Luke chapter number 18, the Bible says in verse number 9, and he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Last week we talked about the widow and the unjust judge. He spake this parable to tell people who trusted in themselves. Verse number 10, two men went up into the temple to pray. the one a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even to make it worse, or even as this publican. Now I can't imagine praying a prayer like that, but I think we probably all have prayed a prayer in the wrong spirit at some point. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. Verse 13, And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes into heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone that exalted himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Now, you know, when I used to read this story, I used to always picture this Pharisee standing here and holding his arms out and praying, you know, and I don't think there's anything wrong with holding your arms up and praying. The Bible talks about men lifting up holy hands, which I believe means clean hands, but there have been times in my life where I've gone out and I've held my hands up and I've prayed to God, but that's usually when I'm by myself and nobody's around. But at the same time, it is not necessarily the stance, but here's how I used to envision this story. I used to envision the publican lying down on the ground, you know, not even looking up. But the Bible says he was standing afar off. So they were both standing, okay? It's not the posture, it's the attitude. It's not the posture that was the problem, it's the attitude. You see, we see the attitude of our prayers matters to God. God is not impressed with eloquence. He's impressed with obedience. He's not awed by display. He's awed by dedication. He turns a blind eye to pride, but directs his eyes towards humility. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, by the way, beholding the evil and the good. We know that from the Word of God. Now, we see this Pharisee, we see this publican, and last week we talked about the widow, and what was the principle there? It was the principle of persistence. Just going to God. And going, and going, and going, and if this widow who went to an unjust judge could get her prayers answered, how much more can we, the elect of God, shall cry night and day. Night and day throughout, though He bear long with them. Even though God sometimes doesn't seem like He answers. How many of you, you don't have to raise your hand, how many of you have been praying a prayer request all last year and it didn't seem like God answered it? Come on, you don't have to raise your hand, it's all right, but you can raise them, that's fine too, because it helps other people know that maybe they're not alone in that. Hey, you know, there's some prayer requests, there's some things on the prayer list. As I sat there today and went through our church prayer list and prayed over things, there's some things I'd love to cross off. And to be quite honest with you, there's some of them I don't understand why God hasn't crossed them off yet. Because it's not like you are praying for Him. It's not like I'm not praying for Him. But we have a Bible promise in the first part of this chapter 18. God does hear you. And even though He bears long with you, He does hear your prayers. And He loves you and He wants to answer. And I'm thankful for that. That's a blessing. I've also had some prayers this week that the Lord did answer. And I go, okay, Lord, I appreciate you answering that prayer. And I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, but this one's kind of more important than that one. Come on, you ever do that? You pray and God answers a prayer and you're like, Lord, if you're going to answer one, I got a few that are higher on my list than that one. I'm not God, and His way is perfect, and I have to trust that. Now, it is nice to know when a prayer gets answered, though, that God is answering my prayers. That's always a good thing. And then Jesus teaches this, and he goes further and he says, he says, listen, I'm gonna teach this because there are certain of you that trust in yourselves. And it's not that you're not praying, it's that your attitude in prayer, and we understand that. And so, well, last week, the last two weeks, we've been talking about 10 things to pray for yourself. This afternoon, I sat down and I wrote about four more lists, and we'll probably teach those through on a Thursday night as well. I wrote a list for things I pray for my children, things I pray for my saved friends, things I pray for my unsaved friends, things I pray for Christians who are away from God. And I wrote those lists out. Those are things that I pray and have been praying for them for a while now. But I'll be teaching through those, Lord willing, sometime throughout the year. And we need to learn how to pray. I'll know this about prayer. I do not know everything that there is to know about prayer. I don't even scratch the surface. And the more I learn about prayer, and the more I learn about how to pray, I feel like the less I know. Do you ever feel like that? It's like, the more I pray, the more I read God's Word about it, the more I do it, I just feel like I'm not even really getting to where I need to be. And so, we need to pray. Man, not always to pray, we know that. Ten things to pray for yourself. First one's protection. We need to pray for protection, physical and spiritual. The next one was direction. You know, I need God to direct my steps. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. I can't emphasize that enough. The third thing I need to pray for is correction. I need to pray that God will correct me. Now, that one isn't always fun. But you know what, correction's not a bad thing. We were shooting on Monday and you get frustrated because that thing flies out and you're trying to shoot it and you miss. So you ask a guy, and it's amazing, when you're shooting, it's going, boom! They're flying out at 100 miles an hour. When you're standing 10 foot behind the guy watching him, it just seems like it kind of floats through the air. I mean, just watch. You're like, man, he had all the time in the world to shoot that. Why didn't he hit that? If it went that slow for me, I'd have hit that. But then you get up there and it's like, whoo, and you're like, where did that thing even go? We had a few guys like that. They're like, I didn't even see that one. Shoot it again, OK? But the thing is, if you were honest and you wanted to, hey, did I shoot high or low? Shot low. Why? What is that? That's correction. Because the next time I shoot, I love seeing that thing just explode. So much fun. I did not shoot very well on Monday, but I had two little rounds where I shot three out of four. Now, I missed several rounds where I didn't hit anything for, you know, I won't tell you how long, but anyway, I was excited. Because I like to see that. Now, but you know what helps? It helps when someone says, yeah, I think you were shooting a little low. That's called correction. We need to pray for that. Next thing we need to pray for is we need to pray for comfort. By the way, we need to pray for comfort for ourselves because there are times when we need it, but we also need to pray for comfort for others, like we're praying tonight. For Terry Smith, Lord, give him comfort. Why? Because he needs that right now. We got several people on our list of people that have lost loved ones recently in our prayer list. Hey, you know what they need? They need comfort. They need comfort, by the way, that comes from the God of all comfort. That's who He is. Oh, need help. All right, you say, you may not need that one as much as I do, but I'm like, Lord, I need help. Amen. By the way, we talked about him being a very present help, and we need a very present help. I pray for God to use me. I pray for God to purify my motives. Number next, number 8, 8, 9, and 10 will be done. I pray for execution. I forgot to chop my head off. Well, what is execution? How something is done. Here's what execution is. I'll give you the James Young definition. Execution is the physical follow through for the spiritual principle. Execution is the physical follow through for the spiritual principle. Let me give you two statements and tell me if you agree with them. We need to follow the Bible. Agree with that or not? Okay, amen. Okay, what about this one? Lord, help me to do right today. You ever pray that? Now, what does that look like, though, in your day-to-day life? You see, I know I need to follow the Bible, and I know I need to do right, and those are good things to pray for, but Lord, I need to have the right execution of doing what you want me to do today. I need to be able not just to pray for it, I need to be able to carry it through. Let me give you a couple examples. All right? Priorities. All right? Our priorities. We were supposed to, Matthew 6, 33, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That's a good thing. But how do I carry that out? First thing is, I pray for the Lord to direct me, right? Pray, Lord, I need your direction. I don't need to lead on my understanding. I need your direction. But I need to have the right execution. Hey, if I'm here and I want to go there, I've got to have a plan to carry that out and to accomplish it. And so I pray, Lord, not only do I need to know what to do, I need to know how to do it. That's wisdom, by the way. Wisdom is skillful use of knowledge. It's a good thing to know the Bible. And if you want to know what the Bible says about something, memorize those verses. And that's a great thing, but it doesn't do you any good unless you carry it out properly. I know guys, they have all the knowledge in the world, but they don't have any execution. I don't know, they tell you how to do something and then they themselves can't do it and you're like, listen, I'm gonna go find somebody that knows how to do it, okay? Not just knows what to say, but knows how to actually physically get it done. And so I need to pray that the Lord will give me the right execution, all right? Well, how do I apply that? Well, my priorities, I set a schedule that puts God first. I don't want things that sidetrack me. Lord, you know, I wanna please you today, okay? Well, then I'm going to have to pray, Lord, but I need to know how to do that. All right? So I've got it on my schedule. Get up, read the Bible. All right? Get up, spend time in prayer. And then I don't let those things get in the way. Why? Because I need God's help carrying the tasks out. We'll talk a little bit more about that on Sunday. Let me give you another one under this execution. All right, what about your emotions? All right, there's six main emotions, right? Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise, right? Some people say there's 28. Those are a combination of all the ones merged together. We're not gonna get into all that, because quite frankly, it bores me to tears, okay? But you know what? The Bible has a physical solution for each one of these. The execution, you see, I know I'm supposed to be happy according to the Bible's definition of happy. But I need to pray that the Lord helps me execute that in the right way so that I actually obey what it says. Let me give you one that's probably more common and more applicable to us. Anger. How many of you ever got angry? This week, how many of you got angry at something? One time, at least. All of us. Now, by the way, is anger Sinful. No. It isn't. Anger in and of itself is not sinful. What we direct our anger at and what we execute, what we do with that anger is what makes it sinful or not. God is angry with the wicked every day. Be angry and sin not. Let the sun go down upon your wrath. We understand anger in and of itself is not a bad thing. You read in the Old Testament, God's anger was kindled. Did God sin? No. God executed that the right way. Now, I'm giving us an example because I want to understand how this... So, all right, would this be a good thing to pray in the morning? Lord, help me with my anger today. Is that a good thing? Yes, but what I need more than that is, Lord, this would be better. Lord, please give me the wisdom to handle my anger in a way that pleases you today. Because I don't know when I'm going to get angry. And I need to know in that moment when I do get angry, my plan of execution for what I'm gonna do with it. Because if I don't, I'm gonna punch someone or yell at my wife, or yell at one of my kids, or say something that I shouldn't, which is most often what happens, or do something that I shouldn't. And we've all been there. We've all been there when we got to the end and we go, man, I cannot believe my anger got out of control. I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I said that. I can't believe that I ruined my whole day because I got angry at that and it just destroyed my whole day. Now, what was wrong? Was the intention wrong? You didn't get up that morning going, I'm going to ruin everybody's day today. What was wrong was it wasn't your desire not to be angry. It was your execution. Lord, I need to handle, Proverbs 16, 20, one of my favorite verses. He that handleth matters wisely shall find good. And whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. I need to handle that wisely. I need to know how to, because you know what? Listen, I'm not, look, you're going to experience happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust. You're going to experience all of those. Emotions are not a bad thing. They're a great thing. They're from God. But we oftentimes sin because we don't execute them, we don't handle them the right way. And this isn't a whole message on that, but I'm giving you an illustration. Lord, I need your help today to not only know what to do, because here's my desire is to please you, but I need to have the wisdom to carry it out when it comes. Let me give you some verses on anger. A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger. Proverbs 15, 1. Alright, so if I'm going to handle my anger today, or quench someone else's anger, a soft answer turneth away wrath. Grievous words stir up anger. Brother Fisher's angry at me. He's mad at me because I cheated on my scorecard. Skeet shooting. No, I didn't keep score, but anyway, I did for a little bit when we're handing it off. But he's angry at me. And he comes to me on Thursday night, and he says, Pastor, I have a problem with you. I'm like, well, join the club, brother. All right. And I make a joke about it. What does it do? It defers his anger. He doesn't know where to go now. Now he can still be angry at me, and he might be. But isn't it amazing if we'll just follow the Bible, how well it'll turn out? You say, preacher, it doesn't actually work that way. My spouse only listens to me if I yell back. Really? Because my Bible says a soft answer turneth away wrath. Now we all get angry. I've done that sometimes where I've done something and yelled at my wife and she's responded in such a kind and gracious way. I don't even know where to go after that. Why? Soft answer turned away wrath. Now I have also, both of us have also gone the other direction with that. But when we apply the Bible principle, when we execute things properly, hey, they turn out pretty good. And I find out God was right. He that is slow to anger appeases strife, Proverbs 15, 18. Lord, help me to do that. Help me to be slow to anger. Not to say you can never get angry, because we all get angry. You know what? I get angry at sin, and I get angry at the devil, and I get angry at all kinds of stuff. And it kind of leaks out in the pulpit. There's a time for militancy. I'm preaching that on Sunday morning. The case for militancy. And there's a time for that. But you know what, at the same time, I need to handle my matters wisely. What about this one, Proverbs 19, 11? The discretion of a man deferreth his anger, and it is his glory to pass over a transgression. It's his glory. His glory. Just to pass it over. You say, preacher, why? There are times we gotta fight battles, I understand that. But the Bible says, my discretion, if I'll pray for God to help me with that execution, my discretion will know when, hey, just let it go. Is it that big of a deal? Now, by the way, there are times where it is, and I understand that. But at the same time, the discretion of a man differeth his anger. One of the ones I made my kids memorize is Proverbs 27, four. I just made them memorize three words, okay, when they were little. Anger is outrageous. Outrageous. It is. Now, it's not the whole verse. Anger is outrageous. Because it is. And I make them say it. Anger is outrageous. Anger is outrageous. Why? Because even a kid can know how to control their anger. People get hangry, right? And we joke about that. Well, I'm just hangry. No, you just don't know how to control your emotions. Nobody in America is that starved to where they have to ruin everybody else's life because they're hungry. Because you can wait that extra 37 minutes to get that Big Mac from McDonald's. I promise you, okay? We can. if we will control our emotions. Anger is outrageous. I gave you the verse already, I skipped ahead of myself. He that handleth the manner wisely shall find good, and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. Proverbs 16, 20. You see, here's God's plan for execution. First of all, trust in the Lord. And whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. All right, how do we trust in the Lord? We read his word. We get His direction. And we get wisdom. We pray for the application over it. Hey, Lord, I don't not only just want to know what to do, I want to know how to do it when it happens in my real everyday life. Because it's easy for me to say, Lord, help me with my anger. Lord, help me to love people. But if you don't pray for the execution of that, Lord, show me a way that I can love someone for Your honor and glory today. Because if I don't execute it, I'll plan to love people, but I'll never do it. So I pray for execution. Have we gotten that point yet? Okay, all right, amen. I think so. Number nine. I need to pray for the proper execution. Number nine, I want to pray, Lord, I want to grieve over what grieves you. I want to grieve over what grieves you. There's a lot of things that grieve the heart of God. Genesis 6, 6 says, And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. It grieved him. Man was so wicked. The sin of mankind was so great that God, in a few moments, in a few chapters later, is going to wipe out the entire earth in a worldwide flood and save eight people alive. You know what? I wonder how God looks at America tonight. And our depravity and our wickedness. I wonder if God ever grieves over, and I know that He does, the millions of babies that have been aborted, 125,000 babies aborted every single day in the world. That grieves the heart of God. Hey, I want to grieve over the things that God grieves over. Israel grieved God in the desert. Psalm 78 40 says they grieved Him. By how? By complaining instead of trusting. They murmured, they complained, they whined about every problem that they had. And it grieved the heart of God. Jesus in Mark 3 5 was grieved over the hardness of the hearts of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Bible says their hardness of their hearts grieved Him. Hey, I wouldn't grieve over that. By the way, it does grieve me. It grieves me when I preach and I'm thankful for a church where most people aren't like this, but it grieves. I've seen them every now and then. A person, their heart is so hard. It's like everything I say just bounces off. That grieves me because it's not my words. It's God trying to get a hold of their heart. You can just see a glaze. You can just see that the lights are on, but nobody's home. Hey, Jesus was grieved over that because the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to hear Him and see Him, but they grieved Him because of their hardness of their hearts. Sin grieves God, Ephesians 4.30. The word grieve means to give pain of mind to. Hey, I want to hurt over what God hurts over. Now you say, preacher, why do you want to do this? Here's why. It not only keeps us sensitive to these things in our life, but it helps us to want to have victory over them. It not only helps keep us sensitive to these things in our life, but it helps us to want to have victory over them. These 10 things, really, if you're seeing how intertwined they are, hey, if I grieve over what God grieves over, then when I pray for correction and God says, this grieves me, I will have no problem getting it out of my life. I'll have no problem saying, okay, Lord, whatever you want me to do, I'll give that up. I'll stop doing that. I'll try to do that better. Lord, if this grieves you, I don't want to be any part of it. I want to grieve over the things God grieves over. And number 10, and we're done. I'll pray for courage. I pray for courage. I pray for courage. Take your Bible and go to Joshua chapter 1. And I want to show you three things. why we pray for courage. Because you say, well, we obviously, you know, we should have bravery in the face of fear, and we should. And that's what courage is. Essentially, you can give it a bigger and more eloquent definition than that. Courage is Courage is the ability to have bravery to do what is right in the face of fear. To have the strength to stand when opposition comes. But look with me in Joshua, chapter number 1, verse number 6, if you're there with me say Amen. What does God tell Joshua? Be strong and of a good courage. For unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous. that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded me. Turn not from it to the right hand nor to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. For then shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have I not commanded thee, Be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee, whithersoever thou goest. I don't have time to go into verse number 9. I hear that verse misapplied to a lot of people. God's not with everybody wherever they go, okay? He's always everywhere. But He is with those who will follow His pattern. But why don't we pray for courage? Alright? Courage does three things for us. Look at verse number seven. Only be thou strong and very courageous, why? That thou mayest observe to do according to all the law. All right, the first one. Courage helps us obey the Bible. We could preach a whole message right here, this could be an outline. Courage helps us obey the Bible. You see, we're living in a world, we are living in a world where following this book is not always popular. And by the way, it doesn't always make you popular. And one of the things that courage does is it helps me to observe all of the law. And that courage gives me the strength to just obey God's word. To just obey God's word, even when, even when people don't. There's pastors. I wish they had one. They're missing a backbone. They avoid four-fifths of the entire Bible because they're afraid of losing people. I don't want to lose people. But you know what? Listen. Courage is, we're going to preach the Bible whether it's popular or not. By the way, who's the demographic that oftentimes is the easiest defendant of this? It's my generation. They don't like Bible preaching. They like feel-good stuff. They like to be told they're something special. That they're like a snowflake and all of them are different. They like that. And you know what? Hey, listen, does that mean we have to start preaching the Bible? No. Courage says, listen, by the way, there are people that do like this. Amen? There are people that do want the Word of God to be preached. Courage helps us obey the Bible, even when it's not popular. Courage helps us stay on the right track. The Bible says, look at verse number 7, Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper with us wherever thou goest. Do you see? Courage helps me to stay on track. Courage helps me not to obey the Bible so that I won't go to the right or to the left. Why? Because it's easy sometimes to get a little off track, isn't it? It's easy sometimes to say, well, this is what the Bible says, but I'll just take my stance over here. This is, I'll just take my stance over here. I know this is where I'm supposed to be. And courage says, I'm just going to keep all the law and I'm just going to keep on going. I pray for courage because courage helps us prosper. that thou mayest prosper with us wherever thou goest." Hey, I don't know about you, but I want God to prosper my steps. I don't want to just go onward Christian soldiers this year just to do things. I want to get to the end and say, that's what God did. God did that. I prayed that this morning. Remember, number seven, we mentioned last week, purify my motives. Lord, I prayed for the man event. I prayed for some of the calendar events of our church. And one of the things that I said and I'll continue to say all year is God, if there's something you don't want us to do, scratch it off the list because Lord, I want to do things for your glory. Because if we don't have that, we might as well not have church. Look, if we have fellowships, and we have promotions, and we have things, and we have events all year long, and we have men's meetings, and we have all of this stuff, and I know the ladies have a ladies conference coming up in April. Hey, if we just do it for fun, we're missing the point. I want to do it for His glory.