So Brother Mark, you come and you tell us how good we are. conferences, the one that you had here. I used to tell people, you can't get to Dover. It's one of the best conferences to go to. And it was a blessing. I was a little blessed by it. We thank you for the opportunity tonight to preach. I thought earlier you were going to preach my message here when you were talking about Moses and that. If you would turn to Matthew chapter 6 and also to And they go to prayer, as Larry had mentioned. And the disciples, you know, ask the Lord to teach them to pray. And we know that that's probably and we don't pray as often as we should, or pray believing, pray with faith. And in Luke 11, one, he says, and it came to pass that he didn't, as he was praying in a certain place, imagine hearing the Lord pray. Here they were hearing him pray. They had heard him without pray. And when he had ceased, And then, as John also taught his disciples, you know the thought, what's our purpose for praying? I think the number one thing is a closer intimate relationship with God, with our Father. I think that we sometimes just repeat our prayer and we don't wait to just listen And I was thinking about some of the times in my life when I really knew I had to get a hold of the Lord. And one of those times was my brother who has been saved now for over 20 years now. He was a long time member of their home Baptist church. And then my dad called me and he said, you need to go talk to your brother Jim. We didn't have any kind of relationship, me and Jim didn't. I mean, there was almost 10 years between us, or 9 years at least. And, you know, that's a big gap between the top and the bottom. And we just had separate lives. And the fact that, too, that they were older when my dad was saved. Jim was 16 and my other brother was already 19. in church and two outside of church. And anyway, my dad called me from Florida and he said, you need to go talk to your brother. You just need to go talk to him. And I said, he's having a tough time. Told me some of the reasons and I said, dad, he's not gonna talk to me. I've been to his house before and he just talked to me on the porch. And I got off the phone and Deb said, what's up? And I said, I gotta go talk to my brother. Dad wants me to go talk to my brother and she said, And so I went in the bedroom and I got down on my knees in bed and I started to pray. Man, really, I was asking the Lord almost in my mind just, how am I going to get out of this? That's my thought as I was praying. And I was praying, it was just like the Lord saying, what are you doing? What are you doing? Get up and go. Get up and go. And I just thought, and I tried to pray some more and it was like, I mean, it wasn't a lot of them, but it was so strong. I come back out of the bedroom, he didn't pray very long, and I said, I gotta go. I just went out and got in the car and I left. I had no idea what I was gonna see when I came into my brother's house. As he opened the door, there were tears in his eyes. And I was shocked to see my brother, who was 47, 48 then, with tears in his eyes and he just, I don't think I've been in his house maybe once or twice before that. And you know what the end result was that day? The Lord saved him. Amen. We were on our knees and living on the floor of his house. Amen. The Lord saved him. You know, when we think about our reason for prayer, well, there's, I think, more than one reason because the Bible teaches that. not just ultimately number one is our relationship with the Lord, but the Lord wants us to bring our needs and our desires and pray with him. You know, in Matthew chapter six, it's interesting in that in verse five, he said, well, interest into when I'll pray, I shall not be as the You know he just tried to get off by himself Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which is in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetition as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be rewarded for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. So then he goes on to what many people call the Lord's Prayer. I grew up in a free Methodist church, and we literally almost might as well say we chanted it. You know, let's say the Lord's Prayer. Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. I had that memorized as a child. And it's contrary to what he just said. that is a vain repetition. Let's go back to Luke chapter 11 there. And in verse one it says, they said, Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And that's where they get lost. which are in heaven. Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, so that we may also forgive everyone that is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine in his journey is come unto me, and I have nothing to say And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not, the door is now shut, and like children are with me in bed, I cannot rise to give thee. And I say unto you, though he will not rise and give because he is a friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needed. And I say unto you, ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. that asketh, receiveth, and he that seeketh, findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. And if a son ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them? The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, and I want you to notice here that Christ, after he gave them the outline here in Luke, he gives them an example of persistence in prayer. He uses this where it says in verse five, which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him, friend, lend me three loaves. Come to my house at midnight, I'm probably not going to get up. My wife's favorite thing, she never forgets this, is that, you know, Brother Titus said one time, he says, you know, if my wife wanted a candy bar at 3 a.m., I would get up and get dressed and go get it for her. And I said, you know why he could say that? I said, because she loved him enough she would never ask him to. But you know, getting up at midnight's not easy, right? You're in bed, and you know, and I mean, I was at Larry's house, and Donna's in there, and brother Carter's out there hollering, he needs something, Larry's like, it's midnight. You know, he's probably crazy. But he was just, he's not getting up. And it says there, it says, friend of mine is coming, I have nothing to say before him. And he said, He that from whence shall answer and say, trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee. And I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needed. Amen. Yet because of his importunity or his persistence, Not because he's a friend, but he's saying there, he's teaching them how to pray, and he's basically saying, don't give up. Don't give up. I was sitting there thinking in the pew, you know, most of you probably don't know much about our daughter, but our daughter was very, very sick at one time. Written off, really, by doctors. They just said, you know, there's nothing anybody can do. And I prayed an awful lot to Lord Taylor. It didn't happen for years. It's an answer to prayer. Amen. It's an answer to prayer. Yet because of his importunity or persistence, he will arise and give him what he needs. And he goes out and says, and I seen you ask and it shall be given you. And so he's telling them to ask. He's telling them to, you know, to pray to your father and ask for forgiveness for your sins and your debts and give us your daily, give us what we need. But then he goes out and says, don't give up. Don't give up. He says, go to use that example. If you, you know, I remember working with a friend of mine. He had a son that was probably at the time, like 30, and we were doing an audition on his house. And, you know, guys, we just get to working. We just get to working. And, you know, and this son was sitting there, you know, we're giving him stuff to play with, nails, you know, so he can, whack himself, and build us up, and keep out of our herring. No, we're getting started at work at six in the morning, and we hadn't even stopped. We're just drinking coffee and Cokes, and we're not even stopping. And then about 3, 3.30, all of a sudden, his son says, Dad, I'm hungry. And we both stopped. And we said, we ain't done yet. And we both just dropped everything. Well, we need to get something to eat. cereal, milk, and just, hey, you know. I mean, when he says that, I'm hungry. I mean, when we go to the Heavenly Father, he says, if you think being evil know how to give good gifts to you unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? You think about the widow and the unjust judge, Luke over chapter 18, because it's the same principle. Amen. The Lord is teaching, he says in verse one of Luke 18, he says, and he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. My biggest problem is I faint in my faith. I'll keep praying, but my faith in the answer to it dwindles. And don't quit. Don't quit believing. God is teaching us not to give up on our prayers. When he said, teach us to pray, he said, let me tell you how to pray. But he says, let me tell you, don't give up on it. Amen. It says in this parable of the unjust judge, he's just saying there was a certain, in a city, a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man, and there was a widow in that city, and she came on in saying, avenge me of mine adversary, and he would not for a while, but afterward he said within himself, though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet, because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming, She weary me. Amen. Just like the man said, I got no bread. Larry, I got no bread. Can you give me some bread? Finally, Donna says, would you go out and get me some bread, sir? Give him something. Send him on his way. And here it says, I don't fear anybody, I don't believe in God, but this woman is troubling me, saying, I will avenge her, that's why her continual coming, she weary me. And he says, hear what the unjust judge said. Look at verse seven, shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him? though he bear long with them. And he says, I tell you, he will. I tell you that he will. You will have been to them speedily. Nevertheless, the Son of Man, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth. And that's where my problem is, is my faith. I can pray, but sometimes my faith in my prayer dwindles. You know, and then I think, how often do we pray? You know, even under basically threat of death, Daniel still prayed three times a day. He found the time to pray. And, you know, I heard many stories when I was younger about Brother Turner, and most of you here probably never heard of him. He was the one that was Brother Jones's preacher, Brother Jones, you know, was one of those that talked about him a lot. But I heard many stories about him, but one that I heard that stayed with me is that somebody would say, you know, you could be just walking along with Brother Turner and you begin to share a burden or something that you might have in your life, and he would just stop you, didn't matter where it was, that sidewalk, you know, store, gas station, wherever, And I guess he had this deep, baritone voice, and he would just, you know, just blasted it out there and would just pray. And everybody that I ever knew said, well, Brother Turner was a man of prayer. And I thought, I don't think that would be said of me, which is a shame. But when you think about why should we pray, Brother Larry touched on it. Can we change the future? didn't Moses beseech God? He said, well, isn't he a sovereign God? Absolutely, God is sovereign in all things. Does it mean we can change his mind? I believe the Bible says that we can, our prayer have effect. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man. Why would God even have the, and tell him to, when he said, teach us to pray, then he says, be persistent in prayer. You've got a need. If you got a need, you be persistent in it. Be persistent in it. You know, I like what Sproul said about this. He said, through our prayers, no, excuse me, though our prayers do not change God's mind, He ordains prayer as a means to accomplish His will. And that, I thought, that's pretty good. But at the same token, I don't know that, you know, you can't say that in a slave that God didn't necessarily change his mind when the people made a golden calf, and they were dancing around it and everything, and after they made their golden calf in Exodus 32 and 9, the Lord said unto Moses, I've seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now, therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, that I may consume them, and I will make of thee a great nation. He says, get out of the way, Moses. I'm tired of you. I'm gonna just kill them all. So it looks like God had his mind made up that he's like, I'm just gonna kill them all, Moses. And what did Moses do? He prayed. Verse 11, it says, and Moses, besot the Lord his God. I mean, that's prayer. He's talking to the Lord and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak and say, for mischief he did bring them out to slay them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath. He's pleading God to turn from his fierce wrath and repent of this evil against thy people. Moses pleads for God to change his plans. Now, ultimately, God knew what was gonna happen, right? But he redeemed his prayer to have his will. In verse 13, it says, whom thou swearest by thine own self. And he said unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever. And then in verse 14 he says, And the Lord repented of the evil which he had thought to do unto his people. I don't know what you can call But the Lord obviously knew he wouldn't do it then. But Moses didn't. Clearly, it seems that Moses was pleading with God. And God used it to accomplish his will through Moses' prayer. Did he not? Exactly. He accomplished his will through Moses' prayer. I was thinking as I studied this, you know what, I prayed, I've been praying a lot over just heal Mark Titus. Right, amen. You know, and I know he's been, you know, we spent a lot of time together and he's like, I gotta get a lot of things set up. He says, I know God can heal me, but he says, I've got to get, you know, gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta do this, I gotta get this arranged and that arranged and his wife. And it's working. I'm sitting there thinking, yep, yep, yep, but I want God to heal me. Amen. you know, when they refused to follow this Joshua and Caleb, same thing almost happened. They were, you know, they didn't go into the promised land and God was angry at them again in Numbers 14 and 11. He says, and the Lord said unto Moses, how long will thou, how long will this people provoke me? How long will it, Be e'er they believe me, for all the signs which I have shown unto them, I will swipe them with pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of thee a greater and a mightier nation than they, or mightier than they. And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, for thou hast brought up this people in thy might from among them. And they will tell it to the inhabitants of the land, for they have heard that the Lord, that thou art Lord, art among his people, that thou, Lord, art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them by day time in a pillar of cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if thou shalt kill all his people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee shall speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring his people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness, And now I beseech thee. What's that? He's begging in prayer. Amen. Amen. He's begging in prayer. I beseech thee. He's pleading. Let thy power of my Lord be great according as he has spoken. The Lord is longsuffering. great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children under the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of thy mercy, as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now. And the Lord said, I have pardoned, listen to this, according to thy word. Amen. Explain that. God is sovereign, but he says, I will do according as you have prayed. Right. Amen. And Abraham, he pleaded for Sodom, did he not? And David, we know, pleaded for the people. And didn't God change? In Isaiah 38-1, Isaiah went to, in the days of Hezekiah, was sick unto death. He says he was dying. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos, came and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, set thy house in order, where thou shalt die and not live. Pretty clear. The prophet comes to you and says, get things in order. Get things in order, for you're gonna die and not live. And Hezekiah, he's obviously in bed sick, he turns his face toward the wall and prayed unto the Lord. And said, remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, I'll have walked before thee in truth with a perfect heart, and I have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. Doesn't sound like he prayed for a year, doesn't say he had a year, doesn't say he had, you know, but he turned his face to the wall and he wept and he thought, Lord, I don't wanna die yet. And then came the word of the Lord to Isaiah saying, go to Hezekiah, go say to Hezekiah, let's thank the Lord, the God of David, thy father. And listen to this. I have heard thy prayer. Amen. I have seen thy tears. The Lord doesn't. It may not happen in a year or two, or in four days, but the Lord has his time. But he says, I have seen thy tears. Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years. He's adding to it. I mean, you know, first of all, it tells us in the Bible that if we serve the Lord, the children, if you honor your father and mother, that he's going to add days to you. That's right, amen. I mean, that's a promise that he says, I'll add days. And so he, Hezekiah's prayer here, he added them to him 15 years. Doesn't the word tell us? As we said that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. He says confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that you may be what? Healed. Healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. God can heal anything raised to death. That's it, amen. Brother Darren told me years ago about a funeral where they were all acting, bodies embalmed, and I know that God could raise that, but you have to be understanding that God has chosen sometimes not to answer our prayer. That's it. But there are two words here that it says, effectual and available. Aveileth means we can, by this practice of prayer, overcome, or be successful, or gain by it. And an availeth means that we might be able to attain that, that answer to prayer. So when we think about what he said, the Lord taught him how not only to pray, but he taught him to pray earnestly. Amen. So we go back there and look at Luke chapter 11, and he says there, it came to pass as he was in a certain place, when he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples. He said unto them, pray ye, saying, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, As it is in heaven, so in earth. You know, we're to pray, we're to pray to our Heavenly Father. Pray for our needs. He said, give us this day our daily bread. You know what? If God didn't see fit, we wouldn't know this. Also, forgive everyone that is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. And he said to them, would you be having that? A friend shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him, friend, lend me three loaves. I like this, if you think about it. He says, lend me three loaves. He says, for a friend of mine in his journey has come unto me and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed, and I cannot rise and give thee. And I say unto you, though he will not rise to give them, because he is a friend, yet because of his importunity, yet because of his persistence, he wasn't going away. Amen. He's out there hollering, he's saying, help me, let me in, I need help, I just need three loaves of bread. I just need three loaves of bread. And he says, yet because of his importunity, he will arise and give him as many as he needed, amen. Give him as many as he needed. And then he goes on and says, and I say to him, ask. And what? It. it shall be given. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh, receiveth. And he that seeks, findeth. To him that knocketh, it shall be opened. And if a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? For he asketh fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if you ask an ape, will you offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? Amen. You know, when we think about praying, you know, when we pray to our Heavenly Father, And I remember when the Lord truly saved me, I had no doubt prayed before that. My prayers didn't go anywhere until I finally prayed and asked the Lord to save my soul. But I heard a lot of people pray. But when after the Lord saved me, I began to listen to other people pray. Not that I could copy them, but just like the disciples, I wanted to learn how to pray. For the first time in my life, I wanted to really learn how to pray. How to pray to my Heavenly Father. Look, in closing here, we'll look over at John chapter 14. John chapter 14. John chapter 14, Jesus said there in verse 13, And whatsoever ye shall ask Look at that. I mean, whatsoever. I mean, that's pretty unlimited, isn't it? Whatsoever you shall ask in my name. When I'm overhearing and learning that... I remember hearing people praying in Jesus' name. Sometimes we get in the habit of just praying and we'll say, and we get to the end of our prayer, we say, in Jesus' name, amen. We realize what that means. The power of bringing Jesus' name into our prayer. We're praying to our Heavenly Father and the Son of God. He says, when I hear my name invoked, He says, what shall I be? Shall ask in my name that which I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. And look at verse 14. If she shall ask anything, You smear some sauces whatsoever. And these are the first 14 years of your life. Ask anything in my name, I will do it. And then, I look at that and I think, I told Mark Titus, I thought about preaching this at our church Wednesday night, but the Lord just didn't give me the leadership to do it. I guess he wanted it for the night. But I said, Mark, I said, I think I'm gonna preach on prayer. We were driving to Vanderbilt, I believe that. I believe that, Mark. But he says, I have to set my house on earth. And I said, well, Mark, I'll do that. And I said, I'm going to pray like Hezekiah that you get more years. Amen. That you get more years. Amen. Not just six months because, you know, we talked about the conference and he just said, I hope I make it to it. I hope I'm there. I hope I'm healthy and able to go. And I said, I hope that there's, you know, four or five conferences you attend. Amen. As the coyote turned to the wall, and it sounds like he prayed one prayer, wept and prayed, and God said, go back there and tell him, I've heard that prayer, I've seen bad tears. I'm gonna give you 15 more years. And he was gonna die. The Lord is able, but he uses our prayers. He uses our prayers. When the disciple says, teach us to pray, the Lord didn't just say, repeat after this. He gave a wonderful example of persistence in prayer. You know, I don't know. It doesn't answer every prayer because every prayer sometimes the Lord has a different will, different plan, but he he wanted to put that thought there in them as he said, they said, teach us to pray. That was just as much more. That was that was more is teaching them to pray than the outline of the prayer, right? Teaching them to be persistent and believe that God and that God loves them and wants to answer their prayer, asking that she'll be giving you seeking Now don't quit. Pray for Mark Titus. Pray for him that the Lord would heal him. I was sitting there thinking, you know, I'm waiting for this next PET scan and I thought, I would love to see that thing come back just white. Now it's blacked out. And I prayed, I said, Lord, I will praise your name for the healing of And after all those 13 spots all over it, if you just wiped them all off there, they just stood there with their chins hanging down and said, only God can do that. Only God can do that. By the power of prayer. In the honor and glory for it.