Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #188 - Unleashing the Power of Prayer in Evangelism (Part 1) - With Special Guest Kie Bowman

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#188 - Unleashing the Power of Prayer in Evangelism (Part 1) - With Special Guest Kie Bowman · The OneCry Podcast

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Music.
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Start with prayer, you might as well have been reading the dictionary to people. There was no power.
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But whenever I would start with prayer, I mean, go in my office,
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shut the lights out, and really spend a half hour or something really asking
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God to empower me and prepare me,
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the opportunities really opened up.
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Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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Welcome to the One Cry Podcast. I'm Bill Eliff,
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and I am really pumped today to have one of my dear friends with us and really
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a leader across our nation in the prayer movement that's happening.
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Uh dr kai bowman kai welcome
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to thank you bill it's always good
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to hear that i'm one of your dear friends because i have so much
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love and appreciation for you so well check in and make sure i'm still on your
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list okay you're all you are on that list and that you are on mine too thank
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you buddy appreciate it and kai you're you're uh coming to us today from austin
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kai has Beautiful Austin, Texas.
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Yeah, Kai's been the pastor of Hyde Park Baptist Church for, what, 25, 30 years?
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I passed here 26 years before I retired.
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26 years, and he's the pastor emeritus there now.
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And Kai's also, for a good while, he led the prayer initiative in the whole
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Southern Baptist Convention and really saw it move forward, I think,
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through his initiation and his writing.
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And every week we would receive.
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In our denomination, some biblical truth coming from Kai about prayer. And it's so helpful.
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And I know, Kai, I told you several times, man, you need to put all this in a book.
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And you've done that with one aspect.
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And Kai has just written a brand new book.
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And the title of it is Evangelistic prayer, engaging the power of God for the lost. I love that, Kai.
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You're bringing together two things that desperately need to come together,
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and we get to be the agents in that,
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engaging the power of God with needy people, and it comes through our prayer.
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So we're going to jump right into this.
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And let me just say, and Kai would never say this,
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but I want to say it because it's important through the years of his ministry
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there in Austin, they saw thousands of people come to Christ, come to faith in Christ.
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And I think in large measure due to what we're going to talk about today and
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the emphasis that that church, the culture that that church developed of praying
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and particularly praying for the lost.
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So, Kai, tell us for just a minute why you wrote this book. Put it on your heart to write it.
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Well, there's two answers. First of all, it was one of those rare opportunities
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where the publisher contacted me and asked me to write the book.
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And the reality is these twin issues of evangelism and prayer have been passions
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of my life since the day I started walking with the Lord as a 19-year-old back in the 70s.
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And, you know, Bill, when we're gifted a certain way, we think everybody in
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the body of Christ is gifted that way when we first start out.
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When we're young in the faith, however God has wired us, we think everybody's that way.
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So I wanted to witness. I wanted to pray.
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I didn't know how to do either one, honestly, for a while.
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But I assumed that's what the Christian life was.
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I've since learned that, you know, everybody in the body of Christ you talk
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to wants to see other people come to Christ, especially if they have lost family
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members or friends or coworkers, whatever.
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And everybody that I know wants
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to pray. But almost everybody I know struggles with those two issues.
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And I'm not saying I don't struggle, but I've always had a strong leaning for
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both of those ministries from day one.
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Let me tell you an example of what I'm talking about.
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We were interviewing a guy for a key role at Hyde Park several years ago.
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And of course, you know, I've interviewed lots of people over the years.
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So we really liked this guy. He was really sharp. And, you know,
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he looked like he was going to be just what we were looking for.
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And we had talked about everything that we were looking for in our church.
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But I said, now I want to remind you, if we extend this invitation,
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the two main, you Things we focus on are prayer and evangelism.
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And he was in an unguarded moment, and he just said, man, prayer and evangelism.
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He said, great, the two things nobody's good at.
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And I thought, well, he probably shouldn't have said that.
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But nevertheless, it was an honest moment.
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And I think, you know, having pastored all these years and led and so forth,
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these are areas that people struggle with.
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And, you know, so I have always loved evangelism. I love seeing people saved,
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but I couldn't win anybody to Christ if I didn't pray.
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And I learned early, early on that the more I pray, the more the doors open for evangelism.
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So when the opportunity came to write the book, it just felt like,
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you know, something that I jumped at it. I didn't even hesitate.
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That's awesome. And, you know, I've often said, like you, after pastoring for
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50 years or so, you know, you realize that those two things are the first things that go in a church.
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I mean, if you don't emphasize them every year and all the time,
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I think there's something, you know, we're fearful of evangelism.
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We think we don't know how to do it.
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Very few people talk to anybody about Christ. And somehow prayer can just go by the wayside.
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And I think Satan is very intentional about distracting us and keeping us from
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intimacy with the Father in prayer because he knows that's where the power is.
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And, you know, you and I were both, our spiritual lives were both birthed in the same season.
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And it was the Jesus movement in the early 70s. And that was the hallmark of that movement.
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Everything was true. You're telling everybody about Christ and praying.
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All the time. Yeah. And growing your hair out and maybe wearing bell-bottom pants.
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That was inevitable. That was going to happen whether you love Jesus or not
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in those days, right? That's right. That's right. Yeah.
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We'll need another revival like that. Yeah, we do.
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And it seems to be brewing right now on college campuses and in other places.
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So that's another discussion, but we see it happening.
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Yeah, it is. Well, and honestly, it's what makes this book so timely to me.
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I don't know, and Kai, you and I talked offline, I don't know of another book.
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And we've read a lot of books on prayer, a lot of books on evangelism.
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I don't know of another book. I certainly haven't seen one that is just focused on this topic.
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Now, this is a short book. It's an easy read in terms of time,
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but I want to tell you something. It is a very, very powerful tool.
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I was convicted and instructed on every page as I read it myself,
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and I wanted to read it because I want to pray better for lost people,
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and I want to see more lost people saved.
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And if our listeners have that same passion, then we want them to listen carefully
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today and then run out and buy this book because it will be a real help to you.
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Now, you talked in the first part of this about the Acts Blueprint,
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and you began right there.
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And one thing, by the way, just another little caveat I want to say is this
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book, different from others, in my opinion, is not just a collection of your thoughts about this.
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It is you taking the scripture and opening it up and exegeting it every chapter.
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So we're getting exactly what God, I think, wants us to see in these passages.
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And so you start at a great spot, and that is what was happening in the book
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of Acts. Tell us a little bit about that.
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Well, I saw this statement online years ago.
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I don't know who said it, but the statement is this. Jesus started the church the way he wanted it.
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Now he wants the church the way he started it.
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Well, that resonates powerfully. And I believe, and I believe we could demonstrate
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that the book of Acts is God's preferred design for the church.
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It was alive. It was dynamic. It was moving.
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It was growing and people were being saved. The Bible says, the Lord was adding
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to the church daily, the ones that were being saved.
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So that's a key thing, you know. So when you look at the book of Acts,
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you have really two sections.
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You have the section that deals with Peter's leadership, and then Paul comes
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on the scene, and the rest of the book, Peter sort of fades out,
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and Paul is the key leader of the second half of the book.
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But especially in that first 15 or so chapters.
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You see prayer on almost every page.
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It's almost like nothing happened at all in the early days that wasn't a direct
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outgrowth of prayer, starting with the birth of the church itself at Pentecost,
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which was the result of a 10-day prayer meeting.
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So, you know, I always try to frame it up like this when I'm talking to other
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pastors, especially. how many people were saved from the resurrection until
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Pentecost? Let me answer that.
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Zero are recorded. Not one is recorded in the New Testament of being saved after
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the resurrection and until Pentecost.
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And of course, after Pentecost, the day of Pentecost, after one sermon,
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3,000 were added to their number.
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So they went from a Bible study, basically, a large Bible study group to a megachurch
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in one sermon. Well, what was the key?
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Well, obviously, the Holy Spirit, the coming of the Spirit, empowering them.
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But the background of that is Acts 114.
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They all devoted themselves constantly to prayer. And then you see this 10-day prayer meeting.
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So a friend of mine here in Austin once said to me an unforgettable statement.
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Everything in the book of Acts happens at a prayer meeting, after a prayer meeting,
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or on the way to a prayer meeting.
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So when you start looking at the book of Acts, not as a travel log, but as a prayer journal.
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And you look at every evangelistic event that occurs in the book of Acts.
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We won't have time to do it, but I could prove it to you. You look at every
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evangelistic event in the book of Acts, every single one, from one person being
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saved to thousands coming to Christ.
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All you have to do is go backwards. And every one of those grows out of some
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praying event, some prayer meeting, some individual or small group praying.
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And it's obvious that Luke, the author, wants you to see it that way,
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which means that God wants us to see it that way.
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And I don't know if you know my buddy Larry Wynn over in Georgia.
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You probably met him over the years.
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He once said not too long ago, we try to accomplish in a business meeting what
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the early church accomplished in a prayer meeting. Prayer meeting.
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Wow. And so if we want what they had, we've got to do what they did.
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Right. And so, you know, I've said recently, Kai,
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that somewhere along the way in the American church in the last decades,
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we just decided we think we think we can do this without praying.
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Yeah. We just think we can do it without praying.
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And it's just so ludicrous for us to have.
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The proof is in the pudding. When you see God moving in extraordinary ways,
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like you're very aware of what's happening on campuses,
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and probably most of our listeners or a lot of them are also aware of this phenomenon
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that has happened in just the last few months. All of that began in a prayer meeting.
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The lady that was there at Auburn, I believe it was, she had a prayer group of five people.
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And she just said they were passionate to see God move on their campus.
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And that prayer group grew to 200 or so. And the passion was seeing people saved.
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And that's spreading all over the country now.
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Now, I don't know if I can verbalize this question, but let me take a step.
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It is so common for us as Christians, if we're interested in prayer,
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and there are many that are, and we begin to pray and we learn how to enter
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into the Lord's presence.
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It is common for us to enjoy prayer as prayer and just as intimacy with the Father and all that.
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But forget the end game of this, that God wants all men to be saved.
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Do you see that, Kai? Do you see that somehow this emphasis on the end goal
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of seeing people saved is lost in much of our praying?
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Yes. I would say this is probably an overstatement, but you can pray.
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You can be a deep man or woman of prayer and not have a real evangelistic focus.
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But I don't know anybody with a strong evangelistic focus who isn't totally dependent upon prayer.
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So we can internalize prayer because of all the ministries.
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Prayer is one that is a ministry, which is an end in itself.
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Because, you know, we want to accomplish something in prayer.
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But when we pray, we are accomplishing something.
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We're in fellowship with God. But we're walking with God through the through
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the garden in the cool of the day when we pray.
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And and that is an end in itself. And it should be since, you know,
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loving God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind is a the number one thing we ought to do.
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But when it comes to evangelism, you know.
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The book of Acts and history demonstrates that great surges of evangelism,
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as well as individual events where we are having the opportunity to talk to
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a family member, a friend, a co-worker, whatever.
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The power always grows out of prayer. I don't know if you know this,
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but years ago when I was working on my doctoral work in Fort Worth,
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I worked at one of the great churches in Fort Worth as an assistant pastor in personal evangelism.
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My only job was witnessing and winning people to Christ and then bringing them
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back to the church on Sunday so that they could, you know, get integrated into
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the church, get baptized and so get them in a Bible study.
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That was my only job while I was working my doctoral work.
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It was then that I really understood. I knew it before, but doing it every day.
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I mean, that was my sole occupation. I was out on the streets for Worth every day winning souls.
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If I didn't start with prayer, you might as well have been reading the dictionary
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to people. There was no power.
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But whenever I would start with prayer, I mean, go in my office,
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shut the lights out, and really spend a half hour or something really asking
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God to empower me and prepare me.
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The opportunities really opened up. Now, I knew that before,
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but when you're doing it every day and you're dependent upon,
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you know, the power of God in that way, you spot the difference pretty quick.
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Wow. Wow. Yeah. And it's got to be rediscovered for sure.
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Well, and this thing you just and you trace this in your book over and over again of the like Peter.
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You know, born out of this prayer meeting, and we know it was an unusual moment,
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but with the beginning and the giving of the Spirit that would now indwell all believers.
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But it says as he preached, their hearts were pierced, and they cried out.
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You know, it wasn't like we had to cajole them and, you know,
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do some tricks to try to get them to respond.
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There was just a deep work of salvation that happened as the Spirit was unleashed
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through Peter and those early believers.
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And that came through this dependency on prayer. God was involved.
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You know, when you pray, you bring God into the equation, and that's a whole different ballgame.
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You know, I have a real burden about one of these chapters.
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You talk about, and the reason I have this burden to talk about this for a minute
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is because this has been, for me personally, one of my greatest challenges all through my life.
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And that is sometimes we don't pray because we're just not concerned about lost people.
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We don't care. We're wrapped up. You know, I'm a pastor and a professional in this area,
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and I can get so wrapped up in the work of the church and just, you know,
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running the church that you forget about the darkness itself.
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Of just being lost and what it is.
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How does a burden for lost people fuel prayer?
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And how do you enhance and develop that burden in greater ways?
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I'm asking for all of us, but I'm asking for me.
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And I found some answers in your book, but talk to us about that.
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Well, you're absolutely right, Bill.
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All of us can get so accustomed to daily life that we forget the only people
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in the world who've been given the assignment of winning the lost or reaching the lost,
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the only group of people is us, the church.
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And if we don't do it, it will not get done.
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And it is very, very tempting to get busy.
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One really well-known pastor that everybody here would know told me one time
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that the average church is looking for a pastor who will do four things,
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marry, bury, party, and preach.
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And if you'll do those four things, they'll love you. But to shake the bushes
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and get out on the streets and witness to the lost, even the churches are not
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interested so much in that.
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And I'm going to answer your question about getting the burden because I think
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I do have something to add to that.
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But we're in desperate.
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The world is lost and the lostness is growing exponentially while the church is declining rapidly.
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Prior to COVID, Ed Stetzer did research on where the Southern Baptist Convention was.
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This was prior to COVID, so we can't even blame COVID on this.
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We were, as a denomination, dying faster than the United Methodists in America.
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Uh, percentage wise. Now let me pause. I'm fully aware that our listeners are
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not all Southern Baptist and probably most of them are not,
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but I think most people recognize that Southern Baptists have been a very evangelistic
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group of people over decades.
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And, you know, uh, so to see one of the leading evangelistic groups of churches suddenly start dying,
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and our baptisms, which are a reflection of how evangelistic we are,
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when our baptisms reach 70-year lows, and that's where we have been.
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And then, of course, COVID hit, and the bottom fell out for everybody.
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And now we're seeing an uptick, thank God, but that uptick is out of COVID.
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It still doesn't even, where we are today still is not comparable to where we
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were during the greatest years of our ministries.
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So I would say to you, there is a dying, there's a lack of burden,
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and we may even need to define what burden means.
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But Barna came out with some research probably 18 months ago.
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I may have put it in the book.
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The youngest generation, the millennial generation, which is one of the youngest
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generations of Americans, not the youngest, they are saying almost 48% of those
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Christian millennials.
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Now, listen to what I'm saying to you.
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48% of Christian millennials say it is wrong to evangelize.
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They want to see people saved, but they believe it is personally wrong to evangelize.
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Now, we're not going to solve all that right here.
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But when you ask the question about burden and conviction and our passion, it is all but gone.
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Now, there are rapidly changing times we're living in, and a lot of people have
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great burdens for the loss, and I thank God for it.
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But what is a burden? This is even old language. This is language that you and
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I use because we've been around it.
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But if you were to talk to some of your younger staff members or maybe your
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younger Christians in your church and you were to use the word burden,
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they might not even understand exactly what you mean.
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So what are we talking about? Well, we're talking about a gripping conviction
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that suggests to us it is unthinkable for me not to share my faith.
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Whatever it takes, I've got to share my faith with my family,
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my friends, my coworkers, other students in school, et cetera.
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So a burden is a conviction. It's not a conviction you hold.
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It's a conviction that holds you.
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So this does come from prayer. Wow.
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You know, Alexander McClare and the great preacher in Manchester,
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England, was a contemporary of Spurgeon's and then on beyond that.
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He once said the appetite grows on what feeds it.
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Let me say it again. The appetite grows on what feeds it.
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So in other words, if you ever, I started to say, have you ever raised a child?
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And then I remembered who I was talking to.
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When you have a little baby sitting in a high chair and you want to introduce
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some new baby food, it's not unusual that that first bite they take,
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all of a sudden you're wearing it. You know, they spit it right back at you.
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But then they start smacking their lips a little bit. And so little by little,
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they begin to say, oh, that's not too bad.
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Well, when you have a generation that's never seen, I've heard you speak on
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this, so I know I'm preaching the choir.
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But when you have a generation that's never seen revival or spiritual awakening
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and never known what it's like to live in a climate of evangelism where you're
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expected to share your faith, that burden has died out.
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And we're living in a dry and thirsty land, so to speak.
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So how do you get it? That was your question. Right. Well, let me give you an example.
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I don't know if I put this in the book or not, and I'll hurry here, but at Hyde Park,
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we would have periodically and regularly, we would have big prayer meetings,
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or we would have prayer meetings that were really designed to attract as many
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people as possible at our church.
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And a lot of times we would announce a theme so
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one Wednesday night we were having I announced that
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the theme of that prayer meeting would be evangelism praying
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for our lost friends family members etc so we had a young lady a woman in our
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church who had never been to one of our prayer meetings and but when I announced
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that it was about evangelists that we were praying for the lost.
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She came because her sister was into new age, occult type stuff,
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totally ridiculed this church lady for her faith, mocked Christianity.
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She was as bad as you could imagine. Well, this church member was deeply,
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deeply concerned about her sister, of course. So she came to the prayer meeting.
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And when I asked, does anyone have someone specifically they want to pray for,
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she came and shared with the church what the situation was.
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And so we gathered around her, and we really prayed for our church member and her sister.
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So the story was this, the church member was into these new age practices.
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All right, so we had an intense It's time of prayer.
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Bill, when the service was over and we all left for home, this lady got a call from her sister.
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Okay, obviously the sister had no idea that her Christian sister was at a prayer
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meeting praying for her. There was no way to know.
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The new age girl called our church member on the phone and said, pray for me right now.
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And her sister was like dumbfounded because we had just been in a prayer meeting
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where everybody was praying for her.
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And she said, well, what's up? And she said, and the lady had a newborn and
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the newborn was in the crib.
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Now, I'm not saying this is what happened. I'm telling you what she said.
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The New Age sister
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said there's lights flashing above the
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baby's crib the devil and the
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demons are trying to kill my baby pray for
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us this is unheard of that she would ask for prayer we don't know what she saw
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I'm not trying to argue in favor or against that that was just her mixed up
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perspective or maybe she was tapped into some spiritual darkness that we don't comprehend.
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Well, I was halfway to my house and I live 25 miles from the campus,
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but two of my staff members live right there.
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So this lady talked to them and they got in their car and they headed to that
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sister's house, led her and her husband to Christ.
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They came the next Sunday and confessed their faith to the Lord.
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And the following Sunday, we baptized them both. Wow. Here's the point of the story.
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A lot can be drawn from that. But the point is this. Where did it begin?
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You have a sister who loves Jesus, who knows that her sister is into some deep
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confusion, demonic activity, and is blind to the things of God.
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And she had preached to her or spoken to her or witnessed her,
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and it was all for nothing.
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Wow. So when she tried everything else, she came to a prayer meeting.
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She came to a prayer meeting. And we gathered and prayed that God would hear us and save that girl.
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And, you know, none of us expected it to be that kind of dramatic thing.
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And everything I've just said is 100% true. I mean, it was astounding.
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But the burdens begin. And then they're, you know, because we know somebody
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that we want to see saved or we want to obey the Lord.
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But those burdens erupt into flame when we pray, especially when the other others
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are right. And God hears. Yeah, and God hears.
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And his heart, you know, our heart is joining in with his heart that desires
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that no man be lost, but all come to knowledge of the truth.
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And so we're just agreeing with him, aren't we, and joining with him and his
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great passion and for those who— Before we move on from that,
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I think this is so incredibly important.
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I would add two things real quickly.
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But one is, going back to what you said earlier, there are many,
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many people who spend lots of time in prayer, very devoted to prayer,
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who haven't made the connection that, hey, beyond my fellowship with God.
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God has called me to intercede and to pray for the lost and believe God that
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he wants them to be saved.
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The second thing I would say is all of that discussion that we just had grows
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out of Romans 10, 1, where Paul said,
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my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.
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I actually have two chapters in the book about that one verse,
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because there's so much to say about that.
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But that desire is passion. It's burden. It's I want this.
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Well, Kai, we always on this podcast, which is under the title One Cry,
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One Prayer, we always like to spend a moment in prayer as we close.
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And we've asked you to hang around a bit and we will record another podcast that'll play next week.
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So people that are listening, I want to encourage you to tell your friends and
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neighbors and recommend the podcast to them so they can go listen to this because
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this is so essential. And I think,
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that we are in the foothills of a major spiritual awakening.
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I know, Kai, you feel that same thing. We may not be in the tsunami yet,
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but we're certainly in the foothills.
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We're seeing things that we've
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never seen in 50 years happening in our churches and on our campuses.
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And we can miss that. I mean, individually and as churches, we can miss that,
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you know, just sitting idly by.
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And one of the reasons might be that we don't believe in what you're talking about today.
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You know, I had a guy one time say to me, you know, I don't believe all that
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stuff about praying and that prayer does this in the lives of people.
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And I just I knew the guy and I just said, well, that's fine.
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But when was the last time you saw your church daily adding people evangelism?
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Right. You know, I think I'll go with the book of Acts.
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I think I'll believe that and try that instead of the other way.
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So, Kai, I'm going to ask you, if you would, to pray for us.
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And you mentioned this in the book, that we should pray about our praying.
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We should pray for a burden. We should ask God to give us, to lay that burden upon our hearts.
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And would you pray that for all of those who are listening right now and for
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all of us across the country,
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that that deep compassion that Paul talks about in Romans 10, even is saying,
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I'd be willing to be accursed if it would be my brother wouldn't come to Christ.
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As we close here, would you pray for us?
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I'd be happy to. Father, you sent your son on the greatest rescue mission,
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and you rescued us, and we're grateful words cannot describe.
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And now, Lord, we are living in occupied enemy territory, and we are here on a mission.
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And that mission is to reach as many people as possible just in the time that we have left.
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So, Lord, we're often distracted and we're easily drawn away by this world's allure.
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But we ask you in Jesus' name today to stir something in us. Yes.
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Give us, oh God, a sense that.
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Evangelism is not an option. It's our mission. It's why we're here. It defines us.
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And so, Lord, I pray that you would stir within us.
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Let it begin, perhaps, for a lot of us, with repentance, for letting so much
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time and so many years go by where we were concerned about ours and not about others.
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So Father, in Jesus' name, forgive us for being so self-centered and remind us, O God,
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that there is a lost world that Jesus came and saw and wept over and died for.
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And so God, in the name of Jesus, give us a desire.
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Give us a burden. Let it begin anywhere. Let it begin with an awareness of someone very close to us.
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So God, I'm going to ask you right now that you would put somebody's name upon
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our mind, some person that we know closely, somebody that we care about who
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does not know the Lord Jesus.
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And I pray that you would stir such a desire and such a burden in our heart
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that we would first and foremost pray for that individual or that group of people every single day,
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that we would never come before you, O Lord,
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that we do not include them in our prayers.
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Asking, O Lord, just as Paul did, that they may be saved.
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Lord, it is a mystery how you change a heart like ours from being lost to saved.
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We're just trusting that it can happen again and again and again.
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And God, we want to be a conduit.
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We want to be a pipeline between your word and their hearts so that your spirit might move.
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And we believe, oh God, that prayer moves the hand that moves the world.
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And when we pray, you work.
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And when we pray, things happen that would never happen otherwise.
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We have biblical evidence and a Christian history of the last 2,000 years documenting
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the fact that prayer changes.
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People and circumstances. And we don't know how it works.
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We don't understand it completely, but we are yielded to you,
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O God, to save those nearest us. Save the lost.
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Empower the preachers, the soul winners, the evangelists.
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Anoint every leader, God, to be more burdened for the lost than they've ever been before.
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And God, we ask you, God, in Jesus' name, save people and use us in any way.
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But God, give us a heart for praying for the lost in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Amen. Amen.
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Okay. Thank you so much for joining us. And again, the book is Evangelistic
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Prayer, Engaging the Power.
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There it is. Engaging the power of God for the lost.
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And they can get it at Amazon or any place.
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Amazon Christian Book or the publisher, especially if a pastor wants to use
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this as a training tool, wants to get lots of copies, go to prayershop.org.
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One of the things you're going to find in this book is it's so practical.
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There are prayer points and prayer exercises.
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Every chapter ends with that, you bet.
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Yeah, going to help you a lot. Well, Kai, we'll have you back next time, and we're so grateful.
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And folks, thanks for joining in with us. Invite somebody else next week.
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Tell them about this podcast and send them a link to that.
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Music.