessors. The preachers, the singers, and all the rest of us we are mouth pieces. But we are so upside down in our present society that we don’t think that way at all. We think that it’s the preachers, or the singers, or the people who are out in front, they’re the people that are being used by God.

Real Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Today I’d like to touch upon prayer. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 talks about prayer, and it just says, “Pray constantly.” What God brought home to me was this: that we think morning prayer is something that will help us be stronger in Jesus. We don’t see that it is a command from God to pray constantly, and that when you disobey that command, you sin. That suddenly came home to me — that a lot of us when we hear somebody talk about prayer, we think, “Well, yeah we can see the advantages of prayer and we can see that we ought to pray so that God can do things.” But loved ones, we should see that if you don’t pray in the morning or pray at a set time each day, you’re actually disobeying a command that is implicit in all of Jesus’ own life, and is explicit again and again throughout the Bible, and that you’re just downright sinning. In other words, when you don’t pray every day, it’s like committing adultery every day. Really. Now do you see it? Because it came home to me very sharply that prayer is not a good thing to do. It’s not something that will enable you to be a mighty servant to God. Prayer is a direct command from God to you. And if you don’t pray every day you are sinning. You’re disobeying God. I think some of us need to see that. We need to stop playing around with each other, because I really think we’ve been playing with kid gloves with each other for some time over this subject of prayer. We tend to be encouraging each other to pray, because it’s a great privilege, or it’s a special ministry of God, or if God is going to get things done we have to pray. Loved ones, if we’re going to go to heaven, you have to pray. You have to pray. And you have to pray because God told you to pray. Secondly, that’s what you’re going to be doing throughout eternity. If you can’t take him for five minutes each day now in this world, surely eternity for you is going to be hell, is it not? Isn’t that the truth about heaven: that it will be heaven for some people and it will be hell for others? That’s at least part of the truth. So I began to see again that if you don’t pray, you’re sinning — that’s it. Now could I share with you just one truth about answers to prayer? John 15:6: “If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” That’s a clear promise: “Ask whatever you want in prayer and it will be done for you, if you abide in me and my words abide in you.” Rees Howells talked about this abiding place. He said, “There is an abiding place for every one of us.” It’s different for each one of us in this room tonight. But there’s an abiding place in Jesus that, if you’re in it, your prayers will be answered. That abiding place is different for Steve, and different for Sandy, and different for me, different for every one of us in this room — because we’re all being dealt with by God in different ways. Yet, if you’re in that abiding place, that place of complete oneness with God’s will for your life, then your prayers will be answered. Rees Howells used a verse that is like that in 1 John 2:6: “He who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” So in each of us Jesus wants to walk in a certain way in us and we’ve to walk the same way. So you could be praying for a son or a daughter. You could be praying for a father or a mother. You could be praying for a colleague in school or in work. God can only answer that prayer if you’re in your abiding place. And your abiding place is walking as Jesus walked in every area of your life. Jesus will show you that. It isn’t a mystery. Jesus will show you where that abiding place is for you. And it may not be concerned with sinful things at all. You may be doing something that’s absolutely lawful. You may be doing something that is not wrong for anybody else — but Jesus has shown you again and again that for you it is not expedient. Now unless you move into that obedience you will not be in your abiding place and God is not able to answer your prayer. So I would challenge those of you who are praying. I know there are different ones of you here, just as I myself am, who are praying for different things for different people. We’re not meant to go on forever and ever and ever, making excuses for God — because that’s what a lot of us do in our hearts. We make excuses for God. God doesn’t need any excuses made for him. God will answer our prayers by either showing us what is preventing him answering, or by changing our prayer to that that he can answer. But he will do one or the other. He will not keep us going on and on and on, praying the wrong prayer and not getting an answer at all. God will give you an answer. He will either explain to you why you’re not getting an answer, or he will show you what prayer you should be praying. So you need to begin to ask God about that. Here’s just one last story. Rees Howells was spoken to by the Holy Spirit and told, “Jesus bore your sicknesses and carried your pains. He died in your place. Would you be prepared to die in someone’s place?” After much wrestling Rees Howells eventually said, “Yes, Lord I would. I would be prepared to die in someone’s place.” Not long after that a fellow called Joe Evans began to spit blood and began to hemorrhage in both lungs. He came to Rees Howells and said, “The doctor has told me that it was TB (tuberculosis).” TB was very prevalent in Britain, and I think I have marks on my lungs just from little touches of TB. I think most of us in Britain had those marks during those years. But he had TB and it was a very serious disease at that time in Wales. He said, “The doctor has told me to go to a sanatorium. Now, should I go?” And Howells said, “Yes, yes, you should. God probably wants to show that medicine in this case can do nothing before he heals you.” So Joe Evans went to the sanatorium and stayed there for five months and was no better at all. He came out with a high temperature and with a bad cough. He went again to Rees Howells and said, “What should I do?” And Howells again said, “Go to the doctor and do what he tells you.” Because Howells made the point, “I was taught by God only to pray the prayers that the Holy Spirit told me to pray.” So that’s important for you and me to begin to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into that grace where we are independent enough of what people want us to do, and of our desire to please people, so that we will pray the prayers that the Holy Spirit tells us to pray. So Howells told him to go to the doctor and the doctor said, “Well, the only thing I can suggest is that you go up Black Mountain, buy a tent and spend the rest of your months there.” So that’s what this fellow did. The idea in those days in Britain was that you would get plenty of fresh air and that might help it in some way. So he went up Black Mountain and was there on the top of the mountain for two months, and Rees Howells would go up and visit him. One day Joe Evans said, “Here am I preaching complete victory in Jesus, and you’re preaching that every prayer can be answered, and here the two of us are on top of Black Mountain, and I’m still spitting blood.” And they just carried on. His father meanwhile was getting more and more irritated because the doctor had told Joe Evans the only hope for him is to go to some more tropical climate, somewhere like Madeira. Joe Evan’s father who was a coalminer was mad at this, because only a rich man’s son could go to that kind of place, and he had no money to send his son there. That same week Howells received a gift of 320 pounds, which back in those days was probably more like $1,000. And Howells wondered what the money was for. Then he heard that the doctor had ordered Joe Evans to go to Madeira. He listened, and the Holy Spirit told him, “You send him to Madeira with the $320 pounds.” Then he said, “And you go yourself.” At that time TB was quite infectious and you could actually catch it from another person. So for that reason alone there was cause for caution in Rees Howells. Yet he remembered the promise he had made to God, “Yes, I would be prepared to give my life even if it was necessary so that someone could live.” So he made the arrangements and they went off to Madeira together. They arrived there in Madeira and asked the local missionary where they ought to stay. There were only two choices. The Portuguese Hotel was the cheaper of the two, and there was the English Hotel. Rees Howells had always been taught by God to be careful of his money. So they both went to the Portuguese Hotel. After about two weeks, Joe Evans was sick with the Portuguese food. They decided they had to move him to the English Hotel. For Rees Howells the only way he could manage that was he would find somewhere else to live. In fact, with the money he had, if he sent Joe Evans to the English Hotel, he had 5 cents a day left for himself to live on. And so he went to the local missionary and asked them where he might live. And the local missionary said, “Well, the only place you could live is the Sailors’ Rest.” And there’s a funny piece in the book, Rees Howells: Intercessor, where he goes to the Sailors’ Rest, which is an old disused home that sailors used to stay in. He finds himself the only inhabitant besides millions of little inhabitants (insects). Each morning he would get up and eat his Quaker oats though he had to fight for them with the rest of the little inhabitants. Bit by bit, he began to wonder to himself, “Why did that missionary send me here to this place? Why did he send me to this place? Why didn’t he take me into his own home like any Christian would?” The Holy Spirit allowed him to go on and get more and more bitter, until eventually the Holy Spirit said, “This is why I brought you to Madeira. You can love people who treat you reasonably. But you can’t love people who treat you unjustly and who are unfair to you. I want you to learn to love this missionary as if he has given you his own bedroom to sleep in.” So Rees Howells began to pray and began to deal with God about that. One day he was going down the street and the evangelist in Madeira was coming up the street and said, “Where are you living? I know your friend is living in the English Hotel.” And Rees Howells said, “I could see the devil rising up before me.” And he said, “I’m living in the Sailors’ Rest.” And the evangelist said, “You’re living in the Sailors’ Rest? That place hasn’t been used in years. It’s full of bugs, full of lice. Well, what could the missionary have thought putting you there?” And Rees Howells said, “Do you pay for your electricity?” “Yes.” “Do you pay for your laundry?” “Yes.” “Do you pay for your light?” “Yes.” “I get all mine free.” So he came through on his attitude to the missionary. Meanwhile, old Joe Evans was getting worse and worse. Eventually Evans decided, “Look, I might as well go back home. I’m no better. I’d rather die at home than here.” They got on the little train in Madeira to go down to the port where they could get the boat home. As they were getting into the train the Holy Spirit spoke to Rees Howells and said, “Now you have come into your place of abiding. I will heal Joe Evans in a month.” Now that was it. “Now you’ve come into your place of abiding,” which was not in connection with healing at all, but was in connection with his attitude to other people who treated him unjustly and unfairly, and prevented him having a clean heart that he could go before God with full faith. Immediately he came within his place of abiding, he didn’t have to struggle with God, “Heal Joe Evans. Heal Joe Evans.” The Holy Spirit said, “I will heal him in a month.” Of course he told Joe Evans. They had a great time going down in that little train to the harbor and they stayed there back in the place they were before in the old hotel. They told all their friends that Joe Evans was going to be healed in a month. Nobody of course believed. They were all looking forward to the complete disappointment of what they predicted. They wrote home and said, “Joe will be healed in a month’s time.” Then Joe Evans said, “It’s a Saturday, a month from now is a Saturday and God has given me 3 AM or 6 AM. But I know it must be the devil who gave me 3AM because I’m never up at that time. So it must be 6AM. So 6AM on Saturday morning.” So of course they just went back to the hotel and they spent a beautiful month resting and just praising God. Eventually 6AM Saturday came, and old Joe Evans came out of his bedroom with the blanket over his head in complete misery. There was no healing at all, nothing, no movement at all. Immediately of course old Rees Howells wondered what to do, and the Holy Spirit said, “Send the cable. Send the cable home that he has been healed.” Howells said, “But he hasn’t been healed. What about all those people back there who have experienced healing when I’ve prayed for them? They’ll begin to doubt even their healing if I send this cable and he’s not healed.” The Holy Spirit said, “You act in faith. I have told you. My word is good enough. You act in faith.” So he sent the one word cable, “Victory.” And then they went to bed that night and they got up on Sunday morning. And Joe Evans came out of his bedroom completely healed, completely whole. So they went home to Wales and the doctors examined him and could find no marks in the lungs at all. Evans lived to a ripe old age. But that’s what praying is about. We are going to have a supernatural body of Jesus walking this world in all of us if you and I all get down to real prayer. That’s it. So all of you have some prayer that God has given you and you have a position of abiding that God wants you to come into. When those two come together the prayer will be answered. That’s it, really. I know this is hard, but some of you even as you sit here probably are camp followers. I’d warn you now: don’t be a camp follower. Don’t sit there and say, “Well that’s a nice story and if I had the energy I’d get into that kind of thing.” If that’s your attitude, all you are is a camp follower, and at the end of this life you’ll just go nowhere where Jesus is. So I ask you as you have heard this: will you take it to your own heart and begin to get involved in praying because beyond that you can’t do very much honestly, really, and truly. Could I just point this out to you? I think some of you still sit there and think, “If I could speak cleverly, or wisely, or interestingly, I could do a lot for God.” Not one thing could you do. Loved ones, nothing is done except through the power of the Holy Spirit. And the power of the Holy Spirit only is available to those who pray and ask God, because God will not share the glory with any man or with any woman. So all of us here are equally powerful before God, because nothing is done through us except through our prayers — and those have to be prayers that are prayed in an abiding place. So if you want to know what I’m praying, I’m praying now in these days that Jesus will be fully formed in each of you. He’s showing me different ones of you at different times, because when you come into a fullness of Jesus and that kind of prayer life, this thing will just blast open — really. And to tell the truth, unless that happens, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have too much interest in carrying on. I mean, I don’t want another human organization, and I don’t think we’re all brought together for that. I think all of us have come together because we desperately want something real and something of God. Now loved ones, that’s the way to it. I just point out to you that next Sunday we’ll have communion service and we’ll have a time of sharing. But after that we’ll be out on the steps of Northrop Auditorium {on the University of Minnesota campus}. You who have been there before know that there are hundreds of loved ones that saunter up and down that mall over those weeks in the summer. Maybe only two or three that you see every evening, but over a period of 12 weeks there are hundreds that pass by. There are hundreds of loved ones that can come to Jesus on that campus through the evening services on the Northrop steps, and through the picnic lunches on the fraternity row. You know that’s completely open. Everybody sees it. Everybody who is there during the summer quarter crowds the campus with people from all over the world. Loved ones, it’s an open door effectual, and that prayer room is available at 6:15 every Sunday evening. Now, I would encourage you, you who listen to this word tonight and who believe it — will you act on it on Sunday evenings and will you go to that prayer room from 6:15 until 6:45 and then go over to the Northrop steps? And you know it’s up to somebody here to have the doors open. I opened it tonight. But it’s up to somebody to have the door open so that we can seek God, so that these Sunday evenings are real evangelistic opportunities and that there will be loved ones who will bless the day when we all decided here to have our summer evening services outside on Sundays. So I do ask you, will you begin now, those of you who are praying for a son or daughter, a father, a mother, a brother, sister, a boss, a colleague at school or at work — will you now ask the Holy Spirit to show you your abiding place and will you come into it, whatever it is? It will be a different one for the next person you have to pray for, but give up those general prayers that you just throw up and you can’t tell if they’re answered or not, and get down to business. God is a prayer answering God. Let us pray. Dear Lord, I pray — but I know, Lord, that my prayer will only count if it’s real in my life, and if it’s on my lips and in my heart day after day. But Lord, I do pray that you will be fully formed in each brother and sister here in this place. And Lord, that you’ll give me the burden for each of them individually as I meet them and come to know them. And Lord, that you will form yourself fully in all of us here so that you can pray and intercede before your Father with that effectual intercession that saved us. Lord, I pray that you will bring us all into that kind of prevailing prayer that gets answers and that forwards your kingdom, Father. I ask this in Jesus’ name. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with each one of us now and throughout this summer. Amen.

The Necessity of Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill In the Hebrides Islands in Scotland in the 1950s, things spiritually were cold. The churches were dead. People came to the services just because they had to and were used to coming. But there was no sense of the warmth of Jesus’ presence, and their lives were utterly unaffected by their worship. Four men who had ordinary jobs — some fished and some farmed — began to pray all night for three nights each week. They would do their ordinary jobs, then they would pray the whole night on three nights: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night. They prayed that God’s Spirit would come down and would touch the people of the Hebrides and would awaken them to the reality of what God had done for them in Jesus, and would begin to apply that to their lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. As they began to pray, God’s Spirit began to touch their consciences. They themselves began to repent of coldness in their hearts towards God and of sins that they had got used to in their own lives. They went on praying like that for six months. Then they sensed that they should invite a preacher called Duncan Campbell to begin evangelistic services in one of the local churches. So they prayed that God would bless and would enable Campbell to accept the invitation. They sent the letter to him. And he got it and prayed and after a long time he decided, yes, God wanted him to come. So he came. Of course they were full of enthusiasm. They had posters up all around the villages and they had a fair crowd in the church that evening. Campbell preached, and it was the deadest service he had ever been at in his life. There was just coldness throughout the service and there was no response to what he was preaching at all. There was not even a sign of any understanding in their eyes or their hearts. After the service, these four men came up and thanked him and he said, “Do you not think you’ve made a mistake?” And they said, “No, we have sought God for six months. We know we have his promise that he is going to warm the spirits of our neighbors and friends, and he is going to make it all live for them.” So Campbell preached the next few nights and came to the end of the week and there was no change. He got together with them after the service and he said, “Listen, do you not think that I should go back home and you should continue to pray for this place? Perhaps we’ve missed God’s timing. I’m willing to come back in six months or a year if you want. Then perhaps your prayers will have taken affect.” And they said, “No, we are sure that God is going to move in these weeks.” And with that they all went home, him very unsettled and very uncertain about what was happening. As he walked down the village street he saw lights in the windows of the houses, and he looked in and there were people on their knees seeking God. Then he went further down the village street and there were people out in their gardens. Now, I know Scots people, and they don’t pray outside. They keep it quiet. But there were people out in their front gardens praying and seeking God. And that was the beginning of a mighty revival that swept through those dour northern Hebrides of Scotland. Now that’s what happens when people pray. That’s been the same story all down through history. We in Ireland always look back to the 1859 revival which started exactly the same way. The churches were dead. The people were unexcited about Jesus. The lives were un-Christ like. Six men began to pray in a little school house not 30 miles from where I was born. They prayed for nine months a year. Then they did the same thing — they invited a preacher to come. Of course it wouldn’t have mattered which preacher had come because the Holy Spirit had already prepared the consciences and the hearts of the people. There came down a mighty conviction of sin upon them. And the 1859 revival in Ireland spread throughout the world. There are churches in Australia and in Canada that are the result of that 1859 revival. Now that’s the place of prayer. Prayer is the method our Father has ordained for actualizing what he has done to us all in Jesus. Your friend who is sick has been placed by God in Jesus and the sickness was destroyed in Jesus. With Jesus’ stripes that sickness has been healed. But that can only be actualized in their physical body by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit acts in response to our prayers. And it’s the same with your relatives and mine. My brother in Ireland, the same with your brother here, or your dad and mum, or your children — God has placed them into Christ. He has already done everything to them that is needed. But that will only be actualized in their lives by the Holy Spirit as their consciences are convicted by the Spirit of their sin and of their unbelief in what Jesus has done for them. And that will only come as the result of your prayers and mine. That is the way the kingdom of God is brought down here to earth from that eternal position in Jesus where it has been wrought already. That’s the way it works. So all that we do outwardly is really only a tenth part of what the kingdom of God moving on earth is about. Do you see that? All this preaching is alright, it’s good, and it’s necessary. But it’s powerless. And all your witnessing is good, and it’s necessary. But it is powerless. None of us with human words, or human actions can create Jesus alive in another human being. Only the Holy Spirit can do that, and he does it in response to the prayers of God’s children. So God has ordained that his kingdom here on earth will be created by the Holy Spirit in response to our prayers. And insofar as we pray we will see deep results of God’s work in our hearts. Now I point out to you that we’re in a dangerous position. I’ve suggested it to you before. There is nothing so popular in America today as Christianity. Everybody is aware that there’s a charismatic movement on. Everybody is aware that evangelicalism is in the White House. Everybody is aware that being a Christian is not a terribly unpopular thing to be. It’s pervading all of the life in our nation. The danger is that it will remain at the shallow level that much of it is at this present time. Why do I say it? Because at this time when Christ is so popular, crime has never been so popular, and sin has never been so popular. So there is the presence of a great enthusiasm outwardly and a great deal of witnessing outwardly, along with a spiritual sickness and a deep immorality that has gripped our nation. Now you see the danger. The danger is that many people will see this Christianity and will enter into this superficial, shallow, mental and emotional understanding of what God has done for us in Jesus — but will not have any of it made real in their spirits. That’s what will happen unless some of us begin to learn to pray. You remember — that’s what Paul said. He said, “I’m again in travail for you until Christ be fully formed in you.” You remember he said the same thing to the Ephesians. He said, “I bow my knee to the Father giving thanks for you in my prayers and asking God that he may give you a spirit of revelation that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, that you may know what is your glorious inheritance in the saints.” So Paul knew that unless he prayed and travailed in prayer, the people to whom he had preached and spoken would enter into only a mental assent to the truth that he shared, and into an emotional experience of the fellowship that he had with the Father — unless he prayed for them. Now that’s what’s needed. We need to pray. It’s not simply because Jesus told us we are to pray – that we are to ask and it will be given to us. But you can see it’s because that’s the only way that the miracle that has been wrought in Jesus for all of us can be actualized here in our own lives. It’s actualized by prayer. Now do witness, and let’s all preach, and let’s write, and let’s live what we believe. But at the end of all that we are unprofitable servants. The real work of the Lord is prayer. Bishop Haughton wrote, “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” He was an Anglican bishop. He prayed for 12 hours each day. Luther prayed for three hours each day and said, “I am so busy that I cannot afford to spend less than three hours in prayer.” Wesley got up at four o’clock and prayed until six every day. Now these are the men that God uses. Brainerd prayed for 16 hours every day and then preached through a drunken interpreter to primitive Indians. Those Indians came to some of the highest levels of sanctification that have ever been observed. That was because of his prayer, because they could hardly understand what came through the drunken interpreter. That’s why prayer is important. It’s by prayer that God works his miracles. If you have found your own relationship with Jesus getting dry, it’s because you are not spending time in prayer with him. Many of you belong to other churches. If there’s a deadness in your church it is not better Bible reading courses that you need. It isn’t even a better preacher or a better minister. It isn’t better music in the choir. It isn’t a new method of witnessing to the outsider. It isn’t learning the Kennedy Evangelism Explosion. It isn’t going to some other great speaker. It is prayer. Prayer will break the cold hard grip that the snow and frost of Satan has on the hearts of your dear friends and the people in your churches. Prayer will do it. Prayer is for many of us the hardest thing because we are caught in carnality. Carnality is a gross independence of God. A selfish, sinful, self sufficiency — that’s what we’re caught in. We think we can do it ourselves. That’s the heart of sin. So when men and women begin to bend their great wills towards God and spend as much time praying as they do talking, and as much time praying as they do witnessing, then God begins to believe that they really depend upon him and trust him, and that they really understand that he alone can do the work. Do you see that’s the heart of it? See, we keep on thinking we can do the work. We keep on thinking, “If we can only talk to that person who is going for a divorce, and if we can only get them to listen to the right tape, or if we can only explain it correctly to them, their hearts will change.” You cannot legalize hearts and you cannot change hearts. Only God can circumcise a person’s heart by the power of his Holy Spirit. So what we need to do is to pray and to learn to pray. Now even more so when you look at the world, you see we’re a privileged group here, really. Probably most of us here are live Christians. Yet do you see? You have 900 million people in China {address was spoken in the 1970’s}, probably almost all of whom know nothing about Jesus. You have about 650 million people in India, many of whom are under the darkness of deception and of evil spirits and very few of whom really understand Jesus. We here have to get out to all those people. Now you examine your life and examine how you’re getting tied down with mortgages, and how you’re getting tied down in jobs. And really, it’s strange. Those aren’t the real ties at all, because the mortgages can be shrugged off and the jobs can be changed. It’s the hearts that get tied down. Examine your heart and see: are you ready to go to China if it opened up? Are you ready to go to India if it were possible, and live there as a child of God? You can’t manage the language. So, are you ready to go to Australia and live there as a child of God? Or, New Zealand? Or, are you ready to go to South America and live as a child of God — not next door to all kinds of other Christians, but probably the only Christian in the street? Now, as you answer that question, I would point out to you the vast change that has to come about in people like ourselves if we’re going to have any chance of touching any of those millions of people that are in those countries. What a vast change has to come among us if we’re going to touch them. That is, if we’re not going to end up having a little Christian jamboree here in the USA for the rest of our lives. Now the only way we’re ever going to get out to those millions of people is by miracles. Isn’t that right? I mean, even if all of us went out today, we would be a small scattering among the 900 million in China, and among the 650 million in India. We would be only a very small scattering. If we’re going to touch them at all it has to be by might miracles. Now that’s the situation that the early church was in. So I’d like you just to look at some of the incidents with me. Let’s start with Acts 4:13. Let’s just settle down to real study as maturing children of God. So I’ll just assume you can read with me for some time without going to sleep. Acts 4:13. Peter and John had preached and of course had aroused hostility in the rulers: “Now when they,” the rulers, “saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they wondered; and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man that had been healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred with one another, saying, ‘What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is manifest to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to any one in this name.’” “So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.’ And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them, because of the people; for all men praised God for what had happened. For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old.” So obviously they were a small minority facing a mighty power that was ruling the country. The only reason in fact they caused any ripple in the surface of the quiet of the country was that this miracle was performed. Now many of us will go to China and we won’t even cause a hesitation in anybody’s mind unless we too are able to do something that causes them to stop and notice. Then see what happens in v. 23: “When they were released they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them.” You can imagine being in that situation in China where the government would then forbid you to speak. “And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, ‘Sovereign Lord, who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who by the mouth of our father David, thy servant, didst say by the Holy Spirit, “Why did the Gentiles range, and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed” – for truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever thy hand and thy plan had predestined to take place.’” “’And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thou stretchest out thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of thy holy servant Jesus.’ And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” “Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” Now that came in response to prayer. God acted in response to their prayers. Now that’s what you and I will be faced with. Do you see? You won’t be faced with it if you carry on with the shallow, superficial Christianity that we’re facing so much in the States today. You won’t be faced with that kind of stuff. Nobody is going to object to that because there’s nothing terribly harmful or convicting about that. But if you once begin to live like Jesus, and you once begin to share in a way that cuts into people’s hearts and consciences, then you’ll find not only them opposing you, but you’ll find in this country and in others that the governments will oppose you. Then the only answer is if you are mighty pray-ers. In other words, if you go out on a limb for God you will find yourself out of your depth, and you will find yourself facing problems that you cannot handle yourself. Actually, probably you’re already facing that. But it’s just that at the moment you’re able to evade it. And probably you have fathers and mothers that are not responding to Jesus. Probably you have colleagues at work that you’ve been praying for in a kind of dilettanti, periodic, desultory kind of fashion and you haven’t seen any change in them. But somehow you’re able to come together like this and forget it. And forget that there is a part of your ministry that is failing. What I would urge you to do is to look at those places, and to see that it is God’s will that a person either receive his Son, or deliberately reject his Son. But it is never God’s will that your mum or dad, or my brother, or your sister, or your husband, or wife should fail to see the choice that is before them. And that choice is going to be brought before them by the Holy Spirit in response to your prayers. So it is interesting that it’s simply that we can avoid some of our apparent failures today by being preoccupied with the good things that are happening. But when we get into situations such as these men, we’ll find that prayer is the only thing that will turn overwhelming odds around. Now there are other examples in the book of Acts. Many of us know ourselves that we need the Holy Spirit – to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Many of us know friends who need to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. The tragedy is that we will not hold on in prayer for that to happen. We’ll give them a book by Andrew Murray, or we’ll get them to listen to a cassette, or we’ll witness to them. But we will not drive through in prayer — which is the only way to bring about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It’s Acts 8:14: “Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit; for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.” Unfortunately, we are great at laying our hands on people, and we’re great at quick little instant answers. But we’re not great at what these men did before they ever laid their hands on them. That’s the praying. Now is it God’s will that your mum and dad, and our brothers and sisters, and our friends and colleagues should be baptized with the Holy Spirit? Well, it is. It’s obviously God’s will. It’s therefore his will that they should either move into that baptism with the Holy Spirit, or should reject it completely. At least then you know where people are. Where the Holy Spirit moves, black is black and white is white. We by our prayerlessness, are making black and white gray, so that we’re all wandering together and drifting like happy old jellyfish in a mediocre kind of attitude which is more or less Christian. But only prayer will bring about decisiveness. I would put it to you: do you not yourself get a little frustrated with the half-moves that your colleagues and friends make towards God and the half-moves back that they make? Are you not yourself frustrated that you’ve been witnessing to some people for so many years and there has been little or no change? Do you not get frustrated with yourself when you keep on saying, “Well, they’re a little better than they were. Well, they’re a little more interested than they were.” Do you not get tired of yourself? Of course that kind of response comes when there are not pray-ers around who will pray the Holy Spirit down upon people in such a way that clear conviction takes place. And do you see that God’s word always moves forward when people either accept it or reject it? It does, really. Even when God’s word is rejected his word moves forward and prospers. But when people hum, and ha, and ho hum, and debate, and discuss, and like a little of it but don’t like the other, and make little moves and try to bluff each other that they’re all moving vaguely towards God, God’s word begins to weaken in its power and its strength. That always happens where people don’t pray. Where people don’t pray the Christian gospel is diluted and becomes a poor shadow of the power that God describes it. God says, “The gospel is the power of God.” Now where there is no prayer the gospel is not a power. It is just a debate, or a dialog, or a set of truths. But where people pray the gospel is a power of God that changes people’s lives. Now it’s the same right through this dear book. If you look at Acts 9:36: “Now there was at Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she fell sick and died; and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him entreating him, ‘Please come to us without delay.’ So Peter rose and went with them. And when he had come, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping, and showing tunics and other garments,” isn’t that terrible — that’s what we do, “showing tunics and other garments which Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside and knelt down and prayed; then turning to the body he said, ‘Tabitha, rise.’ And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and lifted her up. Then calling the saints and widows he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.” Where there’s real prayer, miracles are performed, and people react definitely one way or another. Now it’s the same with all of us loved ones, even more with those of us who live with loved ones, because all of us here live with dear ones that need to be further on in Jesus. They are living with us, and we need to be further on in Jesus. It’s even more essential that we go to God in prayer for those loved ones. Otherwise, you get used to each other and you get used to accepting each other’s nominal commitment to Jesus. Prayer alone will change that. Now just very briefly, how do you pray? Set aside a time for prayer. Do that. That’s the biggest battle, having a set time. You will have every excuse under heaven and above heaven to change that time. Could I explain to you that Jesus’ strength is made perfect in your weakness? It doesn’t matter if you are up completely one night with no sleep at all. God will make his strength perfect in your weakness the next morning if you’ll hold to the time that you’ve set. Satan will use every trick to get you to postpone that prayer time for one day. All you have to do is give in one day, and the slide begins. Three weeks later you find you have no quiet time at all. Set a time when you’ll pray. There is no easy time. There is no convenient time to pray. There isn’t. You’ll find that. It doesn’t matter what way you play the game, God will not let you avoid the beauty and the deliverance of his cross, and he will demand that you face the cross in regard to this prayer time. So you get up at six normally. Then start getting up at 5:30. At least hold half an hour for prayer. Not for Bible study — half an hour for prayer. At least start there. Then move it to five but as you do that decide how many hours of sleep you need and go to bed early. See that if you don’t go to bed early it’s like saying to the Lord, “I will not pray at five in the morning.” See that. Don’t be silly. Don’t think that you can go to bed late and be faithful in the morning. You won’t be. It’s at night when you’re going to watch the television for another 10 minutes that you’re saying to God, “I will not see you in the morning.” Or, “If I do see you, I won’t be able to see you very clearly because I’ll be half asleep.” So decide when you’re going to get up for prayer — then do it and fight it. It doesn’t matter if you set three alarms. It doesn’t matter if you rig the alarm up to the bed clothes so they all fly off. It doesn’t matter what you do. Win at that point. Win with a fixed time. Keep a fixed time. There are lots of reasons for keeping the fixed time. But one obvious reason is you’re being — your physical being and your psychological being — gets used to it. It just becomes easier and easier the more often you do it at the same time, because the body and the personality works better in set fixed cycles. So set a time and get up for prayer. Get up. Now, maybe later on when you become a very holy saint you will be able to prostrate yourself upon your bed and pray. But don’t do it now. Get up and get down on your knees. Why? Because it’s signifying to the Father, “I bow my life before you Lord, and I bow my mighty will before you, and I treat you as my God.” Get down on your knees. And then adoration first. There’s no mystery about it. You just look at the one you’re going to pray to. So adoration is preoccupation with God. So think of where he is and think of what he’s doing. The Father will respect you if you make whatever childish attempts to set your mind on him you can. Think of him. Think of what he’s doing. Is he with Jesus? Is he with the angels? Can he see Hawaii? Can he see you? Can he see everything in the world? Think of what God is doing. Put your mind into his mind. Adore him. That’s what adoration is. It’s putting your thoughts out upon God — not that stuff, “Are you running with me, Jesus?” Not that. Not preoccupation, with yourself: “Well Lord, my mouth is very dry this morning. I’m not feeling very fragrant, but I’d like to try to pray to you.” Not that stuff. Forget yourself. We are miserable poor little worms. We’re of no importance. But the dear God will lighten us with his brightness if we’ll put our minds upon him. So take your mind off yourself. Take your mind off how you’re feeling, of how your body is, and put your mind on God. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. You can stay your mind on God. You can stay your mind on him if you want to. Use the Psalms. If you look at the last few Psalms, you’ll see that all of them are Psalms of praise. You see Psalm 150: “Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!” Psalm 149: “Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song.” Even though you’re not going to do your Bible study in that half hour, use one of those Psalms of praise. Speak it, and then memorize one of the verses. Don’t make a big deal of it so that you become preoccupied with meditation instead of prayer. But get at least one of the phrases ,even if it’s just, “Praise the LORD!” Then pray that up to God. “Lord, I do praise you. I praise you for who you are. I praise you for your mightiness, and your greatness, and your kindness, and your love to me.” At times you’ll find it useful to verbalize. Even if you can’t verbalize because someone else sleeps in the same room as you, you can move your lips. Sometimes it helps with those of us who are still having trouble with mental prayer, or with spiritual prayer, to mouth the words. And so mouth the words and praise God. Then thank him. Thanksgiving is so easy because we have so much to thank him for. But do you see the beauty of it? It’s casting your mind away from yourself and it’s having actual thoughts. Now loved ones, I agree with anybody here who says, “Aren’t we supposed to pray with the Spirit?” Yes, but Paul says, “Pray with the Spirit and pray with the mind also.” And most of us are at such an adolescent stage in our spirit lives that God needs and encourages us to use thought forms until we eventually lift into the level of prayer that Saint Teresa and Saint Thomas a Kempis were in. But start with thoughts. So encapsulate things in thoughts. Don’t waft off into TM {Transcendental Meditation}. Don’t. Don’t waft off into that vagueness, into those shades of blue and azure and all that kind of thing. Don’t. Keep the mind working. The mind is God’s gift to you. Encapsulate your thoughts and words and express them to God. Apart from anything else it keeps you awake. But what it does for the Father is it enables him to use your mind to prime your spirit. As you’re leading out with your mind like this, your spirit is beginning to rise too and beginning to touch God’s Spirit. And so thank God for all that he’s given you, and give him thanks for the things that he’s done for you. Don’t forget to do that. A lot of us ask God to answer prayers. Then we never thank him for answering those prayers. So we never keep a running record with God, and God knows that we don’t. He knows therefore that we’re not running a consciously developing relationship with him. He knows that we wouldn’t treat ordinary friends like that. So thank God. So adore him and then thank him. As you look upon him, of course the Holy Spirit of God begins to remind you of things that you yourself should be doing in your life. So it’s very natural to confess to him things that you see that are not like Jesus and be honest about it. The importance of confession is not the verbal confession. The meaning of the word, you remember, is to agree with God. It means putting up your hand and saying, “Lord, I agree with you. I did speak harshly to my mother yesterday. I did speak critically to that friend at work. Lord, I agree with you. I nail that as sin. Lord, I know it was wrong and Lord, I repent of it now. I trust you by your Holy Spirit to lead me to the inner depths within me that cause that to come out from my mouth.” So confess just plainly to God. Then begin your petition and always ask God for something. Do that. Ask him for something. That’s what Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you.” And always ask God for something definite either for your own life — maybe a spiritual gift, or a physical gift. But ask him for something that you need. So if you need more of a heart for the Bible reading then, “Lord, will you work in my heart and cause it to be more hungry for your word?” But ask God for something definite and keep track of whether God answers you or not. That’s right. God wants you to hold him to his promises. God is not glorified at all by this scattershot kind of prayer where you throw up 25 prayers to him so that if three are answered you can testify to everybody, “Oh, God answers prayer.” God is not glorified by that at all. The whole purpose of prayer in God’s eyes is to glorify him and his own faithfulness to us, by the answers. So ask God for definite things and always have petitions somewhere in your prayer. And keep praying until God either answers the prayer or explains how you should change it. You remember that we’ve shared for some time that the basis of petition to God or interceding for others, is knowing God’s will. So that’s what you will find in your adoration of him. As you spend time with him, his will will begin to reveal itself to you for different things and different people, and then you can ask him for those. Then lastly, intercede and pray – always be praying for some others. Now if you say to me, “Oh well, how do you know which person you’ve got a burden for?” Well, normally as you go through the day you know of people who need different things. So intercede for those people, those people that you think of. Don’t sit around and wait for a great burden to thump upon you. Use your mind and pray for the things that you see your friends and your colleagues and others need. And as you go through the list of intercessions the Holy Spirit will lay certain ones upon you in a burdensome way. You’ll know that you have a burden in your heart for those people. Then pray until that burden is released, and never pray beyond the weight of the burden. And I’ll try to share a little next day about prayer and spiritual warfare in that sense. So it’s a very down to earth thing. Do you see that? I won’t ask you because I love you, but if I were to ask you to be honest and to put your hand up if you have a daily quiet time, how would you answer? Now, I won’t ask you because I don’t want to embarrass you, but where would your hand be? Now, that gives you a measure of how little of God’s power we’re experiencing. See, we’re not involved in real Christianity at all. We’re playing with it. Really what I would say to you is, you’re getting the worst of it. You really are. You’re getting all the agony without the joy. You’re far better to begin to pray and begin to experience the power of God in your life — instead of all this ideology stuff that you’re preoccupied with. And you know how many of us are arguing, “Well, that’s a good way to pray,” or, “This is a good way to think of communism,” or, “This is a good way to think of that verse in the scripture about tribulation.” Well, that isn’t what Christianity is about. The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. So when you begin to pray and have a daily quiet time, you begin to experience the power of God in your life. Then you begin to find your life growing and progressing instead of what so many of us are experiencing: up and down, up and down, round and about, and a little way forward, but mostly round and about, back and forth. Mostly one step forward two steps back, then one and half steps forward and half a step back. Then we switch it around the next week. But that’s God’s plan for us. God’s plan for us is that we move forward towards the prize of the high calling in Christ Jesus, and the simple way is prayer. So will you at this very moment, will you settle in your own heart to begin to pray? Because you’re missing the best of what God has for us. In fact, I think you’re just pretending. You’re playing with an ideology instead of experiencing God.

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Prayer and the Senses Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Every few months it seems right that we should say to each other that you need to pray; and I have tried to do that through the years. It doesn’t matter how often you and I come together here in church on Sunday, if you don’t pray its all bluff anyway, because the whole purpose of us coming together is for you to know God who made you and not to be surprised when you meet him at the end of this life but to know him and to be aware of him. So, that’s why every few months, I have tried to remind you — pray! If you don’t pray loved ones, it doesn’t matter what you do here, you know, it doesn’t. If you don’t speak to God yourself, all this is just a charade that we are involved in; and it’s vital that you speak to him, do you know that, it’s just vital that you speak to him. Now don’t sit there and say, “Brother I am not kind of religious like that at all and I don’t go for that stuff,” loved ones you have to go for it, you have to talk to him. You are going to spend forever with him so you better start getting to know him now. And there is no point in saying, “Oh! Well I am not sure, I am not sure whether I’ll be there or not,” if you are not there, you are going to be burning in hell so you better work towards getting there. There is a hell and a heaven loved ones, there is, you just can’t get around it. I was brought up as a liberal and I was brought up to explain how there wasn’t a hell and all that stuff, that’s all bluff — there is a hell. There is a place where you burn forever in your own selfish desires and there is a heaven; there is a place where God is, and where you and I will be forever. So, it’s just vital that you get to know him now and that you start talking to him; doesn’t matter how you talk to him, doesn’t matter if you talk to him the way your grandmother did or your mother or the way people do here it doesn’t matter, but it’s vital that you start talking to him. It’s vital that you start talking to God; it is loved ones, please do it. And it’s not just talking to him when you are in a foxhole kind of situation, where you have cancer or where your Mom has just died, that ends up not being prayer, it’s just crying out for somebody to save you, it’s not real prayer. It’s just an agonizing desperate desire to get out of the situation that you’ve found yourself in. But prayer is talking with God; it’s talking with God. Now, what do you need in order to talk with him? I think a lot of you feel you have to be kind of mystical, or you have to have kind of a feeling about it, or you have to have a great sense of his presence, or you hear other people talking about their prayer times and it sounds glorious. They talk about being caught up into the third heaven and they talk about the wonderful the times they are having with the Lord — you don’t need all that stuff. You don’t need all those wonderful feelings at all, that isn’t what prayer is first and foremost. You just need one thing to be able to pray and I’ll show you where to find it. It’s in Hebrews 11:6. “And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God, must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” That’s all you need; that’s what you need. If you want to draw near to God and you want to speak to him, all you have to do is believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him, that’s it. You don’t need feelings, you don’t. You don’t need to be mystical like Thomas a Kempis or St. Teresa. You don’t need to be eloquent like other people that you have heard. You just need to believe that God is. You don’t need to have a big cathedral, you don’t need to have candlelight and soft music, you don’t need above everything else to “have wonderful feelings,” that’s it, that’s where we go astray. We get into this wonderful “feeling” thing, and all we are involved in is mysticism and spiritualism. And I think some of us kneel down in our bedrooms at home and we can’t get a feeling and we say to ourselves, I don’t feel God’s presence, I don’t feel his presence. And we work for the next five or ten minutes trying to get a feeling of his presence and trying to get a mystical perception of God. That isn’t what the Bible says you need; it doesn’t say you need first of all to feel God’s presence; or you need first of all to have a mystical perception of his reality; or you need first of all to get a real sense, a real feeling that he is there that he is listening to you, it doesn’t. It just says, what a person needs is to believe that God exists. And that he is the kind of God that this Book says he is, that’s it. So, if you say to me, you mean you could be just cold blooded about it; you could be just intellectual about it? Yes, yes, you could. Because actually you know that you have been in certain situations where you have done that. I think it’s only last week on television, there was an example, a couple gathered around a bed and the person was in a coma and they asked the nurse, “Can she hear me?” and she said, “I am not sure that she can,” and of course the mother in the situation talked to the person in the coma, whether she thought she could hear or not. So, there have been many situations where you have lifted the phone to talk. Do you feel the other person is at the other end? “I really feel you there, I really feel you.” You know you don’t; you know this phone works this way, you know you have tried it before, it works. You just believe the person is there and you keep talking; sometimes you find they weren’t there, but you keep talking. But you do believe it, you don’t go by feeling and that’s what prayer is. Prayer is not that reflective experience that the spiritualists talk about; you see that’s where we get into silly stuff; TM and all that. We try to get into Middle Eastern religious stuff where we kind of feel that God is there. We wear ourselves out; you know you do. You wear yourself out because you try to feel his presence. You feel it for a while, then you don’t feel it. Then the next step is I don’t think he is hearing me. Then your faith goes and the whole prayer collapses. Or you feel him for two or three weeks at the beginning and then the feelings go and you say, God mustn’t be there, the heavens are as brass he can’t hear me because I can’t feel that he hears me. It’s not feeling its faith. If you read CS Lewis’s partial autobiography “Surprised by Joy” you would have read of his torturous experiences as a schoolboy in England where he would try to realize a prayer. He would pray a prayer and then he would look into himself and say, did I really pray that prayer? He would, as he says, try to realize the prayer. He would try to feel; did I pray that prayer as really as I prayed it last week? Do I feel God heard that prayer? Do I really sense that God heard me? Do I have that feeling that the Bible seems to talk about that I know that he heard me? Do I feel that? And he says his prayer times became masochistic sessions, where he tortured himself and beat himself until he began to hate prayer times, because he was constantly examining himself after he had prayed a prayer to see if he could realize that prayer. And if he was able to realize it; it meant that he could feel that God had heard him and that he was confident. And he could get up having felt that he had prayed well. He says it drove him mad; it actually drove him away from prayer all together — this attempt to realize his prayer. And then he has a very good sentence, he says, “little did I realize that every time I looked in the driving mirror” — because that’s what he was doing. He was driving along the road in prayer then looking in the driving mirror, except the driving mirror went through reflecting directly on himself; looking in the driving mirror to look at himself. So as he was praying, he would look at himself to see if it was a real prayer and he said, “little did I realize that the moment I looked in upon myself, at that very moment I had ceased looking to God and I had ceased to pray and so, what I saw when I looked in was a man looking in at himself or a boy looking in at himself. I did not see a person praying to God, I saw a person looking in on himself and I came up with the relentless conclusion each time that I was not praying properly because I wasn’t, I was looking in on myself; I was introspecting.” Loved ones don’t do that. Prayer and worship is what it was expressed in Thomas you remember, when Jesus appeared to him and Thomas was overwhelmed and he fell down and said, “My Lord and my God.” He was utterly taken up with Jesus, he hadn’t a moment to say, “Am I falling right, or now, am I falling nicely, am I falling without hurting myself?” He didn’t — he just fell on his face before the Lord and said, “My Lord and my God” — that’s what prayer is. If you have time to look in and see how it’s going or how well you’re praying, you can be sure you are not praying; and that’s why it all seems to become a kind of introspective experience; and that’s how you get into depressing experiences in prayer, because you are actually involved in spiritualism and spiritual meditation and you are actually opening yourself to the evil spirits who are all around about us trying to get our eyes off God. And the next thing they do is, they bring you some feelings and for a moment you have a good feeling and once you yield yourself to them then they bring you a feeling of depression and before you know it, you are absolutely hooked on spirits of error that are beginning to make chaos out of your prayer time. Don’t do it. Forget that stuff; forget that old business of am I getting satisfaction out of this prayer time, am I getting good feelings out of it, can I feel God’s presence, can I be sure he is hearing me. The only way to be sure he is hearing you is whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him — that’s the only way. You are dependent on faith, you are dependent on believing that God, over these thousands of years, has dealt the way this book has said he has dealt with people and that he has not changed over these recent few thousand years. That he is the same yesterday, today and forever and that he listens to you the same way as he listened to Moses and the same way as he listened to Jesus. In other words, you believe it, loved ones. You believe it in your head. If you say to me, now brother, isn’t it true that at times the Holy Spirit may give you a real glorious sense of elevation in praying? Yes, yes. But you don’t live for those times, you don’t go to God to get good feelings; you go to God to talk with Him. Moreover, the Father will watch you, you see. The Father will see when you are in danger of getting hooked on good prayer experiences; he knows when that happens — you know when that happens in a love relationship, when you get hooked on the satisfaction that the love relationship is bringing to you so that your mind comes off the person that you are loving; God knows that. God knows when you need to be backed off a little. At times I have had good feelings in prayer; yes, the Lord gives you good feelings in prayer but it is the Lord’s right to withdraw those feelings when he thinks that your eyes are coming off him. So, brothers and sisters see that prayer requires only one condition. That is that you believe that God exists and that he is a rewarder of those that seek after him. If you say to me, well brother how can I be sure I am not talking into the darkness? Because you believe, you believe that God hears, you believe that he hears. If he wants to play a game with you that is his responsibility, but your place is to believe that he hears. That’s how you know he hears. You get up from your prayer time knowing that he hears. If you say to me, but aren’t the Reese Howells’ and the C.T. Studd’s and the George Muller’s — aren’t they men who entered into very deep experiences of prayer that seemed to have more reality in them than that? No, there was no more reality in them than there is for the little guy or the little girl that kneels before God for the first time and believes that he exists. The reality is the same all the time; maybe a Muller or a C.T. Studd or a Reese Howells or some of these great saints were able to perceive more of what God was doing and were able to understand more but there was no reality that was greater. They maybe saw the reality more clearly but the reality itself is the same all the way. If you say to me, is it necessary for me to have a certain feeling before God can answer my prayer? No. The Father answers prayer in accordance with his promises, he answers it whether you feel he has answered it or not. If you say to me, but haven’t some of these great saints been able to get up from their prayer time and say I know God — yes, yes they have. At times they have been able to know it and certainly at times you will be able to know it, but that doesn’t affect the reality of it. God will answer the prayer whether you know it or not if you fulfill the conditions; and so brothers and sisters in this age you know what an overwhelming power feelings have in this society. In this age when we are all the dupes of this feeling business, this existential experience, “how do you feel, how do you feel, how do you feel, I feel good today, I feel bad today,” where we are all at the mercy of this ‘feeling’ thing, don’t let it destroy prayer, which is the highest occupation that a human being can engage in. Don’t let it destroy your prayer times, please; and don’t get into that feeling thing, or that spiritualist thing, or that transcendental meditation thing, don’t. Don’t be like little cookie monsters, that’s what we are; little cookie monsters, give me another cookie Lord, another cookie give me another nice feeling in my prayer time, another nice feeling like I had yesterday — don’t be a cookie monster, don’t. Be a child of God that believes that God exists and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek after him and pray to him. Now, Jesus gives us some directions and they’re there in Mathew 6:6. And they are just very plain and not complex and not filled with ecclesiastical directions. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” That’s it. Just be private; that’s it. Just be private about it. Don’t be full of talk with everybody else. “Oh! I prayed last night for my brother who is ill.” Don’t, that’s none of their business, they are not going to answer the prayer. But too often in us there is a feeling that a prayer is a work of salvation and we feel, well I did my little prayer wheel turning last night and so I better let somebody know that I turned, so just in case God doesn’t know and then maybe the thing will work, no. Loved ones be private; be private before the Father. CS Lewis makes another point in that same autobiography. He talks about maestry; I don’t know if you know the Anglo-Saxon word, maestry — but it was connected up with the operation of the Druids and the pagan religion that was followed by the old Celtics years ago; and it was the idea that you could gain ‘maestry’, mastery over the elemental spirits of the universe by working certain kinds of things in your spiritual life; by manipulating the powers of evil spiritually through doing certain things. In other words, it was really the belief in magic. It’s strange how it runs through all of our lives. Do you remember as children we thought, oh if we didn’t walk on the cracks of the sidewalk, it was in Ireland, maybe it would be okay; or, if you said “abracadabra” a certain way, maybe something would happen — that whole belief that you could manipulate the spiritual powers of the world through the way you did things; I’d keep clear of that. Keep clear of looking upon prayer as a work of salvation; that if you do it, then God will have to do something. So be private about your prayer life. You don’t need to tell your wife or tell everybody else what great prayer times you have had, or how many hours you have spent on your knees in prayer; that’s not their business. There is a time that will come in your life when you will stand alone; absolutely alone, you know that, you know. There is a time when you will stand alone. It doesn’t matter how close you are to your Mum or Dad or your husband or wife or your friend or your brothers or sisters. There will come a time when you and I stand absolutely alone. We will be alone facing our God. Now prayer is to be that time. Often we spoil the honest talk that we have done with God by gossiping about it to other people. And by that means we degrade it and we demean our God. Brothers and sisters, when you pray, go into a quiet private place and pray. If you say, isn’t there a time for praying in public? Well you know that; we pray in public here. Isn’t there a time for joining together in prayer times? Yes. But the prayer meetings gain their reality from you being alone privately with God. See, the Father looks down upon you and he knows fine well when you are doing it for the sake of everybody else around you seeing what a good Christian you are. He knows that. He knows when you are playing games and it bites into his heart. He knows when you appear at prayer meetings and how rarely you appear before him privately where nobody can see you. So real prayer is going into a quiet place yourself and talking with God; and for most of us it really does mean, getting a time early in the morning or late at night when we can be quiet before God. Most of us are different; some of us can sit and watch television and almost pray. Some of us can listen to all kinds of stuff coming through our ears and can read with great concentration; others of us can’t hear a door bang but our thoughts are distracted. You need to work that out for yourself; but generally, you need to get a quiet place where you can be alone with God and for most of us, that’s been either early in the morning before everybody gets up in the house or the apartment wakens up or the dormitory, or very late at night when everybody has gone to sleep. Often we find it’s easier if we kneel down. Why? Because we are human beings and your physical posture influences the way your mind and your emotions operate and the way your spirit operates. And so often we find, when we kneel down it’s the kind of thing we know we would do to the King of the Universe and we know it’s the kind of attitude that we have towards him. So many of us find it is good to kneel down. You don’t have to kneel down if you have sore knees, or you don’t have to kneel down if you don’t like kneeling. But often it’s good to kneel down by your bedside at a time when everything is quiet. And then to begin to first of all state to God, “Lord God, I believe you exist and I believe that you are a rewarder of those who diligently seek after you. Lord I believe that you look upon me with favor because I am seeking you here tonight or here this morning. And Lord God I ask you to hear my prayers.” And then loved ones, you just start being honest with God. And if you are a person who isn’t sure that God really does exist, or if you are a person who isn’t sure where you are in relationship to God, then that’s what you say. You don’t go through a whole lot of gobbledygook and a whole lot of nicey-nice prayers. You start with God where you are in reality. And if you are not sure he exists then that’s what you say; “Lord, I hardly even know I am sure that you exist. At times I think you do, but I don’t know all the time; so, Lord I am coming to you as honestly as I can, and where I am not honest Lord, will you make me honest?” Or maybe you call him God or maybe you call him Jesus. You do whatever is real to you; but the beginning about real prayer is it’s honest and plain and straight. Now that’s you remember, what Jesus said, if you look at Matthew 6:7, “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” No, you don’t need to pray ‘thee and thou’ if you are not 16th century Englishmen; you don’t need to pray that way. Or if that comes naturally to you and you feel because of your background, that is the way you refer to God, then you do it. But you don’t engage in games; don’t get caught in the, “Oh! I know the way Pastor prays or the way somebody else prays and I am going to pray the same.” Don’t do that loved ones; God doesn’t want little monkeys imitating each other, he wants honest sons and daughters who have come to him as they are, and are plain and straight. So, be real. If you say to me, do you need to pray out? Most of us at the beginning find that we concentrate better if we actually either speak the words quietly, kind of whisper them because it helps our minds to concentrate or if we mouth the words; most of us start at that level. It really isn’t important. If your wife is sleeping just a few feet from you then I suppose you don’t want to make any noise at all. But if there is nobody else in the room you can either pray aloud or you can whisper the words to God. Or if you get kind of embarrassed by even what you are praying – “who am I, saying these mighty and wonderful things?” then don’t say it out loud, don’t embarrass yourself, just let God hear and not even you yourself hear. But most of us find that it’s good to start with thoughts. If you say to me, why make the big deal? Because there is a level of prayer where you could run out of thoughts, as there is a level of interrelationship in communion between two people where you operate above the level of thoughts. But most of us start at the level of thoughts and verbalize thoughts because thoughts normally form themselves in words even in our minds. So begin by speaking to God. If you say to me, what do I talk to him about? You talk to him about what comes into your life as real. You don’t get caught up with the business, well, now I know that should be an unselfish prayer, so let me pray for all the missionaries all over the world. Don’t, if you don’t really care about all the missionaries all over the world, don’t pray about all the missionaries all over the world. If you say to me, oh, but I should care — yeah, maybe you should, but God wants you to be real with him. And if you are all worried about your car then you pray to him about the car. But you be real with him, be honest with him and true with him. And if you said to me, how long do you pray, I would say, you pray as long as it is real to you at the beginning. If you can only pray for a minute then you pray for a minute. If you can pray for two you pray for two. If you can pray for 5 or 10 or 15 all I would say to you is, if you keep on doing it everyday you will get more at home with your God. You will get more at home with him, and his spirit will begin to move in you and prompt you to pray the right way; the way that he is able to hear you and he’ll teach you that and your prayer times will grow in length. And you’ll pray maybe for 15 minutes, maybe for half an hour, maybe for an hour, it’s not really the time that matters it’s the reality of it and the good manners of it. The good manners and the respect; and they involve regularity — that’s it. If you make a commitment to the Lord, “Father I will see you every morning here at 5:30 at this bed,” then do that. Don’t say, I will see you every morning at 5 o’clock and then you do it one day or two days and then you stop — don’t do that. Be mannerly, be respectful towards God, and show him that you really do believe that he is there. See that’s the importance of that — do you see that? You know, if you say to me, “Oh, now we are getting into legalism,” No, no. But if you believe he is there, if you believe that God exists and that there he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, then you make a commitment to him and you know he will be there. And so, what you are involved in doing is saying, either I don’t believe he is there or I ignore him even if he is there, that’s beyond reality. So be real and regular, day after day. It doesn’t matter how brief the time is or how long the time is, but just be ordinary and straight with him. If you say, “How do I know when to finish?” You finish when you finish. You finish when you feel you’ve said all that you should say. And if you say to me, “Can I get better at this?” Yes. I think God will teach you. But the important thing is to start where you are and to be real. If you say to me, well, brother I don’t know, I mean I like ejaculatory prayers, I kind of go out and as I am starting the car, I say “Oh Lord help me today.” Well, those prayers don’t have much meaning unless you at least will give God some time each day, you see that? I mean, he reckons he has given you all of your life; and he is giving you the potential for all of eternity. He knows fine well that an ejaculatory prayer that is just thrown up like that has no respect or no meaning or no value in it unless you have a set time where you respect him. In other words, if you pray it really does show that you believe God; that you believe God is there. Let’s face it, isn’t it plain straight? If you don’t pray, it’s all a big talk. If you really do believe there is a God, you bet your bottom dollar you’ll want to talk to him. If I said to you, look here is Jesus, here is Jesus, you know you’d wait here for days; you’d do anything to see Jesus and to talk with him. Now God knows that. He knows that the final proof that you believe him and you believe he exists is that you start talking to him and if you don’t talk to him, he knows it’s all big talk on your part because faith proves itself in actions and he always knows that your actions are speaking so loudly that he can’t hear what you are saying with your lips. If you really believe in God you will speak to him in prayer; and you’ll meet him regularly. So loved ones, I would encourage your hearts — I didn’t get as far today as I thought we would. But could I say to you first, will you start praying because you getting to know God is everything. That’s what this Book says, this is eternal life, to know God and him whom he has sent even Jesus Christ — and the only way you get to know a person is to begin talking with him. And the only way you can pray to God is if you believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek after him. So I would say to you first of all, what old Kennedy said, “Let’s begin; let’s begin.” Will you begin today? Don’t make it a prayer wheel turning thing; don’t make it a work of salvation thing; don’t make it, I am going to prove that I am a Christian thing, don’t make it; I am going to get things from God by doing this little thing, don’t, Just be straight. You and I have been made by a great Creator; we are going to live with him forever. During these 70 years we owe him some time each day to speak with him and to talk with him and to get to know him; and that’s where we start — just begin there. So would you just pause for a minute and think, when could I do that each day? Let me just mention to you how much time you are going to spend these next days talking with people that you will not see next year. Do you know that most of the people you spend time talking with this next week you won’t even know them in five years time? Most of them you won’t even know in five years time. Now we are talking about talking to the person that you are going to be with throughout eternity. So will you pause just for a minute and think, when could I talk with God each day? Even for two minutes; when could I talk with God each day? Now, when we have a quiet time in a moment or two, will you seriously consider it? I would ask you seriously to consider. Would you seriously consider covenanting with God; that you will talk with him at that time each day for two minutes or five minutes or however long. Now I ask you to seriously consider it because he who makes a vow to the Lord and breaks it will find that God will reject you from any real relationship with himself. If you just make vows and break them, he does not respond to that kind of playing around. So it’s very important if you make the vow, to hold to it. So will you think of that now and what I would like to do is next Sunday try to deal with some of the other questions that come up in prayer that might help you. And so I’d like to begin to deal with why we ask God to do anything at all. All right, let us pray. Father, we come now into your presence and Father we want to be real with you these moments, we recognize with our minds that you are the Creator of the world; that you made us and that we will spend forever with you. Lord God, you have commanded us to pray at all times and we are now facing that command and Lord we are now going to make our covenant with you as you have guided us during these few minutes and we are going to covenant with you as you have shown us we should. Now Lord, we ask you to meet each one of us according to our agreement to come to you in conversation every day. We ask you to begin to help us to know you and understand you. So that on the last day, we will be meeting a person whom we know and trust and not some unknown judge to whom we have never spoken. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and evermore. Amen.

The Key to Prayer 1: Talking to God Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill If you don’t talk to God yourself then you are really kind of wasting your time coming to church. Do you see that? Because the whole purpose of church and religion and faith and all this stuff is that you yourself would talk to God personally. And if you don’t talk to him, loved ones, we are just filling in time here; you really are, because these years are going to pass very fast and its questionable how many of us will even know each other when the moment of your death comes. And yet, it’s at the moment of your death that you are going to meet the Maker who made you. And you need to know him before that time comes. So sooner or later you’ll have to do it. And if you never address him personally, if you never speak to him personally before that day then don’t you see that you will just meet a judge on that day who doesn’t know you at all — and you will presumably meet a judge whom you have not been pleasing at all, all through your life. So, you are going to meet at that day, an unknown God; unknown to you, who will have no alternative but to say, “I never knew you; depart from me into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That’s the bottom line brothers and sisters, and you have to see that, you know. It is just vital that you see it. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t matter how nice you are to me here or how nice I am to you here, we are just a lot of clowns, because we are not helping each other at all. The whole purpose of being together here for just an hour is not so that you can get a little bit of a lift to help you through the week. Really, if you went to a funny movie, that might give you a lift too, in some ways a better lift — or if you went out on to the lake and just sailed around or swam around, you might get a kind of refreshing. But the only reason for us being here today is so that you yourself will go on from here and will begin to speak to God. That’s the whole purpose of it, what I am trying to do is, I am trying to say, look in here, and you know its not really in here; but that’s the symbolism of that chancel; in here is God — and I am telling you about him, I am telling you the kind of person he is, and I am suggesting even some ways in which you can approach him, but that’s the whole purpose of it. I am here to introduce you to God; and if you don’t go through to him, don’t you see that all you are receiving from another human being like you is information and knowledge. So brothers and sisters, it doesn’t matter where you think you are in regard to Jesus or Christianity. What I am saying to you this morning is if you don’t speak to God yourself in whatever simplistic way you may think it is; you’ll never get to know him. You may think, Pastor, I am dumb as regards these things. I have no idea how to pray. When I hear other people praying, I don’t even know the words to use; I don’t know even how to juggle my thoughts around. Loved ones, it doesn’t matter how foolish you feel about it you have to go through to God in your own way as best you can. And would you realize this: he knows you. I mean, we don’t all know you, we don’t all understand you, even your mom or dad doesn’t understand you but your God made you, he knows you. You may say I am stupid about these things. I haven’t thought much about them, I don’t know how to deal with it — but he knows that, your God knows you. He knows you and he understands you and he will be understanding to you. You might say I can’t do the things that other people do to make him real; you don’t make him real, that’s not your job. Your job is to close your eyes and to speak to darkness; that’s it. Just speak to darkness, that’s what faith is. It’s speaking to darkness; it’s closing your eyes and speaking to darkness. And if you are like the little child that says oh, there is nobody in the world because I can’t see anybody. Okay just say that, there is nobody, I can see nobody. Alright, but speak, speak to God in the darkness; that’s where we all start. And I think that’s one of the errors that we make, or one of the traps you and I fall into. We think when we close our eyes that everybody else has some wonderful feeling. And so, maybe you’ve tried it and you’ve closed your eyes, maybe you went home a couple of Sundays ago and you closed your eyes and nothing. I mean, if I half opened them, then I can see kind of, light through my eyelids but I can’t see very much. And you wonder well, surely there is something, surely in spite of what we said two Sundays ago, maybe you think surely I should see something, I should feel something. I’ll close my eyes and surely God will give a little signal of some kind — no, no, he won’t necessarily. He won’t necessarily give you any kind of signal. He reckons, look, I’ve overwhelmed you with signals, look at that ceiling up there, that sky that I gave you, look at the storm that I brought yesterday, look at the rainbow — I’ve given you all kind of signs. Look I’ve been giving you signs for years; no, you are not due yet another signal from me. I want you to close your eyes and I want you to speak to me. And loved ones I feel so for you in one way and yet in another way you know we are all in the same boat. I feel for those men here who — really its not only the men, some of you ladies are just as pragmatic and practical and commonsensical and earthy as us men but often we men feel we are not really good at this stuff. We are not very good at this mystical stuff or this emotional stuff. Loved ones, you don’t need emotion and you don’t need mystical stuff to pray; you just don’t. I would point you back to that verse that was started at a couple of Sundays ago. It’s in Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” So you do have to do that, you see. It means for whoever would draw near to God, whoever wants to come near to God in prayer, you first must believe that he exists and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him; so you do have to believe, you have to believe that he exists. Now you may say what if I don’t even believe that he exists? God is so gracious, even if you go to him like that and say Lord, “I hardly even believe that you exist but I know that I need to in some way try to contact you.” But that’s what faith is. And you remember two Sundays ago I shared with you the agonies that C.S. Lewis got himself into through being preoccupied with what he was feeling and what he was sensing inside. And you remember how he used to pray a prayer and then suddenly look in on himself and say, “Did I realize that prayer, did I really realize that prayer, did I realize that prayer, that is, did I make it as real as I did two weeks ago?” And he said prayer became an agony for me. It became something I wanted to avoid because I would pray a prayer then I would look in to see if it was real and it wouldn’t seem real and so I kept on torturing myself with this eternal introspecting — don’t do that. The one thing you can be sure of when you look into yourself to see if you can sense the presence of God is that you have stopped worshipping him; because you are not looking at him anymore, you are looking at yourself. And so, all you’ll see is yourself looking at yourself. So you pray a prayer, and then you have a look to see, have I really got the presence of God? And what you see when you look at yourself, is yourself looking at yourself to see if you have got the presence of God. And you always come up with the same miserable torturing answer: I am not sensing the presence of God. Well of course you are not; all you are sensing is your own presence because you are looking in at yourself. Loved ones, prayer is not introspecting; it is not having a mystical experience, or having a certain feeling of the presence of God. If you say to me but brother, don’t you sense the presence of God at times? Yeah, at times; but thousands of times I don’t sense the presence of God. And you remember, I shared with you on the whole phone thing; you call that person out there — if you are at work you call up somebody and you don’t say to yourself, ah, I feel your presence right here. I feel, no, no, I don’t feel it enough yet so I can’t speak, no wait, wait I have to feel it. Let me feel your — yeah, I feel now I can talk. You don’t. Even though its only old Bell telephone and they are not always reliable and they are certainly not as reliable as God has been for centuries raising the sun every morning, yet you do put your faith in the system and you talk to the person whether you can feel that the other person is at the other end or not. And I can tell you it’s even worse on transatlantic calls where you are very uncertain who is at the other end but you keep calling them. I have a little fax machine, it faxes documents from one country to another and I pop the letter in that and I hit the button and it disappears into my machine and comes out the other end. And I have absolute confidence that Myron has got it in London and yet I haven’t seen him there. So loved ones, we are not requiring something ridiculous of ourselves when we say you need to have to faith to pray to God. Even when you don’t feel his presence, all you need is faith to believe that he exists. Now if you say to me yes, but shouldn’t you speak to him in a certain way, aren’t there forms for speaking to him? Shouldn’t I call him Thou or Thee or shouldn’t I call him Our Father or, there are certain ways to do it? No, there aren’t. Don’t you see that that’s getting into magic? That’s getting into magic. Magic is the belief that you can work the elemental spirits of the universe to do your bidding if you manipulate them in a certain way. That’s the difference between Christians and Pagans. Pagans are always trying to manipulate the evil spirits of the universe by all kinds of magic. Christians don’t deal with the elemental spirits of the universe. They deal with their God and faith. No, you don’t have to manipulate God. You don’t have to do certain things to conjure him up; that’s not right, that’s going back to the yellow brick road, its going back to the Wizard of Oz, its going back to all the magician stories you have heard of, where the magician conjures up the evil spirit, you don’t do that loved ones. You just have to believe that God is; and you have to speak to him in honesty from your heart. And that’s how to pray. You just have to be real. You know that our generation is preoccupied with one thing; I mean it is sickening, the extent to which we are preoccupied with this one thing. We are preoccupied with, what’s in this for me, what’s in this for me? What am I getting out of this? You know loved ones that’s what’s causing the break up of the society. None of us will do anything now — we won’t go to a movie, we won’t go anywhere unless we are getting something out of it for me — we won’t do anything unless we are getting something out of it for me. And do you see that’s what tends to dominate our attitude to prayer. With due respect to you, you know that’s the way we tend to think of Church, that’s wrong. We tend to say, what am I getting out of this? And you know our old great grandparents and so forth, they went to some miserable — what we would call miserable churches. When the old guy was blasting away, they are boring them to tears but they would be there, Sunday after Sunday because they were utterly convinced that you went to church to realize the worship of God and to honor the worth of God and that’s what worshiping meant. And brothers and sisters, our generation is overwhelmed with the desire to get something out of a thing; and see, that’s what you have to watch out for in prayer. Because you will close your eyes at times and you will speak to God and your dear old mind is brainwashed and programmed by our education, by our television, by our books, by the way everybody is talking. And we immediately think, was that a good prayer time? And the last thing we mean is, did God hear our prayer? The first thing we mean is, did I really enjoy myself in that prayer time? Did I get something out of it? Did I get something from God? Brothers and sisters, that’s not praying you see. That’s looking — as we said two weeks ago, for another little cookie, “I am a cookie monster, I want little cookies Lord, give me a cookie, another sense of your presence, another feeling of joy or delight, give me another little nibble of happiness.” No, brothers and sisters, praying is believing that God exists and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. It’s speaking to him and believing that he hears you and that he will respond to you, that’s what prayer is. So it’s nothing to do with introspecting or “I feel I feel a feeling that I feel I felt before.” Or looking in and seeing how you are enjoying it. It’s nothing to do with that. Prayer is believing that God is there and praying. That’s it, that’s just it. You go over to the faucet, hot faucet, you turn it on, you don’t say, I feel I am going to get hot water out of that faucet, I feel it. You don’t. You turn the faucet on, you stand there and you wait for the hot water to come because it will come. That’s what you do. In all of our lives, from turning the key in the ignition of the car to everything else we do, we believe we have faith that the thing is going to respond as we have observed it to respond in past days. So it is with God. Prayer is believing that God is. Now that’s why Jesus gave us the advice that he did in Matthew 6:6, and you remember we talked about this a little last day. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” And that’s it. It’s not a work of salvation, it’s not something that you quote to somebody else to show them what a great pray-er you are and how very holy you are. Nor is it something that you quote to somebody else to try to put a half nelson on God by exposing them. “Now I prayed for this and I am trusting the Lord will answer me.” And you hope maybe the Lord is listening to you as you witness that to somebody else. That’s not what it is. It’s you going into your prayer room in secret and the Lord who sees you in secret will reward you and he will reward you openly. Prayer is something between you and God; it’s just something between you and him. And in a way, the more private and the more secret it is, in a way the more real it is; and I don’t know if you’re caught — I suppose if you are not a Christian you are not caught in this, but some of those of us who call ourselves Christians are more intent on our reputation in everybody else’s eyes than we are in our reputation in God’s eyes. And so, we are all preoccupied with telling, how we prayed this morning; “well in deep prayer this morning I got this from the Lord.” And we are intent on making an impression on other people as to how spiritual we are. Loved ones, prayer is just your private conversation with the Father. It’s just you and God, it’s just going in privately to God and praying and the more private and the more secret it is, the more efficacious and the more realistic it is. Prayer is you and God. Somebody has said, “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.” It’s what you really want. It’s you expressing that to God himself. So prayer is a private thing. There is an interesting statement that Jesus makes in the next verse; and it creates a problem in many of our minds. It’s Mathew 6:7, “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them,” Why? “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” And many of us say, well, then why bother, what’s all this about? Why ask him, why all this agony about prayer if God knows already; because that’s what Jesus says. And sometimes — I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’ve thought that at times I have tried to explain the thing in such detail to God that it almost seemed as if he wasn’t bright enough to understand it and so I had to outline it to him in Technicolor — and in fact, God does know what we need before we ask him, then why ask him? Why do you ask God for a thing if he knows already that you need it? If you, yourself are in financial difficulties God knows that already and he knows exactly what you need in that situation. He knows whether you need money or he knows whether you need wisdom as to how to rearrange your affairs. If you need a job, God knows that already. He knows which job you need, he knows what kind of environment you need to work in. If he sees your mother who is dying of cancer, he knows that already before you ask him, he knows exactly what she needs in her situation. Then why do we ask God? Loved ones, it’s just vitally important that you see this. It’s because of Genesis 2:16, “And the Lord God commanded the man saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’” And there in 16, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden.’” That’s the greatest principle next to God’s love and it’s really a part of God’s love that exists in our universe, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden,” that’s God saying to us, you may do what you want. If you say, but he — in the next verse said, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it lest you die,” yes but that’s a command that you’d only give if a people had free will to disobey it. You wouldn’t bother giving a command to a person who had to obey you; you only give a command to a person who can disobey you. The greatest principle in our universe besides God’s love, and its really part of God’s love, is our free will. You can do what you want; you know you can, because you have done it, you can do what you want. I remember somebody saying about some people who had kind of got out of the way of God’s life and will for them, they said oh, such a great relief and he said yeah, it’s a great relief for them to find out that God will let them do what they want even if it means their destruction. And the fact is that God has given us free wills, he’s given us free wills. And if you say to me, well now what has that to do with the original question, why ask God for things that he knows we need already? Because, and this is startling, it’s very humbling, because we are such little fleas compared with God and his greatness. God will not act apart from your free will; that’s unbelievable. He can’t act against his own will, but he refuses to act apart from your will. It’s incredible; I mean even if you are going to kill his Son, he will not send angels down to stop you. God refuses to act apart from your will; in other words, God can look down on your life and he can see exactly what your life needs but he will not act unless you see that yourself and are willing for him to do it, that’s right. It’s unbelievable that God would respect our free wills. We hardly respect ourselves that much, we don’t think that much of ourselves; but God so respects your free will that he refuses to act apart from your free will. And even though he sees what your life needs at this moment, he will not operate independent of you, he will not operate over and above you, he will not come in as an overdrive across the top of your life and do something against your free will, he will not act apart from your free will. Now if you say to me, but isn’t it true that there are some unconditional gifts that he gives all of us quite apart from the exercise of our free will? Yes, there are all the gifts of common grace. He has given us through common grace, rain; the rain rains on the just and the unjust. God graciously gives to us natural life and he gives us all the energy to keep our hearts beating and to enable us to eat food and to enable us to survive so that we may have an opportunity to freely submit our wills to him. So he does give the gifts of common grace to all men and women whether they submit to him or not; but in the area of coming to know him, in the area of submitting to him, in the area of our eternal destiny or our entering the next life which is the real life that he has for us, he is utterly subject to our free wills. And so do you see that even though God knows what you need in your life, he will not bring it about unless you see it too and ask him to do it — that’s it. So, God knows what you need before you ask him, but he is only free to bring that about in your life when you ask him. If you say to me, do you mean that I — little flea that I am, can stand up and with my hand hold back the eternal power of the universe? Yes, for seventy years you can do that; or maybe by strength, you can do it for eighty years. For eighty years — ninety years at the most, you can hold back the power of the universe. After that, he has designed that you will then cease to have that freedom and he will rearrange the whole universe as he originally intended; with those of us who during our seventy or eighty or ninety years have freely submitted our wills to him. But at this point in your life you can; yes, you can. And if you ever question it, you think of your dad or your mom or some good dad or mom that you can think of, or some dear uncle or aunt, you think of them; you know how often they knew what was best for you, you know that. But they could not do it until you wanted it also; and you know how often dads and moms sat and prayed for us day after day, night after night, year after year and they could do nothing if we didn’t want them to; that’s the power you have over God. Your God knows what he has in mind for your life, he knows the plan that he has for it, but he cannot bring it about unless you ask him to bring it about. This is stated loved ones, in a very plain and simple way in Ezekiel chapter 36:37. It’s one of those important verses that reveals the whole key to what prayer is about and it deals with this whole important issue of us aligning our wills with God’s before we can see him act. Ezekiel 36:37, “Thus says the Lord God: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” And this was after the exile you remember. And the Israelites had been decimated and God looked down and he saw, if this nation of mine is to survive, they will need more people, there will have to be more people; they have to have more children born, otherwise they are going to die out and God saw that, he knew that. But he could not bring it about unless the Israelites prayed and asked him to do it. That’s why he says, “Thus says the Lord God, this also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them; to increase their men like a flock.” I will let them ask me to do that for them. I know that I should do it, I know it’s what’s needed and I will let them ask me to do that for them and when they ask me, then I am able to do it. That’s the same with you. That’s the same with you. There are all kinds of things in your life that God wants, and that is best for you but he cannot bring them about and he will not bring them about unless you see them yourself, and ask him to do them for you, that’s it. And you know you may sit there and say, “Pastor, I can’t believe that.” Loved ones, that’s it. That’s it, you can hold up God. You can stop him and you can live your own life just as you want, you can. You can prevent God having his way in your life. And the only way in which he can have his way, is if you see it and you ask him to bring it about in you, that’s right. If you say every little detail, yes, if you have a car that is in difficulties these days or you have a home situation that isn’t satisfactory or you are wondering where you are going to live next year, or you are wondering what you are going to do with your life, or you are wondering about marriage. Every little thing; or your money, you haven’t enough money to see you through this coming week, God has a definite will for every one of those details, but he cannot bring that about until you see it and you ask him. Because he refuses to act apart from your freewill, and I don’t think you have any doubt in seeing why that is so. He doesn’t want robots, he doesn’t want a bunch of little know nothings that have just come to him because they couldn’t do anything else. He doesn’t want robots; he wants living human beings who walk into Heaven because they have submitted freely to their Father and they have chosen to love him of their own free wills and that’s what makes Heaven possible. So, loved ones, will you think about that? I mean it’s overwhelming; but that’s the key to prayer. God knows what he wants to do in your life but he can’t do it until you ask him. Next Sunday I would like to talk a little bit about how to know what he wants to do in your life. Let’s pray. Dear Father, You know it’s so hard for us to believe that you who made the Rocky Mountains and who made the Milky Way and who created the Theory of Relativity and the protons and the neutrons and all the particles that we have not yet discovered could be held to ransom by our little wills. Father, it’s hard for us to believe that you care that much about our freedom and you care that much that we would come to be your willing friends. But Lord, we see the evidence of history and we know the evidence of our own lives and we can see that finally, we can act against your will if we want to. Now Lord, we realize that there is only one who knows what we were made for. Our mothers don’t know it, or our fathers, or our teachers. There is only one who knows why we were put on earth and what particular thing we have to achieve while we are here — or what kind of person we have to be, and that’s you Lord. So Father, we know that you have plans there for our lives that are the only plans that will work. And Lord, we would turn away from all these prayers that we fly like kites. We would turn away from all this turning of prayer wheels and this wanting our way and expressing our wishful thinking to you and Lord we tell you we want to know what you want for us. We want to know our Father what you want to do in these situations that we are facing, we want to know that Lord. Because that’s the only final solution; and so we ask you as we begin to pray to you in faith this coming week, we ask you Father to begin to help us to see what you want for us. So Lord, we commit ourselves to speaking to you and to beginning to talk to you as a real person in real faith. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and evermore. Amen

The Key to Prayer 2: Confidential Prayer Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill It’d be interesting to listen to all the mothers teaching all their children how to say their prayers, because it might be surprising how similar we all were. Ours were – God bless Dad, God bless Mom, my brother was called Desmond, so God bless Desmond and then, we had a dog whose name was Chummy and so, we blessed him as well. And then we did, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon the little child,” and then we did the Lord’s Prayer, and depending on who was in form that night, my brother or I got to the end first. But we always did say our prayers; and I don’t know what yours were like but, probably most of them are more or less the same. And so, I’d like to start there by asking you, do you say your prayers now? Do you pray now? And I put it that way because it’s so easy for us to just bluff each other in a service like this. Of course we all say our prayers. I am asking you, do you pray? Do you pray every day? And probably a lot of us would say, “No, we don’t pray everyday. Yes, I do pray, but I don’t pray every day.” And I’d ask you, why you don’t pray every day? And probably you would answer, “Well I really don’t feel the need to pray every day.” Then I’d say to you “Well, when do you pray?” Maybe too many of us would say, “Well, we pray when our son has cancer or when our mother is dying or when we lose our job or when lightning strikes our neighbor’s house.” And so really, what we are saying is, we pray foxhole prayers. Foxhole prayers are prayers that we prayed when we were in the army, when we were in a foxhole and the bombs were falling all around us and we cried out for fear because we realized we were no longer in control of the situation. And the fact is that most of us tend to pray when we feel the need to pray and of course that’s not the basis of prayer at all. If we pray in that sense, you can hardly even call that prayer and probably we know that ourselves. We are not very aware of whom we are praying to, we are just crying out in desperation. “God help me, help me, save me.” And we are still preoccupied; you might even say it’s just we are preoccupied with our own safety, our own security. And of course it’s not really prayer at all. In fact real prayer doesn’t actually need to have an overwhelming sense of need. It doesn’t even have to have a great sense of reality. And I know you may rebel against that, you may say, “How could I pray if I don’t feel that God is there? Or if I don’t feel some tremendous reality, prayer is meaningless unless you feel something. That’s why at times I like to go to an old church somewhere because you can kind of feel the presence of the ages and all the saints. Or that’s why at times I like to be out on a lake in quietness because I can kind of feel the presence of God.” And you remember, several Sunday’s ago, loved ones, we shared that that finally drives you away from prayer. When you pray looking for a feeling, or thinking that you are only praying when you feel the presence of God, eventually that destroys you, eventually that drives you to distraction. And I don’t want to bore you by referring to it again but you remember C.S. Lewis, when he was a little guy at boarding school, would pray a prayer and then he would think, “Have I really realized that prayer? Did I really pray it the way I prayed it last week? Did I really-really pray it? Do I feel that God heard my prayer?” And he says, “Eventually prayer became a self-torturing experience for me. I wore myself out, because I was so preoccupied with praying and then trying to examine if I’d really prayed.” And the truth is, you don’t need to have any feeling to really pray, you don’t. I know it goes against our society’s emphasis on existential experience and our society’s emphasis on, are you enjoying yourself? Was it a good service? Was it a good prayer time? Meaning really, had you an enjoyable experience? I know it goes against that, but the truth is, you don’t need to have feeling to pray. All you need — and I just point you to it very quickly, is in Matthew 6:6, it’s very simple. It’s just what Jesus says,” But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” All you need is faith to believe that, that’s it. You don’t need to feel it; you don’t need to feel the Father’s presence, you just need to go into your room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. If I could speak to the husbands; you know that your wife and your children need certain things, but just you go to God about it. You don’t need to share great things with them; you don’t need to share things with all kinds of friends. Go to God, privately. It’s far better actually, that it’s just between you and him; it really is — far better. In a way, when you share this thing with someone else, it isn’t quite that it frustrates or vitiates the prayer, but you better not. And you ladies, you know there are certain things your men need; certain things your children need; just go in privately to God and ask him for those things. And keep on asking. I think a lot of us spoil our prayer times because we pray for 3 weeks about something, no result comes, then we go to the pastor or we go to some counselor or we go to some book to find out why we are not getting an answer. That’s a shame, don’t you see? Don’t you see what God thinks when he looks down upon us? And here we are going to somebody and saying, why doesn’t God hear me? Don’t you see how that breaks confidence with God? See, God wants you to trust him. He wants you to believe that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek after him. He wants you to just come to him and pray, and pray to him alone. There is an awful lot, loved ones, that we lose in prayer because we are performing something that we think will work magic, instead of going quietly to our Father privately and asking him for something and keep on asking. George Muller was originally a German who preached for years in England, and built orphanages for thousands of children through faith in God providing the money. He built them with thousands and thousands of pounds that God brought into him in answer to his prayers. And do you realize that at the end of his life which was a long life, he died at 92 a week after he died; a man received Jesus as Savior for whom Muller had been praying for 35 years? And you see what it says: Here is a man, who was mighty in prayer. Who had seen thousands of pounds and many orphans brought up in answer to his prayers, but he too, had people that he was praying for year after year after year and he saw no change in them but that didn’t stop him. He knew what Jesus had said about this unjust neighbor that kept on being asked by his friend for a loaf and even though he hated to get up, yet because the other person kept on asking, he got up and gave him the loaf of bread. And Muller and all the men who have experienced God’s answers to prayer have believed that. So loved ones, don’t spoil your prayers by either looking for feelings, feelings, and feelings; am I having a feeling of God’s presence, or by looking for answers in your time. God expects you to believe him and that means, you keep on praying and you keep on praying until you die, absolutely confident that God will either answer your prayer or will change your prayer. He’ll either answer it or will change your prayer. He’ll either give you greater insight into it or he will give you an answer to the prayer. But what is needed is just a little confidentiality to tell the truth. A little confidentiality between you and me and God; and less of this looking upon prayer as a game that we are playing or something that we do right. “Am I holding my mouth right? No I am not. Should I close my right eye and wink my left eye?” No, don’t get silly about prayer. And you may say, “But Pastor, aren’t there right ways to pray?” But God is going to show you those, you know that. You know how silly it is to work out how is the best way to approach your Mom, after you’ve been absent from her for a year or months. You don’t go to somebody else and ask, how should I express my love for my Mom, you do what comes naturally. It’s the same with our dear Father. He actually is dying for a direct line between you and him; and all the time you are putting things in place. So many of us were brought up in Catholicism and we said all the priests were in a place between us and God. That’s just an excuse, you know. We are always putting things between ourselves and God. We are trying all kinds of books, all kinds of methods, all kinds of techniques, all kinds of counseling, all kinds of advice, all kinds of other people’s successful ways — don’t, just go to God. Yes, he knows you, he knows how foolish you are, he knows how stupid you are, he knows how inexperienced you are, he knows all that. But he will respect you, if you do what Jesus said. Go into your closet and just pray. Now, I would point out to you that you know that is true because you had prayers answered when you knew less about God than you know now, you know that. And we all know people who are surprisingly and ridiculously irreligious people. And yet we hear them say, “Oh I remember when God answered my prayer for my mother.” Because God does; God answers an honest heart that really believes in him. So to pray, you need to just believe that God is there and you need to be real with him. Now, you remember last day, we pointed out the difficulty that you have in this next verse. It’s in Matthew 6:7, Jesus is elaborating on how to pray and telling us not to make a game of it or kind of, a verbal maestry or magic, abracadabra of it, but to be real. Matthew 6:7, “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do” as if you thought God would be influenced by your eloquence — “for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them.” And then here is the problem, “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Then why ask him? I mean, why waste our time? If our Father knows what we need before we ask him, then why ask him? Well, a good enough reason is of course, God tells you to ask him, that’s good enough. He says “Ask and it will be given you.” So that’s enough reason. But you remember, the other reason that we mentioned last day is this amazing fact. You have free will; God has given you free will. You are free to believe in God or not to believe in God. You are free to accept him or you are free to reject him. God has given you free will, loved ones and really with all the teaching of Skinner (an American philosopher) on determinism you know that you still have free will. Yes, you are influenced by your heredity and environment, but finally, you can act against that. You can do whatever you want. God has given us free wills. When he said, “Look, you can eat of any tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, do not eat of it or you’ll die” — that is a command that is given to a person who has free will. If we didn’t have free will, God wouldn’t bother giving us a command. Because there is no point in giving a robot a command, because you know he won’t be able to do anything that you don’t allow him to do anyway. You give a command only to free will agents and God has given each of us free wills. And even though God knows what you need in your life at this present time, God will not be able to bring it to you unless you ask him, he won’t. You can protest; you can say “Look brother this is game playing. If God sees that I need this change in my life why doesn’t he just go ahead? Isn’t he a good God? Why doesn’t he just change me, whether I ask him or not? If God sees what I need in a job why doesn’t he just give me that job whether I ask him or not?” Well, do you see why? It would cease to be of any importance what you wanted in life, if God did that, do you see that? It would cease to be of any importance what you wanted. If God just brought you the job that he knows you should have, you wouldn’t have any free will. If God just changed you as he sees you need to be changed, it wouldn’t matter what you did. Do you see loved ones, it would make fun and foolishness of free will and God would end up at the end of this life with a bunch of robots that were the result of his overruling sovereign action in your life. In other words, God cannot do even what he sees needs to be done in your life unless you ask him. Otherwise he makes you a robot. Now, you may say, but doesn’t he rain his rain on the just and the unjust? I mean, he rains whether we ask for rain or not, he rains the rain whether I get up this morning and ask for my heart to beat, he keeps my heart beating. Aren’t there certain natural laws that he keeps operating for all his creatures? Yes. In order to give us the opportunity to accept him or reject him, he has given us natural life. We needed natural life in order to be able even to choose. And so, God has given us certain life actions and certain life grace that we have, whether we ask or not. But whenever you approach the redeeming grace of God, whenever you are dealing with friendship with God or acceptance with God or rejection of God with wanting to live with him forever or to live in hell forever, then free will governs your life and God will not do any thing that you do not ask him to do. In other words, if you say “Look, he knows I have bad temper, why doesn’t he just take the bad temper away?” Because he requires your will, the activity of your will to want that with all your heart; then he will take it away. But he will not make you like himself unless you want to be made like him. And that’s why he says you must ask him. Even though he knows what you need, you must ask him for it. Otherwise he is not able to do it. You remember we looked at the end of the study last Sunday at one of the verses that shows that very clearly. It’s in Ezekiel 36:37. And it occurred at the time in Israel’s history when they had of course, just been put into exile and their numbers had decreased tremendously and God looked down and saw that they needed to increase in number if they were to survive so that his son Jesus could be born into the world. And yet even though we knew that, you see what he says in Ezekiel 36 and 37, “Thus says the Lord God: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” Now God saw that what they needed was to be increased in number and yet he says, “This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” So God knew they needed to be increased in number, but he would not act apart from their wills. He required some little human being here on earth to ask him to do that, among the people of Israel. And so it is in your own life and in the lives of your friends and your relatives. God knows what they need, but he cannot act against his own will. That is, he cannot kill people, he cannot send cancer to people, he cannot destroy people and yet, he will not act apart from your will. And unless you or I ask him to do something in regard to changing people and making them like himself, he cannot do it. Now there is another reason loved ones for it, and I’ll show you it in Acts 9, and I think you’ll just see the sense of it immediately as we read the historical record. It’s Acts 9:5 “And he said,” that is Saul you remember, on the road to Damascus. And Saul said, “Who are you, Lord?” He was struck blind you remember, “And he said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’” And then look at verse 10. “Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, ‘Ananias.’ And he said, ‘Here I am, Lord.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘Rise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus named Saul; for behold, he is praying, and he has seen a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.’ But Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints of Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call upon thy name.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.’ So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized, and took food and was strengthened.” Now do you see it? Ananias wouldn’t have touched Saul with a 40 foot pole; because Saul was a persecutor of the Christians and Ananias was scared to go near him. But God’s plan for Paul was to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit through the hands of an ordinary person. And the only way that could take place in a way that gave glory to God and brought Saul into a right relationship to the Father was if Ananias was free from fear to lay his hands on Saul. In other words, there are things that God intends to do in this world; but he intends out of his great graciousness to allow you be part of them. And you can only be part of them if you know what to do when. Now just reflect for a moment; the Israelites at the Red Sea; Pharaoh behind with his army. God, just by sovereign act without speaking to anyone at all, suddenly moves back the water. Yeah, the Israelites might know to go through, but can you imagine the absolute chaos that begins to take place in their lives, as they saw, for no reason at all, the laws of nature apparently being superseded? Would it have brought glory to God? They wouldn’t have known why it happened. They may well have said that — people even say today it was just a strong wind that dried up the water. In other words, glory came to God and it was a revelation of God only because Moses was praying to the Father, and God told him to stretch forth his staff over the Red Sea, and the sea would move back. Glory comes to God only when it is seen by men and women to be God’s sovereign act. If God acts apart from any of us knowing then it is attributed normally by human beings to chance or to Satan or to just the absolute unreliability of the laws of nature. Do you see it’s the same with the Mount Carmel situation? If the pagan priests had set up the altar and the sacrifice, and then God by sovereign act had just sent fire down without any explanation from an Elijah who had prayed and who had talked with him, it would not have brought glory to God. It would just have seemed an arbitrary effect of nature. Now, it’s the same, loved ones, in our lives. Your friends and relatives, your colleagues at work, whom God wants to touch and he wants to do works in their lives; but no glory or witness will come to God if God by sovereign act just changes them. Unless one of us is able to see what God intends to do and ask him to do it, so that we know God answers that prayer unless that happens, glory does not come to the Father. And of course the other side is, that quite apart from God’s glory, it is his great graciousness and kindliness to give you and me the opportunity to work together with him, to work with him. God gives you the opportunity to work together with him to bring this world under his control and under his will. And that’s why he requires you to know what he is doing. Do you see how messy our own system is? I mean the way you and I operate? We are looking at our situations at work and we are thinking up, what do we want God to do? We are looking at the situations in our families and we are thinking “What would God want to do in this situation? And what do I think he should do?” And we end up praying what we think God should do. Now can you imagine the reality of that? The Father is here, and he has given us a can of paint and a brush, and we are looking up and we are saying, “Well, you want me to paint the chair? The chair, I’ll paint the chair. No, he didn’t want me to paint the chair. Oh, paint the lectern. Okay, I will paint the lectern. Do you want me to paint the lectern?” We are going around suggesting to God all kinds of things that might be good for him to do. Don’t you see there is an easy way to solve that? Lord, what do you want me to do with this paint? That’s it. We have husbands and wives, we have friends and colleagues and children all of whom need God’s touch in their lives and our Lord God knows what they need. All we have to do, is find out from him what they need and then ask him to do that. That’s it; just find out from God what he intends to do in their lives and then ask him to do it and he will immediately act; that’s it, loved ones. It makes sense, doesn’t it? He is the Father that has made the whole world. He is the Father that has made all of us. He knows what we need. It’s just silliness for all us little tinkers, all us little good tryers, all us miniature fleas, to be saying “Well, should you do this, should you do that, should you do the others?” It’s silliness. The Father knows, and he will tell us if we will stop making all the suggestions and we will start spending some time listening to him and finding out what he wants to do. I just point you back to that comment of old Bismarck. Didn’t they call him the Iron Duke? He was just a dictator, you remember, responsible partly for the unification of Germany, back I suppose in the 19th century and Bismarck was just, to all intents and purposes, a brutal military tyrant. And yet you remember someone said to him, what’s the difference between a statesman and a politician? And he said, “A statesman is one who listens for the footsteps of God.” A statesman is one who listens for the footsteps of God — and you know we attribute to Winston Churchill some of that ability; we call it a sense of history. And we attributed it to Harold Macmillan and we attributed it to some extent to John Kennedy. We said, they were men who sensed the way history was moving and actually the way Bismarck put it was they sensed the way history wasn’t working. The way God’s story was moving; they listened for the footsteps of God — that’s our job. The Lord God has a will for your life and mine and for each of our friends and each of our colleagues and he is able to begin to bring it about if we will find that from him what he wants us to pray for, and then we pray, that’s it. Next Sunday, I’d like to try to talk about how we do that. Let us pray. Dear Father, we bow before you. Lord God, we know that there isn’t a bird that flies, but it is in accordance with your design and your plan. There isn’t a little insect that crawls anywhere in the vast hinterland of Africa, but you know where it is crawling, and you know how many steps it has taken. Father, we know that you know all things. And we realize that you know all about us, and all about our friends, and that there isn’t a problem that they have that you have not already seen a solution for. And so Father, we bow before you now. And we ask you Lord to begin to show us what we are to ask you to do. We ask you Father to show us what you want to do in our own lives and the lives of our friends and colleagues. So that we may take part with you in your great plan to bring us and everyone for whom we pray, under your will, and into the plan that you already had for us from the beginning of the earth. Father, we thank you, that prayer is so simple, and we thank you Lord that you are God, and you are in charge and you are the boss and the Lord of all. And we bow to you and acknowledge that and commit ourselves to praying in accordance with your will. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us, now and evermore. Amen!

True Importance of Prayer: Getting to Know Him Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill I think it was on Wednesday, we were going to a restaurant for supper with one of our suppliers that make some of our products for us in Taipei. It was quite wet and the road was slick, and we were driving along and then we saw a bus stopped right in the middle of the road. Behind it was a poor little cart that was all squashed and the fruit was lying all over the road. And then up in front of the bus, there was a bundle of clothes lying there; and there was no driver in the bus and there were no people around at all. And then Dan McCarty explained to us that the bundle of clothes was the little old man that was driving the bicycle with the cart of fruit behind him and that he actually was lying there dead — and he was dead, but nobody would touch him in case the ghost came out of his body and came into them. So, everything was just left there and he could be left for two or three hours until the family came and picked him up and then took him home and they buried him. And you and I think that it’s just primitive and it’s just savage. The important thing that I want to remind you of is that whether you will end up lying in that spot or not, or whether you will die in one of our sanitized hospital beds, doesn’t really matter. Sometime you are going to die; sometime you are going to die. And all of us who have any gray hairs at all realize that it could come anytime but I think many of you who are even younger now realize it can come like that. And whether it comes like that or not, whenever it comes it’s going to seem sudden to us. We are going to be surprised by it, and I just want to make it realistic to all of us again this morning. Loved ones, you are going to sooner or later, face your Maker and you better get to know him now before you have to face him then; it’s just commonsense. And so, you need to talk to God; you need to talk with God. You need yourself to talk with God; that is, you need to pray. And I urge you most strongly as I have urged you on several Sundays now, please don’t say you men, don’t say you are not that kind of guy, you ladies don’t say you are not that kind of woman. Loved ones, this church going does us no good unless it introduces us to God and you start talking with God yourself — you need to talk with God. You need to do it in the best way that you can and if you are sitting there and saying, “Pastor you seem to know how to talk to him. That’s why we come to church so that you can talk to him on our behalf,” loved ones, it’s no use. I won’t be with you when you die; and your mom won’t be with you, or your dad or your son or your daughter. Nobody will be with you when you die. It’s no use saying, “Yeah I plan to have a real party, a real Irish whoopity-doo when I die, so that I will have all kinds of people around me and the stuff will be flowing like water. Loved ones, it doesn’t matter what kind of a wake you have, nobody will be near you when you die. They may be all close around you, they may be touching your hand, but you’ll know that they are a world away from you. You are entering an unseen world that they know nothing of. And a second after you lose consciousness you will be face to face with the dear Creator who made you. And it’s vital that you have talked with him before that moment; otherwise, he will say to you, “Depart from me, I never knew you; depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That’s it, loved ones. It’s vital that you talk with God, its vital that you start praying to him, it’s vital that you start going home and praying to God yourself personally. And you remember what I shared with you, I think a lot of you have been in the same spot as I have; and thought “I am not that kind of mystical person.” Or we say to ourselves, “I’ve tried prayer and for me it doesn’t work” or “I’ve tried prayer and it’s just like a banshee wailing in the dark. It just is not real at all to me; it’s just like talking to nothing and I don’t get anything from it.” I think that’s one of the big disadvantages we all labor about today. We are not getting anything from it. Because of course, we are brought up to get things from people, get things from church services, get things from our jobs and we will say I don’t get anything from prayer — loved ones that is all irrelevant. A person does not need to be a mystic in order to pray, a person doesn’t need to be emotional in order to pray, a person doesn’t need to have visions in order to pray, a person doesn’t even — here is it, a person even doesn’t need to feel God’s presence to pray. Only one thing is needed loved ones, and it’s in Hebrews; and I know we have looked at it before, I think it’s good to look at it because a lot of us have trouble about this business of praying. It’s Hebrews 11:6 and its just as down to earth and practical as any businessman or any mathematician or scientist or commonsensical person could want. Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” That’s all you’ll need in order to pray. All you need to do is believe that God exists. Believe that this whole universe, those trees out there in that blue sky, that hasn’t come about by chance plus time. I frankly think evolution is as hard to believe as creationism but even if you believe in evolution, you know somebody had to start the evolution, somebody had to create the first single cell amoeba that evolved. Somebody had to plan and program the evolutionary process. But for those of us who believe in creationism, it is obvious to us that those trees did not come about by themselves. It’s obvious when you look at yourself, your own personableness; that had to be made by a person who is as personable as you. Now in order to pray, all a person has to do is believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. That he will hear you, that he will keep his promise, “Him that calleth to me I will hear.” And all a person has to do is believe that. Loved ones, that’s what is necessary for prayer. It means you are going home and into your bedroom tonight or this afternoon and just believing that God is there and closing your eyes and saying, “Lord God, I do believe you are there; and Father I bring these things before you that I am concerned about.” And then you mention them to God, that’s where you start. You don’t need to start anywhere more exulted than that. You can just start there and say it and then say, “Amen.” You don’t need to wait for angels to come floating down. You don’t need to wait for lots of wonderful feelings of warm waves of rapture coming over you, that isn’t what prayer is about. Prayer is talking with God; and all it needs is, you to believe that God is there. Now if you say to me “Well, how do I know if anything happened or not?” You know it because you believe that God is there and that he hears you, you just believe. If you say to me, “Oh what if I go on ten years like that?” Then you go on ten years like that. You keep on eating whether you feel it’s doing you any good or not, you keep on eating because you know eating is a real thing that people do. You keep on doing it loved ones, you stop looking inside to see if you can perceive God’s presence and you stop looking at your own life to see if there are any answers. Don’t you see loved ones, that the moment you start looking at your own life to see if there are answers to your prayers, that moment you are walking by sight and not by faith and therefore you will see nothing? Prayer is believing God. It’s just believing that God is there and it’s praying to him in that belief. Really, the old Chinese would put us to shame. They keep on going to these temples and laying money before these altars year after year after year and there is little or nothing that they can see for all their work and they keep on doing it. We were walking on the street I think on Thursday and you could hardly breathe, there was that kind of inversion over Taipei there, it must be the most polluted city in the whole world. And they were burning incense because it was a special day, and they were religiously burning that incense as they’d done for years before, whether it did any good or not. Loved ones, God calls us to be at least as faithful as the pagans are. To be at least as believing as the pagans are; praying to God simply requires that you believe that God is there. Now I would just ask you to pause for a moment; do you talk with God? Do you pray each day? Do you pray each day? And then I would point out to you the number of hours that are in the day; 24 hours and probably 16 of them, for most of us, are waking hours. And then I would ask you, how much of those 16 hours do you spend talking with God? And then would say, “Brother I cannot find time to pray. I can’t find time to talk with God.” Then I would say to you, “Loved ones, waken up, waken up, none of the rest of us will be here probably when you die or very few of us. None of the rest of us will have power over your destiny. I can’t tell where you will go after you die. Have a bit of sense! What’s the point of spending 16 hours talking to all the rest of us and never talking for five minutes with the one Significant Other in the universe who can control your destiny?” Do you see? It’s vital that you talk with God. It’s vital that you spend a little time each day talking with him. You have to, loved ones, otherwise this life is foolishness. Can I remind you how much time you could count that you have wasted already in this life? I mean when I think of some of the time and the hours I have spent on things that I may as well never have done — you must be the same. When you think of all the hours we have spent in our lifetime so far on stuff that hasn’t paid off at all and hasn’t been worth it. Brothers and sisters, it’s vital to spend some time each day talking with the one person who is going to have absolute power over the way you spend the rest of eternity. It’s vital to talk with God. Now if some of you say, “Brother I am not churchy, I am not religious, I don’t know how to do it or I was Catholic for years and I really left it all to the priest, I don’t know what to do.” Loved ones, there is no beautiful way to do it, there is no set pattern. Be real, be honest. God made you, he knows you. He knows how stupid you are or how bright you are. He knows how experienced you are, or how inexperienced you are. He loves you far more than the rest of us love you. And he understands you; he will hear you however you put it and whatever words you use, he will hear the cry of your heart. So talk, begin to talk with God. Now there is one problem we all come up against when we talk about prayer; and I will point it out to you. We have talked about it before but it is very important. Matthew 6:7 to 8, and it’s the heart of theism and all belief in a passive life in regard to God. Matthew 6:7 “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” So there it is; don’t pile up empty phrases because your Father knows what you need before you ask him. So why ask him? And many of us come up against that. Why ask God, why pray, if God already knows what you need? And you remember we have answered it over the past Sundays. God knows what you need in your life. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows whether you need a trial tomorrow or whether you need a little encouragement. He knows whether you need a new job or whether you ought to continue with the present job. He knows whether you need healing or whether you need strength to bear the pain. He knows whether you need the family’s conflict solved or whether you need to learn something through patience and love in that conflict. He knows, loved ones; he knows what will happen to you tomorrow. He knows that. And he knows what you need. But God will not send it to you unless you ask him. He will not send it to you unless you ask him. And the reason is that he respects your freewill and he wants to preserve your freewill. And if he sent you what you need whether you asked him or not he would eventually begin to run your life, do you see that? Can’t you see that? If he sees that you need a new job and he brings you the new job whether you see you need it or not and whether you asked for it or not, then it isn’t long before he is beginning to run your life absolutely independent of you completely. So that it doesn’t matter what you are thinking, it doesn’t matter what you want, it doesn’t matter what you are asking for, it doesn’t matter what you understand, he just makes his will happen in your life. Now God will not do that. He cannot act against his own will and he will not act apart from your will. God will not act unless you ask him. If you say, “Do you mean, if God saw that I needed healing from cancer that he would not heal me unless I asked him?” Yes, that’s right. If you say, that’s a cruel and wretched God that he would allow me to experience the worst in this life rather than make me well. No, the worst in this life is that you would become a robot. Cancer is not the worst thing in this life. Death is not the worst thing in this life. The worst thing in this life is that you would become an inanimate object, a robot that could not do anything that you yourself wanted to do because then you are incapable of loving and then you are incapable of heaven and then you are incapable of the whole purpose that God had in mind when he created you. So loved ones the Father will not act on your behalf unless you ask him, that’s true, that is right. I would point you to Ezekiel 36:37 that states that principle very clearly. God knew that the Israelites had been decimated you remember in the second exile, when they were in exile to Babylon and that there were very few of them and that they needed to be increased in number. And yet even though he saw that that was necessary, you see what he says in Ezekiel 36:37. “Thus says the Lord God: This also I will let house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their men like a flock.” In other words God is saying, I want to increase their number and I will let them ask me do that for them but I cannot increase it unless they ask me to do it. That’s it, loved ones. God allows us to ask him to do for us what he knows is right and best for us. Now do you see why our own prayers are often so futile? Do you see why we are so often frustrated in our own prayers? Because you know we are all praying what we think we need, we are all asking God for what we think we need. In fact many of us are trying to persuade him to do what we want him to do, and here God is working on an absolutely different principle. He knows already what we need and he wants to let us know that so that we can ask him to do that for us. You see, a lot of us feel, yeah but he probably wants me to marry somebody who is absolutely wretched looking, whom I won’t like at all, who will be a complete and absolute burden and torture to me because that’s what God is like. Look at that miserable sunshine out there, look how terrible he is. Look at those wretched waves that he has breaking on the shores in Florida. Look how miserable he is with those swallows soaring in the air and singing. I mean he is a miserable wretched God, you can see it all around you. He just wants the worst for us. Loved ones that’s where we get caught. We take this so far and we say, okay we can see that God has a will for us and we can see that he wants us to ask him to do it for us but there is the rub. We are not sure that we want him to do for us what he sees we need because we think that he is sitting up there saying, “What that guy needs is cancer. What that girl needs is a bit of good hardship. What that boy needs is some more sweat and perspiration.” Loved ones, the Father isn’t that kind of father. The Father has put us here because he wants to love us and express his love to us and he wants us to love him and to live with him and enjoy him forever. The Father wants the best for us. Moreover do you see that God knows what will fulfill you? Now you must admit you have in your life thought that certain things would be ideal for you and you have tried to bring them about. And you have come into absolutely different situations in your life and sighed a sigh for relief that you didn’t get what you wanted. Because you have seen that what you wanted was not suitable for you at all. Often we are the worst people at knowing what will fulfill us. Loved ones, God made you. Have you ever looked at your appendix? Or maybe some of you have but most of us haven’t. Have you ever looked at your gall bladder? Eventually if I keep on asking you I will get something that you haven’t had taken out of you and you will have to say no. Because there are parts of us that we just don’t know. There are many parts of us that we don’t know and we don’t understand. Now God knows all of them. God has seen every part of you. He has seen every bit of your personality. He has seen every secret desire that you don’t even know you have. The Father knows you better than you know yourself. He knows how you will be fulfilled far better than you do and the Father knows what is right next for you. But he is not able to bring it about unless you ask him. And that’s why you have to know God’s will. For prayer to be real you have to know God’s will, that’s it. I will show you where it says that. In 1st John 5:14. “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” That’s it. You can only pray if you know what God’s will is for you. How will you find out God’s will? Well how do you know your mom’s will? You know you know it. If I suggested a certain movie that your mother might like to see you know you could pretty well tell me whether she would like to see that movie or not. And certainly you could do it with your husband or your wife or with the person who is probably sitting beside you this morning. If I suggested that certain movie that they see, you could pretty well tell me no, they wouldn’t like to see it or they would like to see it. If I suggested a Chopin concert that they would love to go to you could pretty well tell me whether they hate Chopin or whether they like him. You could tell pretty well what the other person’s will is, why? Because you know them, you know them. You have been with them for hours at a time. Some of you have been with them for years. You have talked with them. You know the kind of people they are. You know the kind of thing they like. You know the kind of thing they enjoy doing. You know the kind of thing they want to do. That’s how you know their will. It’s the same with God. How will you get to know his will for you? Get to know him, himself. Get to know him. Get to know the kind of person he is. And that means talking with him. You see that’s what the Bible says: “This is eternal life, to know God and him whom he has sent, even Jesus Christ.” Getting to know them, that’s what prayer is about. Getting to know God and then as you know him, he reveals his will to you and you ask him to do that in your life and he does it, that’s it. That’s why Jesus guided us in the way we should pray and here it is if you look at it, it’s in Matthew 6:9. “Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.” I know some Catholics who could beat me at this but he didn’t say “Pray then like this: (he speaks the words rapidly) Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” He didn’t say that. He said pray “Our Father who art in heaven.” Start with thinking of who you are praying to. I don’t know if you have ever done it. I wakened one day in my 20’s and realized that I had no idea who I was praying to. I was so taken up with the things I was saying. And it was then that I started to think, now wait a minute, where is God and what is he like? And I wonder what he is thinking at this moment? And I started to try to think where God was, and I thought of him as in heaven, and I know it’s supposed to be unsophisticated to think spatially, but most of us probably think that way. And I thought yes, he is in heaven, he is up there and he is looking at me. And then, what is he like? And then I remembered how I used to be taught by my parents “Our Father who art in heaven” and I thought he is my father. He is my father, he is looking down at me and he thinks of me as his son and he is my father. He is a kind person like my dad. He is an understanding person like my dad. He has affection for me. I remember my dad used to say every time I got the cold, “I wish I had it instead of you.” And I thought that’s what my Father is like in heaven. He would rather be bearing this thing than me. Lord, you are like that, you are my father. And I started to talk him and express my love to him for being my Father. And loved ones, that’s where you start in getting to know God. Spend time, the saints call it, spend time in adoration, or in praise but really you know praise and adoration is not all putting your hands up in the air and singing all kinds of hymns or saying all kinds of words, it’s just looking at the other person. It’s looking at them. The way when you fall in love it’s enough just to stare into each other’s eyes it’s so wonderful. Even know the eyes aren’t very interesting, suddenly they’d become wonderful to you. And you just stare at each other like dummies but you just do because you love each other. That’s what praise and adoration is, you see. It’s not necessarily saying a whole lot. It’s just looking at God and beginning to think of him himself and giving him your attention. And as you do that more and more so he begins to reveal himself to you and to make himself known to you. It does help to use this dear Book at times. And so Psalms like 90 and 91 are good. Psalms that talk: “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.” And it’s good to think that Father, you are the one who forgives me and who heals my sicknesses. Lord, I thank you for being that. Loved ones, a great deal of prayer is involved in getting to know God first and getting to know God means thinking about him and looking up to him and really realizing that he is there. Now, steer well away from looking into yourself to see, am I having any wonderful experience? Not a big deal, it doesn’t matter whether you are having a wonderful experience or not. But spend time thinking of God, that’s what real love is, isn’t it? Real love is thinking of the other person and wanting to know and understand the other person. Now that’s the beginning of real prayer. And you see all of us can do that in our own miserable clumsy ways. And I suppose I think of the men here but really I am sure there are ladies that are very down to earth and practical and have difficulties with this too but men or women, loved ones it doesn’t matter how clumsy or how inexperienced you feel in this, begin. Do it your way, do it your way but begin to do it, because all of us are here on earth for one reason and that’s to get to know our Maker because we are going to spend forever with him. And we have just seventy years if we are fortunate. We have seventy years here to get to know him and then begins the real life. So I would just encourage you once more. It’s the last time we’ll talk about prayer in this session. I’d encourage you now to begin to pray, begin to talk with God each day in your own way. And he will begin to show himself to you and you will begin to know what he wants for your life and then the moment you ask him to do that, he’ll do it. And you will begin to find your life moving forward by leaps and bounds, that’s the Father’s will for us. Let us pray. Dear Father, we would pray now that you will hear us when we come to you this evening and Lord we may not be very good at this but we are going to get started and we are going to start talking with you. And Father we thank you that we can know that you are there because of all these things that we see around us. We know they didn’t come by chance and we know you have to be there somewhere. And Father you have said through the years that even if a little unimportant person will cry out to you, you will hear them, so here we are Lord crying out to you. And we believe that you hear us. And Father we thank you that you are a Father. We thank you that you are warm and comforting and you are thoughtful and loving like a Father. In fact Lord, we thank you that you are even better than our own fathers. And we thank you that you care about us. And Father we ask you to begin to reveal yourself to us in our prayer times so that we will start to understand your will for our lives. We ask this so that you will be satisfied and pleased with us. And so that we ourselves would be ready for real life when it begins, we ask this in Jesus’ name. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

Praying According to God’s Will Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill I thought it would be good to talk just once more on prayer, just for the last time in this series, loved ones. So, I just ask you, do you pray each day? Do you say your prayers each day, really? And then for those of you whom I haven’t asked the question of before, do you realize that all the church going is kind of silly hypocrisy unless you are praying each day, do you realize that? It’s just the same thing as the pagans went through offering their sacrifices to kind of bribe God and get him off their backs, that’s all we are doing here each Sunday unless you really do pray each day. Because of course, there is going to come a day when you meet God and then it’s vital that you will have spoken to him at some time during a whole 70 or 80 years of life. He will just ask you on that day, “Now why didn’t you speak with me?” So loved ones it’s vital that you speak with God. It’s really important that you speak with him each day and that’s what prayer is, it’s just talking with God. And I just repeat briefly in a couple of minutes that the objection that especially we men often make, but some of you ladies are just very earthy practical types and we all tend to say the same thing, “Well I don’t know how to pray and I don’t get anything out of it when I do pray.” And I remind you of the truth in this dear Book that there is only thing that you need in order to pray and that’s mentioned if you would like to look at it in Hebrews 11:6. “And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” That’s actually all you need in order to pray. “For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” That’s all you need, loved ones. So I just encourage those of us who are maybe very cerebral or very practical and down to earth, guys or girls or men or women, that you don’t need to be mystical or emotional nor do you need to wonder, “What am I getting out of prayer?” It doesn’t matter whether you get anything out of prayer. You have to talk with God, it’s just good sense. So could I plead with you just once more? Because there will be some person here that will die before the end of this year and none of us are going to be near you. It’s important for you to talk with God before that moment arrives. And then all of you here are going to have some guy like myself coming and looking at you in a casket and then at that time that fellow won’t be able to say anything to you, so I am speaking on behalf of that minister. I am speaking on behalf of the pastor or the priest that will bury you and I am pleading with you now, talk with God, start talking with him. And all you need to do is believe that he is there, you don’t need to feel that he is there, you don’t need to feel any good feelings. That’s not what prayer is about. You need to believe that God is there and you need to talk with him, that’s all you do your bit; let him do his. So loved ones, do you talk with God? One of the difficulties that many of us have in asking God for things comes up in the question that probably you put yourself. Is it right to put the tag on the end of the prayer “if it be thy will”? And I think a lot of us wonder about that, where we ask God for something and then it sounds the right thing to do to say “if it be thy will”. And so many of us do pray like that. We go to God in prayer and we pray the best that we know for ourselves or our friends or our relatives or our colleagues and then we add the tag on at the end “if it be thy will”. Now, we realize that there is a difficulty in that because other people tell us to pray in faith and then somebody like me says to you, today exercise faith through the rest of this week for what you have prayed for. And of course in the back your mind that little tag kind of undermines it because you’ve said to yourself, “Well, yeah, but how can I continue to exercise faith for this answer if I am not really quite sure that it is what God wants? And that’s why I’ve said, Lord if it would be your will.” And for those of us who are kind of practical business people we know ourselves that it gives you no confidence at all, that it’s just a bluff thing. You are just shooting a prayer up to God and you are saying, “Answer it if it be your will” and you kind of have to leave it up there in the air somewhere and maybe hope that it will fall down. If it falls down it was his will and if it doesn’t fall down it wasn’t his will. And so most of us who have anything to do with ordinary business or professional life know that we couldn’t operate that way, we couldn’t. We couldn’t go into a bank and say, “Well, I’d like this $25,000, it’s vital to my business, so I ask you for it if it’s your will. And meanwhile I will go on and if it falls down on my head then I will know it’s your will. If it’s not I know it’s not your will.” We wouldn’t operate that way and we wouldn’t go to the dentist and say, “Look I would like this molar filled.” I believe we fill molars. My wife is a dentist. Now I am supposed to know all this in detail, “but I want my molar filled and it’s paining me and I’d ask you to do it if it’s your will?” And then go away from the dental office and wonder “Well, I wonder if it’s his will?” And then he happens to call you for an appointment, so you say, “Oh! It must be his will, good.” So we couldn’t operate that way in ordinary practical life. And actually brothers and sisters you must admit with that kind of tag on the end of a prayer you don’t operate realistically with God, you don’t. You eventually give up praying I think because you recognize this is just a game. I’m just shooting up these wishful thoughts to God and asking him to answer them if it’s his will. And really it just becomes very unreal as far as the relationship goes. Another difficulty with it is in 1st John 5:14. “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the request made of him.” So you see verse 15 is the basis of being able to walk in faith. “If we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the request made of him.” So if we know he has heard us, we know he is going to answer the request. Now how do you know that he hears you? Well, you have to go to the previous sentence. “This is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” So, if we ask anything according to his will we know that he hears us and if we know that he hears us we know that he will answer us. So the whole basis of prayer is, being able to ask according to God’s will. Brothers and sisters it’s no use this stuff of “Lord do this, if it’s your will.” That’s not the way we’ve to pray. This dear Word emphasizes that we have to pray according to God’s will and the only way we will know that God is going to answer us, is if we’ve prayed according to his will. And you remember we spent the past three or four Sundays saying what Jesus said, “You have no need to ask because God knows what you need before you ask it.” And he says, “God knows it already.” So the only reason for asking is that you know what God wants you to have and you know that he won’t answer it unless you agree with him. So the only way is to know God’s will. God has a will for every detail of your life, you see. There is nothing in your life that God does not understand and that he has not an answer for. But he cannot make that real in your life until you ask him because he won’t overrule your freewill. He won’t just drop things on you that he knows you need unless you ask him for those things. Otherwise you become a little passive robot who receives and is operated and ruled and run by God independent of what you want. So even though the Father knows what you need he knows the money you need, he knows the job you need, he knows what your family needs he cannot do it unless you ask him. And the only way you can ask him is if you know what he wills for you. You have to know God’s will for your life. That’s it, loved ones. If you say to me, do you mean generally? You mean broadly speaking what his will is for my career? No, for every detail of your life. God knows what you should do with that difficult situation in the office. He knows that. He knows what you should do in that business transaction that you are trying to decide about, he knows; he has a will for that. And he wants you to know it and then ask him for it and he will manifest that. He will bring it about. Now, how can you know God’s will? How can you and I come to know God’s will for our lives? Why I felt I should speak once more on prayer is because of the answer to that question, it’s so important. How do you know God’s will for your life or how can you come to know what his will is for you in every little detail of your life? There is a vital key that is the answer to that and I’m introducing it to you and preparing you for it because it’s so important, loved ones. There is only one way in which you can begin to know God’s will for your own life. Now I will show you. It’s in 1st Thessalonians 5:18, and this loved ones is just a deep one, so you really need to let it come into your heart, and your spirit. “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In your present state exactly as you are at this moment with the car that you own at this moment, with the wife that you have at this moment, with the sick friend that you have at this moment, with the pain in your leg that you have at this moment, with the hideous work situation that you have at this moment, with the hopelessness with which you look forward to the next few months that you have at this moment, give thanks, give thanks. Give thanks in all circumstances, why? “For this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus”, that’s it. If you won’t stop being squirrelly, if you keep on wriggling and saying, “Well I know this isn’t God’s will, well I know this isn’t God’s will, I know it wouldn’t be his will that I would be in this situation. I know this isn’t, so I will squirm and I’ll squirrel until I wriggle myself into a situation that I think might be his will”, loved ones do you see God will never be able to get through to you his will because you will never be at rest. Your own mind will be sending up so many prayers. Your own heart will be desiring so many things that God will not be able to reveal his will to you for your life. The first step is to accept what you are now, where you are now in all the circumstances that you are now, as God’s will, start somewhere. You see you have to start somewhere and that’s such a step of faith. It’s such a great step of faith because it’s saying, “Lord God, it’s you that have allowed me to come into this situation at this time. I have made mistakes, I have made errors, people have done me in, people have betrayed me, and things have not fallen out right in the economy. Physical things have taken place that I couldn’t control but those things did not bring me where I am today. You were able to overrule all those things and I believe that you were in everything working for good for me. And so Lord God with all the errors and sins and mistakes that I have made and done and with all the things that people have done against me and with all the things that have happened by chance, Lord God I give you thanks in these circumstances. Because I know that this is the will of God for me in Christ Jesus at this time.” Brothers and sisters that is such a step towards reality that you cannot grasp it because a mere man says it. But it’s such a magnificent step towards maturity in your life if you will stop this morning wishing it was different. If you will stop pretending that it is different. If you will stop pretending that it is different and if you will just accept the circumstances and the situation that you are in today and not with resentment but giving thanks to God. “Lord God, I want to thank you for the present situation I am in. I want to thank you for the situation I am in internally, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically. I want to thank you for the position I am in financially and economically. I want to thank you for the position I am in domestically. Lord God, I want to stop wriggling. I want to stop being a squirrelly stupid little thing that will not accept that you have brought me to this place. Lord God, thank you, thank you for this situation.” Loved ones, there comes into your heart and your spirit such a peace and a rest when you at last do that, that God is at last able to begin to get through to you and reveal to you what his next step for you is. But you see unless you do that you are so filled with discontent, you are so filled with dissatisfaction, and you are so filled with wishes and your preferences that God can’t reveal to you what his will is. Now I know what some of you are saying. “Brother, if you knew my circumstances, you would know that it cannot possibly be God’s will for me. If you knew my financial situation, you would know it could not possibly be God’s will for me.” Loved ones, that’s why it says, “This is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” Because in Christ Jesus God has done something that negates and neutralizes the bad effects of your circumstances upon you. Now I will show what it is, it’s in Galatians 6:14. “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Now I know loved ones that some of you may have real trouble with that phrase but I would be glad to attempt to explain it. In the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world was crucified to me, God took the cosmos, that’s the Greek word for world, the cosmos. It’s not the physical earth. It’s the whole world system that has been set up independent of God. He took that whole world system with all its principalities and powers and spirits and he put it into Christ and he destroyed it there so that that cannot have the effect on you that it is intended to have. So, you were deceived into some ridiculous loan. Maybe you wanted instant gratification the way most of us do and you just had to have the car or you had to have the building, you had to have this other business or you had to have the stereo but somehow or other, you were deceived or you’ve fumbled your way into some ridiculous loan, which is now exerting it’s usual enslaving, imprisoning pressure upon you. So that, dear love you, you are like a little robot or the money comes in and goes out, you don’t have much discretionary money left because you are just shelling it all out in this loan or in a series of loans. So you were deceived or you’ve fumbled your way into a loan or a series of loans, that you are now paying big payments on each month and of course you are experiencing what we’ve all experienced in that situation. You are experiencing just bondage. You are just bound hand and foot, you can hardly move. You have just a little money to deal with the groceries and the gas and a few other things and you are tight. And so there are spirits and powers behind that. You are not tight just because your poor old mind has worked out “Boy, if I don’t pay they’ll repossess it or if I don’t pay this I’ll go bankrupt.” That’s not it; it’s not the little mental calculations that are wearing you down. There are spirits and powers behind a whole loan system of the world. The whole loan system was set up because we can’t wait, we can’t wait, we can’t wait, we must have it now and we’ve got used to it. I mean we are all in it together, we’ve got used to this system, but its set up basically independent of God. God’s plan is, give us this day our daily bread. You love the daily bread and you’ll be worried only about today; you won’t worry about tomorrow and that’s his plan. But all of us have got out of that plan in different ways and we’ve wanted to have the thing today and we pulled upon ourselves all kinds of spirits and powers and principalities that lie behind the loans. You remember I once outlined to you where your money probably comes from. It’s ridiculous because it shows you that we human beings are the innocent or the simple dupes of the spirits. A lot of your loan money, you think it comes from some huge Norwest National Bank or some huge financial organization that you just hate like crazy or it comes from some subtle money lenders, who actually want to choke you to death, it doesn’t. It probably comes from some dear old lady whose son owns Schmidt’s Beer Company or owns some other company and she is the last remaining unmarried sister or daughter and she is sitting in some mansion in Minnetonka or somewhere else and she hasn’t a clue that her money is causing you the agony that it’s causing, she has no notion. She is just fiddling about feeding the birds and her attorney or her accountant comes in from time to time and tells her how much she has made on the millions. So you see it’s not that we human beings hate each other, we are choking ourselves to death but there are spirits and principalities and powers that are involved in the whole system. And the loan system is only one part of the cosmos you see, the pecking system. The pecking order, that’s another one. The whole pecking order in businesses and in professions the whole business of touching your forelock, it used to be in old Irish days but it’s still that we don’t touch our forelock but it is still the same thing. You know who you have to please and who you have to avoid displeasing. It is spiritual principalities and powers that exert the binding power of those things upon you. You think it’s the loan, you think it’s the boss; you think it’s the economy, it’s not. Behind all that cosmos system are spiritual principalities and powers that bring the real agony into your dear heart that makes your tummy turn and turn at night and makes it impossible for you to sleep and makes you worried and weary of life. It’s the spiritual principalities and powers that do that. Now in Christ, God crucified that world system. And in fact there is another place in the Bible where it says, “He destroyed the principalities and powers” and he took away their power to destroy you through the loan systems, through the pecking order systems, through all the other systems that you are involved in. That’s why he says, “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” Because in Christ Jesus God has taken away the power of those circumstances to destroy you, he has. Even if you have AIDS, if you have AIDS, through your own lust or your own desire for the pleasure that God did not want you to have at that time. If you have AIDS you can give thanks to God because the Father in Christ Jesus has destroyed the power of that disease to bring you into overwhelming guilt and self justification that eventually causes you to be lost eternally. And he can enable you to be forgiven and to enter heaven with the rest of us, if you are willing to put your trust and your submission again in God. So loved ones whatever your circumstances are God has destroyed the power of those circumstances to destroy you because he has taken away the power of the principalities to use them against you. That’s why the first step is, give thanks in all circumstances. And those of you have had tragedies in your family or accidents, God has already taken away the power inside that circumstance to destroy your friends or your relatives or you and that’s why he is saying to you, give thanks, settle, be at home, stop resenting, stop saying “No, no this isn’t God’s will.” Because what you do when you do that is you stop exercising faith in God and you start putting your faith in Satan, the one who is out to bring chaos into your life. So loved ones the first step in coming to know God’s will for you, so that you will be able to ask him to fulfill that will in detail, is to come to a place of peace and rest about your present life. And could you do that just this morning? You know your life, each of us know the details of our personal lives this morning. Could you come to a place this morning where you just thank God? “Lord, I thank you. I am going to stop resenting you. I am going to stop resenting these intrusions that have come into my life, these unpleasant circumstances. I am going to stop resenting that, Lord. You knew these were coming and you allowed them so you must know what you are going to achieve in me through them. So Father I want to thank you now for these circumstances. I want to thank you for everything that I have in my present life. I want to thank you for that person in my home that just wears me out. I want to thank you for that person, Lord. I want to stop resenting her or stop resenting him. Lord I want to thank you for the shortcomings of my husband or my wife or my children. Father, I want to stop resenting them. I want to stop playing the big judge, the superior one, who knows how they should be. Lord, I want just to start thanking you for them. I thank you for even the shortcomings that they have. Even the things that up to now have irritated me, Lord, I want to thank you for these because I know you have put these here for my good and that you have taken away any power these things have to destroy me or hurt my life in anyway, so I know that all that remains is something good for me in these situations. Lord, I want to thank you for this ridiculous loan that I got myself into. It’s wearing me down but Lord I thank you for it now and I know it’s in your hands and I know you have destroyed the spirits and powers behind it that would wear me down with anxiety and wear me into the grave. Lord, I want to thank you for this loan. I know in some way I brought it upon myself but Lord you allowed it to come so I thank you for it and I thank you that you will provide the grace and strength to meet it and indeed I give it to you; it is your loan, Lord.” And then those problems that you have, those things that you have not solved. “Lord I want to thank you for this difficulty that I am facing. I want to thank you for this problem that I see no solution to. I see no way forward Father. Father I want to stop taking it as my problem, I want to stop resenting it, I want to stop worrying about it, I want to thank you for it and Lord it’s not my problem. You allowed it to come here into my life so that you could show an answer for it. I want to give it to you. I won’t accept that problem as mine. I give it to you, Lord. And I thank you for it.” Loved ones, how about just doing that this morning. You must be like me; so many things come into our lives that we end up resenting and we end up worrying about and wishing were different and the dear Lord is saying to us, “Would you stop wishing things were different and would you see that I have allowed these things to come and I have them all organized. I just want you to settle, for goodness sake, settle and begin to have faith in me and begin to thank me for these things.” Loved ones, there will come a whole spirit into your life of light and revelation, there really will. So I don’t want to make a big thing of it, I just want to ask maybe Carmen to play “Have Thine Own Way” on the piano and then just those of us who want just come up to the alter and give thanks to God. “In all circumstances for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” Just do it and go back to your seat and maybe then we’ll at the end sing “Have Thine Own Way Lord”.

The Importance of Prayer: Praying For Loved Ones Genesis 18:20-33 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill It seems to me, we talk so much about love today and we all talk about loving each other and we’re all talking about self-esteem and the importance of recognition and I would dare to say that those of you in large companies talk more about this than ever our forefathers talked about it. And yet it’s strange, there seems to be less love in a way. More talk about love and less love and I think loved ones, one of the ways that this shows itself is that we know there are many things in our wives, our husbands, our sons, our daughters, our fathers, our mothers, our friends, our girl friends, our boy friends that we would like to see change. Year after year goes by and we do not see them changed and the reason we do not see them changed is we don’t love them enough to pray for them. Now loved ones I know what you think. You say, “Brother, I pray for them.” But loved ones you know as you sit there, what we call prayer is just child’s play compared with real prayer, you know that. You know that what we do is when we get a little worked up about them or something terrible happens, then we pray for them. Too often it’s the situation that many of us have mentioned today. Either the loved one has a miscarriage or the marriage gets into difficulties and then we get enthusiastic and we pray for the urgency of that moment or maybe our partner just gets particularly unbearable and so we pray for them for a while but we don’t pray on through to victory and deliverance. So many of us here this morning have friends and colleagues, associates at work, we have loved ones whom we have married, we have loved ones whom we’re related to, we have all kinds of friends who have things in their lives that desperately need to be radically and permanently changed and yet it goes on, year after year after year, unchanged and you and I say, “Oh, we love them, we love them, we love them”, but we never really do pray with prayer that enables God to change them. So, it’s with that in mind that I feel that I should share some things with you from this dear Book. The first is that God is able to change people radically and is able to change their whole situation radically if you will keep on praying for them. If you will keep on praying for them, God is able to change things radically but it means praying with a desperate seriousness, loved ones. It means beginning to give up time in your days to pray for them. Could I just mention to you again the very real fact that there came a time in your life when you could no longer pray for your dad, because he was dead? There came a time in your life when you could no longer pray for your mom, because she’s dead. There came a time in your life when you could no longer pray for your grandmother, because she’s dead. There is a very short time during which you have the opportunity to pray in a radical way for your loved ones and that time is now and you don’t know how long it will be but you do have this time. Now may I ask you, how much of your day do you give to that? Do you see, that is it? How much of your day you give to that and think of all the other things we’re doing? Think of all the time we spend eating, all the time we spend playing, all the time we spend working. Now do you see why I am suggesting to you that we don’t really love each other, because the years go by and go by and go by and we don’t really spend time praying for each other in a deep desiring way? We do all kinds of other things for each other. You know that. We buy each other presents, we take each other out, we talk to each other, we are even kind to each other but none of those things will change the other person. The only thing that will really change them is God changing them in answer to our prayers. Now, compare how little you pray for them; that’s how much you love them. I don’t know how many of you are in this situation but I think probably all of us here this morning, whether you’re primarily a son or daughter or primarily a mom or dad, I don’t think there’s one of us here this morning that has not somebody that we care about very deeply and that we know needs to change in some radical way and needs to be delivered from something in some radical way and yet the truth is, we don’t pray very much for each other and that’s the only thing that really counts. What I am saying to you is — I know this is hard — we don’t really love each other. I know it’s hard and that I know you’ll say, “Oh look, I do love my loved one.” Loved ones, you don’t. We don’t really love each other. Otherwise, we would pray long and hard for each other. I know why you don’t. It’s the same reason as I didn’t because I thought, “Well, prayer, I mean it’s not the greatest thing I can do for them.” Brothers and sisters, it’s the only thing you can do. It’s the only thing you can do for your loved ones. It’s the only thing you can do for your colleagues. It’s the only thing you can do for your associates. I’d ask you, “Where has all your talking got?” You wives are trying to convert your husbands; you husbands are trying to change your wives, where has all your talking got? You know where it’s got, you know her. Twenty years later you’re exactly at the same spot because man cannot change man. What about your friends and your associates at work? How much has all your talking and all your witnessing got, it doesn’t do anything. Only prayer changes them and what I am saying to you is, if you measure your love by the amount of praying you do for them, you can see how little we love each other, that’s it loved ones. That’s why I say we don’t really love each other and I just take one more step, that’s why so many of us are insecure these days because you hear, you know all the fine expressions, “Oh I love you, love you darling, love you, love you”, and we know they don’t love us. They don’t love us. They don’t really love us. They say they love us but they don’t really love us and we actually know we don’t really love them because we don’t put ourselves out much for them, because we won’t engage in this laborious, toilsome business of praying for them, we won’t. It’s so hard and so loved ones that’s why I want to share these things this morning. So you know what I am saying to you is that it is time to start loving each other and that means praying for each other. It’s called interceding for each other, interceding. Now, here it is loved ones, does it change? Yes, look at Genesis 18, what Gentry read at the time of the lesson. Genesis 18:20 because of course we are all thinking of the dreadful situations that our friends are in or our loved ones or we’re thinking, “Oh, they’ve been going that way for 20 years, they’re not going to change now, there’s no way they’ll change.” Well, that’s just lies. Those are just lies. Genesis 18:20, “Then the Lord said, ‘Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me; and if not, I will know.’ So the men turned from there and went towards Sodom; but Abraham still stood before the Lord. Then Abraham drew near and said, ‘Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?’” Because of course Lot, his relative was in Sodom and so he was praying, “Lord, there is one man that is righteous in there, will you save him?” And you remember he kept on at it so that you almost feel he’s been impertinent to the Lord. You feel you’re pushing your luck far too far, just back off. You’ve asked God once but you see in verse 26. Genesis 18:26, “And the Lord said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.’ Abraham answered, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Wilt thou destroy the whole city for lack of five?’” He tries to put it diplomatically you know, now let’s say they are fifty and just five little ones missing, but do you know fine well it’s him daring to go before God and keep on asking, asking, asking because he loved Lot. You remember it gets to a ridiculous point in Genesis 18:30, “Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.’ He answered, ‘I will not do it, if I find thirty there.’” and I thought that’s enough, I’d back off. You got a promise, go with it but verse 31. Genesis 18:31, “He said, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.’Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry,” because he thought there was only maybe about 10 and Lot’s family, “and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’” Just look across the page, verse 15. Genesis 19:15, “When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, ‘Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.’” If you keep on, God will answer. You keep on. You have a son or daughter, you have a husband or wife, you have a father or mother, you who have a friend who needs deliverance, you keep on. You keep on asking God. That’s how you love. Only God can deliver them. You keep on asking and God answered and delivered Lot out of that city and he will do the same for you. He can’t force Lot to flee, he can only tell him to flee; Lot has to flee but he will tell him to flee. He can’t force your loved one to accept him but he can tell him. He can make himself clear and reveal himself to your loved one, and that’s what they need. That’s what your friend needs, that’s what your loved one needs, needs to see God as he really is, needs to have God speak to him. God can’t force him but he needs to have God speak to him. If you really love your wife, if you really love your husband, if you really love your dad or your mom or your son or your daughter, your friend, your colleague, loved ones, you’ll come like Abraham and you will keep on pushing because that’s what loving prayer is. You know loving prayer is not wanting to know how you can work the trick or how you can work the magic. Loving prayer is not saying, “Oh now Pastor, tell me all the theological reasons why God would require importunity and prayer”, that’s not prayer. Prayer is, “I am desperate, Lord. I don’t know how you operate. I don’t know why you don’t answer me now. Father, I want you to answer me. I ask you to answer me. I am going to keep on Lord. I am going to keep on keeping on.” That’s it. Those of you who are salesmen know that if you say, “Okay, you can’t see me today, all right I’ll be here in January for the spring buying.” Eventually that dear person is going to realize, “I am not going to get away from this guy. I am not until I see his merchandize. I have to see it. Okay, I may as well give in, okay, show me it.” Now the Father yields his loving heart to persistence and perseverance and importunity in prayer. Brothers and sisters I just gently suggest to you that if you really love your loved ones then you will beseech the Lord God with the same importunity as Abraham. Now you remember Jesus told us to do this. He felt that this was so important that he told two different parables about it. You’ll find one if you look at Luke 11:5. “And Jesus said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him”; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.” Now Jesus suggested there that the failing was in the person that was being asked. He had to use that kind of an illustration because he could not find a friend like God. He suggests, of course, that the reason for importunity and prayer is not because God is unwilling to give — because you see in verse 9, “And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” So He says, “God is not reluctant like this neighbor.” The reason for keeping on asking God is not because you’re trying to persuade God but because the problem is in you. You don’t really want what you are asking God for. There’s something in you that prevents God giving you the answer now. See, loved ones this is part of our own uppityness. We ask God for something and he doesn’t give it and we assume, “Well, Lord why aren’t you giving it to us? I mean to such a perfect person is me, you’re bound to give anything I ask. It can’t be me. The problem isn’t me and the problem must be you.” Well no, loved ones. The problem is never the Father. Our dear Father has more love for your loved one than you will ever imagine. Our dear Father in heaven has given himself to die for your wife or your husband or your son or your daughter or your friend. Our Father loves them far more than you with your petty little heart will ever love them. He longs to give them a revelation of himself but he cannot because of what is in you and that’s why Jesus tells us, we must keep on keeping on in prayer. Because as we keep on keeping on the Holy Spirit begins to reveal in us the sin in our lives or the wrong attitudes in our lives that would mean that we would be actually radically hurt if God answered our prayer. See, that’s it. See just as a dad will not give a razor to a little two-year-old, so the Father will not give us anything that will hurt us and some of us are in such a desperate state of independence of God and of desire for our own will in our lives and the lives of our loved ones that if God answered our prayer, he would just encourage us in that and so the reason for us having to keep on asking God is that in the asking God’s Spirit reveals to us how far are our wills from his will, how far our hearts are from his heart. How unloving our attitude is to our husbands or our wives. God cannot answer our prayers until we are in a position where we can receive that answer and can be a help and a blessing to the other and so that’s why Jesus says, “You must keep on asking.” In other words, stop this attitude, “Well, I have been praying for him for twenty years and he is no better now than when I started. I guess his heart is just hard, that’s just it. I’ll just leave him”, or, “I guess that’s the way she’s going to be, that’s just her nature.” And we give up praying and really what we’re doing is ceasing to love that dear one and the truth is the Lord God is anxious to give to that loved one of yours what you’re praying for but there’s something in you that is stopping him. Now, do you see that’s the meaning of the thing at Peniel? You remember that strange story about Jacob at Peniel? I’ll show you where it is loved ones, it’s in Genesis 32:24, “And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.” Because it was the angel of the Lord that was wrestling with him. “Then he said, ‘Let me go for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’” Same attitude as Abraham. “And he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then he said, ‘Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God’ — you wouldn’t let go – ‘and with men, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Tell me, I pray, your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’” Genesis 32:31, “The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his thigh.” Ever after that he limped and had to hold on to God with one arm and ever after that, could only walk with his arm on God’s shoulder. That’s often what God is after. Often you and I are still too uppity. We’re still too dependent on ourselves. I don’t know if you men have examined Jacob’s life before that, he was a manipulator. He manipulated everything. He was used to bribing this guy and that guy and getting things his own way by his own strength. That’s what God wanted to bring him to the end of; that’s often the same with us. Too many of us here pity ourselves because we say, “We have a son that is driving us to distraction.” Too many of us here say, “We have a partner that is driving us to distraction.” Too many of us here say, “We have friends or colleagues that are beyond hope.” We should be seeing that God is well able to act in their lives if we will at last come to the end of ourselves and come to the end of our ability to change them and that’s why God wants us to keep on asking him, asking him, asking him until he can reveal to us the hopelessness of our own situation and until we begin to see the Father’s dear heart of love. I don’t know if you have any idea how dear that heart is. If you could see the Father’s heart, he is the dearest man. He is the dearest person. He has a heart that embraces us all in itself and he wants the very best for you and me and he wants the very best for our loved ones and he is anxious to gather us up in his arms. And as you keep on asking him and praying and praying and praying and it seems the same prayer day after day and yearning and yearning, gradually he reveals to you the independence of your own heart and the sin in your own life and the willfulness of your own heart and he begins to make your heart one with his and then his great heart of love begins to burst through yours and you begin to love your loved one with God’s love, that’s it. See that’s the key. You begin to love your loved ones with God’s love. The heart of God begins to come through you and you stop praying for this colleague at work for the sake of your business. You stop praying for your son or your daughter so that you may be thought to be a good Christian parent. You stop praying for your dear partner so that you will have a happier time and you begin to pray for the loved one because God’s dear heart of love is bursting through yours and then the Holy Spirit begins to move in the other’s life, that’s it. Jesus says, “You keep on praying, you keep on praying” and you know if you’re sitting there and you’re saying, “Well brother, that seems pretty deep stuff. I don’t know all about it” — I don’t know all about it but you know that if you want something with all your heart, you’ll keep on asking for it and there’s no trick to it and there’s no tricky theology and if you sit there and you say, “Oh well, I am not holy enough”, no I am sure you’re not holy enough, only Jesus is holy enough but what God is asking from you is the desire of your whole heart yearned out to him day-after-day for that loved one until he changes your dear friend, that’s it. That’s the greatest love that you can exercise towards him, that’s it. That’s the greatest love you can exercise to the Lord. So brothers and sisters, I would just say to you, yourself and to myself, let’s spend more time in our days praying for the changes that we really want to see. Let’s spend more time praying for each other. Let’s give more time to praying and to asking God the way Abraham did to change our loved ones and change our friends, to act upon them. Old Churchill said you remember, “Never, never, under any circumstances, whatever the provocation, however great the difficulties are, however many your enemies are, however hopeless it looks; never, never, never give up.” Never give up, you never give up, you never give up praying. Everything that God shows you that you believe he wants to do and that the other person needs, you go for that with all your heart to the very end. George Mueller you remember died and the week after he died, a certain man that he had been praying for, for 40 years, was saved, that’s it. You and I, if we really love, we will begin to pray with a deep heart of yearning for the ones that we love and then they will know that we love them. Let us pray. Dear Father, we see all the little things that you’ve given us that every dad gives to his children. We see all the flowers and the lakes, the snowmobiles and the cars and the nice suppers we have. We see the little dogs and babies and we see these clothes that you’ve given us. We see comedians and laughter, movies, Father, you’ve not held anything back of all the little treats that any dad gives to his children but Father we thank you that those are not just the gifts of some rich father to his children. We thank you Father that you love us with all your heart and that your heart is soft towards us this morning and that you are far more anxious to give us good gifts than we are even to ask for them and that what we want for our loved ones, you want far-far more than we do but you can only bring that about when we begin to want it with your heart. So Lord, we would take our stand against all discouragement that we had in prayer over the past years and we would now take our position before you again on our knees and we would come to you for our brothers and our sisters, for our friends and our relatives, for our husbands and our wives and our moms and our dads and our sons and our daughters and Father, we would begin to come to you again in prayer, in faithful prayer day-after-day for them until you answer, Lord. And we would thank you for Abraham and thank you for his holy boldness that he kept on coming to you time after time after time appealing to you on behalf of your own dear heart. So Father we would in this quiet moment whisper to you the name of the person that we are going to take up the prayer battle for again. We would just whisper that name to you Lord and we would ask you now our Father, to begin to move in this dear life and to change them utterly and completely, to move in their hearts, in their spirits, to give them revelation of yourself so that they see you as they really are and to change and deliver them absolutely and completely and to make them what you want them to be, Lord. Father we intend to go on praying this prayer until you answer the prayer or until you change us so that you are able to answer it. So Lord we ask you to bring us into perfect love, where we love them as you love them. Thank you Lord in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Persisting in Prayer Luke 11:9 Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Many of us here have friends or relatives who have long needed some change in their lives. Either they need to have their health turned around, or they need some change in the way they’re operating, or in the way they’re living. And probably you’re like many of us over the years who have done a lot of talking and a lot of listening and yet years later they’re just the same. If you have experienced that, you know the way you feel. You feel frustrated about it because it seems that you’ve talked and they’ve at times listened and now they seem to have stopped listening. Or you keep on finding new remedies or new pieces of advice to give them but now you’ve run out of remedies and advice. You still love them and you want them to be changed and you want the thing to be better for them but you don’t see where to go. It just seems you’ve run out of ideas and they’ve run out of any ability to follow your advice. You do feel frustrated, don’t you? You feel there’s something not right that we should both, they and we, travel on towards certain death and yet not have this thing changed or not have it remedied. It’s hard really in that situation to know what to do. Loved ones, the answer is just as solid as anything for us this morning. I don’t know if you know the saying. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” The problems that you and I can solve by our advice or by yet another human remedy that we pass on to our loved one or our friend, those aren’t the real problems. They aren’t. I mean we comfort ourselves by solving some of them and we think, “Oh we’ve really achieved something.” But really those aren’t the important problems. The important problems are these that we’ve just been talking about: the frozen relationships, the hostility, the deteriorating physical state, the attitudes that will not change, the old habits that continue year after year to spoil a person’s life. It’s the way that we have of dealing with each other that just prevent a family or a marriage moving into any higher level. Those are the important problems. Those are the real problems. They are there in a fallen world like ours to do one thing and that is to drive us to God. That’s why they are there. I don’t know if you have thought the same as I have at times. I’ve thought, “Why? Why are there problems like that? Shouldn’t this world be happy? Shouldn’t it be happy and shouldn’t we be able to live and tackle things the way all the power of positive thinking people tell us to tackle them? We should just have this life by the tail. We should have it ordered and all our families and all our relatives and our friends, they should be happy.” Well, loved ones it was never meant to be that way after man had rebelled against God. Ever from that time, this has been a fallen world and God has allowed problems such as we’re talking about to develop in order to drive us to God. So maybe the first, most important thing is, what Churchill said, “Whatever the difficulties, however great the enemies, however often you fail, however many disappointments you have, never, never, never give up. Never give up.” Just as you sit there today, first of all settle that, you’re not going to put up with this thing; you’re not going to give up. So step right back from all that cynicism towards your dad or your mom or towards your relative or your friend, step right back from that and just give it a hardy kick in the right place and say, “I am not going to give up. I am going to do something about this thing.” Loved ones, that insuperable problem is there to drive you to God, not to drive you to defeat. It’s there to drive you to God. Now how do you get God to intervene? No doubt you’ve tried. Well, let’s look first of all at the basic verse and scripture. It’s Luke 11:9. How do you get God to intervene? “And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” And then all of us say, “I have knocked. I have asked. I have sought and the person is no better now 15 years later.” And that’s really where we show that we don’t believe Jesus’ words here and we don’t really believe what He said about our God. Because I’d point out to you, we’re always doing what we in America specialize in doing. Every time you go to Europe, you see that even the house in London where our group lives is older than our constitution here in America. It’s more than 200 years old. We went to see a church one Sunday and it was founded in 1000 A.D. So, in Europe, you realize that things are not done in a second. In America, if it doesn’t happen tomorrow, we have no patience with it. And so we tend to say, “I’ve asked, I’ve sought.” Loved ones, you haven’t asked and sought until you’ve died asking and seeking. You haven’t and that’s where we let our friends and our relatives down. We stop praying because we say, “Well, I have asked and I have sought.” And we don’t really believe God that His nature is to answer us. We tend to say, “We want His nature to answer us now.” But it’s His nature to answer us in His good time. We need to believe that God is like that. You’ll find that in the chapter that we just looked at. It’s Luke 11:1-13. Luke 11:1-13 “He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ And he said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive every one who is indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation.’ And he said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” You remember in another piece he says, “How much more will your Father give good gifts to those who ask?” Jesus has told us our Father hears us. He hears us, so you keep asking. You keep asking. In other words, Jesus says, “Put your mouth where your heart is. You believe that God loves you and that He will answer your prayers, then put your mouth right there. You keep on asking. You keep on keeping on, year after year after year after year, until you die, you keep on asking. But you don’t step back from it because you’ve been at it 10 years.” See, you look at those situations, look at some of them. You know why they’re like they are, because actually you’ve backed off. I mean, isn’t that what we do? We all arrange in our lives problems that we can do something about and ones that we can’t do anything about and these grow and grow as the years go by and we train ourselves to forget them. Actually what we do is we stop praying for those situations and we stop believing God for them and so they pile up as a growing, hard, frozen block of unbelief that makes it more and more difficult to believe even for the things that are easy. So loved ones, when you think of your dad or your mom or the loved one who is an alcoholic or the frozen situation in that relationship or the attitude that will not change, loved ones, I say lovingly to you, you know why it’s like that. It’s like that because you gave up after a year or three months of prayer and actually what is needed is somebody there to hold steady and to stand with that, year after year after year. That’s believing God. To stop praying is not believing God. Brothers and sisters, you can’t prove to me from that chapter that you are right. I can always answer you that God will do it. He said He will do it. All you can answer me is He hasn’t done it inside my timeframe but do you see the promise is not inside a timeframe? See loved ones, where we’re being deceived. See, we’re saying, “We’ve prayed for 5 years or 7 years or 10 years or 20 years or 30 years”, and then we stop praying. Except that, who of us here has prayed for 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years — a few of us maybe, but probably very few. Most of us have given up on the thing after maybe two or three years of prayer. Some of us who live with these situations in our home day after day have prayed for 20 years. But 20 years is nothing. 20 years is nothing in God’s timeframe and His promise still stands here. So there’s no place in which we will be able to go to Him at the end of this world and say, “Lord, we did not respect you because your promises here were not kept.” He will respond, “How long did you wait for me to fulfill my promise?” All we can answer is, “Well, I waited three years. Well, I waited 5. Well, I waited 7, well, I waited 10, well, I waited 20 and then I gave up.” But loved ones, you see we haven’t a leg to stand on. This chapter is very clear. If an ordinary father will give his children fish when they ask for fish and won’t give them a scorpion, then your Father will much more readily give you good gifts. And if some host who is called upon by a guest at midnight will get up just because the guest keeps irritating him by asking and asking and asking then how much more will your Father give you who loves you? In other words, Jesus is saying, “Put your mouth where your heart is. Start being faithful in prayer day after day after day and be importunate. Keep on keeping on.” Now, how far should you carry this? Loved ones, look at that wild story you remember that we’ve looked at before in Genesis 18 and it’ll just startle you and set you back on your heels because Abraham seemed to go beyond the point of respect and reverence. You remember God told him that he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham had a nephew called Lot who was there and he knew Lot was going to be destroyed along with the others and so he prayed to God. It’s Genesis 18:23: “Then Abraham drew near, and said, “Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?” And do you see that some of us are a bit reluctant to do it that way. We would say that’s irreverent, “Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked.” I mean that’s insulting God. It’s trying God. It’s tempting Him. But you see Abraham was saying, “You said the sinful soul will die and the righteous soul will live. Now Lord, that is your nature as I understand. Now, I am taking you at your word. Now I am calling to you on behalf of your own nature. Are you in this case, going to contradict your nature? Are you in this case going to destroy the righteous with the wicked?” So God wants us to take His nature seriously. Too many of us are doing it as a compliment to God. We’re asking because you’re supposed to pray. It’s a childish game. Do you see loved ones we’re not being fair to the Father? It’s a childish little game. Okay, we say our prayers; “Our Father who art in heaven” or “Gentle Jesus meek and mild.” And then I said, “God bless my dad, God bless my mom.” And so we say our prayers. We say our prayers to God. It’s like the prayer wheel turning, we turn our prayer wheel and then we go to sleep and we say, “Now Lord, you should answer us.” Whereas God is saying, “Get to grips with me. I have said I am such and such. Do you believe me to be such and such? If I am not proving such and such to you, you have a right to charge me with that. Come, let us interact with each other. Let us put our arms around each other. You deal with me as a living, real live God who is your Father and stop playing games with me.” See, that’s what He wants. So what to us seems impertinence is something that God desires us to do, to come to Him in terms of His own nature. And Abraham says, you see in Genesis 18:23: “Then Abraham drew near, and said, ‘Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'” Abraham is saying: “Lord, this is your nature. Will you not abide by your nature?” “And the LORD said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.’ Abraham answered, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Wilt thou destroy the whole city for lack of five?’ And he said, ‘I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.’ Again he spoke to him, and said, ‘Suppose forty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of forty I will not do it.’ I think Abraham was working down to Lot’s family, that’s what he was after, trying to get down to that number. “Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.’ He answered, ‘I will not do it, if I find thirty there.’ He said, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’ And the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.” That’s it, loved ones. That’s praying. God wants us to plead with Him importunately, repeatedly, continuously for these impossible problems that we face. Now if you say to me, “Why on earth and why in heaven does God do that? Why does He not answer us immediately? Why does He require us to keep on asking?” Well there are all kinds of reasons. Usually it’s because there’s something in your attitude that God is trying to remove before He is able to change that other person’s life. Usually it’s that. Usually it’s something in our attitude. Sometimes it’s for other reasons. It’s to bring us more into His own nature. For instance, the host did everything he could. He thought, “Now the stores are closed, I can’t get any food from there. There’s no other way I can do this. The only way is to go to this neighbor of mine.” In other words, he tried everything else and there was nothing else he could do but go to his neighbor. Often God is trying to bring us to that place. Often we are praying, “Lord will you heal this person? Father will you make their marriage better? Lord, will you smooth over this bad relationship?” And what God is trying to do is to get us away from all those other alternatives and get us to pray that this person will be confronted by God firmly and strongly and will see that the only thing is to give their whole life to God. And so the Father often holds back an answer because we’re praying the wrong prayer and He is trying to get us to the place where we will leave off all the other solutions. And we will pray that this person will come into contact with God Himself. This host had tried everything else and then came to God. Sometimes it’s for another reason if you look at the story in Luke 11. You’ll see what the host did when the guest came. Luke 11:5, “And he said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him.'” The friend got up out of his bed, went out into the cold and did whatever was needed to get the bread for his guest. Sometimes the Lord knows that we lack love for our friends and our relatives. Sometimes He knows fine well that we’re just slipping a prayer up there because it’s an easy way out of a difficult problem. And the Father is trying to beget in us that willing love that is willing to die and willing to put itself out for the sake of the other person. That’s what real willing love is willing to do. It’s willing to die and to be lost to itself for the sake of the other person coming to God. Often God holds back from answering our prayers to beget in us that kind of love. I don’t know about you but it seems we talk a lot about love and yet so few of us really love, isn’t that true? I don’t know how all of you are who are married or who live with friends or who live with family, but are you not startled repeatedly at how little love you have for your friends and for your relatives and for your husband or for your wife. I mean we’re all big talkers. We talk love, love, love. I love you, I love you. But, we’re not ready to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and suffer what they suffer. We are not ready to put ourselves out for them. We’re not ready to put them first and us second. We’re not ready to sacrifice and to lose ourselves so that they will gain and God often holds back answering our prayers until we come into that kind of love. Here is that kind of love. It just boggles the mind when you look at it, but you’ll find it in Exodus 32:31-32. It’s Moses praying after I believe the Israelites made the golden calf and God threatened to destroy them all. Exodus 32:31, “So Moses returned to the LORD and said, ‘Alas, this people have sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if thou wilt forgive their sin – and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.'” So we’re big talkers and big prayers but that’s what prayer is. It’s where you put yourself in the other person’s shoes that you’d rather die for them. That’s the prayer that God answers. God often holds back our answers because He knows we don’t really love. He knows if we go into heaven with the shallow, superficial love that we call love, it’s going to be hell for us. And we’re going to eventually end up in hell, which is the only place we’ll be at home with all the other selfish people who are just talking love and not loving. So for that reason the Father will often hold back an answer to our prayers to get us to come into this place where we ask ourselves, “Why is God not answering my prayer in regard to my mom or in regard to my wife, or in regard to my son or in regard to my colleague? Why is He not answering my prayer? What am I lacking? Holy Spirit, what am I lacking?” And often the Holy Spirit is trying to get through to us and say, “You wouldn’t die in their place, that’s what you are lacking, you wouldn’t die in their place. You wouldn’t go to hell so that they could go to heaven, that’s what’s lacking.” God can only answer your prayer when you begin to love the way He loves. One of the great privileges of preaching is that the Father preaches to you as you preach. So doesn’t it dawn on you as it dawns on me? You have no excuse to stop praying. We haven’t. Which of us here says, “Well brother, I am willing to die for that person”, or, “I have spent such hours in prayer that God must know I am.” Loved ones, I think we all have to stand before God poverty-stricken this morning and say, “Lord, what we call prayer isn’t prayer at all. We’ve offered up to you little petitions during prayer in church or we’ve offered up a little wish to you as we’ve been sitting at the stoplights in the car or we’ve done things as we’ve talked a lot to our friends and our relatives but we haven’t prayed this way. We haven’t prayed with the kind of willing love that is ready to sacrifice itself for them. No, no, no I am not that anxious for them to be saved.” It comes to our hearts that we are not praying loved ones. We’re not praying, yet do you see the tragic situation we put ourselves in? We put ourselves with those people who generally take a shallow superficial attitude to prayer and who say, “Well, yes God answers prayer on the whole, except for the 45 that He hasn’t answered in my life.” We put ourselves in that position. So do you see, and I say it lovingly to you, because I know it’s a hard thing to bear, but do you see that in a sense, we are God’s enemies because we’re not praying with the kind of prayer that He is able to answer. Yet we tend to be saying to other people, “Yes, we have prayed.” But God doesn’t just operate the way He used to years ago and so we end up being God’s enemies primarily because we’re saying, “It’s not my fault. Whatever is the problem with this unanswered prayer is not my fault. It’s not my fault. I have done………” See, that self-righteousness has to freeze our tongues in our mouths. We have to stop saying, “It’s not my fault, and I have done all that.” That’s terrible. We bow before the Lord God and say, “You are right Lord. All the time you are right. You are always right. This is your nature. This is what your son says is your nature, you’re right. Show me what I have to do so that you will be able to answer my prayer.” But don’t stop praying, you don’t stop praying. Any other reasons? Sometimes it’s to get us to stop our silly games. Sometimes it’s to get us to see our own impotence, our own inability to solve this problem. Sometimes God holds back from answering our prayers for that reason– to get us to stop thinking another set of tapes will do it, or a new spiritual wave. We think if we could only get them to the Basic Youth Conflict Conference or to Campus Church or if we could give them another book. Just stop that. That’s not what they need. They need somebody to pray for them with a whole heart and a self-sacrificing love. Often God refuses to answer your prayers to bring it to the end of all those human devices, which answer only the problems that can be solved by human power. So often the Father holds back from answering our prayers to bring us into the kind of love and the kind of prayer that His Son prays. Loved ones there is far more to say but could I ask you to just stop for a moment now and identify again those things that you have prayed for in the past and that you have now given up praying for. Would you just identify again those chronic problems in your family or in your home or in your marriage or in your job, just identify those now. Now, put them down in your diary again today and start praying for them. Start praying for them. There’s another reason for this. If you don’t do that, that whole defeated area that you know about acts as a cancer in your relationship with God. It acts as a cancer and you keep on allowing that to grow and grow and grow until it eats up all your faith. Because the truth is, our place is to pray. It is the Lord’s place to answer. Our place is to pray. Our place is not to say, “He has not healed Susan yet.” Or, “He has not healed my marriage yet.” Or, “He has not put things right in my family.” Our place is to pray and after the answer has come that we did not ask for, our place is to bow down to the Father as David did when his son died and to say, “The Lord’s will be done.” Our place is not to judge God. Our place is to believe what His Son said that our Father is more anxious to give us good gifts than we are to ask for them. And we have a holy privilege and opportunity to pray for our friends unfailingly until the day when our tongue stops for the last time. Only then can we stop praying. Only then can we say, “God has not answered our prayer.” So brothers and sisters, will you deal with God on those things and let’s take back some ground from Satan here this morning. Let us pray. Dear Father, we would first of all ask forgiveness Lord for the things that we have given up on, for the moms and dads or the brothers and sisters or the sons and daughters or the husbands and wives or the colleagues or the roommates that we have given up on. Father we know that hopelessness and despair dwells only in hell and nowhere where You are present because You are the God who raises the sun every morning. So Father we repent of having given up and Lord we repent of having become cynical about prayer. Lord we see some of the things you’re after in us. We see Lord that you love us first and foremost but above everything else you want to make us like Your Son Jesus so that we’ll be at home with both of you in heaven. So Father we do thank You for your delay in answering our prayers. We see how shallow and superficial our love for our dear friends have been. And Lord we commit ourselves now to praying for them with a whole heart and with full faith depending on you only and believing that you are the God who answered Abraham as he pleaded for Lot’s life. Lord we thank you. We thank you for your faithfulness. We thank you Lord Jesus for Your plain words to us, “Ask, and it will be given you, seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you.” We thank You Lord Jesus that you didn’t tell us how often we had to knock. You didn’t tell us how many years we’d have to ask. You simply told us that if we ask, we would receive. Father we thank You for that. We now Lord build our faith again on the basis of Your dear word and we take up the weapons of prayer on behalf of our friends and we now Lord ask You to mightily intervene in these situations and to change these dear hearts and to drive back this physical sickness. We ask You Father in full confidence to set forth Your own nature among us and among our friends by acting mightily to apply the victory of Calvary to these people’s lives. Father we thank You that you are a prayer-answering God and that we have not yet proven otherwise. Father thank you. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

MAN’S EXTREMITY IS GOD’S OPPORTUNITY Video clip transcript is extracted from the talk: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Many of us here have friends or relatives who have long needed some change in their lives. Either they need to have their health turned around, or they need some change in the way they’re operating, or in the way they’re living. And probably you’re like many of us over the years who have done a lot of talking and a lot of listening and yet years later they’re just the same. If you have experienced that, you know the way you feel. You feel frustrated about it because it seems that you’ve talked and they’ve at times listened and now they seem to have stopped listening. Or you keep on finding new remedies or new pieces of advice to give them but now you’ve run out of remedies and advice. You still love them and you want them to be changed and you want the thing to be better for them but you don’t see where to go. It just seems you’ve run out of ideas and they’ve run out of any ability to follow your advice. You do feel frustrated, don’t you? You feel there’s something not right that we should both, they and we, travel on towards certain death and yet not have this thing changed or not have it remedied. It’s hard really in that situation to know what to do. Loved ones, the answer is just as solid as anything for us this morning. I don’t know if you know the saying. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” The problems that you and I can solve by our advice or by yet another human remedy that we pass on to our loved one or our friend, those aren’t the real problems. They aren’t. I mean we comfort ourselves by solving some of them and we think, “Oh we’ve really achieved something.” But really those aren’t the important problems. The important problems are these that we’ve just been talking about: the frozen relationships, the hostility, the deteriorating physical state, the attitudes that will not change, the old habits that continue year after year to spoil a person’s life. It’s the way that we have of dealing with each other that just prevent a family or a marriage moving into any higher level. Those are the important problems. Those are the real problems. They are there in a fallen world like ours to do one thing and that is to drive us to God. That’s why they are there. I don’t know if you have thought the same as I have at times. I’ve thought, “Why? Why are there problems like that? Shouldn’t this world be happy? Shouldn’t it be happy and shouldn’t we be able to live and tackle things the way all the power of positive thinking people tell us to tackle them? We should just have this life by the tail. We should have it ordered and all our families and all our relatives and our friends, they should be happy.” Well, loved ones it was never meant to be that way after man had rebelled against God. Ever from that time, this has been a fallen world and God has allowed problems such as we’re talking about to develop in order to drive us to God. So maybe the first, most important thing is, what Churchill said, “Whatever the difficulties, however great the enemies, however often you fail, however many disappointments you have, never, never, never give up. Never give up.” Just as you sit there today, first of all settle that, you’re not going to put up with this thing; you’re not going to give up. So step right back from all that cynicism towards your dad or your mom or towards your relative or your friend, step right back from that and just give it a hardy kick in the right place and say, “I am not going to give up. I am going to do something about this thing.” Loved ones, that insuperable problem is there to drive you to God, not to drive you to defeat. It’s there to drive you to God. Full Sermon: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

PERSISTANCE IN PRAYER Video clip transcript is extracted from the talk: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill Luke 11:1-13 “He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ And he said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive every one who is indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation.’ And he said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” You remember in another piece he says, “How much more will your Father give good gifts to those who ask?” Jesus has told us our Father hears us. He hears us, so you keep asking. You keep asking. In other words, Jesus says, “Put your mouth where your heart is. You believe that God loves you and that He will answer your prayers, then put your mouth right there. You keep on asking. You keep on keeping on, year after year after year after year, until you die, you keep on asking. But you don’t step back from it because you’ve been at it 10 years.” See, you look at those situations, look at some of them. You know why they’re like they are, because actually you’ve backed off. I mean, isn’t that what we do? We all arrange in our lives problems that we can do something about and ones that we can’t do anything about and these grow and grow as the years go by and we train ourselves to forget them. Actually what we do is we stop praying for those situations and we stop believing God for them and so they pile up as a growing, hard, frozen block of unbelief that makes it more and more difficult to believe even for the things that are easy. So loved ones, when you think of your dad or your mom or the loved one who is an alcoholic or the frozen situation in that relationship or the attitude that will not change, loved ones, I say lovingly to you, you know why it’s like that. It’s like that because you gave up after a year or three months of prayer and actually what is needed is somebody there to hold steady and to stand with that, year after year after year. That’s believing God. To stop praying is not believing God. Brothers and sisters, you can’t prove to me from that chapter that you are right. I can always answer you that God will do it. He said He will do it. All you can answer me is He hasn’t done it inside my timeframe but do you see the promise is not inside a timeframe? See loved ones, where we’re being deceived. See, we’re saying, “We’ve prayed for 5 years or 7 years or 10 years or 20 years or 30 years”, and then we stop praying. Except that, who of us here has prayed for 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years — a few of us maybe, but probably very few. Most of us have given up on the thing after maybe two or three years of prayer. Some of us who live with these situations in our home day after day have prayed for 20 years. But 20 years is nothing. 20 years is nothing in God’s timeframe and His promise still stands here. So there’s no place in which we will be able to go to Him at the end of this world and say, “Lord, we did not respect you because your promises here were not kept.” He will respond, “How long did you wait for me to fulfill my promise?” All we can answer is, “Well, I waited three years. Well, I waited 5. Well, I waited 7, well, I waited 10, well, I waited 20 and then I gave up.” But loved ones, you see we haven’t a leg to stand on. This chapter is very clear. If an ordinary father will give his children fish when they ask for fish and won’t give them a scorpion, then your Father will much more readily give you good gifts. And if some host who is called upon by a guest at midnight will get up just because the guest keeps irritating him by asking and asking and asking then how much more will your Father give you who loves you? Full Sermon: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

PLEADING WITH GOD IN PRAYER Video clip transcript is extracted from the talk: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill So God wants us to take His nature seriously. Too many of us are doing it as a compliment to God. We’re asking because you’re supposed to pray. It’s a childish game. Do you see loved ones we’re not being fair to the Father? It’s a childish little game. Okay, we say our prayers; “Our Father who art in heaven” or “Gentle Jesus meek and mild.” And then I said, “God bless my dad, God bless my mom.” And so we say our prayers. We say our prayers to God. It’s like the prayer wheel turning, we turn our prayer wheel and then we go to sleep and we say, “Now Lord, you should answer us.” Whereas God is saying, “Get to grips with me. I have said I am such and such. Do you believe me to be such and such? If I am not proving such and such to you, you have a right to charge me with that. Come, let us interact with each other. Let us put our arms around each other. You deal with me as a living, real live God who is your Father and stop playing games with me.” See, that’s what He wants. So what to us seems impertinence is something that God desires us to do, to come to Him in terms of His own nature. And Abraham says, you see in Genesis 18:23: “Then Abraham drew near, and said, ‘Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'” Abraham is saying: “Lord, this is your nature. Will you not abide by your nature?” “And the LORD said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.’ Abraham answered, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Wilt thou destroy the whole city for lack of five?’ And he said, ‘I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.’ Again he spoke to him, and said, ‘Suppose forty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of forty I will not do it.’ I think Abraham was working down to Lot’s family, that’s what he was after, trying to get down to that number. “Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.’ He answered, ‘I will not do it, if I find thirty there.’ He said, ‘Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’ And the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.” That’s it, loved ones. That’s praying. God wants us to plead with Him importunately, repeatedly, continuously for these impossible problems that we face. Now if you say to me, “Why on earth and why in heaven does God do that? Why does He not answer us immediately? Why does He require us to keep on asking?” Well there are all kinds of reasons. Usually it’s because there’s something in your attitude that God is trying to remove before He is able to change that other person’s life. Usually it’s that. Usually it’s something in our attitude. Sometimes it’s for other reasons. It’s to bring us more into His own nature. For instance, the host did everything he could. He thought, “Now the stores are closed, I can’t get any food from there. There’s no other way I can do this. The only way is to go to this neighbor of mine.” In other words, he tried everything else and there was nothing else he could do but go to his neighbor. Often God is trying to bring us to that place. Often we are praying, “Lord will you heal this person? Father will you make their marriage better? Lord, will you smooth over this bad relationship?” And what God is trying to do is to get us away from all those other alternatives and get us to pray that this person will be confronted by God firmly and strongly and will see that the only thing is to give their whole life to God. And so the Father often holds back an answer because we’re praying the wrong prayer and He is trying to get us to the place where we will leave off all the other solutions. And we will pray that this person will come into contact with God Himself. This host had tried everything else and then came to God. Full Sermon: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

WHY IS GOD NOT ANSWERING MY PRAYER? Video clip transcript is extracted from the talk: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill So we’re big talkers and big prayers but that’s what prayer is. It’s where you put yourself in the other person’s shoes that you’d rather die for them. That’s the prayer that God answers. God often holds back our answers because He knows we don’t really love. He knows if we go into heaven with the shallow, superficial love that we call love, it’s going to be hell for us. And we’re going to eventually end up in hell, which is the only place we’ll be at home with all the other selfish people who are just talking love and not loving. So for that reason the Father will often hold back an answer to our prayers to get us to come into this place where we ask ourselves, “Why is God not answering my prayer in regard to my mom or in regard to my wife, or in regard to my son or in regard to my colleague? Why is He not answering my prayer? What am I lacking? Holy Spirit, what am I lacking?” And often the Holy Spirit is trying to get through to us and say, “You wouldn’t die in their place, that’s what you are lacking, you wouldn’t die in their place. You wouldn’t go to hell so that they could go to heaven, that’s what’s lacking.” God can only answer your prayer when you begin to love the way He loves. One of the great privileges of preaching is that the Father preaches to you as you preach. So doesn’t it dawn on you as it dawns on me? You have no excuse to stop praying. We haven’t. Which of us here says, “Well brother, I am willing to die for that person”, or, “I have spent such hours in prayer that God must know I am.” Loved ones, I think we all have to stand before God poverty-stricken this morning and say, “Lord, what we call prayer isn’t prayer at all. We’ve offered up to you little petitions during prayer in church or we’ve offered up a little wish to you as we’ve been sitting at the stoplights in the car or we’ve done things as we’ve talked a lot to our friends and our relatives but we haven’t prayed this way. We haven’t prayed with the kind of willing love that is ready to sacrifice itself for them. No, no, no I am not that anxious for them to be saved.” It comes to our hearts that we are not praying loved ones. We’re not praying, yet do you see the tragic situation we put ourselves in? We put ourselves with those people who generally take a shallow superficial attitude to prayer and who say, “Well, yes God answers prayer on the whole, except for the 45 that He hasn’t answered in my life.” We put ourselves in that position. So do you see, and I say it lovingly to you, because I know it’s a hard thing to bear, but do you see that in a sense, we are God’s enemies because we’re not praying with the kind of prayer that He is able to answer. Yet we tend to be saying to other people, “Yes, we have prayed.” But God doesn’t just operate the way He used to years ago and so we end up being God’s enemies primarily because we’re saying, “It’s not my fault. Whatever is the problem with this unanswered prayer is not my fault. It’s not my fault. I have done………” See, that self-righteousness has to freeze our tongues in our mouths. We have to stop saying, “It’s not my fault, and I have done all that.” That’s terrible. We bow before the Lord God and say, “You are right Lord. All the time you are right. You are always right. This is your nature. This is what your son says is your nature, you’re right. Show me what I have to do so that you will be able to answer my prayer.” But don’t stop praying, you don’t stop praying. Any other reasons? Sometimes it’s to get us to stop our silly games. Sometimes it’s to get us to see our own impotence, our own inability to solve this problem. Sometimes God holds back from answering our prayers for that reason– to get us to stop thinking another set of tapes will do it, or a new spiritual wave. We think if we could only get them to the Basic Youth Conflict Conference or to Campus Church or if we could give them another book. Just stop that. That’s not what they need. They need somebody to pray for them with a whole heart and a self-sacrificing love. Often God refuses to answer your prayers to bring it to the end of all those human devices, which answer only the problems that can be solved by human power. So often the Father holds back from answering our prayers to bring us into the kind of love and the kind of prayer that His Son prays. Loved ones there is far more to say but could I ask you to just stop for a moment now and identify again those things that you have prayed for in the past and that you have now given up praying for. Would you just identify again those chronic problems in your family or in your home or in your marriage or in your job, just identify those now. Now, put them down in your diary again today and start praying for them. Start praying for them. There’s another reason for this. If you don’t do that, that whole defeated area that you know about acts as a cancer in your relationship with God. It acts as a cancer and you keep on allowing that to grow and grow and grow until it eats up all your faith. Because the truth is, our place is to pray. It is the Lord’s place to answer. Our place is to pray. Our place is not to say, “He has not healed Susan yet.” Or, “He has not healed my marriage yet.” Or, “He has not put things right in my family.” Our place is to pray and after the answer has come that we did not ask for, our place is to bow down to the Father as David did when his son died and to say, “The Lord’s will be done.” Our place is not to judge God. Our place is to believe what His Son said that our Father is more anxious to give us good gifts than we are to ask for them. And we have a holy privilege and opportunity to pray for our friends unfailingly until the day when our tongue stops for the last time. Only then can we stop praying. Only then can we say, “God has not answered our prayer.” So brothers and sisters, will you deal with God on those things and let’s take back some ground from Satan here this morning. Full Sermon: Persisting in Prayer by Rev. Ernest O’Neill