Genesis chapter 22, it's not on prayer yet. I'll get to that in just a second. Genesis chapter number 22. One of the things that we often forget, I mentioned it in Bible study, is the law of first mention. And in the law of first mention, when the Lord mentions something the first time, it's generally true throughout the entire Bible. And in Genesis chapter 22, you find the word worship. Now this is the reason that you don't see worship service nowadays, or you see a cheap imitation. You're always looking for an electrical kind of a feeling or some kind of a feeling, because feeling and emotion is a part of your worship service. It's part of what happens, but it gets stale after a while. And the reason that people go for a counterfeit or a cheap imitation is because of what's found in Genesis chapter 22, because true worship of God always begins with a willingness to sacrifice. and you get accustomed to doing things, it's not a sacrifice for you to come to church anymore, not a sacrifice to read and pray and to study, whereas before the Lord would be pleased with you doing that, it's become part of the normal routine of things anymore. And so it winds up having to cost you something in order for you to see the Lord. In other words, an investment, you might say it that way. You have a tendency to appreciate more what you invest in than you do something that you're just spectating on. Being a spectator is different than being a participator. The illustration I gave you during the Bible study was that you might like baseball, but if you have a kid that's playing in the same game that you like, you have a tendency to have a little more interest in it. So it has to do with something you put an investment in. A lot of times you don't experience God in an emotional way because there hasn't been an investment on your part. So God looks at you and is like, well, you haven't invested anything, so you're not gonna get much out of it. It's true in every other aspect of life that you get more out of something you invest in than you do if you don't invest in it. You have more care, more concern, and even more expectation out of it. Sometimes it'll lead to disappointment. But then we expect God to give us the benefit and the privilege of having a worship service without any investment. It's like, Lord, I don't, I mean, I figure I'm investing. The illustration I used was, as you appreciate your kid when he begins to walk, you try to get him to take a step, get him to take a step, he takes a step, everybody puts it up all over where he took his first step and all this, you bronze his shoes or whatever, this is his first step, he took it about four inches before he fell and busted his nose and so on and so forth, and it's a big event. After that, you don't make a big deal when he's walking anymore. But yet, when it comes to the Lord, after you've started walking with Him, you expect the Lord to appreciate the fact you're walking. The Lord's like, well, you've been walking a while. Why should I keep appreciating you for walking? It was a big deal when you first started walking. But it should be expected now. You're supposed to walk. All right, you know how they start, you know, having their first, you know, he's eating now, he's eating now, and then it's a big deal when they move off of formula, or move off of milk to formula, and then from formula to eating smushed vegetables and stuff, and then when they begin to be able to pick up a knife and fork and not sling it all over the wall, that's a big deal, and then when he begins to feed himself, you think it's a thing, and you teach him manners, and after that, when's the last time you said to your kid, I sure am so proud of you, you can feed yourself? You say, well, that's a dumb thing. Yeah, but aren't we still expecting the Lord to pat us on the back because we're feeding ourselves? Lord, you should appreciate it. I read the Bible. The Lord's like, do you thank your kid for eating? See how it gets kind of messed up? And you wonder why you don't have a worship service. Genesis 22, I'm trying to help you. I want you to experience God. I want it to be that way. I want God to be real to you, but there's a cost involved and there's the problem. Look in verse number 4, we'll pick it up. The third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place of Pharaoh. Abraham said unto the young men, abide ye here with the ass. and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again unto you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, laid it upon Isaac his son, and took the fire in his hand, the knife, and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake to Abraham's father and said, my father, here am I, my son. And he said, behold, I have the fire and the wood, but where's the lamb? for the burnt offering. Abraham said, my son, God will provide himself a lamb for the burnt offering. So they went both of them together. And then what happens? He lays his son up there and the Lord stops his hand and then a sacrifice takes place. The first time worship shows up in your Bible is a time where a man is offering that which is the most valuable thing to him. And guess what? God shows up. Father, bless your word, I appreciate it. The privilege of being here, appreciate the fact you gave us a Bible, appreciate the building you gave us, appreciate the air conditioning. I thank you, God, for the weather holding all so these folks could get here. Thank you for a house full on a Wednesday night, for people that are hungry to know about you. And I pray, God, that you'd allow me the privilege of feeding them and let it be something that'll help them and benefit them. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Now, that being said, I appreciate you keep on trying even though you're struggling. That's the Christian life. But ladies and gentlemen, too often we're looking for recognition and appreciation for stuff that should be status quo. It should be expected of us. The illustration I gave in the Bible study was, I don't tell my wife every night when she comes home and she doesn't tell me, I sure am glad you came home today. She expects me to come home. She's been expecting me to come home for 35 years. When I don't come home, she knows where I'm at. You say what? We're married. She doesn't tell me, I appreciate you coming home. Right? because I'm supposed to come home. So what happens is, is we do what the Lord tells us we should do, and we're like, Lord, how come you don't tell me thank you? And it's like, yeah, we got that one backwards. How come you're not telling me thank you for all the things that I do? In the Bible, ladies and gentlemen, worship is always connected with sacrifice. And if I use the word sacrifice in its proper context, it means it's always something that costs you something. It's not something that doesn't cost you anything. And the four sheep for the sheep thing that David goes out there, the illustration is he takes the one thing when he had somebody over here with a pasture full of sheep. And it wouldn't have been as much to the individual if he had taken all one of the sheep from the guy that had a bunch of sheep than to take his only sheep. Sacrifice. And that's where our relationship with the Lord sort of stagnates. It sort of stops. It doesn't continue to grow. And that's what happens in our prayer life, is that we just kind of get accustomed to our prayer life being something that there's no time element that causes us to have to pay a price to make our flesh stay down for a little while. Two things generally will hinder the prayer life more so than anything else. One of those things is, is always being enslaved to feelings. You have to learn to pray even when you don't feel like praying. Prayer doesn't always come at an opportune time. Prayer sometimes will sneak up on you, you're riding down the road and all of a sudden you're hitting the brakes and screaming, oh God, oh God, oh God. How do you know God doesn't keep you from running into somebody else or whatever? You get into a situation like that, it's not always an opportune time where you can put all your fingers together and all that other stuff. Well, Lord, I just didn't feel like it. Okay, good, here comes the sacrifice. Lord, I didn't feel like it, but I came anyway. And I'm telling you, I didn't feel like it, but I knew it was right for me to be here, so I'm gonna be here, and I hope and pray that you'll help me to overcome this in my prayer life. Now, that's true when it comes to work, it's true when it comes to school, it's even true, honestly, when it comes to being married, and when it comes to your responsibilities around the house, you have to learn to do things you don't feel like doing. But when it comes to prayer, what we generally do is, is Lord, I don't feel like praying. Well, I hate to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, you don't have to wait till you feel like it to learn how to pray. It requires character. The second thing that'll get in the way is oftentimes will be the ability for your mind to stay still while you're praying. A wandering mind is the thing that gets me in trouble sometimes. When I get quiet and trying to wait for the Lord to talk, I need something sometimes to occupy my mind. So I read the Bible while I pray, or sometimes I'll sing a song while I pray, or sometimes I listen to the right kind of music while I'm praying, and that's done because I'm so weak in my prayer, I can't keep my mind, not from wandering on wickedness, thinking, I need to get this done, I need to get that done, I forgot to make that phone call, I need to make a reservation over there, I need to ask Brother so-and-so about such-and-such, I wonder how so-and-so's doing in the hospital, I think such-and-such is going over here, and the Lord's like, could you shut up for a minute? So what I have to do is, is to kind of direct it. I do better praying when I'm reading or when I'm studying than I do any other time. I'm not a good prayer warrior at nighttime. When it comes time for me to pray, oftentimes, ladies and gentlemen, at nighttime, it's not a good time. I get kind of selfish at night. I come to the Lord and I run through the stuff in the daytime and I thank the Lord for this and that and the other and I get to thinking about what I need and what I want and generally speaking, before I'm done praying, I'm asleep. So what I have to realize is, is I have to realize if I'm gonna spend time in prayer, like this afternoon, it's good for me to be reading my Bible so I can pray for a little while and then go back to the Bible and to keep my mind focused on what it is I'm supposed to be doing. But I don't feel like it. This afternoon I felt like taking a cotton picking nap. Clouds were rolling in and I was a little tired and I was thinking about this and thinking about that and I thought, man, I could just, and the Lord's like, I thought you were praying. And I see the Lord walking by like this. Could you not watch and pray one hour? Wake up and pray, for the flesh indeed is willing, but the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And I'm like, okay, all right, I'm back at it. And then he comes back by and just says, well, sleep on, man, sleep on. I can't count on you to pray for an hour? Watch and pray for an hour? But he says, watch and pray for a reason. Prayer all by itself without making sure you stay focused can be a dangerous thing. It can cause your mind to wander and you can kind of get off into some bad situations there. I want to show you some prayers in the Bible, maybe just one prayer tonight. A child can use his prayer, but the wisest saint can't get to the bottom of what prayer means. A child can pray, but you can't grasp everything that prayer means, no matter how smart you are what it is. How do you get a hold of that thing? You're up there talking to the creator of the universe and you're allowed to talk to him. How are you even allowed to address him? It's the most powerful thing that you as a mortal can do. It's more powerful than preaching. It's more powerful than reading. It's more powerful than singing. The most powerful thing, and yet it's the least thing or the thing that we do the least when it comes to prayer. I don't know about you, but oftentimes I find out that I don't take advantage of the tools that God's given me. I don't pray as much as I ought to pray. I'm working on it. This has been a great study for me. It's helping me, 2 Chronicles chapter 14. Now we already talked about when to pray and what to pray and how to pray and those kind of things and I want to show you some prayers in the Bible that may help you. And I'm not going to immediately go over to Matthew and show you the prayer for a Jewish saint in the tribulation. Second Chronicles, chapter number 14. I'm also not gonna go over to the passage that says, if my people that are called upon my name will humble themselves and come to me and all that stuff, that has to do with Israel. It has nothing to do with the United States of America. If there's one thing I hope and pray that you understand here is, is that you're not his people, you're his bride. And that if the Bible is right, this age is gonna end in apostasy, and the church is gonna end in apostasy, and it's gonna end in the rapture. Now, I was asked this while I was out of town last week, and I think it probably is something that's worth repeating. How soon is the rapture? I don't know. If I did, I'd tell you. I wouldn't keep it a secret. If God showed me when it was, in spite of people thinking I was an idiot, I'd tell you. That's what I believe the rapture's gonna be. But I have no idea. I'm hoping it's any time now or any day now. I believe if you're prepared to die, you're ready for the rapture whenever it happens. But number two, is judgment going to come on America before or after the rapture? I don't know. There's nothing in the Bible that says that judgment can't come to the United States of America before the rapture happens and you not be in the tribulation. This nation may have judgment. It's fallen everywhere else and every other country that's turned their back on God in that book. Every nation has been judged and God I don't see overlooked in the United States of America. I do believe that the only reason that God's judgment hadn't fallen already is because the Lord's got Christians that are still here. But sooner or later, there were Christians in China when it went underneath the fellow over there in China and created, they're persecuting Christians now to beat the band just like they did for years over there. Same way in North Vietnam, when all that took place and Ho Chi Minh comes in, kicks all the Christians out, there was still tribulation period for them, but it wasn't the tribulation, but there were Christians that were killed and crucified. You've got Christians now, not just Catholics, but Christians that are being persecuted in other countries. The stuff they say now about Christians being killed, most of them they're talking about are Catholics. But I hate to say this, ladies and gentlemen, at least those Catholics in foreign countries are known for what their belief is, and they're willing to be martyred for what they believe, even though their belief is wrong. They got more faith and trust in Mary than most of you do in a Bible and Jesus Christ. They'll go to the stake and let them hang them upside down on a cross or cut their head off because they believe they gotta do it in order to enter in. But I admire somebody that's willing to die for something like that. Believe it or not, I admire the communists. When the communists first started moving years ago, they were willing to sell anything, do anything, and completely sell out to their cause. Americans won't, not American, Christians, you're not willing to sell out to find, you don't want Jesus that bad. To give all you got? I'm talking about in theory. I'm not talking about, you know, piling up on the altar right now and that kind of, I'm saying, Lord, whatever I got's yours. My family, my friends, my possessions, my life, my whole heart, my mind, everything. My hand, you got it all. Doesn't matter. It belongs to you. No, you don't believe that. You keep something back for yourself. That's the Lord referring to a servant over there. Why didn't you invest it? Why didn't you invest it? Why didn't you invest it? Because it was for me. I kept it. I buried it. I put it in the earth. Really, and what good would that do you if you invest in it down here? It doesn't help you at all. This thing, when it comes to prayer, it requires a sacrifice. There's some great prayers in the Bible. We're gonna go through a few of them. I'm gonna give you a couple of them maybe here tonight. 2 Chronicles chapter number 14, Asa, one of the great kings of Israel, until he got puffed up in his head and that kind of a deal, but Asa was a great king. Notice in verse number two, chapter 14, verse two, Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He has a personal relationship with the Lord. Don't expect to get much of a prayer life if you don't have a personal relationship. One of the reasons that when it comes to communication, you don't have the same communication with everybody. The closer the relationship is, the better the communication, right? In other words, I talk to my wife about things that I don't talk to other people with. I have some friends I talk to. I talk to them about things I don't talk to the general public about. Not secrets, not stuff, you know, gossip. I'm talking about personal issues. The same way with God. Asa had a personal relationship with God. One of the reasons that our prayer life lags behind is we don't know God good enough to be open, front, and honest with him. Their attitude is this, well, he already knows everything anyway, why bother to tell him? Well, he got a great example in Bartimaeus. These boys sang about him on Sunday. In Mark chapter number 10, Bartimaeus comes up there and he's crying out, and everybody in the town knows that he's blind. Y'all all know the story better than I do. And he's crying out, and they tell him to shut up, shut up, and the Lord has them bring him up there. And he's kneeling down there in front of the Lord, and his eyes are popped out of his head, and he's kneeling down there, and the Lord makes a strange statement there. He says, what would that thou have me to do for thee? What do you want me to do for you? Well, you're the creator of the universe. Don't you already know everything? You're God manifest in the flesh. Don't you already know what I need? I mean, don't you know before I even ask what it is? The issue is, is the Lord knows what He needs, but He wants to know if Bartimaeus knows it. Sometimes God wants to know, do you know what the problem is? Yeah, He knows what the problem is. Yes, He knows what the trouble is. Yes, He knows what you need before you even ask it. He wants to know, are you willing to humble yourself and say, God, me, I need help with this. I need some help. I'm in a real jam here. Personal relationship. and pouring your heart out. When's the last time you went to God and said, don't be irreverent, is the word I'm looking for. Don't be cussing God like one guy said, you know what, God knows you're gonna cuss anyway, so just go ahead and cuss at him. I would not suggest that's a very wise thing to do in the name of being spiritual. I don't find anybody in the Bible, even when Job gets upset, and even when Jonah gets upset, he don't say, using curse words and profanity, you better remember who you're addressing. That's the devil using that kind of stuff in that kind of a deal. Be respectful, but be honest. Lord, I didn't feel like praying today. I got so much going on in my mind and I'm so mad and bitter of this and that and such that and so on, but I know I'm supposed to pray and I want to learn how to pray. No matter what it takes, I want you to teach me how to pray. Cause I wanna learn how to pray. Well you're not gonna learn how to pray just waiting till you feel like praying. And then trying to pray some fancy flowery prayer when in your heart you're just as far away from, you gotta have a personal relationship. It's important. Look in verse number four, he commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their father. He had an impact on other people. He had said, not only am I gonna have a personal relationship, but he told the people around him that they should be seeking God too. Not just I should be praying, but my family should be praying, my wife should be praying, my kids should be praying, my church should be praying. People to pray, it's important. Prayer sometimes is the very vehicle by which a lot of people depend to get from point A to point B, more so than you can possibly imagine, or God wouldn't put so much emphasis on it in the Bible. It's just generally speaking we use it for selfish, self-serving purposes. Look, if you will, if we go a little bit further in the passage, they come up against these, got great walls and towers and gates and bars and everything's going great. Why? Because the Bible says in verse seven, therefore he said to Judah, let us build these cities and make about them walls and towers and gates and bars while the land is yet before us. Why? Because we have sought the Lord our God and we have sought him and he hath given us rest on every side. God's first. I've heard a lot of preaching about put your wife first, put your husband first, put your kids first, put your business first, put the home first, put the church first, put the, uh-uh, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. All these things will be added to you. God's gotta be first in your life or you've got no prayer life. The whole time you're praying, you're praying to somebody you don't believe. You pray to your real God. Whatever's first in your life is your real God. So when you don't see a worship service, it's because you've been praying and sacrificing to the wrong God. Now, I don't mean to be hoarse with you, ladies and gentlemen, but one of the reasons we have a problem in our prayer life is we're not willing to sweat in prayer. I mean, really get at it and work at it. It's a weak spot in our lives, my life, maybe not your life, maybe you're a prayer warrior and live at the foot of the cross. Look if you will please and come down to verse number 14. Now there comes the Ethiopians are coming down here and they got thousands out. They got over a million plus 300 chariots. That's a pretty big army coming at them. Verse number 9. In verse number 10, he was willing to do something. Notice an Asa went out. He wasn't lazy, he was active. He didn't sit back on his haunches and wait. He went out against them in verse number 10. Set the battle on array, the valley is a path of Mershaw. And then he says in verse 11, here's the prayer. This is where I want to get to. Asa cried unto the Lord, his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no power. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on Thee, in Thy name we go against the multitude. O Lord, Thou art our God, let not man prevail against Thee. First thing I want to say about that is, is that he cried out, he was earnest. He was sincere. He meant business. He took it serious. Notice it says that he cried. When's the last time you cried in prayer? When's the last time that whatever you're praying about broke your heart? When's the last time when you got down to pray you were willing to shed some tears on the behalf of it? He was sincere about his prayer. He was sincere about what he was doing. Now let me just say this, as the old preacher used to say, sincerity alone is not enough because sincerity can lend toward selfishness. You can be praying selfish things when you're praying and be sincere about them. There was an old guy in England years ago, and he had some land in Essex, and he owned some land in another providence close by, and he stood up to address the general council of the church there, and he stood up and he said, oh God, our Father, I have lands in Essex, and I have lands in so and so, and I pray God that this land will be prosperous and protected from its enemies, and you'll protect it and give it the right amount of rain. That's selfish, he's sincere, But he's motivated by selfishness. So sincerity alone is not the thing that'll get it done. But he cried out. He was serious about it. His back's against the wall. God, I need you to do something for me. Hardest thing about prayer is that there's not an instantaneous answer. Sometimes God answers by not answering. He actually answered, but you won't realize he answered until five or ten years down the line. And then you look back and go, well, I'll be. The Lord heard me the first time I cried that thing out. He just didn't reveal that he answered the prayer until 10 out of 10. You thought, well, the Lord didn't hear me. The Lord said no. The Lord said wait. That's the typical answer. The Lord answers three ways. Yes, no, or wait. A lot of times you think he said wait. He didn't say wait. He answered the prayer right there. He just doesn't show you he answered it until you get old enough to handle it. 10 years later, he says, oh, by the way, I answered that prayer. Does it mean as much to you now, 10 years later, as it did to you at that time? Back then, you thought you couldn't do without it. And now, 10 years later, I'm showing you that I answered that prayer for you. Does it bother you as much now as it did back then? No, Lord, I didn't really care. See? And you were mad at me because you said I didn't answer your prayer. I did answer it. You just didn't like the answer. He's sincere about it. He's crying out. He's saying, God, do something for me here. Notice the second of all, His God. I might say this. He cried unto the Lord, His God. He has a personal relationship. It's personal. His God. He's not talking to somebody else's God. He's not talking about a God he doesn't know anything of. Now, how do I get that relationship? I believe in this. In my life personally, I can remember the tragedies better than I can remember the deliverances. In my life personally, I can remember the things that are on the top of my mind right now that I need to pray for and I have a tendency to forget the things he's already delivered me from. So when it comes to be your God, I suggest that you do where you write things in the Bible and you even put a date by where God spoke to you and God answered your prayer and did something for you so you can look back over that list because sometimes in times of trouble especially, we forget. what God did. I think you should start in salvation. Thank you for hearing my prayer when I was however old. And start right there. Now don't stop there, but then begin to review your life and start seeing God's hand in your life and seeing where God helped you and God blessed you and God did things for you. And spend some time, as we talked about on Sunday, thanking God for what God has done in your life. There's gonna be some momentary times in there where God did some things you don't understand. That's what's called faith. God doesn't have to run anything by me and you before He does it. You've got to grab a hold of that, ladies and gentlemen, otherwise you can get real bitter with God because you start to go, why'd He do that to me? I don't know. I look at it this way. How come I'm not living in China and I might not have ever met Him? How come I'm not born with a towel on my head and a rug under my knees? How come I grew up in this country and not that? I could have been born anywhere. I didn't have anything to do with it. How come I got raised the way I got raised? I don't know. I think it's God that did those kind of things. But I don't have to understand everything. God doesn't check with me. Hey, what do you think if I do this or that or the other? He's God. He does what's best for me, whether I understand it or not. That's called faith. Lord, I know you know what's best for me, but sometimes that's a hard thing to do. Come on down a little bit further. He says there in verse number 11, the Lord, it is nothing to thee to help. He's lifting him up. He's adoring him. He said, Lord, this is nothing to you. It's no big deal to you, whether you help one or you help many. And then he says this, he says, help us, O Lord our God. Now it's gone from just me to crying out, help us. He has a definite purpose in his prayer. So that when God answers the prayer, he knows who it is that's answering the prayer. Asa's not going to walk away from this battle saying, well yeah, we asked God to do it, but we already took care of it ourselves. He's saying, God, I'll give you the glory for this thing. If we win this battle, it'll be because you did it and you'll be the one that's responsible because it's an answered prayer, not our ability or my ability to set the battle in a ray or anything like that. Most of us pray like the roofer that's up on three-story roof up and he's working. He's on about a 12 or a 14-pitch roof and that thing's flying off of that deal and he starts sliding down that roof and sliding down that roof and he's, oh God, help me, oh God, help me. If you do anything, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'll serve you. I'll worship you. I'll do whatever you want me to do. And about that time, his britches catch a nail that hadn't been pounded down. And he says, never mind, Lord, the nail caught me. In other words, I made you all those promises and everything, but this nail was here all along, and I didn't really need you, God, so I don't owe you nothing. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I don't mean to be too difficult with you, but God's done a whole lot of things in your life where you are where you are right now because of what God did for you, and when you go through trouble, you know what you have a tendency to do? You forget all them nails out there, and you're saying, that wasn't God, that wasn't God, that wasn't God, that wasn't God, that wasn't God, that wasn't God, but you blame him for all your trouble. No, God brought you all along here. There's some of you sitting in here, you shouldn't even be saved, let alone sitting in church. On a Wednesday night, on a Wednesday night, you should be in church. You gotta be kidding, man. You shouldn't be on a Wednesday. You wouldn't even have a desire to be here on a Wednesday night. And I'm not saying you to be some crack whore down on 8th and Main or something like that or somebody out raping and robbing or something like that. You'd just be so busy with work or you'd be sitting out. You wouldn't have any desire. It's because of God you're even sitting here. Or prostitute, excuse me. Well, that's a biblical word. But the bottom line is you always have a tendency, oh, no, I would have never been the drunk on the street. I would have never been the crackhead. I would have never been the person sitting in jail. I understand that, but you could have gotten caught up in your own ways. You could have gotten caught up in what you're doing. You could have gotten caught up in a career. You could have gotten caught up in all the stuff that you want to do at Mass. You could have run in a whole different direction. You could be running around with a bunch of different people. You could have got a bunch of STDs. You could have already died from liver cancer. You could have already died from hepatitis C. You could have already died. You could be sitting in an insane asylum, what some of you people have been through. It's a miracle you're sitting here. You should be in a rubber room somewhere with a straitjacket on and them loading you up with Thorazine and walking around with glassy eyes. You're sitting here clothing in your right mind because God took care of you and got you to where you are. I'm telling you folks, there's a lot of times you forget them nails. Oh, that wasn't God, that was a nail. That wasn't God, that was a nail. That wasn't God. Hey, you wouldn't be married to who you're married with because nobody else would have put up with you had God not gone ahead and intervened and done something for you. No, Lord, just a nail. No, Lord, it's just a nail. Lord, I know you brought him into my life so I could straighten him out. I've been bearing the burden for everybody. The Lord's like, no, if it had not been for what I let happen in your life, you would be headed for hell and you would not be sitting in a church on Wednesday night. You would not desire God in any way, shape, or form. You forgot the nails in your life and thought, oh, well, those things were just sticking out. They'd always been there anyway. No. God supernaturally intervened in your life, whether you like it or not. If I'd have been raised different, if I'd have been done different, if you had have been, you wouldn't be where you are. God knew exactly what He was doing when He did it. I don't understand why, because God made you unique as a snowflake. And He said, these are the things you need in your life to turn you to Me. And when you get there to eternity, you'll look back and go, I sure am glad you did that. Say why? For some of you, it's been hard. Man, it's been hard. I don't know why God hasn't put me through some of the stuff He's put you through. But I know this, God knows what He's doing and it's His way of having His personal fingerprint in your life and you get to experience things about God that some of the rest of us will never learn. Probably in your life, you could go back and say, God, I want more of you, and God, I want to learn more about you, and God, I want to minister to people, and I want to be a blessing to other people, and I want to help other people. The Lord's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're saying a mouthful there. No, Lord, I want to be something for you. I want to do something for you. At the time, it might have been you were thinking I wanted recognition. God said, if you want to be my ministry, we're going to put you in the wine press. Hey, you can go out there and get you a bunch of olives, but if you want olive oil, you got to smush them olives. That may not be good English, but you understand, smush is a little bit more than squeeze. I mean, smush means there ain't nothing left of the olive. All that's left is a little greasy spot where that thing was in that press, and when it's pressed down, you get the benefit of the oil, but there ain't nothing left of the olive. Need to understand, ladies and gentlemen, that there's a definite purpose to prayer, and God says, when I give you the answer to prayer, make sure you're careful about who you give glory to. How come you got through without losing your mind? You say, well, this is medicine and I've been to see so and so and all that kind of stuff. Can I say this with all due respect? You are an idiot. It's only by God's grace you haven't lost your mind and you're chewing on your tongue sitting somewhere completely out of your mind. If it hadn't been for God's grace getting you through, whether you give him credit for it or not, I know why you're where you're at. Some of the stuff you folks have seen, some of the stuff these policemen have been through, they're sitting here in church tonight They ought to be sitting around with a 12-gauge loader with their back up against the wall and watching all the windows and watching all the doors thinking at any minute they could be next if they didn't trust God to say, hey man, I did what I was supposed to do, thank God for the blood, I'm going home to heaven one day and God got me through. My friends would testify, we are not alive by our own doing. Stupid, ignorant things we did when we were young. In the name of the law, not illegal stuff. And you say, what happened? God intervened. I really believe the Lord heard my wife praying. More times than not, there's stuff that happened. It's like, how'd that happen? You say, why? I'll tell you why, God. I look back at my life, why didn't one of those messes I was involved in turn bad and they wind up bringing me up on charges or something? Why didn't I wind up getting hurt more times than I did? Why not? God, that's why, God. Whether I ask Him for it or not, He said, I'll watch over him, he's a red-headed stepchild, just take care of him, I'll watch out for him. How come He surrounded me with good friends that were loyal to the cause and loyal to that uniform and loyal to friendship and whether they disagreed with you or not, when it came to having your back against the wall, how come that is? Why has my wife stayed with me through all these years when she winds up later in the years of our life getting ignored and me going here and going there and doing this and that and the other? You say, well, she's a good woman. I say it's God. I say God makes her that way. I don't think it has anything to do with she's just a good woman or I'm such a divine cat, you know, that she's just so glad when I am there that she'll take what even a little bit is good enough for her. No, that's God blinding her. When we got married, I had to, it's an unfortunate thing, but I had to leave her dog to the side where I couldn't let her bring the dog in the church when we got married. She had a C&I dog. That was funny. Y'all were getting kind of intense there for a minute. The last time you prayed with a definite purpose. I mean, you really meant business with God. You said, Lord, this is something I need in my life. Sometimes we don't pray and ask God, and the way we ask a miss is we really don't want God to answer our prayer. So we don't pray sincerely about it. We just kind of bump it because we know we're supposed to instead of that's what we really need. Notice the next thing here in the same verse right here. He says, we rest on Thee. My goodness, man, we rest on Thee. What is that? It's faith. Amen. I'm praying. He ain't got an answer to prayer. He didn't even have a promised answer to prayer. He's saying, Lord, no matter what, we rest it on You. Now three Hebrew children, same way. I talked to Bill Terrell today. Some of you know him. Some of you knew he was here for years. Him and Miss Sue went and had to move because of their parents and then Miss Sue recently passed away. Brother Bill said today, he said, Preacher, he said, I knew things was going to get bad after Sue went on. And he said, I've gotten pretty bad now. And I said, well, how are things, Brother Bill? How are you getting on without it? He said, I'm not good, Preacher. They've called hospice. I said, what in the world, Brother Bill? He said, Preacher, I can't hardly do nothing no more. My health's so bad. He said, they've got so much fluid on me. I take Lasix all the time. They give it to me by drip. They give it IV. They give it oral. They give it every way. I can go to the bathroom, but it still comes up. And he said, there's so much in my legs now, it's weeping through my skin. Hospice comes every couple of days and changes my bandages. He said, I'm in pain constantly. I can hear the oxygen machine running in the background. Like that. He said, it's been pretty lonely. I've been by myself since Sue's been gone, just me. He said, but I'm a big boy. And I said, well, I said, we'll certainly pray for you. What do you want me to pray? I said, you want me to pray you get well? He said, I don't think these sores on my legs are ever going to heal. They say they won't heal. He said, I guess if God wants me to be well, He could, but I'd just soon go home. Could you have your people pray, the Lord will take me home? What do you do with that? You know, I ain't finished the phone conversation. Well, preacher, you know Romans 8, 28 is still in the Bible. I didn't tell him that. I don't 828 people when they're in a situation like that. He said, God knows what he's doing when he took Sue and left me here, and whether I got three months or six months, which is what they're basically telling me, that's not in my hands, it's in God's hands. He said, I'm gonna do the best I possibly can until the time the Lord draws the curtain closed. If he wants me well, fine, get me well, and if not, take me home. It don't matter. 828's still in the Bible, he said. Amen, amen. Pretty high cotton. That's a personal illustration. You say, what happened? Well, Ted Wormack, I called him today. Ted Wormack, just a few weeks ago, he's a chaplain over there in Tallahassee. And Ted Wormack was a great chaplain over there and just a peach of a guy. We've been going over there for 20 years, 21 years. And Ted Wormack, all of a sudden, he falls out and has all kinds of problems with his heart. He has a heart attack, and not long before that, he goes out and he twists his knee. He goes and has knee surgery. After he gets his knee fixed, he's hobbling around out there, and he gets ready to get into the truck, and there's a rattlesnake over in the corner. He gets ready to go get the rattlesnake, and Sandy kind of got in the way. His feet got kind of tangled up, and he reached up to grab a hold of the little thing on the truck, and when he did, he tore his bicep out. He went over and killed the snake and then took him to the hospital. They had to do reconstructive surgery on his bicep and then his knee. He hobbles over there for when we went to meet with the old preacher a few weeks ago and stuff. And we sit around there and talk. And then he winds up not long after that has a heart attack. He's laying up there in the hospital bed and stuff like that and they tell him what's gonna go on. He winds up being turned out of the hospital with all the stuff he's gotta do to start getting this thing reduced so he doesn't have another heart attack and all this. And then his wife all of a sudden shows up and Brother Walker hits me today and says, hey preacher, he said pray for Brother Wormack and Miss Sandy. Sandy's in the hospital now. So I called Brother Wormack and I said, hey, old soldier, what's going on? He's a former Marine. He's in his 70s now. And he said, oh, he said, he's going through a little trouble and nothing unusual for us. You know how that is, you know? And he kind of laughed a little. He said, spiritual warfare, brother, spiritual warfare. He's laughing. And I said, how's Sandy? He said, I think she's mostly dehydrated. She's been real sick lately because of something she's been taking and that she has to have and this and that and the other. He said, but I just want you to know, Preacher, 828's still in the Bible. Rest it in the Lord. Whatever the Lord does. He's got it. He knows what He's doing. I don't have to understand it. I don't even have to appreciate it. I just know God knows what He's doing. He said God had to get us here to show us some things we wouldn't have known otherwise. Man, that's a hard one to get a hold of. David Walker's over there, and a good friend of mine been there. Most of you know him here. He's over there in Monticello. He's been coming here for years. His dad had a real bad bout with cancer. He got a little bit better, and then he got where he could afford to get his folks down there close to him. They folks moved down there where he's at, and his dad been doing pretty well. Then all of a sudden, his cancer's back, and he goes in. They find out he's gonna have to have chemo and radiation, and now they're not able to stop the progression. They can't slow it down now. It looks like his own dad is going to be gone here before much longer. You know what he said? I didn't say it to them. My rest is in the Lord, he said. What do you do with that? You know what Asa says? Our rest is in thee, Lord. If we get slaughtered, oh well, we get slaughtered. We rest in that. If we win, we rest in that. It's not based on our situation. It's not based on our circumstances. It ain't based on the outcome. It's based on who you are. You do what's necessary for my benefit. I have faith in you. I trust you. You know what you're doing. I don't. You know what I need. I don't. Met an old woman up, I say that respectfully, I don't mean that disrespectfully, an elderly woman, I guess I gotta learn to change my vernacular a little bit. This elderly woman has been by herself for a number of years. Most times, the women outlive the men, I don't know if you know that. I don't know if you know this, men are made to have to depend on a woman. But a woman don't need you. She can do just fine without you. You are a tick. Amen. If Miss Robin was here, she'd be amenin' me. You get married and all of a sudden you're gonna be the man and all of a sudden you become the little boy and she's got a son that she never had. She gotta take care of you. You're a big old burly man, but you gotta have her to take care of you, do things you can't do. And this dear old saint of God has not missed a church service. She's been coming. I happened to be sitting around a table where she was talking a little bit and one of the young girls said, well, what's life like for you? She said, well, if it wasn't for the Lord, I'd be all alone. And she said, I don't even know if I'd still be alive. She said, well, you don't have anybody. Your kids and grandkids live away and all that. She said, oh, yes, I do, honey child. She said, I got the Lord. My rest is in Thee. My goodness, man. That's ground I've got to tell you folks, I don't know that I'd get there. I want to get there, but I don't know that I'd get there. That's mighty high cotton. You say, what is that? That's Asa's prayer. Part of the prayer is, Lord, listen, I can't see the future. I don't know the outcome. But I want you to know, Lord, I'm resting in whatever. There's no pressure. My relationship with you is not based on how you answer my prayer. Get that! You don't get anything else I say tonight. Get that. We rest in You, Lord. We win. We love You. We lose. We love You. Three Hebrew children. We go to the fire. We love You. We get delivered. We love You. Daniel on the lions' den. I get ed up. I love You. I get delivered. I love You. Hey, my relationship with You does not depend on how you answer my prayer. My prayer is, God, you do what's right. I'm resting in you. I'm not trying to do it myself. Carry the burden alone. You handle it. I'm good with whatever you decide. My goodness, man. You imagine this. You go out. You get ready to start dating. You sit there and look at each other. And you say, where do you want to eat? I don't care. OK, let's have pizza. I don't want pizza. I thought you said you don't care. Let's get steak. Oh, I don't want steak. I thought you said you don't care. Let's get a hamburger. I don't really want a hamburger. Why don't you just tell me what you want? I don't really don't care. Yes, you do. And now your date is going to go by whether or not you can spin the wheel, close your eyes, pin the tail on the donkey, and go, oh man, I got that one right. You know, if you've been with her more than two weeks, she thinks you should know. When you've been with me for two weeks, you should know what I like. How many of them say, I don't care. Say, OK, we're going to get staked. OK. I trust you. Honey, we're going to go buy so-and-so. OK. I trust you. It's when you start buying four wheelers when you ain't paying for the mortgage that we got trouble. That's called stupid. You don't do that. You have certain responsibilities, right? You take care of those things. You don't buy the extras. The extras, it's like giving. You have certain responsibilities. Other stuff's an extra. Well, folks, I hate to tell you this, but in your prayer life, there has to be a calm assurance. God's got this. He made you a promise. 828 is in the Bible, and He said, Hey, however it comes out, I'm still a good God, and it will be for your good. That's a great promise when you're praying, it's not even yet written in the Bible. But Asa, that great king says, just want to let you know, not that you need our approval, but we rest in you. The outcome's in your hands. Not, we rest in you to take care of this problem. He put Paul in jail. Could have stopped it. Decided not to. Notice quickly, I got just a few more minutes. We rest in Thee, in Thy name we go. Remember we just talked about that in John 14 and John 16, you ask in His name. David goes out and 1 Samuel. Oh, what is that? 17, is that right? The Goliath? Something like that. 1 Samuel 17, is that right? David goes out, you know what he says? They go to you in the name of this, and they go to you in the name of that, and you know what David says? I'm coming to you in the name of the Lord. He said, Lord, I just want you to know something. When we go out, we're going in your name. We're doing something to try to be representative of you. Whether we win or lose, we're doing it in your name. Man, that's a mouthful. He's facing a million man army and chariots. He is outnumbered three and a half to one. And he's saying, hey, odds are we're going to get the snot stomped out of us. I mean, blood and guts everywhere. Just by attrition we are going to get ruined. But you know what? We're going in your name anyway. I like in the Bible when we trust God. and realize who it is that we're representing before we go off half-conked. And then notice this, he says, we go in thy name and against this multitude, O Lord, thou art our God. Oh man, can you just get a hold of that? Lord, I got cancer. You know what? I know it's nothing. You can take it away or you can leave it. It's nothing to you one way or the other. If you take it away, it's nothing to you. If you leave it, you give me the grace to get through it. It's nothing to you one way or the other because you're God. You can do what needs to be done. But God, I want you to know as I finish up my prayer, you're my God. No matter what the outcome is against this multitude, against this trouble, against this problem, you're my God. And I'll not deny you in spite of the overwhelming odds that I'm facing, in spite of the trouble that I'm in. Man, can you imagine when he gets ready to pray how the throne room must have opened up? Notice at this point there is no calvary, there is no blood that opens it up. He has to go in through that priest. He's in there praying to himself, standing on the battlefield. He's already set the battle in a ray. faced by a million. I can't even, in my mind's eye, I have seen in one place 300,000 people gathered in one place. It is a bunch of people. I can't imagine what a million on that side and 300,000 on this side, I can't imagine what that must have looked like. And the amount of noise and uproar and dust and everything gathered around, and yet he pauses long enough to say, hey, you're our God. Insurmountable odds. But I'm sticking with you even if we lose in the physical world because I know in the spiritual world that's what matters most. And the Bible says this, let not man prevail against thee. Lord, it don't matter If I get whooped, just don't let them prevail against you. People say, well, what he's saying there is, is God, you need to win this battle so that they don't prevail against you. No, that ain't what he's saying. What he's saying is, is whether we win the battle or lose the battle, just don't ever let man get one up on you, no matter what. Don't let man ever take your glory. Don't let man ever steal your place, your position. Lord, don't let us and our pride, if we win, ever take your place. And that's what he's praying. No matter what, just don't let man prevail against you. And in this case, the Lord answers pretty quickly in verse 12. So the Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled. Now, there's a whole lot more that goes on in chapter number 15, and I don't have time to do it because it's 8 o'clock, but I want to say this to you. Notice the word in your King James Bible, sow the Lord. Do you see that? Sow the Lord. Sow, my question would be, if Asa had not prayed, would the Lord have smitten? Doesn't look like it. Well, preacher, it's all foreordained. God already knows cosmically where everything fits. Did you ever stop to think that Asa prayed and God answered just to be real to Asa? Did you ever think that God didn't care if they got wiped out or didn't get wiped out? That He was doing something because one man standing on a battlefield said, OK, Lord, we're resting in You. You do what needs to be done. We're in Your hands. Don't let a man prevail against You. So the Lord. Why? In response to Asa's prayer, I believe. Well, he was going to do it anyway. Then why pray? Here's the flip side of what people think about praying. If it's already praying, if it's already foreordained, if it's already set in motion, why does he say men ought always to pray? And that when you pray, pray in the name of the Lord, and when you ask, ask things according to... Why does he say that if it's already ordained to pray? Why even ask for salvation? It's already ordained. That's what a Calvinist believes. I don't have to ask. Oh yes you do. God sets the thing up where that we can actually have an impact on things in our life and God can orchestrate things based on our prayer life with him. He's wanting to do something for God's glory here. He's not wanting to do something just to preserve his life. Ace is a king, he don't care if he dies. But he is saying this, he's saying Lord, She would like to see you get some glory out of this and your nation done. Moses prayed that prayer one time. We'll get to that later, but Moses prayed that prayer. He said, Lord, I need you to consider doing this for one reason. What will they say about you and your people? So, Lord, I'm asking you. You know what the Lord said he was going to do? I'm going to wipe these people out, Moses, and I'm going to start over with you. If that was us today, you know what we'd say? Huh, sounds like a pretty good deal to me. You're going to start a whole nation with me? Tell me that wouldn't be a little tempting? That's the epitome of a promotion, man. I mean, man, you the chief cook, bottle washer, you are the top. We all trace back, instead of to Abraham, we trace back to Moses. He said, I'm going to wipe everybody out. I'm going to start all over with you, Moses. Moses is like, yeah, that sounds good to me. Moses said, Lord, you know what? If you do that, the enemies of God are going to rejoice and blaspheme and I'd ask that you just block me. I pray thee out of thy book, but don't kill all these people, even though they deserve to be killed. and the Lord repented of what he was going to do, not repenting and turned around from it and said, OK, Moses, I'll hear your prayer. Wonder what would have happened if Moses didn't answer. He could have prayed in agreement with God. Amen, Lord, wipe them out. I'm worn out with them anyway. Had enough of them griping and murmuring and complaining. Get water out of a rock and be Give them manna, they growl. Give them quail that runs out of their nose, they growl. Always doing something wrong. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Moses complained about that one time. If Moses and God got the same day on the same page, we'd have been in a mess. But the Lord said, now Moses, you need to settle down. And then one day, the Lord's going off. And Moses is like, Lord, I humbly request that you might possibly consider that, you know, I kind of messed up one time in my life, too, and in spite of the murder I committed and being out of your will and doing things wrong, you had mercy on me, so just take me out of the way, but can you overlook that, please? And the Lord said, oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be merciful, aren't I? Okay, He says, but I'm going to judge them anyway. And He sends judgment for their sin, but He won't kill them. Prayer does change things. Or there would be no need for it. Secondly, there wouldn't be such opposition against it. Sure as I'm standing here, it's connected with something to the judgment seat of Christ. And that's why the devil doesn't want you to pray. Question. I get sick, I'm dying. I come to Brother Manning and I say, I need you to pray for me. The doctor told me I'm dying. It's okay, preacher, I'll pray. And he prays, and I get well. Now I might come to Brother Larry and say, Brother Larry, I appreciate that, but I know Brother Larry didn't heal me. I know God saw fit to heal me. So the glory would go to God, right? What recognition would he get? Would you think I'd stand up in church and go, well, I told Brother Larry I was sick, so Brother Larry prayed and I got well. Then y'all be coming to him as a faith healer or something. In prayer you don't get recognition. You don't get appreciation. It's not something that's public. I've never seen anybody get paid to pray. Because there's no way to know if they got through or not. So if I ask the whole church to pray for something and it comes through, which one of you got through? So prayer is that most unselfish act that you can do but you never get recognized for. And that's the stuff that God likes. God likes those unnamed women underneath the altar over there when Spurgeon was preaching. Talmadge and some of those old guys, they would say, they asked Spurgeon one time, why do you think your preaching is going across the world? He grabbed these media people and took them down to the basement. Down in the basement, that thing had grown from two women to five women to over 100 women down underneath that platform praying for him in the basement when he stood up every time to preach. And he said, knee power. He said, it has nothing to do with me. I believe that. You say, who are they? They're not named. A lot of the prayers in the Bible, you don't even know who's praying them. You say, why? God likes that. He means you and God got a secret. What have I been praying for the preacher? Praying he get better. I guess I need to fast and pray, because it's not working. Lord, I'm praying for brother so-and-so and sister so-and-so. And they start getting better. You walk up and go, I've been praying for you. I'm glad you're doing better. No, you don't. You just, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. And then you start looking, who else can I pray for? The Lord puts somebody on your heart and you're like, oh, okay. What do they need? I don't know. God just said pray for them. The problem is going to pray. God, you know what their need is. Prayer does change. Don't fall into this trap of God's already made up his mind. It don't matter. If he did, he wouldn't ask you. The secret is I want to find out what God wants me to pray about and how God would like me to pray about it so I can get in on what he's going to be doing. Because God's doing that for us. He doesn't do it for himself. He does it so he can spend time with us. He likes to spend time with us. He has a little project he wants to work on. He'll hand you the hammer and let you make a mess. Paintbrush, paint outside the line. He'll say, here. Say, why did he let me make a mess? Because he likes to hang out with you. Likes to spend time with you. You don't spend time with him in any other thing the way you do in prayer. Not in a preaching service, not in a song service, not in fellowship with others. Prayer is a time when it's just you and him working on a project. If you've got kids, you know what that is. It's not that you're looking for them to do it right, it's that you just enjoy being with them. Let's stand together and be dismissed. Hope that helps you.