Well, good morning, everybody. Open your Bibles, please, the book of Mark and chapter 7. Mark in chapter 7, and we're going to read verses 24 to 30, and then I'm going to take you over to Matthew 15, and we'll read the parallel account there. But what I'm going to do is, I'm going to read it in Mark, and then I'm going to read the two parallel versions together, because they tell the same story. But Matthew adds some beautiful and rich details that we want to include in our message this morning. So reading from Mark chapter 7 and verse 24, it says this. Jesus got up and went away from there to the region of Tyre. And when he had entered a house, he wanted no one to know of it, yet he could not escape notice. But after hearing of him, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately came and fell at his feet. Now, the woman was a Gentile of the Syrophoenician race, and she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he was saying to her, let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. But she answered and said to him, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children's crumbs. And he said to her, Because of this answer, go, the demon has gone out of your daughter. And going back to her home, she found the child lying on the bed, the demon having left." Now, if you take your Bibles and flip over to Matthew 15 and verses 22 to 28, I'm going to read the same story again, but I'm going to weave the two versions and the two parallel accounts together. I'll let you know as we're going back and forth, but it should follow along pretty closely to the same thing. Reading again, it says, Jesus got up and went away from there to the region of Tyre. And when he had entered a house, he wanted no one to know of it, yet he could not escape notice. But after hearing of him, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately came and fell at his feet. And you have, in verse 22, and began to cry out, saying, Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is cruelly demon-possessed." Back in Mark 7, it says, Now the woman was a gentile of the Syrophoenician race, and she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. Back in Matthew 15, verse 23, it continues, But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and implored him, saying, send her away because she keeps shouting at us. But he answered and said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and began to bow down, this is back in Mark, before him saying, Lord, help me. And he was saying to her, let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. But she answered and said to him, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children's crumbs and Matthew adds, which fall from their master's table. Then Jesus said to her, Oh, woman, your faith is great. It shall be done for you as you wish. And back in Mark, he says, And he said to her, Because of this answer, go. The demon has gone out of your daughter. And going back to her home, she found the child lying on the bed, the demon having left her. And you can take your Bibles and flip back over to Mark chapter 7 if you'd like to, to follow along in the message. In your little folder there should be a little sermon outline in front of you. It's got seven points on there. And the good news is we're not going through all seven of them this morning. We'll take the first four, and next week we'll take the balancing three, and then a further point from the next story in verses 31 to 37. So that's where we're going this morning. Why do we need to hear this message and why do we need to unfold this passage in front of us? It's not simply because it's the next passage in the lineup of the book. There is a great reason why we need to hear a message from this passage on the subject of faith in our day. We hear lots about faith. There's the Muslim faith. There's the Mormon faith. There's faith as a spiritual exercise. The spiritual people like to talk about faith. There's faith as in the idea of a complete set of Christian beliefs. There's also the faith that we exercise as believers in God. When I read stories, when I first got saved, I think I might have told some of you this, I went out and I bought all these little mini biographies. Spurgeon, C.S. Lewis, Henry Martin, this list goes on and on. All these old great men of faith that went out and did great things for God. And I was always wowed by these guys. I thought, I want to live that kind of life. I want to live a life of faith that's like that. I want to read the story about William Carey as a penniless cobbler. He had a great dream to go to Asia and preach the gospel on the far side of the world. He had nothing. And for years he prayed as he drew a map on the wall over top of his cobbler's bench of all the unreached places in the world. And he dreamed and he prayed and he longed to live in obedience to God and preaching the gospel in a far-off nation. Before he died, he had translated the Bible. into I think 30 or more, I can't remember the exact number, of all these Indian dialects, I believe. And he had gone over there and preached the gospel all over that area. He had also been a great studier of insects and bugs and plants and flowers and all this stuff. And you could take a little bug to him and he would tell you exactly what that bug, where it was, where it came from. And God blessed him, and he had the incredible ability to become a PhD in bugology, whatever that particular title is supposed to be. But God blessed him, and he was a man of great faith. I thought, I want to live a life like that man. Men like Hudson Taylor, who went to China and preached the gospel to thousands of Chinese men and women over his lifetime. You can read his little biography written by, I think it's his daughter, that says, The Spiritual Secret of Hudson Taylor. He was a man of great faith. John Wycliffe, the handwritten Bibles, William Tyndale, and the first English translation of the New Testament. Jim Elliot. Who remembers the story of Jim Elliot and the Alka Indians down the Amazon dying for his faith? These men were great men of faith, and as a young believer, that's the kind of life I wanted to live. So a question comes up, where is the faith of the disciples and these men, all of whom but one died a horrific death because of their faith? Where is the faith like the rock of Gibraltar that just stands firm no matter what? Why is the faith of so many, including myself, in our day so fickle and so shallow? We trust in God, right? And the first little splashes of the storm that comes begin to hit our face and we turn and we run for the hills. Why is our faith so shallow? I don't know about you, but the faith of these men of old, these women of old, is a sort of faith I want to have, and I want to live, and I want to exercise before God. I want to have the faith that stands firm no matter what. Where do you find about that? Where do you find that sort of faith? Where is it that we learn both what we are to believe and how we are to believe? And the answer, of course, is in the Bible. The passage of scripture before us this morning gives us an outline of the key elements of that sort of faith. And if you look at your note sheet, you can track along there. The faith that comes by hearing the word of God, number one. Number two, the faith that is testified to by a confession. Thirdly, the faith that is proven alive by its works. Fourthly, the faith that is exercised in persistent prayer before God. Fifthly, the faith that brings true humility before God. And sixthly, the faith that fuels obedience for all of life. And seventh, lastly, the faith that is rewarded with God's blessing. Obviously, we're not going to unpack all those. Jesus finished up his story with her and he made this declaration about her, such great or so great faith that she had. He testified, he marveled at the faith of this woman. And that's the faith that I think we need to have. And if you're with me, I want to take us through this passage and I want to see how it is that we can have that kind of faith and how we can live like these men of old and these women of old with such a great faith. So first of all, Faith comes by hearing the words about Jesus Christ. Notice what it says in Mark 7 and verse 25. It says, but after hearing of him, she went and did something. She came and saw Jesus and so on. She heard about him. Faith comes, the Bible tells us, by hearing and by the words of Christ, by the gospel message. It is the words about Jesus, it's the words about the gospel, it's about God. Faith comes by hearing about Jesus Christ Himself. Listen, we are induced And we are convinced to trust in Christ by knowing about Him. We know about His greatness as God in the flesh. We know about His all-knowingness of our situation. Richard was talking about the number of hairs on his head that God knows. Listen, God knows everything about you, far beyond anything that you can possibly understand. God knows more. about your situation. We're induced, we're convinced to trust in Christ because we hear about Him and what He knows, His all-powerfulness to control the weather, to calm the storm, to confine and control demons, His unchangeable nature. Do you know? that the God that we come before week after week after week to worship and serve, the God we get before to pray, the God whose word we open is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The same God that split the sea in the Old Testament, the same God that went to a cross hasn't changed. And we are induced and we are convinced to trust Christ when we hear about Him. This poor woman, you can just see her with a daughter on the bed and she's maybe thrashing around, possessed by a demon, and she hears about Jesus. The woman is never named. I think that's remarkable. We'll call her, let's just call her Mary, just an easy name to remember. Listen, Mary, there's somebody over there in the house over there, not far away. He can deal with this. There's somebody over there who has the power to drive out demons. There's somebody not so far away who can take a loaf of bread, five of them, and break them off and feed 5,000 men, possibly 20 or 25,000 people. That God is over there. He can deal with this. She heard about Christ. She heard, perhaps, about His person. Look, we can say, He is the God man, one person, two natures, three offices. He has a human nature and a divine nature. You're making the good bro about his divine nature. We often forget about that, thinking always about Christ the man, but he is perfectly man and perfectly God. two natures in one person. He has three offices in scripture, three roles to fulfill. He's a great prophet preaching the word of God to us. He's the great priest who went to a cross and offered himself as a sacrifice for us. And then beyond that, as you're pointing out and John was pointing out in Revelation, he goes up to the heights of heaven and he is seated beside his father and he continues that priestly ministry. He is interceding for us as the days go by. I said a few weeks ago, I'll say it again. Be encouraged. Jesus is praying for you. We are induced and we are convinced to trust in Christ when we hear about our savior. She heard about him. She heard about his works, how he created everything, how he is the redeemer, the healer, the teacher, and so on. She heard about Christ. Doesn't say who told her. All we know is that somebody was faithful to go to somebody else with the message that Jesus is the one that can deal with our problems. There's encouragement for us, isn't it? take the message wherever we go and share it with those around us. The works of healing he'd done, the works of teaching that he had done, the works of raising a girl from the dead, the works of feeding thousands and casting out demons. She heard and was convinced that he alone had what was necessary to deal with her problem. Listen, faith is not ignorant. Faith is not blind. Faith is not a predominantly emotional response. Faith is begun. It is nurtured. It is matured on a constant inflow of the word of God, the words about Jesus Christ into the life, the heart, and the mind of the believer. These men of God we're talking about whose lives were saturated with scripture, all of them. David Livingston, you may have heard the story. He got stuck somewhere in Africa, had to be rescued. He sat down with his Bible. and he read it cover to cover while he was waiting to be rescued. Not once, not twice, not three times, but four times he read through his Bible cover to cover while waiting to be rescued. G. Campbell Morgan, who knows that name? Nobody, Julia? Jekima Morgan's a great preacher in London in the late 1890s and early 19, I think up to 1920s thereabouts. He said that he would sit down with his Bible and he would put his notebooks in his pen, he didn't have a computer, and all his books, he'd put them all completely aside and he would open up his Bible and he's gonna preach in the book of the Bible, he would read through that book 50 times. Again and again and again and again. Absolutely saturating and soaking his mind and his heart in scripture. So when he got up to preach, he had so ingrained the truth of that book into his mind that he could just call on verses and phrases and passages all over the book to unfold it beautifully. George Mueller read the Bible through over 200 times later in his life, not just the earlier parts, later. Hudson Taylor got up every morning between two o'clock and four o'clock in the morning. They said if you went with him on a trip, you'd be in a tent, you'd be laying there asleep, and in the middle of the night, you'd hear scratch as a match is being struck, and he would light up a candle, and he would open his Bible, and for two hours or more, he would sit there with his Bible open, and he would read and soak up the scriptures. Why? Just to check off a box? No, because these men knew, these women knew that by soaking up the truth of the living God, that was what fueled their faith. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. William Wilberforce, one of my favorite little guys in England. You remember the story, you watched the movie Amazing Grace about how they ended slavery in England. There's a story told that he lived not far from Parliament, a nice house, and he would walk every day from his house to Parliament. As he would walk along, he would recite from memory in prayer the entire 119th Psalm. He saturated, yeah, that's a huge psalm, 176 verses. And every day he recited it. He soaked his mind in scripture because that fueled his faith. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. It induces us to trust Christ, but faith is built and nurtured by soaking up scripture. Listen, struggling in your faith? Every time a storm hits or the wave hits and it just kind of knocks you back, knocks you back. It knocks you back. Listen, the way you build the strength to withstand those storms of life is by hearing and soaking your mind in the word of God. Faith, secondly, is testified to by confession. The passage of Matthew 15, she cries out, have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David. And she uses a title that's very specific. The Son of David title is a messianic title. By the time it lands to the first century and the Jews in Jerusalem and around that area, Palestine, when they used that title, the Son of David, they weren't just thinking about a future king. They were thinking about the future king. the most important one to come, the Messiah who would set them free. She recognized from whatever she had heard that he is the son of the great King David. Listen, our faith must be accompanied by a confession of trust in the one that we are trusting. She called him Lord, son of David. And she says, have mercy on me. The plea, it's a plea of the condemned, isn't it? The condemned stands in the dock before the judge. He's about to pass sentence on the condemned man. And the condemned man cries out, have mercy. Let go of your just retribution against me. It's another sense, too. It's the idea of deliverance. And she's saying, Lord, Son of David, have mercy. Think about her daughter. She needs to be delivered from her situation, just like mercy is delivering the condemned man from his condemnation. So she is crying out to God, crying out to Jesus to have mercy on her and her daughter. She is confessing her trust. You say, how does that confession of trust? You don't ask somebody to deliver who cannot deliver. You ask somebody who can deliver to deliver, right? It's like you don't ask me to go and play basketball on Joe's team because Joe will lose if we do that. Because I don't have the ability to play basketball on that team. Not only will my knee handle it, nothing else will either. It'll all fall apart. You want someone to play on Joe's team to play basketball, you go and approach someone like Matt who can do that, or Matt who can do that. They have the ability to do that thing. You don't go to somebody who cannot deliver from that situation to ask them to deliver. She went to Jesus. Notice something else. She didn't go anywhere else. She stayed right there. She stayed right beside Jesus. And the Bible tells us, as we'll look in a second, she kept asking Him. She recognized that He was the only one that could deliver her from her situation. It becomes increasingly clear that she totally and completely trusts in the Lord. Faith, that's our topic. Faith must be accompanied by confession. The Bible says in Romans 10 and verse 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That's a promise of scripture. Faith is testified and displayed by the confession that comes out of our mouth. Thirdly, next thing he is, it's this faith is proven alive by the works that she does. Look back in Mac mark again. Mark seven and verse 25 says, after hearing of him, the woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately came and fell at his feet. Faith is proven by the works that we do. James chapter two, verses 18 and 26 tell us this, that faith without works is dead. The faith we claim to have is proven by the works that we do. Faith is not works, but faith is proven and displayed by the works we do. Think about Hebrews 11, right? All those Old Testament men, what does it say? Abel offered. He did something. Enoch walked with God. He was pleasing to God, and God took him up by faith. By faith, Noah built an ark. You say, what's the big deal? Arks got built. Boats got built back then. Not in the middle of a plain. Not a boat so big that nobody could move it. He went out there and built this great big boat. I think some of you have seen the picture on TV of Ham. Ken Ham is building a replica of the ark over in America somewhere. It's giant. It's true to scale. It's a massive boat. And Noah goes out there and he's building this thing away. And there's not a lake in sight. He built it in faith. His face caused him to step out and commit action. He built an ark. He trusted God to keep his word about a coming flood. By faith, Abraham obeyed and left Ur of the Chaldees. He trusted God to keep his word about leading him to a land that would be his possession and dwelling and he would have a son and not just be the father of one nation, he would be the father of many nations. By faith, this Canaanite woman came to him. She came trusting that Jesus Christ, who had healed diseases and cleansed lepers and calmed storms, would cast the demon out of her daughter. Faith demands that we act in agreement with that faith. What's Romans say? Romans 4 verses 19 and 25. Take your Bibles, stick your finger in Mark and flip over to the front, to the end, sorry. Romans chapter 4. First getting a hold of the idea of what faith really is, this passage was so key for me. Romans chapter 4 verses 19 to 25, let's read it together. He says, speaking about Abraham, without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but he grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, he was able also to perform. That's how I define faith. God is able to keep his promises. Verse 22, therefore it was credited to him as righteousness. Now, not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also to whom it will be credited as those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification. Faith is being convinced and acting on it. Abraham was convinced that God would keep His promise and nothing could dissuade him. Adoniram Judson, you heard that name before. He was convinced that God had called him to take the gospel to Myanmar, way back in the 1800s, I believe it is. And nothing could stop him, not even William Carey. He'd been there for years as a missionary. He said, don't do it. Don't go over the mountains into Burma, or what's called Myanmar now, because it's too dangerous. Adenar, I'm judging, spent years in prison and he went through all kinds of terrible doubt and, not doubt, depression and discouragement. But he was convinced, that's what God had called him to do, and he carried on. Abraham was convinced and so he acted. Abraham was convinced and did not consider the roadblocks. You know what we do a lot? We talk about open doors and closed doors, right? All the time. God opened a door, God closed a door. I suddenly thought, you know what Abraham did? He didn't look at Sarah's womb and said, there is literally a closed door. He said, I'm convinced that this is what God is going to do. I'm convinced this is what we should do. And he did not consider, the Bible says, the deadness of her womb. But he was trusting in God. He gave glory to God in the faith that he had. Abraham could have concluded it was a closed door. But no, he gave weight. and greater weight to the word that God had given him and disregarded the closed door. That's why faith begins with the word of God, the words about Christ and builds on them. That's why it's so important to also act on our faith. Faith is being convinced, but sorry, the faith that is convinced, but does nothing is a shallow, empty, unconvinced faith. It believes whatever it's told, but it commits absolutely nothing to it. Faith is conviction of the truth. Faith is commitment to the truth. Faith rolls up its sleeves and gets to work. Faith like a muscle must be worked to build strength. So faith is the key. Faith that is proven by action. Fourthly, faith is exercised by persistent prayer. And you wanna know where the crunch of God's convicting finger hit me? Right here. Here's where it is. Notice again in Mark 7 and verse 26, the Bible says, the woman was a Gentile, the Syrophoenician race, and she kept asking him. And those words just hit home. She kept asking him. She did not ask once. She was persistent and persevering in her request. If I can use the word, she nagged him to the point of the disciples' frustration. Send her away. She's bothering us. Her persistent asking is the perfect picture of faith practiced in prayer. She's like the man in Luke 11. The man goes to his friend, and late at night, and says, my other friend has come to visit me. Give me three loaves of bread. But the man inside says, no, no, no. It's late at night. My kids and I, we're in bed. The lights are out. Go home. But because of his friend's persistence, he will eventually rise and give him that which he desires. And Jesus was saying, listen, it's persistent prayer. It's the knocking that just will not stop. She kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. Faith is most clearly and purely demonstrated by prayer. Faith must be accompanied by works, but faith is toughened and strengthened by prayer. Prayer is the perfect preparation for the work of God we do. Did you notice John the Baptist's life? 30 years he spent preparing and waiting and praying. He finally got the call. Three months he preached and lost his head for it. All that time of preparation. Jesus spent 30 years preparing in his father's carpenter shop. He went out and preached and ministered for three years and then went to a cross. Look at the comparison. All that preparation for such a short ministry. And the reality is we're kind of people who love the idea of getting down to work and getting the thing done, that we don't spend enough time in preparation. What's one of the reasons, it's just occurred to me, Joshua son of Nun. What's one of the reasons that there's 40 years of time in the wilderness? You say, because they disobeyed and God judged them. You're absolutely right. Guess what else he did? He spent 40 years in the desert learning, Joshua, learning how to be a leader. You know what's said of him? Moses pitched a tent, a tent of meeting, way outside, far away from the camp. And Moses and Joshua would go out to that camp and they would spend time in the presence of the living God inside that tent. And Moses got to a point where he left and went back to the camp of Israel. Where did Joshua stay? in the tent before the living God. Joshua was a man of prayer. I've been listening to Alistair Begg talk about Nehemiah, the way he says it, and what they did in rebuilding the wall. And he made this great point. He said that Nehemiah was a leader and a governor. He was a man of prayer. He spent more time in prayer for the rebuilding of the wall than they actually did in building it. He spent 90 days in silent fasting, praying, and weeping before the Lord in preparation for the work that he would do. Then they spent 52 days less time actually rebuilding the wall. We're so interested in doing but seemingly so uninterested in seeking and in pleading in prayer for the wisdom of God, the strength of God, the enabling of God through prayer. John Knox. A fiery Scottish reformer lived in 1514 to 1572. He knew the secret to enduring suffering was faith that was built in prayer. He would rise in the middle of the night. He would go off into a room by himself in the coldness of the night, and he would pray for hours there. His wife became so concerned that he would get sick that she'd go up, and she did not dare enter the room where he was praying, and she would knock on the door. John, honey, come on. had to come back to bed, and he would say, no, I have a thousand souls that I must wrestle with before God. Or wrestle with God with. Try it again. Wrestle with God about. And he spent hours and hours and hours in prayer for his people. He also spent hours and hours in prayer for his own situation. John Knox would be put in a prison hulk. He'd go down to the very bottom of this hulk, and they put him to work, and this is in the 1500s, and he was rowing a boat. down the bottom of a dark, dank hold of a ship. That was his job. In those dark spots, he learned how to really pray before God. Mary, Queen of Scots, his great antagonist enemy there, she said she was more afraid of the prayers of John Knox than she was of an enemy advancing army. Because John Knox prayed. Devoutly and persistently, this woman, she kept asking Martin Luther, one of my other heroes, he said, I have so much to do today that I must set aside three hours to pray. And a day before computers, mass-produced paper, mass-produced pens, and I think printing presses were just around then, he produced in one year 180 finished written works, sermons, books, pamphlets, tracks, letters, and so on. He also preached, by the way, just as a side note, seven times a week. He said, I got to pray. I got so much to do, I got to pray. And he spent three hours of his day praying. Martin Lloyd-Jones, they call him the last of the Puritans, a preacher of the 1920s and 30s Welsh revival, was described by his wife after he died as, first of all, a man of great prayer. He was one of the greatest preachers the English country ever knew. Him and Spurgeon stood side by side. He was a man of prayer. She kept asking. She didn't give up. Faith is proven, faith is tested, and faith is developed and toughened in our knees before God praying. We don't need a new system. We don't need a new method. We need men who are renewed in prayer before God. We need women who are renewed in prayer before God if we're going to see the gospel advance. Perhaps, brothers and sisters, the reason we don't see the same great faith lived out in our lives is these three reasons. Number one, we do not spend enough time in God's Word to know Him, to know His ways, to know His will, to know His desires for us. Second of all, we do not spend enough time praying through the scriptures that we are reading to become convinced of what it is that He is calling us to do. And third thing is the other side of that. We do not spend enough time listening to God as we pray. Listening to hear what the Spirit of God is saying through the Word of God that is open in front of us. KC Bible Church, we began this church four years ago with a time of nothing but prayer and seeking God to do His work in us and through us. Sorry, this is going to hurt. I've become convinced over the last couple of days that the struggles we have faced over the past four years are a result, at least in part, because of the decline of the gathering for the public prayer by the men and women of this church. Sorry. And I know I'm not sorry at the very same time. I needed to hear that. You ask Hev, I was different last night. She kept asking me, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? My heart was so convicted as I was studying this and working through this. If we want to see God do a work in us, we want to see God do a work through us into this community, this church, it's not going to start by programs and doing and running in every direction of the guy who jumped on his horse and ran off in all directions at the same time. It's going to start when the people of God get together on their knees before the living God and begin to pray together. Listen. Gathering for prayer will never be convenient. You know how many times I've gotten into my truck at the end of a night of prayer to Woodley's house and gone home thanking the Lord for it? It's almost directly related to the number of times I drove to the prayer meeting wishing I didn't have to go, because I've got something else to do. And I've gotten home again and again and said, Heth, I'm so glad I went. Because when I'm there and we begin to pray together as a church, as a group together before God, God works on our hearts. Prayer will always, always cost us something. If it didn't cost us something, we'd miss the point. Jim Cimbala, who is a pastor of Metropolitan Tabernacle. You've heard about the Metropolitan Tabernacle Choir. I did music backing for years and amongst the music industry in the States. He said it best. He said, if you cannot make it to every meeting, come to one, the prayer meeting, Tuesday night. If you're so busy and so full and you got so much to do that you can't stay all Sunday morning, come and pray and go. Missed the rest of the service, but prayer is the key. Listen, Jesus said, my Father's house is a house of prayer, and we have made it almost everything but. It's true. We will not see God work in this church until we become again a praying church. And you know what? I'm laying heavy on you. You're right, I am. There's a piece of me that didn't want to get up and say that this morning, say this. But I'll tell you right now, God worked on my heart last night and said, you know what, if you don't become a praying pastor, you won't see the change in this church. Ian Bowen said something like this, I can't quote it exactly, but he said, a pastor's role is first of all and primarily to turn his people into a praying people so that all the time, through all their lives, they have God set before them so they are constantly in prayer before God. That's what will change. That's what will help us. That's what will work to reach this community. It isn't new programs, new methods, and new tracts. It's the people who are on their knees praying before God. God created this world in seven days without our help. Do you think he needs our help to reach a world for Christ? No. But he delights to use us. And he will use us if we are men and women of prayer. Mark 7, 26, she kept asking on the other side of it. She would not let go. Remember the Old Testament story about Jacob? God has brought Jacob out of the home of his parents and into Laban's home and all the years of him learning what it's like to live with a chiseler, live with a swindler. And God finally brings him back and he's going to bring Esau to meet him. And Esau is coming with 400 men this way and God is coming, sorry, Jacob's coming this way and God meets Jacob at a place called Peniel and the Bible describes that he wrestled with God all through the night. And the angel of the Lord finally said, let me go. And Jacob said, no, I will not let you go until you bless me. When was the last time, brother and sister, you heard God say, let me go? I haven't heard that. I confess it. How much difference would it make in our church if we were praying so much that God finally said, let me go? We wanna see God do a work here. We've been praying for revival, a group of us, for months, probably over a year now. We need to keep praying. We need to keep persisting. We need to keep going back and saying, Lord, this is a work that you can do in this church. Brothers and sisters in Christ, is it just possible that we do not see the blessing that God wants to give this church because we are not willing to do like she did and keep asking? There is so much more I want to say. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. She heard about Jesus. Matthew 15, 22, faith is testified by confession. She cried out, have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. Faith, number three, is proven alive by its works. After hearing, she came. Fourthly, faith is exercised in persistent prayer. She kept asking him to cast the demon out. Next week, we'll look at faith that brings great humility, faith in obedience, and faith in reward. But there is one more thing that I want to say this morning. I want to go on to one more thing. It's not in your notes. Look at the Lord Jesus Christ in the text. Let's read it again. Matthew chapter 7, verse 24. Jesus got up and he went away from there to the region of Tyre. And when he had entered a house, he wanted no one to know of it, yet he could not escape notice. You know what it tells me? He made the great point, brother, about how God is, Jesus is God. But he's also a man and he got tired. I think he was tired of all the work and the weary of the trouble and the strife that he'd been through for the last couple of days. And he finally said, you know what? I just want to get away from it all. And the Bible describes him walking. And to go to Tyre, it's about 40 miles northwest of where he was by the Sea of Galilee. And he gets there and he says, I'm far away from everybody. And he goes into a house, perhaps of a friend, who knows who it was. And he says, I don't want anybody to know that I'm here. He wanted to be alone. Perhaps he wanted to spend some time in prayer. This Mark chapter 8 is a turning point in the whole book. Up until now, he's been working all around the Sea of Galilee. Mark chapter 8 happens, and now he starts to head down south towards Jerusalem, towards the end of his life, his crucifixion. Maybe he wanted some time for that. Maybe he wanted some time with his disciples just to minister to them and talk to them and encourage them. But she hears about it, and she comes in, and she starts asking. She won't let go. And it hit me, you know what that shows me? He did not send her away. That's grace. In the middle of everything that's going on in his life, in his preparation for his death, he still had time. Yes, Matthew 15 says he didn't answer a word for a time, but he had grace. If you've been given a hiding this morning through the Word of God like I got last night, listen. God has grace. If you look at your prayer life and think, you know what, I need to spend more time in prayer, then do like this woman did. She heard, she came, and she kept asking. There is something I missed out. I could go back and look at it. I don't know if I will. She fell at his feet. She literally threw herself down before him in an act of great obeisance and worship. You're getting poked. Your prayer life is not what it ought to be. Your time in the world is not what it ought to be. Your life of obedience is not what it ought to be. Don't despair. Don't give up. Don't look at the problem and say, the problem is bigger than my God. Turn and come to the feet of Jesus and you will find grace. She pleaded with him, and he responded to her, and that's grace. He met her need as only he could, and that is grace. He approved of her faith in an amazing way. Woman, your faith is great. What a magnificent statement from the Savior. Think about that. Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despised the shame, looked at this woman and said, your faith is great. Looked at Romans and said, great is your faith. He commended her because she came in pleading. She came in total helplessness and knowing that only He could deliver her. Listen, there is grace with God. As long as there is life and breath in you and me, as long as the Lord tarries in His returning, there's still grace. There's still opportunity to put our lives right before God, to live in that kind of faith. There is still opportunity, and so long as God tarries to see this community reach for Christ, it will happen if we become a people of faith and prayer. Be encouraged. God is gracious. He has not given up on you. And like him sitting in the room in the house when the woman came, he waited until she came. And when he'd finished with her, the Bible says he turned around and he walked right back down where he came from. Makes me think, he went to get away, but he also went because he knew he had to meet with her and her story would be included in the scriptures. Come to Christ, fall at his feet in worship and confession of his greatness. Cry out to God like she did in prayer for the things that are on your heart. You know what? We make prayer too difficult at times. I got to have the right sayings, I got to have the right form, got to use the right wording. Uncle Jack, he was one of the godliest men I have ever known, would say his best prayers were two words, help, Lord. It's absolutely true. We need to come before God and just pour out our heart before Him, tell Him everything that's going on, the hurts, the frustrations, the fears, the difficulties. And by the way, God in His grace will point out to you what needs to be dealt with as sin, and He'll point out to you what is a genuine fear and a concern, and He will help you deal with it. Be like this woman and like Jacob, who would not let go until God blessed them. Wonderful, merciful Savior. We were singing that a minute ago. He is a wonderful Savior. He is so gracious and He is so kind. And He's also a wonderful interceding high priest too. Whoever lives on high, He's praying for us. Do you know He's praying for you that you might pray more to Him? That's amazing in itself. about such great comfort that our Savior is waiting to hear and longs to hear us to come in faith and in prayer. KC Bible Church, we need to be a people of faith and a people of prayer. With that in mind, I'm going to ask if maybe a couple of the men would stand and would lead us in prayer as we go. I asked John, it was very short notice, to put the last song at the end so we could do this instead. Perhaps if I won't point you out, perhaps if a couple of men could just lead us in prayer, and I'll close in a few minutes, and we'll be done. Loving Father, again, we give you thanks for your grace. Grace so rich and so free, and yet, Father, it costs the Lord Jesus everything that we might experience it. Father, we thank you that you are indeed a loving Father, And although you discipline your children to bring us back from our wandering ways, Father, we plead with you this morning. We plead with you to keep laying the rod on until we come all the way back. But Father, in knowing that, knowing that there is also grace, that you will give us the strength. Father, we give you thanks for the scripture that tells us that you are working in us both to will and to do for your good pleasure. Father, keep working in us. Don't let go. Don't let up. Father, it is so critical that this world sees the body of Christ as it was truly meant to be. Loving each other, loving God. Father, we pray this morning that you would break hard hearts. That you would encourage the weakened and the struggling hearts. Father, that you would strengthen the knee and strengthen the arm for the journey and the walk that's ahead. Father, we pray that you would lift up saddened and burdened hearts and fill them with the joy of the Lord. Father, we pray that as we go from this place, we would go rejoicing because God has met with us and God has spoken. Father, we ask you again for your blessing on our little church. And we give you thanks for the great work that you are doing amongst us. And we do so in Jesus' name, amen. I'm going to read the words of that song we sang. Wonderful, merciful Savior, precious Redeemer and friend, who would have thought that a lamb could rescue the souls of men? Oh, you rescue the souls of men. You are the one that we praise. You are the one we adore. You give the healing and grace our hearts always hunger for. Oh, our hearts always hunger for. What a wonderful Savior we have this morning. Amen.