It's called Making Your Church a House of Prayer for the Nations. What I want to do is introduce the major components of it, briefly state what those are, and then illustrate it for you. That's what I want to do. So, making your church a house of prayer for the nations. When Jesus went into the temple, he cleansed the temple, And he said, you're making my father's house a robber's den. Now, he's referring to two different passages, one in Jeremiah and one in Isaiah. Jeremiah says, you're making my father's house a prayer, a robber's den. Isaiah says, you're making my father's house a prayer for the nations, a robber's den. And then his disciples, Remember, a psalm that says, his zeal for his father's house has consumed him. So Jesus was overwhelmed by what he saw going on in the temple, which was supposed to be, these money changers were in the court of the Gentiles, which means the Jews, as they passed through, were supposed to pray for the Gentile nations. It wasn't supposed to be all about them, they were supposed to pray for the nations, but they had turned God's house of prayer for the nations into a robber's den. And so Jesus is driving them out. He made a whip. He'd been going to the temple for years. This didn't catch him by surprise. He made a whip, which means it was volitional, intentional. He drove them out. Now, we want your church to be a house of prayer for the nations. This is what I mean by revival prayer. Now, whenever you're building a house, or any other construction, you have to have a solid foundation. If you have a faulty foundation on land that's moving around or land that sinks, you've got a major problem. You probably have to tear the whole house down. It's a mess. So you've got to make sure the foundation is very solid. Now, when you're building a house of prayer for the nations, there are two major foundation blocks on which this house must be built. Without these, you do not have a solid foundation. The first one is something I spoke about at great length the first time we were together today. That's the intolerable burden. You must have that intense agony, grief, and alarm at the status quo in your own personal life, in the church, and in the world. That is foundational. And when you lose that, and we all lose it, you've got to repent and go back and start over again. Lord, here we go again. The second foundation block is what I talked about last night, and I don't have time to go into it now. We're out of time just about. But it's humiliation. Remember, those of you who were here last night, I told the story about Kwasi Zibantu and Kwazulu Natal and Erlo Steggin, this white Lutheran pastor, tried to minister to the Zulus. Nothing's happening. God begins to work on him. God humbles him, shows him his racial, cultural theological pride. God humbles him. God humbles his people. The Holy Spirit came upon that ministry in a powerful way. Isaiah 57, prepare the way, prepare the way. Remove every obstacle out of the way of my people, says the Lord, thy high and holy one. Because God dwells in two places, my friend. God dwells in a high and holy place. And he dwells in the hearts of the lowly and contrite. That's absolutely essential. So, those are the two foundation blocks. Now, as you begin to build on those foundation blocks, there are 12 living stones that make this house of prayer for the nations. And some people would refer to these as conditions of prayer, of effective prayer. But I like to use the term, I'm using the metaphor of a building, so I talk about 12 living stones. Now the first four living stones are sort of vertical, our relationship with God. The second four are more inward. The last four are more outward to other people. And again, I'm going to mention them briefly, and then I'll illustrate them. The first four living stones, again, more in a vertical relationship. is you must pray with the heart of Jesus. When I talk about praying with the heart of Jesus, I mean two things. First, I mean you must have the heart of Jesus. You must be born again. In our last prayer session, Laura read from Ezekiel 36, I'll take out the heart of stone or replace it with the heart of flesh. That means you've got to be born again. God's got to take out the rebellious cobra heart, as I put it, that loves sin and hates God, and give you the heart of Jesus that loves God and hates sin. That's being born again. So you can be a Presbyterian Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, whatever, but until you have the heart of Jesus, he's not hearing your prayer. So that's fundamental. But the second thing I mean when I pray, I mean pray with the heart of Jesus. I mean pray what's on his heart. What's on his heart? Well, the good place to look is the Lord's Prayer, the six petitions of the Lord's Prayer. By the way, the larger catechism does a marvelous job expounding on these six petitions of the Lord's Prayer. You could even use that as a model for prayer, it's powerful. But in the prayer, but the first thing I want to say about the prayer with the heart of Jesus, and again, I won't go through the whole thing in detail, but you remember how it starts? Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. In other words, God, More than anything else, I want to hallow your name. I want to glorify you and everything that I think, say and do everything in my life. My supreme desire is your glory. You remember this woman who'd been a lesbian who was converted and now her husband's a pastor. What's her name again? Butterfield. That's right. Thank you. She spoke recently at Liberty University, and I have a young friend who always hangs around these people who speak at Liberty. And he was telling me that the students loved her. They thought she was great. And so he's telling her, he said, boy, the students really loved you. And she said, well, that's nice, but the only thing I want, I want them to see Jesus. That's all I care about. I want to see Jesus, right? And that's what we mean. You get to the place where the most, the greatest thing, I want people to see Jesus Christ in me. Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. That means God, give me a desire for the nations. I want to be concerned about the salvation of souls. I heard my dear brother pouring out his heart in prayer a little while ago, praying for the lost people of this world. That's, that's the heart of Jesus. That's on his heart. My kingdom come, my will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, work in me in such a way that I can really be content where I am, not grumble and complain, but really be content. Trust your fatherly love and provision for me. Give us this day our daily bread. Could we really pray that? Lord, all I want to know today is that you'll feed me today. Now, our brothers and sisters in Africa, many times that's how they live. That's all they have. They may have enough for today. And then forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. I like to put it this way. There's no one here that's not been cheated, ripped off, abused, hurt in some way. Everybody has. But God has forgiven you a debt that you can never repay. If you lived a perfect life right now for the next 300 years and you did all kinds of wonderful things to help people, you still go to hell. Because you're not perfect. And you could never be perfect. You could never work it off. And yet he's forgiven you this great debt. He's released you of this debt. And therefore, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 4, therefore be kind to one another, tenderhearted, what? Forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. If he's forgiven you this great debt, those people have wronged you, hurt you, ripped you off or whatever, you are to release them of their debt they owe you. They owe you, they cheated you, whatever, but you say, God, I release them because you forgave me. That's the heart of Jesus. lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. Lord I don't trust myself. I'm capable of profound evil. Don't even let me be tempted. Don't even let me get into a place of temptation. I fear what I might do. And again this is right out of the larger catechism. But Lord in your providence if you allow me to be tempted deliver me from it. And if I in your providence am tempted temptations put before me and I fail, Lord forgive me, restore me." That's the heart of Jesus. The second thing we want to do is we want to pray in the name of Jesus. Until now you've asked for nothing in my name, asking you shall receive that your joy may be made full. And it's not just a formula. Jesus is the mediator. He's the broker. He's the go-between. He's the one who makes possible the us taking our prayers to Jesus. I've talked to dear Muslim people on many occasions. I remember talking with one one time, I said, I was speaking about the necessity of Jesus. He goes, no, no, no, no, we don't really need Jesus. We just, we go straight to Allah. I said, well, I said, now, with all due respect, that tells me two things. Number one, you really don't understand how holy God is. because you could never appear before him in your own strength. He's a consuming fire. He's the holy one. If you were in his presence without some benefactor, without some broker, you would be burned up immediately. The second thing that tells me is that you really don't have an accurate view of your sin. You actually think you're better than you really are because we're all wretched. All wretched miserable, poor, blind, and naked, every one of us. So what you have, I said, so what you need is you need a mediator. You got to have one. And that mediator's got to be perfect. And the only perfect mediator is Jesus who died on the cross and was raised again. So, yes, we must have a mediator, and he's the one who takes our prayers to the Father in the name of Jesus. I could say a lot more about that, but we don't have time. Third thing, and I mentioned this earlier, you pray the Word of God. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you. So you want to pray the word of God. And the easiest way is to take out your Bible. And the reason I say that is I want us to learn to pray for extended periods of time. But most of us can't do that, because most of us use certain phrases we've learned over the years. And what happens is we run out of material real fast, right? So when you have the word, you can keep going. It can never get to the bottom of it. You can keep going on and on and on. So the easiest thing to do is just take out your Bible and get a passage and read it. I was doing a prayer meeting, one of these one time, and this older woman at the very first of the meeting says, you know, I'm here tonight, but I've never prayed publicly, and I'm just afraid. I don't know if I can do this. I said, it's OK if you don't pray. That's all right with me. But we're sitting in a circle, and of course, By now, you figured out that I'm going to go one way or the other. I'm praying first then. So she didn't know that. So she's sitting to my right. So I said, OK, now, after I pray, I want you to pray. Now, she wasn't like somebody who got up. She either got up. She was very bold. She moved over. But anyway, so I prayed. I prayed a while. And then she could tell it was her time to pray. So she starts going through the pages of her Bible. I could hear her. And she opens up to Psalm 2. Why are the nations in an uproar? The people's devising a vain thing. The kings of the earth take their stand against the Lord and against His anointed. Let us tear their fetters apart. Let us cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. He speaks to them in His anger, terrifies them in His fury. So she takes one verse, she expounds it in prayer. Then she takes a second verse and expounds it in prayer. She'd never done this before. Not that it really mattered, but I did notice that she prayed for about 15 minutes. And she was thrilled. She said, I can't believe I could do that. I was at a prayer meeting at the University of Alabama a few years ago, and we prayed for about two hours, and I taught the students to pray using the word of God. The spirit of God fell on that meeting. They were on their faces praying. The campus crusade director, after the meeting, says, you know, I thought I was gonna leave a crew and go work with a church, I sensed God wanted me to stay, now I see why. And he said, I believe God's gonna do great things. The next week, a tornado came through Alabama. Not the big one that killed like 50 people a few years before, but this was a minor one. It was a young man who was a swimmer at the University of Alabama. He was an atheist before he became a Christian. About two years before that, this guy was on fire. He's telling everybody about Jesus. Very, very fervent Christian. He's with his girlfriend. when the tornadoes are swarming around, and they're out of the porch, looking at everything, and he says, we better get in the basement. She goes, well, it's not that big of a deal. He goes, no, no, your daddy will kill me if I don't get us in the basement. We got to go down there right now. So they go down to the basement. They're taking selfie pictures. Just kind of joking around, you know. He's a big, strong guy. I think he did the butterfly. Big, strong kid. There was a water that was stopped up in a sewage place, you know, sewage, I don't know what it's called. Anyway, the wall began to collapse, and the wall's collapsing on him. His girlfriend's sitting right next to him. He takes her and throws her out of the way, and the wall collapses on him, and he's bent down like this, and she's looking straight at him, and he says, I can't feel anything. And his neck was broken. And they talked a couple of minutes and she watched him die right there in front of her. And he was the only person who died in the tornado. The next day Jesus was the major topic of conversation at the University of Alabama. Everybody knew about this kid. And she later that summer took his place at a campus crusade all you know one of these training sessions all summer long. And at that next fall, at the first crew meeting at the University of Alabama, I called the guy who was the head of crew at the time. I said, well, how many people showed up? He said, we had 800 students at the first meeting. And God does that sort of thing, you know? Sometimes, you know, Hebrews 11 says the world's not worthy of certain people. You know, he takes them early. You know, that's what he does sometimes. But the point is is that These people in Alabama were praying the word of God. Number four, you pray in the spirit. Now, I like to say that makes some Presbyterians rather nervous. I don't seem to make this group nervous, however, which is good. Praying in the spirit, what does that mean? You pray until you pray. If you're like me, there are times that you don't really, you're not really feeling it. When you start, you know, And you just, but you keep praying. Now I've been doing long distance running for like 40 years. And I can tell you most of the time when I start running the first mile, I'm not feeling it. I don't have it today. But I keep going. And after about a mile or so, everything kicks in, I feel good. So that's the kind of the way. I run until I run, I pray until I pray. So keep going. And when you pray in the Spirit, it means this also, that the Holy Spirit gives you what to say. I've noticed that here today. And I noticed that there's a felicity of speech. God just gives you what you need. And the Holy Spirit comes upon you and He leads you on what to pray for. Pray in the Spirit. I could say a lot more about that. It's mentioned in Ephesians chapter 6. It's mentioned in the book of Jude. Pray in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit becomes the author of your praying. And again, we want to get to the place where we don't just have this knowledge, this theological knowledge, as important as that is. We want it to be in our hearts, and it comes out in our speech and in our life. Pray in the Spirit. That's the first four. And the second four are more inward in our lives. You want to pray with holiness. If we regard iniquity in our heart, the Lord will not hear us, Psalm 66, 18. Isaiah 59, the arm of the Lord is not so short that it cannot save, his ear so dull that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and hidden your face from him. Now, I've been married to my wife for 42 years. We love each other. We're not getting a divorce. That's not going to happen. But I can tell you, there's been a lot of times where it's kind of been tense. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. So now some of you, some of the guys here know her. I know Tony's matter and so forth. So she's very sweet. She's a typical Southern, you know, very genteel woman. But I got to tell you, I get away with nothing. She lets me know what's going on, okay? So imagine this. Imagine that I'm leaving to go to my office one day and I say something rude to her. Now usually, I mean, she would let me know straight up, that was rude, you need to ask for forgiveness or whatever, okay? But let's say I didn't do that. Let's say I just went out onto my office and I come home and it's August in Alabama. It's 90 degrees, 95% humidity, okay? It's hot down there. And I get out of my car, and there she is outside. I say, hi, sweetheart, how you doing? It's cold as ice. It's like January in New Jersey. You know what I'm saying? I said, what's wrong? You know. What? You know what? You mean you don't remember what you said? Now, we love each other. We're committed to each other. But there's some tension going on. There's some broken fellowship going on. You know what I'm saying? So what do I need to do? I need to humble myself and say, would you please forgive me? I don't know about y'all. That's the hardest thing in the world for me to do. That was an accident. That's just a personality thing. I'm not feeling good today. I come up with all kind of stuff. The hardest thing to do is say, that was sin. Would you please forgive me? And when I say, would you please forgive me, she goes, I'll think about it. No, she does. She says, I'll forgive you. I'll forgive you, right? That's the beauty of the gospel. But you see, when we sin against God, We've broken our fellowship with him. Now, he loves us. He's not kicking us out. He's not divorcing us, as it were. But there's some tension going on here, right? What do I need to do? I need to confess my sins. And watch this. John Calvin said, we don't know one one-hundredth of our sin. I tell you what, if I knew all my sin, I think I could handle it. I'd be depressed all day long, every day. But he does let us see some of our sin. And so watch this, I know y'all know this verse, 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins in what? All, did you catch that? All unrighteousness. He cleanses you of those things you know, but what about all that stuff you don't know? He'll cleanse you of that as well. I gotta tell you, what other religion gives you that? I don't know anything. Jesus, he's the only one. You've got to pray in faith. You've got to pray in holiness. You've got to pray in faith. Now, faith, Matthew 21, whatever you ask in prayer of believing, you shall receive. Wait a second. That sounds like one of those health, wealth, prosperity gospel verses. You ask anything in my name, I'll give it to you? Whoa! I think I need a million dollars. I think I need a brand new Mercedes. I think I need a house, a ski lodge at Aspen or somewhere. That's what I need. He says, well, if I believe I can have it. Now, we know instinctively that's not right. Here's my illustration. So Tony takes his dear wife out to eat dinner. And they're eating dinner somewhere. And the waiter comes up to him and says, sir, is everything OK? Tony instinctively knows that the waiter's saying, sir, is the meal okay? What the waiter's not asking, sir, how's your job? How's the family, you know? No, no, no, no, no, no. He's asking in connection to this dining out experience, is everything okay? He just instinctively knows that. So when Jesus says, whatever you ask in prayer believing you shall receive, It's in the context of praying with the heart of Jesus. Praying in the name of Jesus. Praying the word of God. Praying in the spirit. Praying in holiness. Doesn't that make sense? That's what it means. And again, I use that illustration. I'm not going to back over it. Remember me telling the story about those two little boys who began to pray and ask that God would give Tim a wife. We should pray that way. Believe what he said. No, listen. If you're praying with the heart of Jesus, You have on your heart what's on His heart. If you're praying in His name, you're praying the Word of God. You can back that prayer up with the Word of God. You're praying and asking the Holy Spirit to lead you in prayer and to give you the words to say in prayer, and you're confessing your sin, and you're seeking to walk in holiness, and you believe God, expect Him to answer. And our problem is we don't expect much to happen. So we have to pray with holiness, we have to pray with faith, we have to pray with fervency. And that's what I hear going on here today, fervency. You know, if a child is in trouble, And the mother sees a snake, a poisonous snake coming at the child. The mother will not say, would somebody please help me with my child? Please help now! Fervency! If the child's about to go into traffic, stop right now! Right? Why? Because this is a life and death situation. That's why fervency. And also urgency. Now. We don't know what tomorrow brings. We have loved ones who don't know Jesus. They might live another 30 years or longer. We don't know, but they could die tomorrow. So we ought to pray with urgency, right? So you pray with faith and holiness and urgency and fervency. Those are more of the inward living stones. The last four living stones are more outward in relationship to other people. The first one's humility. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. God hates pride. God resists the proud. That means he pushes them away. He keeps them down. He will not let you prosper. He will not bless you if you're a prideful person. He hates it. It's the very antithesis of all that he is. And we know that because we hate to see pride in somebody else, too, don't we? It's disgusting to see it. So humility. In James chapter 5, James says, confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can't accomplish much. So men I like to speak to men in this regard men need to need to be a small group and they need to be in accountability with other men. Now women usually don't have a problem with that. I've noticed that women's groups they can meet for two and three hours at a time and 45 minutes time to go. We got to get some we got to get that's the way men are you know. So women seem to know this but men need to be in a small group where they can actually hold each other accountable. Now, you've got to be careful. You've got to be in the right group, you know, where people won't talk outside the group, because we've all got our sin issues we're dealing with. But men need that. That's right. But it's hard for men to do that. Here, let me give you an example. Men, you'll understand what I'm saying. So if men, if you're in a group that's meeting for the first time, and you don't know any of these guys, you've never met them, but this is a group of Christian men meeting together. And so the first meeting has come, and you begin to share a little bit about who you are, And one of the guys in the group, again, nobody you've ever met before, he begins to share about his emotional issues, his sin issues or whatever. And most of the men, here we go. This is a little uncomfortable. Am I right? You know, men aren't like that, you know? You gotta get to know somebody. Well, we're not gonna just lay it all out there the first time, right? But we need that. But it's hard. It is hard for me to admit to another man that I struggle with sin. It's very difficult. But that's what we're to do again. We've got to be careful. We've got to be in the right group and all of that. But we need that. That's just an illustration of the need for humility. And then unity. where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst." Unity. And the illustration I like to use is God wants the church to be unified. He wants it to be a safe place. So if I go off and preach somewhere, and I take my brand new grandson, who's an adopted little boy from Congo in West Africa, Malcolm. They named him after my middle name, Malcolm. So let's say I take Malcolm with me to preach somewhere. And so I'm taking him to the nursery. And I'm going to put him in the nursery. And I noticed that there's about five little two-year-olds in there with green snot running out their noses. Kind of gross, isn't it? Well, I don't know a whole lot, but I know those babies are sick. And so their mama's not gonna be happy if I put Malcolm in the nursery. He's gonna get sick and they're not gonna be happy about it. So what I say, Malcolm, you gotta sit out here with old mom. You gotta sit here while I preach. Now why would I do that? Because I love him and I don't want him to be exposed to sickness. God loves his people. God especially loves the little lambs who are coming into his kingdom. And so when there's a church that has division and sickness in it, he's not going to bring those kind of folks in. I pastored a church one time that was going great, going great. We were up within about a year or two. We had a couple of hundred people coming. We were, it was going great. And the secretary was old enough to be my mother, but she was a real, she was a problem person. She was like what I call a grenade thrower. You know what those are? You're in a group of people and a grenade, somebody throws a grenade and they walk off and it just causes all kind of carnage. She'd just say stuff off the wall. It just, it would hurt people. I mean, it's like, whoa, where'd that come from? She just, she just had no filter at all, you know? And I, I put up with it for a while. One time I just kind of, I just, I tried to be nice, but I was pretty direct. I said, you ain't got to stop that kind of stuff. That's, that's sinful. Well, it didn't go well. It didn't go well at all. What I didn't do is I did not appeal to her as Paul says as a younger man a son to a mother. I was more I was more you know top down type stuff and it caused division. That little thing blew up the church. I mean we had people leaving right left. They didn't know why they were leaving. And that church went from about 200 down to about 80 in a couple of years. It was devastating. Now, I eventually finally acknowledged my sin and went to her and asked for forgiveness, but much of the damage had been done. And besides that, I was kind of hoping, you know, she'd reciprocate and say, well, yeah, no, I was wrong too. Well, I never got that, which is okay. It's between her and God. But the point is, is that there was division. We tried all the same stuff we were doing before, nothing worked. The spirit had left us. Okay, so if there's anything like that, I know y'all have had your trouble in the past, but if there's anything like that still, get rid of it, humble yourself, ask for God to forgive you, go make restitution with whoever you need to make restitution with, and move on. Amen. Amen. That's what you got to do. Unity. And then community. Again, in Matthew 18, it says that if two or more agree on earth and it will be done in heaven. Now, we don't have many of those World War Two vets left. They're almost all gone now. But you remember how they would have these reunions like every year, every couple of years. Now, why did they do that? Because they saw things, they experienced things that really nobody else understands. They just, they needed to be with each other. There was a sense of community. And even as I, when I met with my baseball teammates back last May, I hadn't seen most of them in like 35 or 40 years. That was very special to me. Because I hung out with those guys for like four years, you know? And we went through a lot of stuff together. That was a sense of community or camaraderie. Here's my point. I've noticed this. The people with whom I pray regularly are my closest friends. You cannot pray with someone you don't like. You can't pray with somebody that you're at odds with. It's like when I would do marital counseling with somebody and they're having trouble, they come to me and they're about to kill each other. So what I'll say to them, I'll say, now do y'all pray together every day? What do you think the answer to that question is? No. Why? Because they instinctively can't do it. They hate each other right now. They're not going to pray with each other. So they got to make it right. They got to confess and repent and so forth. Now, when we had that Sunday night prayer meeting, Greg and Laura came like every week, and those people still are our closest friends, right Greg? Yeah. Yeah, it's just, you know, and that's what happens in a prayer group. So what I'm after is a group of at least five people. You can have more of that, but no less, because sometimes people are out of town or they're sick and they can't make it, so you want to have at least five. And then if you can have more groups, great. I don't care when you do it, but look, when you pray, don't do like most prayer groups. Most prayer groups meet together. They'll talk for 45 minutes, share prayer requests, and then maybe pray for 10 minutes and go home. You know what you're there to pray for. You're there to pray revival prayer. You're there to pray with the heart of Jesus and in the name of Jesus, and you're to pray the word. You're praying in the spirit. You're praying in faith. You're praying in holiness, you're praying in fervency and urgency, you're praying in humility, unity, community, you're praying in persistence. So just start praying. Another thing churches tend to do is they tend to focus in on the physical needs of people. What I call an organ reciting. You know what I mean? Lord, Aunt Matilda's bunion's acting up again. Would you help her with her bunion? Now look, I'm not opposed to praying for people's healing. There's a place for that. Absolutely, I'm not trying to make light of it. But what we're doing in revival prayer is we want to pray with a kingdom focus. And even then, when you do pray for healing, you pray in the sense of the kingdom of the Lord. In other words, Lord, use this illness, if the person's not a believer, to drive the person to Jesus. And if the person is a believer, Lord, use this not only to sanctify the person, but the person's response and the family's response to be such a witness to other people that it will draw people to Christ. So you can turn anything, even a physical illness, into a kingdom-focused prayer. And then you want to pray with persistence. And persistence is that you pray without ceasing, 1 Thessalonians 5. What does it mean to pray without ceasing? Well, it means at least two things. It means pray until you get an answer. You're praying for lost people. Pray until either they're saved or they die. You pray for somebody who's sick, you ask God to heal them. Now there comes a point in time, we don't know when it is, but if God's not going to heal, we know that sooner or later, then your prayer begins to change. Then you begin to pray what Jesus is praying. In John chapter 17, Jesus prays, Father, I desire that those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may see my glory, for thou hast loved me before the foundation of the world. In other words, there comes a point in time you say, God, I give them up. You, Jesus, you want them, you desire for them to be with you in heaven. I'm standing in your way. Okay, I'm all right with that. But you pray, but it will vary from person to person. You just begin to sense God's not saying yes on this prayer. He's going to let him go, and you pray in that way. But it also means to pray, you lose sight of time. You just pray. Y'all went like 30 minutes over time back there. It's all right, man. It's beautiful. You know, that's praying without ceasing. You lose sight of time. I mean, we've been here for nine, what, eight hours, nearly? I mean, you know, I bet you thought before you started, eight hours, there's no way I can do this for eight hours. Well, here we are. You know, it's amazing. So that's what I mean by kingdom-focused prayer. Now, let me illustrate it this way, and then we're gonna close. Here it is. So about five years ago, I was on my way, this is Memorial Day, I was on my way back from Uganda in East Africa. And my wife, Winnie, and our oldest son, Andrew, and his wife, Carrie, and their four kids were down at St. Simon's Island, Georgia. That's where I used to live. Mark was just down there recently. And I was coming there myself when I got back from Uganda. And they went to the pool on Memorial Day, about 10 o'clock in the morning, and Winnie saw this girl named Sarah, who had been at our classical Christian school like 10 years before. We had moved away. Last time we saw Sarah, she was in second grade. And here she is. She's just graduated from high school, and she's on her way to college. And she's on the first day on the job as a lifeguard. And she's been trained to be a lifeguard. And they were talking, Winnie and Sarah were talking. And Winnie said, Sarah, are you still as feisty as you used to be? Yes, ma'am, I sure am. And she was a real character. She was a really sweet girl, but just a strong-willed young lady. So they're talking and getting to know each other. And we found out later that the night before, Sarah was talking to her dad. And she says, you know, I'm very excited about my job this summer as a lifeguard. I hope I get some action. And he said, ah, look, I was a lifeguard for five summers. I never saw anything happen. You probably won't see anything. So Winnie and Sarah talk, and you're about 10 o'clock in the morning. About 30 minutes later, Sarah's on the perch, looking down at the pool. Right there in front of her is a little five-year-old boy on the bottom of the pool, 30 minutes on the job. She jumps in the water. She pulls him up out of the water. Winnie saw the whole thing going down. And my daughter and my daughter-in-law, the whole family saw it. There's a couple of hundred people there. Sarah brings this little boy lifeless, gray. He looks dead. She puts him on the side of the pool, and she begins CPR. She had been trained. She knew exactly what to do. She's going through the rhythm. They breathe in the mouth, and they push on the chest. She knew exactly. She's going through the thing right the way she should. The mother of this little boy sees what's going down. She is beside herself with grief, as you can imagine. When he says she's beside the pool, pounding her fist on the concrete part of the pool, wailing utterly in despair. Now, my wife and my daughter-in-law began to pray in what I call an uncharacteristic Presbyterian fashion. They began to pray with fervency and urgency. Jesus, save this little boy. Jesus, help Sarah. That was their prayer, hands up in the air. You know, loud prayer, fervent, urgent prayer. Now, it would not have done to say, you know, maybe tomorrow we'll pray about that. Hey, today's not gonna be tomorrow. It doesn't do to pray in that fashion with falling asleep while you pray. Or, God, would you maybe do something here? No, no, no, no. They had to say, God, would you please show up and do something here? Sarah keeps working on the boy. A couple of doctors came up and they wanted to take over. They said, no, no, no, you know what you're doing. They'd forgotten how to do it. They hadn't done it in so many years, you know. And so there's this 18-year-old girl doing it just right. And when he says, it seemed like five minutes. But Sarah later said, it's about a minute and 45 seconds. She's working on this boy. And he spits up water. He begins to cry. She picks him up. You know, color is coming back to his body. She handed him to the mother. And I was there the next day and about two days later, I see the kid running around like nothing's happened. It's amazing, you know, beautiful. But it's a brilliant illustration of revival prayer. God is sovereign. God's in control of the situation. The boy, now you can talk about human responsibility. The boy shouldn't have been in the water. Maybe his parents should have taught him how to swim and all kinds of stuff. Should have happened but didn't happen. And Sarah was well trained. God could have prevented it. God could have somehow or another got the water out of the kid's lungs. But the simple fact is God uses means to accomplish His purposes. And God trained. She was trained. She was well prepared. She did her part. But without God doing something, it wouldn't have happened. And so you see it all come together there, prayer, the sovereignty of God, the human responsibility of people, and yet at the same time, fervency and urgency in prayer. That's how we must pray. So my challenge is this, that in your church, and we've got a couple of churches represented here, make any existing prayer meetings a revival prayer meeting. Pray together with all of these things I was talking about. Pray the 10 marks of the revival culture. Pray with all of these, the living stones. Ask God to give you humility. Ask God to give you this intolerable burden. Confess your sins when you begin to pray. And pray and continue to pray. Don't give up. This is a paradigm shift. This is not like, OK, let's try this church Sunday school curriculum, see how that goes. Oh, it didn't work too good. OK, we'll can that. No, no, no, no, no. We've got to pray. And I don't know what God's going to do in your churches. But I can tell you this, that when you begin to pray this way, he begins to give you an outward focus. Now, your churches already have an outward focus to some degree, which is wonderful. Y'all are far ahead of the game than a lot of churches I've talked to. But stay at it. Don't give up. Now, tomorrow morning in the Sunday school hour, I'm going to talk about how to actually engage in personal evangelism and get things moving. So we'll talk about it there. And then I'm going to preach on 1 Peter 2 as well, proclaiming the excellences of Christ. So that's what we're going to do tomorrow. But what I want us to do, we're really pretty much out of time. I always like to stop at 15 minutes ahead of time because I want us to have a little feedback. So why don't we do this? We got 15 minutes. I would like for you to maybe give me a takeaway or two. What have you learned today? What are you walking away from this meeting today with? So let me just give you an opportunity to share whatever it is you'd like to share. Yes? I'm walking over there. You've got time. And so, talking about how do you want to put it down in the end, there is a discussion. That, I think about four things. of the church is built for the community. So I love seeing this structure that grows. And so if we truly, truly go by this structure, I think this will go you know, a part of this, you know, maze, like, you know, where everyone else, too, they exist, that's who you are. I'm going to give you a few minutes this time to stay at it. And again, I'm telling you, you're flesh on the road today. It's going to happen. At the same time, as Bruce said, I'm going to be attending Jesus at the University, and I'm going to be at the University of Rhode Island. I'm going to be at the University of New York. I'm going to be at the University of New York. I'm going to be at the University of New York. I'm going to be at the University of New York. I'm going to be at the University of New York. I'm going to be at the University of New York. Yeah. Yeah. and something that I really love. to share your confidence. And again, it's all for the Lord of all, because, you know, that's important. Something that God has not given us, but he blesses us with the spirit of redemption, which is the most beautiful gift that he gives, and he wants us, in what I'm doing today, for us to actually go, actually be brave here, to go, You have to see the board is stirred up in the staff so we can see. It's not a personal thing right now, but we have to solve this. It is a long time. and guided us to the stage, so us believers would say, wait a minute, we've lost our love. And we've been on our knees praying, and no one's gonna believe it. God will hear us, and he won't blame us. You know, because we're not turning from our living faiths, so that God can pour our land and pour our healing. And once we get into that place, It should be destruction of, you know, the father of our faces, the father of our shoulders, his word, the father of our faces. We still have our stuff, we still have the trees. Anyone in church that you see, you need to go on by them. Go on down by them in any way. Do not criminalize them. Do not make them a disturbed spirit. And that would be foolish to do. I have to pray for myself. Lord, give me that discernment, because I lost it. For women who walk in the church, I will fully fear. I will fully hurt. I will all give up. I will never see the Lord. I will totally abandon. I have to pray for myself. Lord, give me that discernment, baby. No matter what it is, I can't be too howdy. Like I said, don't think too howdy, I'll do it all. That you know what we good at. And when we do that, that's what it is. I'll go back to this issue. You may think we got it all good. That's how you go. God is good, and God is doing what? That's why we do this. Let me tell you, I don't work at the school bill anymore. You look, respect. There, instead of there, look within, respect within. Respect God who sent you. Every day. Nothing was equal to the impact of this. Please be seated. all night, to see how many people are out, to hear this, and encourage and pray, and encourage me, to see so many people here. And we're actually feeling a little overwhelmed when we have her, Mark and I, and her talent, and we've talked about her other very big times, that depression can have a talent, and it's not the end of it. But anyway, I want to thank all of our supporters again, You are the everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, One and Full Council. We worship you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thank you for your grace, for yourself, for your desire to know us, for your self-knowledge, Thank you, Lord. Yes, it was. Love, embrace, acknowledge.