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Lesson 8 - Prayer and the Believer · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  Let me tell you this for an introduction for tonight. I have not heard one Christian leader today who does not admit that his prayer life is lacking. That they are satisfied with their prayer life. And I've talked, you know, a lot of pastors and that, and you get on the subject of prayer, they all admit like, yeah, I'm not real satisfied with my prayer life. I know I should be praying more.
• 0:34
  Even MacArthur said, one of the things he said in his tape, he said, no matter how much I pray, I feel I need to pray more. Anybody in here satisfied with your prayer life? We all know we need to pray some more. Prayer is very familiar to all of you. We all pray. We pray in church all the time and that. Yet, it's so hard to do. We know a lot about it.
• 1:05
  yet it is so hard to do. I heard a sermon sometime or a speaker or maybe I read it somewhere. Martin Luther was in the habit of rising at 4 a.m. every morning to spend four hours in prayer every day. Wow. Someone challenged me and said, you don't have time to do that. And his response was, I don't have time not to do it.
• 1:36
  He found that spending that much time in prayer helped him get through the rest of the day. I'm going to do something really different tonight. You can turn those papers over now. And I'm going to discuss this chapter. If you did your homework, almost all these questions are taken from your homework. I'll give you a few minutes to five, seven minutes. This should be all it takes.
• 2:06
  to fill out this little quiz. And this then will summarize our chapter that we studied. And if you did your homework, it should be a breeze for you. And then we will discuss them. So go ahead and just put down what you think on that quiz. I'm not grading them or turning them in. But then we will discuss your answers and my answers for our class tonight.
• 2:41
  Everyone have a pen? Okay. Do the best you can if you don't know one. Okay. Let's go ahead and stop. And if you didn't have anything filled in, you can fill it in as we discuss them. I would want to say, since we all confess that we admit that our prayer lives fall short of what we know it should be, I would encourage you still this week to listen to John MacArthur's sermon, Pray Unceasingly.
• 3:16
  is in there, particularly in the last ten minutes, he gives ten motives to pray persistently. And he lists ten motives there. And maybe you need more motivation to pray like I do. I know I should, but I should pray more than I do. But he gives ten motivations to pray, so I encourage you to listen to that. Alright, question number one. What did you think? Simply put, prayer is what?
• 3:46
  With God. What? Communication with God. Talking with God. Those all fit. Those are all correct. Simply put, that's just talking with God. When we had a small group that was meeting on Wednesday nights, this was several years back, we had a man come, because his wife had been coming, and you could tell he hadn't spent much time in church in that.
• 4:19
  But we would split up. We always ended our time together with men and women separately and share requests and pray. And I loved the way this guy prayed. He would pray. He would always start off his prayer. Well, God, it's me again. You know, you don't hear that in church. But it was honest. He was just talking to God. And I liked that. You don't need fancy words or anything. It's just talking with God. God wants to talk with you.
• 4:50
  And wants you to talk with Him. So, we don't need to make prayer anything that, well, I've still got a lot to learn so I can pray like Pastor Danny or something like that. No. God wants you to share your heart with Him. Just talk to Him the way you talk to anybody. And that's what prayer is, basically. You don't need to use all these flowery words or anything.
• 5:16
  Two, what does God promise to those who bring everything to Him in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving? Does that phrase sound familiar? He'll guard our hearts and minds? Okay, what else does He promise? The peace of God. Yeah, that's our memory verse for this week. He promises us the peace of God. He doesn't promise He's always going to give us what we ask for.
• 5:46
  He doesn't always promise that you're going to get it right away or in the manner that you want, but He'll give you something better. The peace of God, which is different than peace with God. You get that as your salvation. But the peace of God will guard your hearts and souls, minds, through Christ Jesus. He promises us peace. So, why should we be anxious? Why should we worry about anything?
• 6:17
  You know, when I find myself worrying about something and anxious about something, I'm trying to be in control. I think I'm in control. God's in control. I'm not in control at all. I love, I've got a friend who's got terminal pancreatic cancer. And she was in the hospital recently.
• 6:45
  Because the tumor on her pancreas had grown large enough it was pinching off the outlet to her stomach. And it wasn't letting any food get out of her stomach into her small intestine. And so they, with her surgeon and that, gave her several options. Gave her three options of what could be done or not done. And the riskiest of all was to detach the small intestine at the bottom of the stomach and move it up and down.
• 7:14
  reattach it at the side of the stomach, and then she'd have to relearn how the food to get out of her stomach and there and that. And that was the riskiest one, and that's what my friend decided to go with. She said, I'll do that. And I love what she said the night before her surgery. She said to her surgeon, she says, look, you voted on what procedure to do, and I voted which one I wanted, but the one who has the ultimate vote is God. He's got the last say.
• 7:45
  And so I want you to know that if I don't come out of this, I'm ready to go be with the Lord in heaven. And it was his decision, not your mistake. She said, I don't want you to worry about it. If I don't come up, that's just fine because God has the last vote. And what a testimony to that surgeon. That surgeon almost cried because it just relieved a lot of burden off her because she had elected the most risky of all the options.
• 8:12
  And that relieved the stress on the surgeon who probably did a better job surgery because she goes like, well, if she didn't come out, that was God's vote. And Carol was just fine with that. So I like that. But Carol had the peace of God through that. Okay, three. This is probably the trick question of the whole bunch. I've got to include one of those. Muslims are to say their prayers five times a day.
• 8:41
  Orthodox, Jews, religious Jews, three times a day. Oh, except on Sabbath and holidays, they say prayer four times a day. And then on Yom Kippur, the most holy day, they say prayers five times a day. I had to throw that in. So, how many times a day does the New Testament say Christians should pray? Always? Okay.
• 9:12
  My trick question was, I would have said, once, just never stop. But you kind of got that idea there. Yeah, we should always be in an attitude of prayer. Pray without ceasing, 1 Thessalonians 5, 17 says. Luke 18, verse 1, Jesus said to his disciples that they should pray always and not lose heart.
• 9:42
  At all times. And then Ephesians 6.18 says, be a prayer at all times. We should always be in an attitude of prayer. And when I was working on this lesson, I felt convicted because I've taught this several times in the past. And then I don't always follow it. But one of the robbers of my attitude of prayer and praying is turning the radio on.
• 10:14
  Even when I was a teenager, I loved to have music going all the time. I always got music on in that. Karen likes quiet. She'd rather have everything off. But I always had music on and radio on. I'd have the radio when I'd go to sleep at night, and I'd have the, you know, you could turn it on and play music for 30 minutes and then shut itself off and fall asleep to music. And I did that all the time in that. And it's kind of amazing and a real blessing if...
• 10:43
  And when I was preparing this lesson and I was driving downtown yesterday, I thought, oh, I better start practicing where I'm preaching at. So I turned my radio off and just talked to the Lord while I was driving downtown. Then I maintained the attitude of prayer. It really helps. I don't have a big problem with road rage, but it really helps me every time when someone does cut me off and I have a few fleeting thoughts of what I wish I could do to them.
• 11:12
  It helps in that situation because I'm talking to the Lord. It's like, okay, Lord, protect that idiot because he's going to kill himself. Protect me. Try that sometime. If you're lacking in your prayer life or your relationship with God isn't quite what you'd like it to be, turn the radio off and talk to him all the way down the highway when you're going to work or back, okay? I suggest trying that. It works for me.
• 11:47
  Alright, question four. We are to pray according to God's will. That's 1 John 5, 14. That was in your lesson. If we don't know what God's will is in a matter, should we still pray? Okay, that one's tricky. Why should we still pray? If I don't know. I've got to pray according to God's will, but I don't know what God's will is. I should still pray? Yeah, we all said that. Why can I do that with confidence? Is what my really question is. What?
• 12:19
  Okay, we know that he'll hear us. What if I ask for something that's not according to his will? Yeah, yeah. Come on. Romans what? Romans 8.26. Romans 8.26. Did the new guy come up with that? Romans 8.26 says what?
• 12:59
  I don't know how to pray as I ought. I don't know what I should pray for. But you know what? I still pray with confidence because the Holy Spirit intercedes for me. I just picture that as like a big screen door, okay? And my big fat requests that aren't according to God's will get strained out. And the Holy Spirit just lets...
• 13:21
  what is according to God's will through. He intercedes for us. And so just because we're not sure what God's will is in the matter, we don't know, pray anyway, because the Holy Spirit is translating it. And He'll say, God, He doesn't really need that. What He really wants is this, and give that to Him. So the Holy Spirit is always interceding for us when we make our prayers before God. So don't let that...
• 13:49
  Slow you down or stop you from praying because you don't really know God's will in the matter. Any questions or comments on that? It's a tremendous promise and encouragement to pray because even, I mean, Paul admits, we don't know what we ought to pray for. We don't know what we should pray for. So the Holy Spirit does intercede for us. So pray anyway. Keep praying. All right.
• 14:15
  Five. Should be easy even if you didn't do the lesson. List three hindrances to prayer. Selfish. Selfishness. Okay. You got any verse to go along with that by any chance? I would go James 4.3. We pray for the wrong motives. Selfishness. Fits. Okay. How about another hindrance to prayer? Sin in my life. Yeah. Psalm 66.18.
• 14:48
  If I regard iniquity in my heart, you will not hear me. In Isaiah 59, 1 and 2, and I forget what that says, but it's the same idea. If you've got sin in your life, entertaining sin, unconfessed sin, God won't hear your prayers. Okay? Wrong motives or selfishness. Sin in your life. One more. Lack of faith. James 1, 5 through 8. Yeah, you have not because you ask not.
• 15:21
  When you ask, you ask with wrong motives. Oh, no, that's James 4. James 1, 5-8 just says when you ask, you've got to ask to believe. Good, okay. True or false? Jesus gave His disciples a prayer to repeat in Matthew 6, 9-13 called the Lord's Prayer. What would you say? True. True? Okay. Why is it true? Because this is what it says? And why is it false? Someone said false. Because it's a model prayer that we should be following.
• 15:55
  Okay. He didn't say pray this prayer. He said pray after this manner or in this way. That's how you should pray. Okay. That's true. He gave us an example, but I don't think he intended it just to recite it over and over and over again. Well, it depends on how you defended it.
• 16:26
  You can pray it, but it's not meant to be there. The way I answered it when I was thinking is I put false because we were to pray in this way, not just repeat this prayer all the time. And I know a lot of times people do that, particularly people of Roman Catholic backgrounds tend to do that. I know back in my working days, we had...
• 16:55
  A men's Bible study at work. And they had a summer picnic. And they invited the women's Christian fellowship group from work to a picnic there too. And they used to invite some friends. And one Catholic gal was there and that. And when we were finishing the picnic and about ready to break up, she goes, Can we say the Lord's Prayer? And everyone goes, Oh, okay. And so we all repeated the Lord's Prayer. But, you know, that's not...
• 17:23
  A lucky charm, you know, it's not a chance to say to get God to do what we want, you know, but he gave us that as a pattern so that we can follow it in our prayer life. So I want you to turn to page 61 in your books where in the bottom of that page is section two of part B and bottom of page 61. And he has a little chart there where he breaks down.
• 17:49
  what we call the Lord's Prayer, or MacArthur likes to call the Disciples' Prayer, because Jesus was giving it to the disciples. And we'll look at this briefly. It goes, Our Father. Why is the word our important there? Did you ever stop to think about our? Because all of ours? We are in Christian community, aren't we? And what might be best for me might not be best for the church as a whole.
• 18:21
  places this in a community of believers. Our Father. What does the word Father indicate to you? Family. Anything else? A caregiver. Protector. Protector. All of those are involved under Father. Love. Also, a little bit, I think the idea there is authority. He's a position of authority over us, like our Father.
• 19:03
  Respect and authority. But also intimacy is the word MacArthur used too in there. Hallowed be your name. What does hallowed mean? Blessed? Not exactly. That's pretty close, Byron. But not exactly. You're awesome. Revered? Holy. Set apart. It's elevating.
• 19:38
  God, above all the rest of us. He is set apart. He is holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty. We are to revere Him. And you can do that in the Lord's model prayer here. It said, your name is holy. Hallowed be your name is another way to say that in the old King James. But when we are coming to God in prayer, we can recount God's attributes.
• 20:10
  When we begin our prayers. Think about them. And we looked at God's attributes in week three. Lesson three of the book. He talked about God's attributes. And just pausing to think and repeat God's attributes from that is a way to pay respect and reverence to Him. To get us in the right frame of mind that God is so much higher than we are.
• 20:41
  Your kingdom come. We should pray for God's kingdom to come. What does that mean to you? How do we pray for God's kingdom to come? Pray for His return? Yeah, I think that's part of it. I also think back in the Gospels, the Pharisees in Luke 18 said to Jesus, When is your kingdom coming?
• 21:16
  You know, tell us when it's coming because they didn't want to miss it. You know, when the kingdom of God is going to come. And he said, it's already in your midst. It isn't going to come so everybody can see it because it's already in your midst. It's an internal thing. And so it's something you said made me think of that. Now I lost my train of thought. Anyway, God's kingdom is reigning in your life right now. If you've been.
• 21:45
  Jesus, your Lord and Savior. Now there's the other essence of His earthly kingdom and physical reign that's still yet future, that He's coming. And I think both of those apply when we pray for your kingdom to come. Which means we should be actively praying for the salvation of the lost. Are you praying for the salvation of the lost? Lost neighbors, lost co-workers, lost family members. We should...
• 22:15
  And part of this, I think, is included in your kingdom come. Lord, may your kingdom spread from my heart to their heart. And this is very convicting to me because I fall down on this. I've invited my neighbors to church. I try to be a good neighbor. I'll shovel off their watch because I've got a snowblower and they go to work. I do good things, okay? And try to say, yeah, it's for the love of Christ and testimony.
• 22:46
  Do you know what? I haven't prayed that much for them. And it's very convicting. I should be spending more time in prayer for them, and then the good deeds and deeds of love for them might have more effect if I was enclosing them in prayer, supporting them with prayer. So I think praying for God's kingdom, yes, it's praying, Lord, come back in your kingdom.
• 23:13
  You can see that in other places in the New Testament. But I think it also means pray for the salvation of souls to inhabit that kingdom. For that kingdom to spread into the hearts of those that we love. Our family members, our co-workers, our neighbors. Thy kingdom come. Your will be done. Whose will is that? Obviously. We should be praying for God's will, not my will.
• 23:42
  Pray that my will will align itself with God's will. So many prayers go up trying to get God's will to match my will. Okay? That's not what Jesus said we should be praying. We should be praying that our will should match His will. Line up with His will. God is not the Santa Claus in the sky that just give me your wish list and I'll do it.
• 24:16
  We need to align ourselves with God's will. Not try to bend Him to conform to my will. Give us this day our daily bread. That's just a petition for our needs. Our physical needs. And oftentimes, I'm afraid, this constitutes 98% of our prayers. Where we pray for someone's health.
• 24:49
  We pray for someone's job if they're out of work, healing. Those aren't bad things to pray for, but that should not constitute 98% of our prayer time. And we fall into that so easily. But he doesn't tell us we shouldn't pray for that. We should pray for our daily bread. And MacArthur pointed out in his sermon, he says, the largest part of the world, Christians...
• 25:19
  very real to them. They have to pray for their daily bread. In our culture, we don't have to do that so much. Because we are so filthy rich. No, none of us in the room feels that way. That's because we're comparing ourselves to others. But if you stop and consider the world, most, the far majority of our brothers and sisters throughout the world, we're filthy rich. And we don't really have to
• 25:49
  pray for our daily bread. We know we've got that all covered on ourselves. We're blessed, so I hope we don't find ourselves in that position someday, but we very well could be when we need to rely on God for our daily bread, our needs and necessities. But this is a reminder, it's a recognition that God is our provider for all that we have and all our needs. Forgive us our debts. What's a debt?
• 26:21
  In this context. Sin. Yeah, our sin, our wrongdoings. Things that put us in God's debt that we owe. This is a prayer of confession. We need to confess our sins before God. 1 John 1.9 gives us the assurance that when we do, He hears our prayers. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. What does that phrase say to you?
• 26:54
  Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Okay. Help us avoid the world's ways and temptation. Okay. It gets back to our attitude, doesn't it? We need to have an attitude that we want to give up our sin and we want to walk in obedience with Him. It recognizes that we are weak.
• 27:32
  and often inadequate to deal with sin on myself. Lord, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil. And I kind of like on the side there in that little chart, he broke off kind of a title to each one. We should be praying to God. We should exalt Him. Hallowed be Your name. We should submit to God in His will. We should look to Him.
• 28:02
  is seeking His provision, we should confess to God and we need to depend on Him and trust in Him. So that was the model prayer that Jesus gave us, not just to repeat the words over and over again, but to follow that model, break it down in those areas. Any questions or comments on that? Do you understand why I said that that question was false now instead of true?
• 28:31
  The way I phrased it. But if you defend it the other way, he did say pray after this matter. We could pray that. Okay, seven. The acronym ACTS is a great way to maintain a good balance in prayer. What does each letter stand for? A? Adoration. What is adoration? Admiring. Yeah? Worship. Just the act of prayer in itself is worship. Really, the whole act of prayer is.
• 29:06
  Adoration is specifically worshiping Him, adoring Him for who He is. Again, you might want to review Lesson 3 in the book where it talks about God's attributes. And if you begin your prayer with adoration, repeat back to God some of His attributes that have been particularly meaningful to you this week or today.
• 29:34
  Praise God. You can talk about His omniscience. Lord, I thank You that You're omniscient. You know my way. You know what's ahead of me. And You've prepared me. And You're protecting me from the evil. Lord, I thank You so much for Your omniscience. And just think about how His attributes relate to us. That is adoration. What does C stand for? Confession.
• 30:00
  That's pretty obvious. We know what that is. It's a time of thinking, okay, Lord, I need to clear the books. We need to admit that we've sinned. Doesn't God already know I sinned? Why do I need to tell Him I sinned if He already knows it? He's omniscient after all. If they're sinning, you don't confess it. You're hindered.
• 30:31
  I have to tell them when I'm wrong because then I feel like I'm hindered by communing with them. Okay. It's because, you know, it makes me feel better to have fellowship with Christ. All right. Any other ideas? Byron? It's our acknowledgment that we know that we have sinned. He knew, of course. We have to know it, though. Oh, he wants us to admit it. Yeah. He wants us to acknowledge our sin. And when we do,
• 31:05
  That breaks down that barrier. When I sin, and I haven't confessed it yet, it's really hard for me to pray. I might miss a day on my knees at my place of prayer where I meet the Lord every day. He's still there. He's waiting for me. So that fellowship, as Pam said, was broken down.
• 31:42
  really from my end, not from him. He's there waiting for me. And he wants me to admit, to confess my sin and just get it out of the way so we can get back to talking to one another and having that fellowship together. Yes, so we should confess, even though he knows when we sin. The T stands for? Thanksgiving. What's the difference between Thanksgiving and adoration? There's a difference. For what he's done, okay?
• 32:18
  Adoration is praising Him for who He is. Thanksgiving is giving Him thanks and praise for what He has done. And that doesn't have to just be for you. I mean, we can give God thanks for the way He delivered Israel from Egypt and showed His great might over all the gods of the Egyptians. Thank Him for what He's done, even in the past.
• 32:48
  It's one of the reasons why He gave us the Scriptures, so we would know what He's done, and we can give Him thanks and praise for that. That's exactly right. We're locked into time. He's not. He's outside of time. I was just thinking, the same thing applies to confession. I think back to Nehemiah's prayer of confession in Nehemiah.
• 33:16
  He confessed the sins of his fathers in that, and he wasn't directly involved in that. But his prayer of confession opened up a pathway of communication for God, God's blessing in Nehemiah's life. So, we should be confessing our sins, but not just our personal. We should be confessing the sins of our nation, like Nehemiah did. And the sins of our nation are great.
• 33:45
  And we need to be confessing that also to God and pleading for His mercy upon this country. C. Oh, no. C is confession. T is thanksgiving. What God has done in the past. And S is for supplication. That is our petitions. That's our requests. Our needs. We bring to God our needs. If we took that in a balance,
• 34:19
  A nice balance there. And I think I got that idea from MacArthur's book. Our actual needs and requests that we bring to God, should only constitute a fourth of our time in prayer. Okay? And I like that concept because we generally flip that on its head. And like I say, most of our needs give us this day our daily bread.
• 34:49
  constitutes 98% of our prayer time. Really, it should only be a fourth of it. And I'm not hard on numbers. I'm not saying that's a hard number. But just to give you an idea, we need to balance out our prayers between adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. So that little acronym ACTS is a good model to follow in your prayer time. Questions or comments? Did it all come back to you, Nathan?
• 35:19
  Now it does. He knew it. He just forgot that. All right. Question eight. You can have different words for this, but how does God answer our prayers in Isaiah 65, 24? What did you put? Before they call. Before you even call? Anyone have any other words to put in there that you came up with? I'll say immediately, but yeah, that verse says, I will answer even before.
• 35:48
  call. Luke 18 7. How does God answer prayers? Sometimes. With justice. Bring about justice. Okay. I'm looking for another word there. Slow. Okay. MacArthur used the term delayed. Sometimes it's delayed. You don't get your prayer request right away. And he got that out of there. So he might answer our
• 36:22
  prayers immediately or even before we ask them. He might answer our prayers delayed at every time. And what did you find in 2 Corinthians 12, 7 and 9? How would you phrase that? Strength to endure. He answers our prayers by giving us strength to endure. Endure what? Whatever you're going through. Okay. Other ideas. What did anybody come up with? He gives us His power and our weakness. In that situation, did He
• 36:59
  give Paul what Paul was asking for? No. He answered in a different way. He gave him the grace to endure, didn't he? Or as Danny said, his power. Sometimes he answered our prayer different than what we asked for, is what MacArthur said. Made me think of this. This came out of the Navigator's Discipleship Magazine. I thought this was interesting and it really applies here. Lauren Sanney,
• 37:30
  was the president of the Navigators, starting when Dawson Trotman, the founder, passed away. And he was the president of the Navigators organization for 30 years. And 10 years after he resigned, so this is later in life, he wrote this. Well, I'm going to read the whole article because it's not that long. This is by a staff member of Navigators, Just Dagger.
• 37:54
  He said, during my first year on staff at the Navigators Eagle Lake camps in 1996, we did a Bible study on prayer. After months studying the scriptures, we invited Lorne Sanney, who had been president of the Navigators from 1956 to 1986, to come and speak to our group. I remember trying to figure out how to sit as close to him as possible, writing his name at the top of my journal page and straining forward to listen to him.
• 38:24
  He asked us a few questions about what we'd learned, and there was a long pause, and then he said this. I know less about prayer today than I did when I was your age. I have prayed for over 60 years for several of my family members to come to faith, and God has not answered those prayers, and I do not know why. Several times I've prayed for lesser things, and God has provided above and beyond and immediately.
• 38:52
  All I know now after all these years is that prayer is communication. It's talking to God. I don't know how it works. I do know that God has asked me to do it. And I've always benefited when I've obeyed God. I have been changed by prayer. I am known by God and know God through prayer. But I don't know how all that happens. He says, you could have heard a pin drop.
• 39:20
  I had expected mechanics, tips, and assurances. I hadn't expected to hear longing and humility. And that night deeply impacted the way I model prayer to my kids and to my students in our ministry over the years. I return so often to the notion that prayer is just talking to God and that we don't get better at prayer because every earnest prayer is warmly welcomed by God. Don't think that your prayers aren't as good as anyone else's.
• 39:51
  Okay? You talk to God from your heart. And God hears that prayer just as much as the most eloquent pastor and speaker in the pulpit. And in fact, if you really want some heartfelt prayers, sit in a group of second and third graders and have them pray for what they need. Because they just like the faith of a little child. They believe.
• 40:24
  Only a couple of you were in my class Sunday. I'll tell you after class. I had a little joke on that prayer, but girl prayer. Number nine, rewrite the sentence to make it a true statement. Prayer is the means which God has set up for us to get Him to do something for us. I hope you see that that's not why God gave us prayer, to get God to do something for us. How would you change that verse or that sentence to make it true?
• 40:56
  I put a prayer as the means which God set up for us to let Him know what is on our hearts. Okay, I like that. That's a true statement. What else? A means to praise Him? To communicate with Him? Okay. And I put, it's the means which God set up for us to align ourselves with His will. Prayer is aligning myself with God's will, not trying to get His will to do what I want Him to do.
• 41:32
  As so many of these TV preachers think that they can get God to do what they want Him to do. Yeah. And if you send them enough money. Since God is sovereign and all things are decreed by Him, why should we pray? Why bother to pray? God's going to do what God's going to do. For a relationship, I like that answer. Okay? I didn't have that down, but I like that. Because He wants a relationship with you.
• 42:06
  For you to talk to him and him to talk to you. What else did you come up with? Any other thoughts? Communicate with him? Okay. I put because he says to do it and he says he answers us. Because he said to do it and he will answer us? Yeah. Okay. He commands us to do it? MacArthur's answer was, is that because he ordains the means as well as the ends.
• 42:45
  God's going to do what he's going to do, but he ordains the means. And you remember James said in James 1, you don't have because you don't ask. Or that was James 4 too. He waits until he asks oftentimes. God ordains the means and one of the means he set up is for his saints to pray to him and ask him to act. And when his saints ask him to act, then he'll act. He could have acted already before in that.
• 43:13
  Here's a really good example to help us see that from Acts chapter 10. Cornelius, a Gentile who feared God, did not know the way of salvation. God sent an angel to Cornelius. Did the angel tell Cornelius the plan of salvation and the gospel? No. What did the angel tell Cornelius? Almost. Send the Joppa and get Peter.
• 43:45
  And Peter will tell you the gospel, how to be saved. So he did. Peter came and told him, and he was saved. Why didn't God just save all this effort? Because God ordained that we spread the gospel. Number one, that we get the blessing from sharing the gospel and having people born again. Do you remember the joy you had when your first child was born?
• 44:14
  What a joy and blessing that was. An exciting time that was. I feel that same thing when I pray with someone to receive Christ. It's like giving birth again to a new person who's going to live for eternity. And God ordained the means. He says, I want you to take the gospel to your neighbor so that you get the blessing. Yeah, I could send an angel, but that wasn't His plan. He ordained the means. It's that Lance is supposed to take the gospel.
• 44:44
  That's why he put me in that neighborhood. He ordained where I was to live. And it's the same way that I think that applies to prayer. That he says, I'm going to act, but I need you to pray. And ask me to do it. And I see that a lot. You know, I'm in the book of Numbers now, about the end of it, in my reading plan. And you see that a lot. God tells Moses, why didn't God just do it? No, God, Moses, go and...
• 45:13
  Talk to the rock or Moses, hold your staff out or Moses do this and then I'll do it. So he wants to use us to affect his people. Now, I took a little longer than I thought I would. I was hoping to have at least five minutes left. So what I'm going to do right now is I want us to close in prayer. And we've only got about three minutes left. So I want us, several of you, just say, you know what popcorn prayers are?
• 45:45
  I'd like to say a sentence. We'll have two or three of you. We're going to do adoration. Two or three of you. Praise God for who He is. And then confession. Two or three of you. Confess. If you don't want to confess your sin personally, confess the sins of our nation. Let's spend a little bit of time in confession. And then two or three of you shoot up a little prayer of thanksgiving.
• 46:16
  And then a couple of you that are really burdened and have a need in your heart, offer a prayer of supplication. And we're going to close following that prayer of Acts. Okay? So just two or three on each one of those. A-C-T-S. Okay? Let's go to prayer.
• 47:05
  Without us, it would be so much easier for you. I just think of being a parent and how much easier it is to do things myself instead of asking my kids. And that makes me appreciate your patience. Father, you are holy. And we are so sinful. And what an awesome God you are to love us in spite of our sin, in spite of your holiness. And Lord, you have provided that way for us to join you in heaven.
• 47:43
  to be holy like your son. You are a great God.
• 49:44
  Thank you for the answers, prayers. Thank you even when we want you to answer the way we want to answer, you ask that your way is always the best. The promise of life ever after. And we most of all thank you for all the guidance in our life, how we should treat each other. Any needs or...
• 51:02
  in supplication to give to the Lord now before his throne.
• 52:14
  Please take her and help her with this new thing she's going through. And also I bring up Butch with his pain in his back and his hip. Please help with that, Lord. I ask that you will help me get closer with my son, Irvin, so that I can figure out what's going on and that he will be alright in this new plan that he has. Father God, we do look to you as the healer of our bodies.
• 53:29
  As we heard tonight, Rich DeBuss and I know her name. I had it and slipped it. O'Neal, may your hand be on them and heal them, Lord. I pray for my son, Keith, still struggling with the SIBO disease. I pray that the doctor would come up with a treatment plan that would help him rid that and enable him to go back to work. Thank you for this lesson on prayer, Lord.
• 54:04
  We know that You long to meet with us in prayer more than we long to meet for You. And remind each one of us that You are always there wanting to hear our praises, our confessions, our thanks, and our petitions as well. And may we be reminded, Lord, that prayer is not to get what we want, but to bend ourselves to conform to Your will.
• 54:35
  that You would receive all the glory and honor. We thank You for this lesson, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.