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Look at James chapter one for
a moment. Walk with me just through James for just a moment. You
all know this, nothing new. But look at James chapter one
in verse five. If any of you lack wisdom, let him do what?
Ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth
not and it shall be given him. That verse always makes me chuckle
a little bit that he begins that verse with the letters of, or
with the word if. Y'all find that a little humorous?
Just in case there's a guy that doesn't know what to do, let
him ask of God, just in case, you know, you're a little unsure.
I just find that funny because if I'd have been the Holy Spirit
writing to this, I'd have said, hey, y'all, ask. You know, would y'all
have been that way? Because I feel like it's not
an if for me, I just better ask that every day. But notice what
he said, if you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, verse 6,
let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. Let him ask in faith. You know chapter 4 as well, don't
you? Look in chapter 4, and this is so familiar. We know this.
How many times have you preached from this? Chapter 4 and verse
2, you lust and have not, you kill, desire to have, cannot
obtain. You fight in war, yet you have
not because. Yes, not, so simple. Verse three,
you ask and receive not because you ask amiss, but we don't have
because we don't ask, and sometimes we ask and don't get because
we didn't ask right. And these are just truths found
throughout the Bible here. Chapter five continues that idea
on several different verses, several different levels, beginning
in verse 13 of chapter five. Is any among you afflicted? What
should he do? He should pray. If he's merry, what should he
do? Sing psalms. If he's sick, anybody among you
sick, well, let him call for the elders of the church and
let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the
Lord. And verse 15 says, and the prayer of faith, the prayer
of faith. Chew on that a moment. The prayer
of faith shall save the sick. Verse 16 says, confess your faults
one to another and pray one for another that you may be healed.
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
Elias, Hebrew Elijah, Greek Elias, was a man subject to like passions
as we are. And he prayed earnestly that
it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space
of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the
heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. Zero
in on one sentence, one sentence, chapter 5, verse 16, the last
sentence. Zero in on that verse with me
just a moment. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much. Brothers, do you believe that?
Sisters, do you believe that? The effectual fervent prayer of a
righteous man avails much. One of the greatest things in
the world is to pray and see God answer your prayers. You
agree with that, don't you? What a delight to have a God that
loves us so much that He hears our prayers and He answers. Isn't
that delightful? What's the biggest thing you've
ever prayed about? What's the most miraculous thing you've
ever seen God do? I know you probably heard that silly story
about the lady that bought her a parakeet, or a parrot, I guess
it was, and the shop owner sold it to her and told her, now,
it can talk, it can talk, and she's lonely, so she said, I
want an animal that can talk, and she took it home, and sure
enough, about six months later, it started talking. The only
thing it would say was, let's kiss. all it would say and her
parrot all the time, let's kiss. And you know, the mailman come
the door to give her mail, the parrot pipe up and say, let's
kiss. And it embarrassed her. And pastor come to visit her
and her parrot would say, let's kiss. And she just felt awkward
about it. Well, their pastor, her pastor went and bought himself
a parrot and taught it to talk. But only thing it would say was
let's pray. And her, you know, his parrot was more spiritual
apparently than hers. And pastor's parrot would say, let's pray.
And so pastor told a story about that one day, and she thought,
well, reckon I could get my parrot with his parrot, and maybe my
parrot would start saying more than let's kiss. So she floated
that by the pastor, and he said, sure, bring it over. And we let
him stay together for a month or so, and see if your parrot
will learn to say let's pray. Have y'all heard this story? She took her parrot over there,
and she walked in, set it up on the shelf there beside a pastor's
parrot, and her bird spoke up first and said, let's kiss. And
pastor's parents said, praise God, my prayers have been answered.
Now, that's a dumb illustration, isn't it? And that's just a joke. You know, I'm sure that's just
a joke. That's got to be. But you do know God answers prayer,
don't you? You all believe that? Sure He does. And isn't that
a wonderful thing to have in our ministry? Sometimes we don't
know what to do, but I can say, God, help. I need wisdom, Lord.
I don't know how to handle this situation. I don't know how to
counsel this couple. Sometimes you want to cancel
them. But I don't know how to counsel this couple. Lord, I
don't know how to counsel this couple. I don't know. Lord, I
don't know what to do. I don't know how to help. Help,
Lord. He says, you're asking. And if you're asking faith, if
you're asking faith, well, God will give you wisdom. It's that
pretty simple, isn't it? And you get chapter 40. He says,
you know, you have not because you ask not. Sometimes we just get
too busy to pray. Anybody here like that besides
me? Sometimes you just get too busy doing good things, but no
time with the Lord. And yet there's all kinds of
ministries we heard about here today, your ministry and the ministry
of these brothers up here. Did you know there are just some
things that cannot be done outside of the miracle power of Almighty
God. And the only way to access the
miracle power of an almighty God is to get on our knees and
say, okay, Lord, help. Help, God. Do it, Lord. Do it,
Lord. Do it, Lord. Do it, Lord. And
sometimes you just got to go to God. And so he says you have
not because you ask not. And sometimes we aren't right
with God, so we don't get our prayers answered. He alludes
to that in the sentence I gave you. The effectual fervent prayer
of what kind of man? Not just anybody can get big
answers to prayers, but if you're right with God, you can. If you're
right with God, you can get your prayers answered. It matters
how we live, even as preachers, doesn't it? And it's not just
such a thing for our church members. We ought to be right. We ought
to be godly. We ought to be clean. We ought to be pure. We ought
to be walking with God. We ought to be holy. We ought
to pursue righteousness. We ought to be trying to do what's
right. Why? Because it's only a righteous man that can get
his prayers answered. And so never be afraid to spend a little
time with the Lord and say, Lord, how am I doing? How am I doing?
I keep talking to your people, Lord, but how am I doing? Don't
ever be afraid to do that. Do that periodically. I don't
know how y'all are, but every time I set aside a little time
to say, Lord, how am I doing? Lord, what could I work on? The
Lord always has something in mind. It always catches me off
guard how fast he responds to that. and says, well, how about
this right here? You could do better at that.
And how about that right there? The Lord just puts his finger on things in
my life because, you know, here's what he's trying to tell you.
Sometimes we can't get our prayers answered because things aren't
well. And so he says, you know, you can pray, but ask amiss and
God doesn't answer your prayer. Don't you love the simplicity
of that sentence, though? The effectual, fervent prayer
of a righteous man availeth much. Don't you love how simple that
is? I'd teach you three lessons from that, three reminders from
that, if you will. Look in this passage and notice
that we ought to pray believing. Didn't he say that over and over?
How do you get wisdom? By faith. You pray believing. Y'all believe in faith, don't
you? You pray believing. Faith is, being full of faith
is important. We say, that guy's really faithful,
and I know what we mean by that. Usually when we say, you know,
let's be faithful, we mean be consistent. Don't give up, don't
quit, don't back down, don't step away, don't stop, be consistent. But the word faithful literally
is, you gotta go backwards to get that word. It means to be
full of faith. And sometimes we're satisfied
with faithfulness in the idea of consistency. Well, you know,
I'm telling you, I've been doing the same thing for 25 years.
I'm a faithful man. But the fact of the matter is,
when it comes to prayer, it's not just a consistency. He wants
me to be full of belief. Full of faith. Now somebody says,
well, how in the world can we be full of faith? Because faith
is based on the recipient, and it's about our God, and who He
is, and His power, and His ability, and His strength. Are you full
of faith? You have confidence in a great God, brothers and
sisters? You don't believe God's real? How many of y'all believe
that? Is He a great God? Can He do anything? Can he still
work miracles? Does he still save the sick and
heal the sick and set people free from addictions? Does he
still save hard sinners? Does he? Does he still change
lives? Can he still help families get
back together? So here's what he's trying to
say to us. Be full of faith about that. Faith is confidence. That
word means confidence. It also means trust. And one
of the tricky things about faith is putting those two things together
into one entity. I have great confidence that
God can do anything. That's why it's always right to pray about
anything that God can do. So you say, I don't know if God's
gonna heal me or not. Yeah, but go ahead and pray about it, because
God can heal, so go ahead and pray about it and pray in faith.
I have confidence that God could touch me and heal me, and I'm
gonna talk to God about it. I'm gonna pray in faith. And
so you say, I don't know if God will do that or not. I don't
know if God would do that or not, but go ahead and pray in faith.
If it's okay to ask, it's okay to pray big. And you just go
to God and say, God, I know you could. I don't know if you will
or not. I think it's okay to pray that way. You can be honest with
God. God already knows your heart
anyway, doesn't he? It's not like you're going to catch him off guard. So you
can go to God and say, God, I don't know if you'd heal this or not.
Sister so-and-so, brother so-and-so, I don't know if you'd heal them
or not. You can go for yourself. God, I don't know if you'd heal
me or not. I know you can. And so I don't know if you will or
not. You don't have to do a miracle for me, but I'm going to just
pray about it anyway. You can pray in faith. That's
confidence in God. But faith is also trust. It's
that balance of saying, God, I know you can. but I'm going
to trust that whatever you do is going to be good for me, and
you know what's best, and I can trust you about that. All of
us are going to get sick one of these days probably and die,
aren't we? Aren't y'all aware of that? Y'all aware of that,
aren't you? Y'all know you got to die, don't you? And some of
us are going to be sooner than others because everybody has
to die. Well, don't be afraid of that. You can't scare a child
of God with heaven. Is that fair? We might get COVID
and die. Well, there's people that did,
and some of my friends did, and there's all kinds of issues from
all that, but we don't sorrow like this world around us that
has no hope. If I die of cancer or COVID or whatever it is, the
fact of the matter is I am gonna be in heaven, and that's still
a land that is fairer than day. Y'all believe that? So we're
not troubled by this thing. We're not troubled. We're not
troubled. We're not missing it. We have great trust that whatever
God does is better, but we can pray in faith. Whatever God does
is good. I've been meditating some over
the last year about Lazarus. Remember, Lazarus died. He died,
and Jesus brought him back. Don't you feel sorry for Lazarus?
We rejoice, oh man, Lord, raised him from the dead. But I'm telling
you, I think Lazarus walked out of the tomb and probably said
something like, seriously? And I mean, he was, you know,
in a land where there's no suffering, no sin, no sorrow, no tragedy,
no trials, no more death, no more dying, and Jesus brought
him back. I think he's probably a little
upset about that. But see, I'm not worried about it. Don't be
afraid. Don't be afraid. God's a good God. You all believe
that, don't you? So you can trust him. So here's what we ought
to learn. The first lesson we ought to learn is we ought to
pray believing. How many times in James did he say, the prayer
of faith, ask in faith, pray believing? You missionary brothers,
well, God bless you. Those are some big endeavors.
Those are some big endeavors. Here's our brother running a
camp, Ferndale. That's a big endeavor. That's
a big endeavor. You say, I don't know if I can do this or not.
I got bad news for you. You can't do it. You say, I don't
know if I can build a church or not, Brother Frank. I don't
know, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, we praise God at 50 say,
but I don't know. Will we ever have a building
like this? Will we ever have a PA system like that? Will we ever
have a grand piano like that? I mean, that's called faith.
Well, the fact of the matter is I got good news for you, you can't do it.
That's good news, Sid, you can't do it. But we have a great God,
don't we? We have a great God. Don't ever
let the world, the flesh, and the devil undermine that. You
have a great God. No matter what your endeavor is, there's a God
in heaven. And, Brother Folger, I don't
know how in the world you can put a Bible in every hand in Asia for crying
out loud. We don't even know how many people
there are. And by the time we figure it out, they have more
of them. and it's getting bigger all the time, but who knows?
I mean, we can't do that, but we can pray in faith about it,
can't we? We can say, all right, Lord, we know you want your word to
go forth, and I don't know how in the world we're gonna raise
the money. I don't know how in the world we're gonna do it. I don't know how in the world
we're gonna get to all the Bibles there. I don't know how in the world we're gonna
get to everybody, but there's a God in heaven bigger than all of
that, so pray believing. The effectual, fervent prayer
of a righteous man avails much. Aren't you glad for that great
truth? Pray believing. Can I say to you, pray big. Pray
big. How big did Elijah pray? I love
this. He said, now, Lord, don't let
it rain till I say so. Now, I don't know. That's a crazy
prayer, isn't it? Now, why did he pray that big?
Why did he pray like that? You all know why he prayed that way,
don't you? It was actually a prayer of faith. Because if you study
your Bible, you'll find out that one of the things God told the
nation of Israel was that as long as you honor me and do what's
right and seek me, I'll bless you and use you and take care
of you. But if you worship idols and you turn away from me and
won't listen to me and won't listen to my men, won't do what's
right, here's what I'll do. I'll withhold the rain till you
get right with me. You can find that in the Bible.
I wonder where Elijah got the idea to pray that God wouldn't
let it rain. Well, there's no doubt about it. He got that from
the law. He got it from the promises of God. And here's what I love
about that, something I've learned, and I'm still meditating on it,
and I don't know that I have it fully figured out. Elijah apparently
was praying because that's what God said would happen, but it
wasn't automatic. God said it would happen. If
you worship idols, I'll withhold the rain till my people are desperate
and willing to come back to me. God said it would happen. It
did not happen. Until a man named Elijah said,
okay God. You said that's what you'd do, so I'm gonna claim
it. You said that's what you'd do, so I'm gonna believe it.
I'm gonna believe it, and I'm just gonna pray big about it.
I don't understand how this happens, Lord, because if I understand,
you know, biology and science and all that stuff, I know how
rain forms and the clouds and the moisture and and evaporation,
all that. Lord, I don't know how all this
works. And I don't, Lord, but you, Lord, you said that it wouldn't
rain. So I'm just gonna go out on a
limb here, Lord, and say, since you said it, I'm gonna ask about
it. Don't let it rain till I say so, so your people will get right
with you. Nothing selfish about that prayer. What's the heart
of Elijah? The heart of Elias, the heart of Elias is that God's
people would repent, come back to God, and get right with God.
What a big prayer. How long has it been since you
prayed really big? What a big prayer. Lord, don't let it rain.
Don't let it rain. And then he took a step of faith. I don't
know how this happened. The Bible doesn't give us the detail. But when
I get to heaven, there's things I want to ask people about. Are
y'all with me on that? Like, I want to talk to Euodius and
Syntyche when I get to heaven and find out what the issue was.
You ever read Philippians 4? The Spirit of God inspired Paul
to tell Euodius and Syntyche, this isn't right. Now get it
right. Get right with each other. But he didn't tell us what the
problem was. And every time I read Philippians, I don't know what
y'all do. When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask him. I'm going
to meet Sintike walking down Hallelujah Boulevard, and she's
going to say, my name is Sintike, and I'm going to say, I'm just
curious, what did y'all do Paul had to write y'all about? Am
I the only one like that? I just want to know. I want to
know all the details of this story. What was it that called
Elias to say, all right, don't let it rain? Okay, we answered
that. We found that. That's in the law. But what was
it that called Elias to get up and say, all right, Lord, you're
going to answer my prayer and march into Ahab and say, hey,
I just need to tell you something, old buddy. I just want you to
know something. I don't know how that happened.
I don't know how he got in. I don't know. It seems like in the Bible,
if I understand it, Elijah marches in and said, hey, I need to tell
you something from God. It's not gonna rain again in
this land till I say so. See you later. And he left. Wonder what Ahab did. Ahab was
probably like, who let that idiot in here? Where'd he come from? What in the world was that all
about? Not gonna rain till he says so. Can you imagine how
he told that to Jezebel? So you won't believe what this
idiot came in and told me today, claimed to be a man of God and said it
wasn't going to rain anymore until he said so. Jezebel was
like, well, you got that right. That man's a first class idiot,
isn't he? Can you imagine? They had preacher for lunch that
day, didn't they? No doubt about it. Nobody was laughing three
and a half years later. Somebody prayed big. Make a difference. Did it make a difference? You
know it did. Six months without rain's a big
deal, isn't it? Three years without rain's getting desperate. This
is a big deal. Can you imagine what Ohio would
look like if it didn't rain for three and a half years? There
wouldn't be any corn. Wouldn't be any soybeans. The
Amish would be getting desperate. They wouldn't have any food in
the cellars. The garden's not gonna grow without water. This
is getting real serious, wouldn't it? Here's the steps we ought
to learn from this. Pray believing. What a lesson.
Pray believing. What a lesson. Pray believing.
What a lesson. Pray big. And I just say to you
lastly, pray because. Because of what? Because the
effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
So pray because. Pray believing. God, you can,
and I trust you, but I'm going to ask you. And pray big because
there's nothing too hard for our God. With our God, nothing
shall be impossible. You all brothers believe that?
You sisters believe that? So pray believing, pray big, pray
because. And he gives us the because right
here. And here's the because. The effectual, fervent prayer
of a righteous man availeth much. And the Bible just tells us,
just a little overview, Elias was a man subject to like passions
as we are. Do you find that encouraging? It's easy to think, wow, these
men in the Bible, my goodness, they were great men of faith. They were super Christians, oh,
my goodness. But James wants us to know, there's
no super Christian here. He's just like you. I don't know,
I mean, how far you go with that? Maybe he could have said, Elias
was dumb as a coal bucket, too. I don't know, how would he have
said that? Elias had bad days, too. Elias
sometimes got up on the wrong side of the bed. Elias didn't
always have faith. Elias sometimes got discouraged.
And we know he did. He's just like me and you. What
was the difference? He had a great God. He had a great God. He prayed
believing, prayed big, and he prayed because. He believed that
the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
And so he prayed, Lord, don't let it rain till I say so. Three
and a half years later, I don't know what happened. I don't know
what prompted this. Three and a half years later, things are
getting really desperate, and Ahab and Elijah connect. Ahab finally finds Elijah, and
Elijah finds, actually, Elijah found Ahab. And Elijah said,
hey, get that Jezebel wife of yours to get her prophets together
and meet me on Mount Carmel. Let's have a little showdown,
not a hoedown, a showdown. And let's come up here and have
a little showdown. And we're gonna build an altar. Y'all,
brothers, you know this. My goodness, how many times have you told
this story and preached this story? Build an altar. And y'all go ahead
and cry out to Baal, and if he's God, let him answer. And I'll
let you guys go first, since there's 800 of you. And since
y'all worship Baal, he's either God or he's not. He's either
real or he's not. He's either real or fake. Let's not play
around with this. Either he's going to be real
or he's not. And if he's not real, let's give this stupidity up. And if
God's not real, then let's give up on religion. This is going
to be real or not. Let's put something to the test here and
find out, is this real? So he said, go ahead, y'all, pray.
And whatever else they must have believed in Baal, because, boy,
they sure tried, didn't they? Whatever else you say about them,
they really were serious about their worship of that false God.
They really believed. They cut themselves. They cried.
They prayed. They begged. They danced. They
tried every way in the world to get their God to hear them.
And then Elijah's getting stronger by the moment. Elijah just cracks
me up because he actually starts making fun of them. He said,
my goodness, maybe you ought to try louder. He might be asleep
or he might be on vacation. Or he might, you know, you might
ought to try a little harder. Hey, cry a little louder. He's
not listening, is he? And I don't know how it all transpired.
We don't have every detail. But somewhere during that day,
Elijah said, all right, that's enough. He said, tell you what,
we don't have much water left. In fact, there's just, we've
got to run down here at the foot of the mountain. There's some
water down there. Cart it up here and dump it on this altar.
Can you imagine what the people thought about Elijah? The man
really is an idiot. You know, they thought that come
come, you know that You know, they thought this guy this guy's
not all there This guy's not all there bring water up here
Dow said I mean water is running everywhere, you know, this is
this is a big point at a time of three and a half years drought
Pour it on there soak it good and he didn't pray very long.
Did he? Now he said Lord show these people your God the fire
came down and The Bible's true, and I believe it is. I believe
every word of it, don't you? I believe the creation story
is literal. I believe the revelation story is literal. I just believe
it all. I believe it all. I don't understand
it all, but I believe it word for word. I believe every page
of it's true. I believe that when the Bible
says this, admit it, that when it was all said and done, the
fire fell down, the stones were even licked up. I don't understand
all that. That's why he prayed. He prayed
because prayer avails. much what happened the people
said boy that's right Baal is fake and false and we're done
with Baal the Lord he is God what in the world did it get
what did it take to get them there what did it take to get a messed
up generation to revival three and a half years three and a
half years The effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
Say, Lord, I sure wanna see people in my town saved. Don't you stop
praying. Can I tell you something I've
learned, brothers? If you're praying, God is working. Don't you all
miss that? If you're praying, God is working.
Tell the parents in your church whose kids aren't well, encourage
them with this Sunday. If you're praying, God is working.
Say, yeah, but we've been praying for 15 years and our son is still
far from God. Just imagine where he'd be if
you weren't praying. Just think of what the devil
would have done in his life if your prayers weren't involved. If you're praying,
God is working. You say, well let's see people
saved in our town. Pray up a storm. Well nobody's getting saved.
Keep on praying. Because the God of heaven is working. If
you're on your knees, on your face, if your head is bowed,
if you're in his presence, the effectual fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much. And my dear brothers, I want
to encourage you about that. Believe it. Don't give up on
prayer. Don't give up on crying out to
God. If it's been a while since you had a prayer life, we're
all preachers, but life can get us so busy. It's been a while
since you had a prayer life, start one. Just start one. Set
aside some time every day where you're going to meet with God.
Maybe get you a list and write it down, start praying over it.
And write things down you want to see God do. This year, I got
to mark off a name on my prayer list. I've been praying for four
or five years that God would save my neighbor. Praise God,
I can mark it off. He got saved this year. I can
mark it off. I told the Cleveland Baptist
Church the other day, I'm so glad he got saved. He has a fishing
boat. That means I don't have to buy one. I don't have to buy
one. I got my neighbor saying he's got a fishing boat, told
me he'd take me out on his. Don't y'all feel like that's
just of the Lord? I mean, isn't that a blessing? Praise God.
Mark that off. I can mark that off. Had three
kids go through college. You know what's been on my prayer
list for several years? Each one of my kids, now, Lord, we got to pay
this college bill. Help, Lord. Help, Lord. And we're
not being fake about it, but so my kids are working hard.
Get you a job. You're going to have to help.
We'll all pitch in here. And I told my kids, if you'll
go to a college I approve of, I'll do everything I can to help
you get there. And I'll help you pay for it, but you've got
to pay most of it yourself. So our kids got good jobs, worked
hard, but I worked at it. I did extra things here and there
to help pay the bill. It was on the prayer list, though,
so I wasn't being lazy about it, but I also knew I can't do
it. God, you've got to pay this bill. Help me, Lord. And I got
three done. Their bills are paid. And Matthew's
trying to be done. He got married before his senior
year, so it's taken him a little longer. And what do you all think
about that? He had this problem, say, don't
y'all judge me. Y'all are independent Baptists,
you don't believe in judging people, do you? And my son, he's a student
at West Coast Baptist College. You know what my kid did? He
kissed his girlfriend on the campus of West Coast Baptist
College under a security camera. Can y'all believe Dave Young's
kid would kiss a girl on a Baptist college under a security camera? That's against our belief. You
wait till you know, you don't know. For crying out loud, what's
he thinking? Number one, I'm glad he likes
girls. Somebody say amen to that. I'm
in our culture. I'm glad he likes girls, but
that's against the rules. No, no. What in the world? You
don't do that. So I called him. I said, son, you know better
than that. We honor rules. I don't know, son, that's the
end of the world that you kiss a girl. That's that's unwise and you
shouldn't. That's not the end of the world. But son, what were
you thinking? At least at least don't do it
under a security camera. And I thought, what am I gonna
do with this kid? So I said, all right, if you're gonna kiss
a girl at West Coast Baptist College, you're gonna marry her,
marry her. So he did. Early, married her, didn't even
finish school, married her. So he's trying to get there,
he's trying to get there, he's trying to get done, but marriage
sure changed all that. It's hard work now to get her
done. He's still got two or three classes, and his grades weren't
high enough, and we've gone round and round about it, and up and
down, and up one side and down the other. If I was them, I'd just
give the degree to him to get rid of him. In fact, I'm praying
about that. Give the kid the degree. I'm
tired of this. But what's the whole deal here?
We pray. It's on my prayer list. Oh, Lord. So get praying again,
brothers. Let's get praying again, sisters.
Let's pray. Pray. And if your kid's kissing
a girl under a security camera, you ought to pray about that,
too. Lord, help my son and help me not to kill him in the name
of Jesus. But see, pray about everything. Just pray up a storm.
Start a prayer line. But brothers and sisters, pray
big. Pray big. Man, God is good. be encouraged
today. I'm glad you came to a preacher's
fellowship. Be encouraged today. Your God is a good God. He's
a big God. And He still hears prayers and still answers them.
So get your prayer life renewed. And you got all kinds of things
you ought to pray about. So pray as big as you know how
to pray and as much as your faith will let you. And just pray real
big that souls will be saved and that God will do miracles
and folks will be healed. Let's not be independent Baptists
who act like we don't believe that God is real. Let's be independent
Baptists of faith, and let's pray really big, and let's let
our teenagers see God do some big things. When your teenagers
see, wow, God did that, you know what it'll do to help your teenagers?
Say, I wanna serve a God like that. If we're not careful, our teenagers,
they come to our churches, and if we're dead and cold, and there's
no miracles, and nobody gets saved, and then we don't even,
you know, we're like, well, these are the last days, Lord, help
us. And the Lord's just not moving like He used to. If I was a teenager,
I'd be like, I'm out of here, too. But if my God is real and
He's big and He's still working and souls are still being saved
and you see miracles and God's on the move and the power of
God is there and His presence is real, then I'm telling you,
young people, to fall in line and say, I want a bite of that.
I want to get in on that. And our people need to see that.
And let's go home and let's pray more than we ever have. Let's
see God do great things.
Prayer Avails Much
| Sermon ID | 1082323736395 |
| Duration | 28:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Bible Text | James 1 |
| Language | English |
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