Now this afternoon, I wanna talk to you about the subject of upper room praying, upper room praying. When Jesus left the earth, all he left was a prayer meeting. He didn't leave a Bible college. He didn't leave a recovery program. He did not leave a sports ministry. He didn't leave a seminary. All he left was a prayer meeting. And the early church did not have a prayer meeting. The early church was a prayer meeting. In the early church, every Christian was a prayer-beating Christian. And there was 120 men and women gathered together in that upper room. Jesus left a praying congregation. Acts chapter 1 in your Bible, Acts chapter 1 in your Bible, verse 13. This pulpit reminds me of Northern Ireland and those Presbyterian church halls where you have a straitjacket around you and you can't move around so much. We're going to go with it. I'll try not to get hurt. Acts chapter 1, verse 13. Acts 1, 13. Notice if you would, stand to your feet if you would for the reading of the word. Acts 1, 13. And when they were coming in, they went into an upper room. were about Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, and Philip, and Thomas, and Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon, Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. Look at verse 14. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brethren. You can be seated. The upper room was a prayer meeting. In the upper room, they waited, they wept, they worshiped, and they witnessed the fire of God fall. Somebody said every hospital has an emergency room, but every church needs an upper room. So I want to give you some simple thoughts concerning what I'm calling upper room praying. Number one, upper room praying is obedient praying. Upper room praying is obedient praying. In Acts 1 verse 4 and 5, Jesus commanded that they should not depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father. Jesus commanded them. That's a military term. Compliance was mandatory. And the disciples and those women were in the upper room because Jesus commanded them to stay. They obediently lingered and waited. Somebody said obedience is instantly doing all God tells me to do with the right heart attitude. Obedience is instantly, it's immediate. Obedience is doing, it's active. Obedience is complete, it's doing all. And obedience is always with a right heart attitude. Now Jesus commanded the disciples to wait and that's exactly what they did. Upper room praying is obedient praying. You know in North America, or in America anyway, I believe that most praying for revival assumes that God will overlook our disobedience. Most praying for revival in this country is presuming that God will override our disobedience and just pour out blessing in any way. Scores of Christian leaders will call us to pray, but to my knowledge, not one Christian leader with a national platform ever calls the American churches to repentance, humility, and fasting. Most leaders can tell you what's wrong with every other group, except their own. And you know, our ministry, as has been mentioned, sponsors prayer advances, not prayer retreats. You know, we've retreated long enough. Don't you think it's time to turn the ship around and head in a positive direction? We need some gospel advance, brother. I'm just here to tell you, the prayer advance is about preaching, praising, and praying. We had a prayer advance attendee come one time, and God spoke to them. They went to the prayer room, lingered for two hours, When they got home, they felt impressed to share a testimony with their church. And when they did, the entire service broke out into a spontaneous revival. Can I just tell you? Obedience is not always convenient, but it's always profitable. And we need to aggressively follow every prompting that God gives us to pray. I believe that all effective prayer is predicated upon the obedience of the prayer. Jesus said, my father's house shall be called a house of? Prayer. My father's house shall be called a house of? Prayer. Prayer. Jesus' central definition of the church is a house of prayer. Jesus' central desire for the church, that it be a house of prayer. Today's church is a house of teaching, a house of preaching, a house of programs, but Jesus expects every church to be a house of prayer. Every church should be first and foremost be a house of prayer. It was the dominant feature in the early church. The prayer culture and corporate prayer defined the early church. It was ingrained in the spiritual DNA of the early church. And the Bible says the apostles gave themselves to prayer and ministry of the word. John Franklin said that that means it was not talking about their personal prayer time. But rather, they first of all gave themselves to the oversight of corporate prayer in the early church. I wonder this afternoon, is your church known for its praying? Is it known for the answers? Is it a praying congregation? Upper room praying is obedient praying. Number two, obedient praying is united praying. United praying. Now Acts 1 14 says they all continued in what? one accord in prayer and supplication. Now continued means obstinate, persistence, they were steadfast, there was supplication going on, affectionate, continued request. They continue with one accord in prayer and supplication. That means they didn't give up. They persisted in believing unified prayer. And you know, one accord means one mind. It was unanimous praying. They were knit by a bond stronger than death. You know, they had all been one in failure. They had all forsaken the Lord. Now they're one in fellowship for ten days. They're one in faith. They're one accord in prayer. Unified praying. Acts chapter 2, verse 1. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were with one accord in one place. Acts 2, 46. They continued daily with one accord in the temple. Acts 4, 32. The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul. Acts 5, 12. They were all with one accord in Solomon's porch. You know what they had? supernatural unity in the midst of cultural diversity. Think about it. Jews, Gentiles, Scythians, Greeks, and even barbarians, all together, that Heinz mixture in the early church, and it was the presence of the Holy Spirit that brought supernatural unity, and supernatural unity preceded supernatural power. I told you I grew up in Southside, Virginia. You can probably tell I'm not from Boston or the Bronx. And we had a tradition, my cousin and I, when we were young, we would go at Christmas and get TNT bombs. Cherry bombs. This is New York. You probably don't even know what I'm talking about. M-80s. And we would have a fireworks fest. We are out there shooting off these cherry bombs one night, and it dawned on me that my uncle had a leftover box of dynamite in an abandoned building on the property. And I thought maybe we could use one of these TNTs as a blasting cap. We had watched enough Mission Impossible reruns to where we budding terrorist, you know, we figured we could rig it. So we went and stole a stick of dynamite, peeled the end of it open, put a TNT in the end, put a cigarette on the fuse. At least we had enough sense not to try to light the thing and get away. So we put a cigarette on the fuse, lit the cigarette, and backed off, and we just watched. And it took forever for that cigarette to burn down to the fuse. I mean, if there's not a sucker on the backside of the cigarette, it takes a long time for that cigarette to burn down. And finally, it got down to the fuse and sputters and sparks and we're full of anticipation, not even knowing if it was going to work. But when that TNT detonated, man, that dynamite stick went off. You should have heard it good night in that cold, crisp winter air. It was amazing. I looked at my cousin. I said, wonder what three or four sticks might sound like. We stole three more sticks. We went to his house this time. We went into a field behind this home. The boys down the road were shooting bottle rockets and firecrackers and sparklers. Here we are with three or four sticks of dynamite. We rigged that thing up. We put it out in the middle of this field. We put the cigarette closer, closer, closer to the fuse. We lit it. We backed way, way off, and we watched. And man, that thing burned down and finally got to the fuse and psssh. Here goes, we're full of anticipation. That thing detonated. I've never been around a nuclear device, but I'm telling you, the earth shook. Dirt was flying, coming out of the sky. It was absolutely amazing. And you know, it was dark, so we couldn't see what happened. But when his parents went to plow the field the next spring, it was gone. There was a whole chest high deep, bigger than this building right here. We had blown the whole field out of existence somewhere or another. We got more than we anticipated. You know what? When that Pentecostal power got unleashed, those disciples got a whole lot more than they ever anticipated. But it was congregational unity that laid the foundation for that power. I'm telling you, there's power in unified prayer. Listen to A.T. Pearson. There's never been a revival, but by such united supplicatory praying, and no revival has ever continued beyond the continuation of that same praying. Jesus said, my father's house, a house of prayer. God can refuse nothing to a praying congregation, said one of the church fathers. E.M. Bowne says that God shapes the world through prayer. Did you know that most prayer in the New Testament is corporate praying? It's mostly corporate praying. Most people in our country pray about three things, I, me, and my. But there's not an I, there's not a me, and there's not a my anywhere in the model prayer. How does it go? Our Father, give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. It's corporate prayer. It's a family prayer, is it not? Our Father, give us, plural, Forgive us, lead us, deliver us. You know the Holy Spirit works in a unified atmosphere. I'm telling you there's power here. And the early church was unified. Man, they were one in hunger, they were one in humility, and they were one in honesty. They were one accord in prayer. Upper room praying is unified prayer. Number three, upper room praying is honest praying, is honest praying. In America, churches talk a lot about prayer. but don't do much pray. In the book of Acts, they didn't talk much about prayer, but they prayed a lot. In the book of Acts, you have 38 references to prayer, more than one per chapter. You have 53 references to the Holy Spirit. And I wanna say this, the only way to explain the early church is prayer and the Holy Spirit. That's all they had. Samuel Chadwick said that prayer is an impossible task without the Holy Ghost. Prayer's impossible. It's not a human thing. It's a God-initiated thing, a God-breathed thing. And the upper room prayer was unrehearsed, unscripted. They talked to God from the bottom of their hearts. That upper room praying was not casual. It was not conversational. I don't think it was laid-back, lackadaisical prayer. It was not one of those if-it-be-your-will kind of unbelief prayer meetings. They weren't asking God to help them. They were asking God to forgive them. Their dreams had been dashed. Their supposed Messiah had been crucified. Their world had fallen apart. They all forsook the Lord. And these men and women were crying out to God. They didn't pray like they meant it. They prayed because they meant it. They came clean in order to be clean. And I got no doubt, but what in that upper room, they took the witness stand against their own hearts. I believe they confessed their sin. And revival happens when people pray with Judgment Day honesty. You know what confession is? Confession is just telling God the truth about myself. That's what confession is, telling God the truth about me. Now, in the upper room, they had openness, brokenness, and recorded oneness. If there's no openness, there is no brokenness. If there's no brokenness, I'm telling you, there is no oneness. And if there's no oneness, there is no revival. Now in the upper room, in the upper room, they were open. I believe they were open, broken, and they were one. You remember on the Emmaus Road, a couple of those depressed, discouraged, defeated. Serapis, disciples were moping along. I mean, it was awful. Jesus pulled up beside of them incognito and he said, in essence, boys, why are y'all so sad? And they said, haven't you heard what happened? And then they rehearsed the whole thing, how they thought Jesus was gonna restore the kingdom to Israel. And here he got crucified and when they got quiet, Jesus began to expound the things concerning himself from the scriptures. Jesus preaching on Jesus from Genesis throughout the Old Testament. That's one sermon I sure would like to have heard. The Bible tells us as he was expounding the things concerning himself, when they got to their destination, their eyes were opened. They recognized that this was indeed Jesus. He disappeared out of their sight. You know what they said? They said one to the other, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us by the way? I'm telling you, brother, we need the kind of ministry that causes people's hearts to burn. You know what I need? You know what we all need? We need a good dose of holy heartburn in the house of God, and we get that from upper room praying. I'm talking about the fire of desire. I know that I used to go preach in Ireland all the time, and I preach around British people who, you know, not to wear a hat would be a mark of excitement, but all I'm saying is this. That brother, when your heart is on fire for God and ablaze, things happen. And when it comes to prayer, transparency, total honesty, a no holes barred, a going for broke kind of praying is the kind of praying we need. You know what our prayer advances. We teach people how to have spiritual CPR prayer meetings. Spiritual CPR. C stands for confession. P stands for praise, and R stands for request. And I believe this is the right order. You know, if we regard iniquity in our hearts, God will not hear us, so there's no use to say anything until we get the air clean between us and God. So we teach people corporate confession of sin. Confess your faults one to another, pray one for another, bear one another's burdens. Round one is confession only, no asking, no thanking. Round two is praise and thanking, no asking. Confession gets the ear of God. Praise pleases God. Now we're in a position to request from God. And some of these prayer meetings go on for hours. Some people have prayed to five o'clock in the morning. And I'm just telling you that it's honesty, honesty, honesty in prayer. That's why they were one heart and one soul, because they were honest before God and with one another. Blind Bartimaeus said, Lord, have mercy on me. The religious crowd told him to pipe down. This is not appropriate. You shouldn't be doing this. Quiet down. He cried out the more louder. And you know what? He would have remained blind if he had kept quiet. The woman with an issue of blood elbowed her way through that crowd. I'm telling you, faith rose up in her heart. She said, if I can but touch the hem of this garment, I know I'm going to be made whole. And I want to say this. Desperate people are not worried about being dignified. And some of us need to get over the fear of man and have the fear of God and cry out to God from the bottom of our souls. That's when revival is birthed with honest, honest praying. You know, she reached out to Jesus and she got a miracle. You know what? Reach is the evidence of desire. Reach is the evidence of pursuit. And if she had not reached, she never would have gotten healed. But that woman with the issue of blood, she admitted she was ill. Blind Bartimaeus acknowledged he was blind. God responds to honesty. You know, I used to be afraid of being a failure until I found out I was one. And that took a lot of pressure off of me when I finally figured out I'm not the only oddball. I'm not the only borderline reprobate in the bunch. And I found out that in honesty, God's spirit unites people. It's unified praying. People with God-sized problems need some God-sized answers. And when it comes to revival, you know there's basically three camps. There's the critics, can never find anything good to say. There's the commentators who explain it all away. And then there's the candidates. Brother Steve and I made up my mind, I'm gonna be a candidate, Lord will until the day I die, a candidate for revival. Honest praying. But listen to this. Opera room prayer number four is expectant praying. Expectant praying. In Acts chapter three, there was a lame man who expected to receive something from Peter and John. In Luke 3, 15, with John the Baptist, the Bible says the people were in expectation. There was something in the air. They hadn't grown into fatalistic thinking, brother. I'm telling you, there was expectation among the people, an atmosphere of anticipation. And I believe those disciples were expecting to receive the promise of the Father, and I really believe They had no idea exactly what that was gonna look like. They didn't know, but they were in expectation. And you know what? What they received was the biggest thing in the history of mankind, the birth of the new covenant assembly. The early church was born in a prayer meeting and the early church continued in a prayer meeting. You know, Jesus marveled at two things. He marveled at two things. Number one, the unbelief of his own disciples. It caused him to marvel. Then he marveled at the faith of the centurion. The president of a Christian university said to me, he said, Harold, when you start talking about faith, the professors all get nervous. You know what I thought? Wouldn't it be better if the professors were more bothered by their unbelief than they are by faith? When faith becomes controversial, brother, we have moved in some form of apostasy, in my opinion. God's greatest grief is to be doubted. God's greatest grief is to be doubted, but God's greatest pleasure and greatest joy is to be believed. People say, well, we're just reserved. We're just conservative. We're just timid. That's code words for unbelief. You know what I think? I think we need to move away from timid praying to confident praying. This is the confidence we have in Him. We gotta move away from problem-based prayer to worship-based prayer. It's already been cited. When Paul and Silas cast out a demon, they got thrown in prison, and they'd been beaten, put in the inner part of the prison in stocks, and here they are. You know what they did? They didn't call the Hebrew Law Association. They didn't call the Anti-Defamation League. At midnight here, they are beaten and they're gonna die. You know what they did? They prayed and sang praises to God. You know what you call that? That's a worship-based prayer meeting. We gotta move away from request problem-centered prayer meetings to faith-based prayer. And brother, if you're not pregnant with expectation, then you will not anticipate your prayer to birth a miracle. I'm gonna say this, non-expectancy is sin. Because whatever is not of faith is what? It's sin. We got systemic unbelief. We're scared to believe. I believe most praying for revival is so generalized, futurized, and depersonalized, and so vague, you wouldn't even know if God answered it or not. And antiseptic prayer is clinical, it's clean, it's precise, but it's cold. Thomas Brooks said, cold prayers always freeze before they reach heaven. Cold prayers always freeze before they reach heaven. And I wanna tell you, if your prayer doesn't move you, you better believe it is not gonna move the heart of God. God responds to heartfelt prayer, upper room prayer, expects an answer now. And I wanna say this, faith is essential to prayer. Listen, what's central in God's plan can never be secondary in Christian experience. Without faith, it's not difficult, it's impossible to please God. Faith is the only way to please God. Faith is the only doorway for God to enter a human heart. F.B. Meyer said, faith makes giants look like grasshoppers. Faith makes giants look like grasshoppers, but unbelief makes grasshoppers look like giants. My preacher brethren, we need to quit preaching about revival and start preaching for revival and start preaching for a verdict. Charles Spurgeon said, believing supplications are forecast of the future. Believing supplications are forecast of the future. Richard Alleyne said, God normally answers us according to our expectations. And I want to say this, faith-based praying is expectant praying. You know those disciples, they were full of expectation, but they didn't have it all figured out. And can I just say this? They were waiting to receive the promise of the Father. Now, brother and sister, what are you expecting? I believe we ought to be praying big, believing big, and expecting big. Listen, thanking God is the first step of faith. Thanking God is the first step of faith. So learn to couch every request with thanksgiving. And believing you actually possess what you ask in prayer is not presumption. The Bible calls it faith. And I believe that intercessory prayer happens when God shares his heart with you. When God invites you to join with the Trinitarian praying. That is the intercession of Jesus. And the groanings, intercessory groanings of the Holy Spirit. And I believe he invites us to join with the prayer that's going on in heaven right now, that his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. Enough of this hazy, lazy, crazy praying. We need to dare to believe God. So determined to pray with expectation instead of doubt. Determined to live in anticipation instead of despair. And start praying with exclamation points instead of question marks. Upper room praying is expectant praying. Now, the purpose of prayer is to reverence the name of God, advance the kingdom of God, and implement the will of God. That's the purpose of prayer. The purpose of prayer is to usher the future into the present. And in the upper room, what they were praying was anticipating of this coming of the promise from the Father, and brother, I'm telling you, upper room praying is expectant praying. We have these prayer advances. One year we challenged all the participants to offer up impossible prayer requests. Not predictable. No, pray stuff that only God could do. Well, we had one lady. Her mother was in Philadelphia. She was old. She needed a kidney transplant. The physicians in Philadelphia said that they wouldn't do it. She was too old. But they found a physician in Richmond, Virginia, who said, if you find a kidney replacement, I'll do the procedure. Her impossible prayer request was that God would give her mother a kidney from a donor without killing somebody. Would you believe when they got home? Not one, but two. Christians of a different race came and said, God has impressed me. If my kidney is a match, I'll be your donor. Not one, but two. The first one was a, it was a match. The doctor swapped them out. Next year at the prayer advance, the daughter was behind the pulpit. Here was Mama Carter. Mama Carter became my adoptive mom. Here was the donor over here. And the daughter was telling the story how that God had answered an impossible request. We were in Champaign, no Danville, Illinois, with Paul Rebert, a friend of mine. We're at Biaggi's, which is the best Italian restaurant. I know we're in New York City, but I'm just telling you it's good. And the pastor began to rehearse his kidney stone episode over lunch, which is maybe not appropriate with marinara sauce. You know what I'm saying? We begin to tell us this story. So we made it through lunch. His wife and my wife got up and left. And then the pastor and I, we got up and left. And no sooner than we walked outside the door, he doubled over in writhing pain. I managed to get him to the car. My wife looked back and said to his wife, I think Paul is sick. His wife didn't even look back. He'll be okay. He'll be all right. Now listen up, ladies. If your husband is sick, he needs some sympathy. He's a wimp, all right? He needs some mercy, man. He'll be all right. My wife said, I don't think he's gonna be all right. We got him in the car, off to the hospital. Checked him in, guess what? Kidney stone episode number two. Well, the doctor said he'll never be out under 24 hours. It'll probably be two or three days. We're having a prayer summit at his church. So we go back that night, pastor's in the hospital, told him what had happened. It's a prayer summit. I said, how many think we ought to pray the prayer of faith? That God will work in his body, deliver him from this kidney stone, and he'll be here in the morning in Illinois. I said, in Illinois, the people said, yes, let's pray. Would you believe by one o'clock that morning, the kidney stone was gone, he was in bed, he showed up at nine o'clock the next morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, nothing is impossible with God. Champaign, Illinois, my privilege to be in a revival atmosphere some years ago. Oh, tremendous. Went on for 13 days. Just things were happening. A lady in the church prayed for her husband for 30 years. They said he was antisocial, bipolar, slapped him with all kinds of psychological designations. He believed them, antisocial, couldn't come out of the house, couldn't be in a crowd. And then the second week on Monday night, he was sitting in the back. I can still see him. You could tell he had some issues, but he was just sitting there. He sat for over two hours, which was like a miracle. Second night, third night, fourth night, he got born again. He got born again. Fifth night, here's a man that can't even go to a store is testifying before over 200 people about what God has done in his heart. You know what I thought? Jesus was passing by. Thank God Roger happened to be in the right place. And I want to tell you something. A revival atmosphere is a healing atmosphere. I believe there's multitudes of people that have real issues, psychological and other kinds of issues. If they could just get in a sanctified atmosphere, I'm just telling you, things can happen. You say, was he 100%? No, but he was 1,000% better than he ever was before. He came to church every time the doors were open. He even worked in the Oana program. Nothing is impossible with God. And what happened in that upper room needs to happen today. I'm wondering this afternoon, could you dare to believe God for things beyond your frame of reference? You know, if you've got criteria for the work of God, other than biblical criteria, you're probably not gonna see much happen. Could we believe God this afternoon? You know, revival is just thinning the veil between heaven and earth. That's what revival is, it's thinning the veil between heaven and earth. We go through some meetings, but some meetings go through us. And I love to get in a meeting that goes through me. I wanna tell you real quick a story. I've been riding a revival wave since January. And what I mean by that is I've had the privilege to be in seven distinct revival atmospheres where unusual things happen. One was in our home church. Our pastor, young pastor, was hungry, placed himself in a revival atmosphere. He wasn't there five minutes, but what God touched him about church hurt, he'd been terribly abused, church hurt and the fear of man. God delivered him. He came home Wednesday afternoon at five o'clock. Prayer meeting was at seven. Some people had gathered. He got up and gave his testimony. And then he said, what do you think we ought to do? I said, I think we ought to just tell God the truth. Now you've got to understand, this is a conservative, traditional, not out of the box kind of place. People begin to confess their sins out loud. This went on for like two and a half, three hours. Pastor took a couple of risks on the spot. He called for three days of prayer and fasting. called for three more nights of cleansing revival. And what we would do is we would just gather and we would do heart searching, pretty much using this brochure right here. And we would pray individually for so long. Then there was testimony. It was unscripted. I'm just telling you, it was not greased. It was spontaneous, pastor-led, cleansing revival. We just followed the lead of the Spirit for the next three nights. These meetings would go on two and a half, three hours, again, non-programmed. but extraordinary prayer, uncommon services. Sunday morning, our church is not a hyper-responsive kind of place, but buddy, everybody just about was on their knees. I remember one lady at the altar who'd been sexually assaulted was weeping her heart out, and God was touching her. People in the church who hadn't spoken for two or three years were getting reconciled on their knees. praying together. All kinds of things began to happen. It was amazing. It went on way beyond, way beyond the normal time. So the pastor called for five more nights of cleansing revival. The crowds began to grow. By Wednesday we had the first convert. Thursday we had the second convert. It was amazing. You know what happened? The pastor went on a revival journey and the church went with him. And our church was transformed in about 10 days. We went from a congregation to a fellowship, and we went from ecclesia to koinonia. And Barnhart Baptist Church was cleansed in a profound way. You know what the pastor said? He said more happened in these 10 days than could have happened in 15 years of counseling. It wasn't long after that they baptized 13 converts out of that, and they baptized regularly since. I think it was Edward Last who said, the church that's fully prepared for revival is already in it. The church that's fully prepared for revival is already in it. So there's only one thing left to do, and that's to get fully prepared for revival. And I believe upper room praying is the way to prepare for an outpouring of the Spirit of God. What are we talking about? Obedient praying. Obedient praying. Dealing with stuff that's just been shoved to the side or swept under the carpet. Obedient praying. Unified praying. One heart and one soul. I'm telling you, if you're saved, you got nobody to impress. You only got one person to please. And when we all get in the light like he's in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us. Honest praying. What a freedom. What a freedom. Meetings this fall, people have stood up and said, well, Started drinking again, and I need help and we just send people to pray with them Don't you think church ought to be a place where people can hurt out loud? Instead of faking it or putting on some sort of a Sophisticated look just just just get honest and come clean all brothers wonderful honest praying unified praying and expectant praying I'm telling you according to your faith so be it unto you I'll tell you what I'm believing for I'm holding out for a better day in Zion and I believe in God for many, many, many outpourings of the Spirit. And you know what? It's happened throughout church history, and if it don't happen again, we're not gonna have any history church-wise. I'm just telling you, it's time to seek the Lord with upper room praying.