Time to talk about prayer. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. O Lord God, this is your holy work. We are your servants. Give us understanding that we might know your testimonies. You have prayed, O Lord God, sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth. Use your word to draw us near. to Jesus our Savior. Show us great and mighty things which we do not know. Let not your holy and errant written word fall upon foul ground, but plow up the hard ground of our hearts, O Lord God. Protect us from Satan, from snatching the sown word. Protect us from the world's scares in the delight of wealth and the passion of other interests which enter in and choke the word and cause it to prove fruitless in our lives. Protect us from the discouragements of tribulations and trials, O Lord God, which are like rocks which keep the seed from taking root and bearing fruit. But grant us good soil, O Lord, that the roots might go downward and fruit bear it upward. O Lord God, let not your holy, eternal, inerrant written word go out of return void, but accomplish that purpose for which you have gathered us together and for which you are sending your word out. Father, we live in a dark and wicked age. Broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are on For there are ways which seem right to men, whose end is destruction. Make your word to us a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Show us that narrow way in which we should walk. Make your word to us the sword of the Spirit, O Lord God. Cut to the dividing point of bone and marrow, soul and spirit. Judge now the thoughts and intentions our heart. Spread your holy word before us this morning as a banquet table. Grant us the heart of the prophet who cried to you. Thy words were found and I believed them, and thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts. As we run in the paths of your commandments, O Lord God, enlarge our hearts that we might love you more and obey you more. As we gaze into the mirror of your eternal, inerrant written word, O Lord God, let us see clearly who we are and what we are about. Let us not be forgetful listeners, deceiving ourselves, but active doers of your word. Drop the plumb line of your word against our lives, O Lord God. that we might know what changes we might make to align ourselves to it. Because of our fealty to you, O Lord God, because of our undying love and devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ, our risen Savior, we pledge our complete and total submission to your holy, eternal, inerrant, written and we pledge our unquestioning obedience to all of its commands. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let's look at prayer this morning. We'll be doing a continuing hour series on discipleship for the Navigator staff intern, and as such we've been looking at the beetle illustration and how we apply that to our lives Now, remember, when we talk about the real illustration, there are four disciplines that come with the real illustration. Mikals, what are the four disciplines, spiritual disciplines of the real illustration? Yes, that's exactly right. Word, prayer, fellowship, and witnessing are the four disciplines, but these were never to be stand-alone spiritual disciplines. What is the center of the real illustration, Michael? Christ. Christ is the center of the real illustration. The real illustration was these disciplines were never meant to be put into use until there was an agreement on who Jesus Christ is, and what it means for Christ to be Lord and Savior of our lives. By saying that, I mean we don't go into a Catholic Church and teach the real illustration, and then we are happy if our brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church, if they apply the real illustration by praying to Mary and the saints. Are we satisfied with that? If they apply the prayer in the real illustration by confessing their sins to a priest to gain confession. Are we happy with that? Well, they apply the spoke of the real illustration by praying that God would release relatives of theirs from purgatory. Are we happy with that? No, we're not. That they apply the spokes of the real illustration by going to Mass and receiving the wine and the bread as the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ as a spiritual form of worship. Are we happy with that? No, we're not happy with that. Christ the center means something. And when you go out onto your college campuses and when you go out into the community or the military base or your churches and you begin to disciple people, your objective a mystical discipline which they will adapt to their belief system. No, the real illustration begins with Christ the sinner. And that has a definition. And we first deal with Christ the sinner. Who is Jesus Christ and to love God? That was our last series of lectures, wasn't it? And we agree with that. And we come to an understanding of that. It is not enough just to say, well, we're all Christians, and just as long as we're all Christians, that will be enough for us. Because there are many people who call themselves Christians who are not Christians. If you ask them more than if he is a Christian, what will he say? Yeah, he'll say it. And there are Hindus that you can ask them if they're Christians, what will they say? I have a relative who's very active in the American Episcopal Church. It's part of the Anglican Communion. And I shared with him that a student in our ministry who is Hindu had prayed to receive Christ and had become a Christian. And he answered me, well, when I went through catechism to become an Episcopalian, I found out that all Hindus are already Christians. that all it means to be a Christian is to love God and want to do good. Well, would I just want to teach him how to pray? No, I would want to go back to Christ the sinner, wouldn't I? We wouldn't need to use the real illustration, the spiritual disciplines of the real illustrations in the Church of Christ. that teaches baptismal regeneration, that you can lose your salvation and regain it and be baptized, and lose your salvation and regain it and be baptized. I had a man come over. One of my children had broken a window in our home, and a man came over to replace the glass, and he was cleaning it. He put the phone window cleaner over the window, and I was standing there watching him. I said, let me show you a neat illustration. on the verge of a stretching point, and asked him if he had received Christ again. He said, yes, five times. And in fact, he was going to go back to church that very Sunday as a result of our conversation, receive Christ again, and be baptized. And he was a member of the Church of Christ, and he had come to Christ, and lost his salvation, and gave his salvation, and lost his salvation. Now, is that what we want to teach? Are we happy with that? As long as they're confessing sins, it doesn't matter what they believe about Jesus, right? No, it does matter. It matters a great deal. Do we want to introduce the wheel illustration in the Anglican Church, where there are homosexuals, and we don't care if they're homosexuals, just so long as they're practicing the disciplines of the wheel? Are we happy with that? No, we want them to repent, don't we? To receive Christ, to change their lifestyle, to make Christ But they are simply not spiritual disciplines which are just helpful for everybody. Don't worry about what people believe. That'll all work itself out. Let's just get all people involved in these spiritual disciplines. Word, prayer, witnessing, fellowship. There's not a major university campus in America that doesn't have a Krishna group or a Buddhist group or a Hindu group that is seeking to gain confidence. How about Muslims? Word, prayer, witnessing, fellowship. Very aggressive witnesses, aren't they? Very aggressive prayers, aren't they? Very public prayers. Very strong fellowship, aren't they? These are simply not disciplines that we just want to teach people, and that's our goal in life, just to get into the church, get into the community, and get people to do four things, and then our job's done. And so before we start this lecture on prayer, I want to bring us back to the fact that the wheel illustration is not the table illustration. It's not for freestanding spiritual disciplines. that we place on top of it whatever belief system we want, that we interpret that whatever we want. The real illustration was meant to communicate that Jesus Christ was the central driving power source of life, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Christ the sinner, Jesus as Lord, and that we all come to an agreement on who Jesus Christ is, what his work is, what are the great doctrines of salvation, what are the attributes of God, what does it mean to be a Christian, that we agree on that. And based on that agreement, we seek to know the power of Christ in our everyday life. D. M. L. Lloyd-Jones, a great evangelical preacher in England of my parents' generation, he's deceased now. His great concern with the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement as it swept through England was that no matter what you believed about the person of Jesus Christ, you can have unity through ecstatic experience, and I think that's a valid concern. You had Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, nominal, unchurched Christians, very, very immature baby Christians, all unified through ecstatic worship and the speaking of an unknown tongue. The fullness of the Holy Spirit and the manifestation of that special blessing of the fullness of the Holy Spirit in that particular movement had no bearing upon Now, we know that's not true, don't we? God the Holy Spirit doesn't function apart from God the Son, does he? So, it's nonsensical to say, well, you know, I'm living in adultery and I'm praying to Mary and I'm not a mature Christian and I'm confused about who Jesus Christ is and what salvation is. but I'm regularly filled with the Holy Spirit. And then the manifestation of that being filled with the Holy Spirit is an ecstatic, mystical experience that is manifested by an involuntary eruption of an unknown language. Which is, being filled with the Holy Spirit is synonymous with what other two If you are filled with the Holy Spirit, what does that mean about your relationship with Jesus Christ? Yes! He's Lord of your life! If you are totally filled with the Holy Spirit, then you are totally obedient to Jesus Christ, aren't you? And what does it mean about your relationship with God the Father? You are totally in subjection to God the Father, aren't you? It would be nonsensical to say I'm having an experience of being totally filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit, but not being totally filled and controlled by Jesus Christ, and totally filled and controlled by God the Father. And so that was his problem with that movement, and I think it's a valid question, a valid problem. whereby being filled with God the Holy Spirit is equated not with lifestyle, but with ecstatic experience. That's a valid concern. Well, I think a valid concern of discipleship is when discipleship is no longer equated with a unanimous consent on who Jesus Christ is and Jesus Christ existing in your life as Lord, but rather We're all going to be unified by four spiritual disciplines because Christ is divisive. Christ is divisive, though, isn't he? Christ has always been divisive. Christ was divisive during his lifetime. Did Christ claim to come to bring unity? No, he didn't, did he? And we know in the writings of the epistles, Christ is described as a cornerstone which becomes a what? A stumbling block. Christ is always divisive. So the best way to get unity is to take Jesus Christ out of the picture and bring ecstatic experience into the picture. The best way to bring about unity is to get Jesus Christ out of the wheel. and emphasize the four spiritual disciplines of the wheel, isn't it? That way we can have a ministry with Catholics and Protestants, Church of Christ, Christian, Episcopalians, and we can have all those people involved in our ministry, but we're not going to bring up the doctrines of Jesus Christ because that's divisive. No, that's not true. Now you might have a Bible study or a ministry that had people in it who were culturally and historically Catholic, culturally and historically Church of Christ, culturally and historically Anglican, culturally and historically Baptist, Presbyterian, all these denominations. But that's their family background. But doctrinally, they were all unanimous. They were all in total agreement. When I was a campus minister, I could have a table like this, and if you went around and asked people, what's your church background, there would be a Catholic, there would be an Atheist, there would be a Hindu, there would be a Muslim, there would be a Buddhist, there would be a Baptist, there would be Church of Christ, there would be Episcopal, which you would call Anglican, there would be all these different the Christian denominations and pagan religious backgrounds. That would be their background. But, if you ask them who is Jesus Christ, they would all be in total agreement on the bridge illustration, Christ the only way, on the new birth, on the doctrines of salvation. They would be in total agreement on that. So what I'm not saying is that people have to reject their cultural heritage and pretend like they weren't, their parents aren't Catholic and their religious background is not Catholic. They don't have to do that. But what I am saying is that we don't make disciples and bypass Jesus Christ because he's the stumbling block. So let's just get past him. He's the stumbling block. We just won't talk about that. Let's all be united on ecstatic experience. Let's all be united on an agreed discipline, four disciplines of the Christian life. Let's be united on those things, and let's stay away from the person of Christ. Can you see the problem with that? Can you see the danger in that? Be alert to that. Be alert to that. And don't be ashamed that you're right. Don't be intimidated by being right. The great unforgivable sin of 21st century humanism is not having a strong belief, but rather having an exclusive belief. 21st century humanism will forgive you for feeling very strongly that Jesus Christ is God. They will forgive you for that. They will not forgive you for believing that you are right and everybody else is wrong. But that's what we're claiming, aren't we? And not only that, we're claiming that other Christians are wrong, aren't they? By the authority of God's Word. Because people will say, how can you say that priests should marry? Well, you would take them to 1 Timothy 3 and 4, wouldn't you? That's how you would say that. How can you say that you shouldn't 1 Timothy 2. How can you say you don't lose your salvation? You would take that to Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 3. Those doctrines we looked at, remember? How can you say there's no baptismal regeneration? Well, we would go and look and study the doctrine of regeneration, wouldn't we? We would look at those doctrines from the Word of God, and we would say, Because we reject extra-biblical revelation, you're wrong, and we're right. Well, 21st century culture, that's the unforgivable sin, to be dogmatic, to take a strong stand. To sit around with the Roman Catholics and Church of Christ and other people and just to say, well, no, you're wrong. You would probably take them aside on the fellowship and say, you know, you're really hurting people's feelings and you're really being divisive here. And it's not unusual at all when I'm speaking on doctrine. I can remember I was speaking to a group on the incarnation of Christ, and there were some papers handed up to me, and one of them said, I just want you to know there's some Catholic people here. I just want you to know there's some Church of Christ. You know, and they were just letting me know. Now, I think that's important. Well, now that we are talking about prayer, that's Roman numeral one. We have to be in agreement before we talk on prayer on who Jesus Christ is and what salvation is. You see, God is not what we believe. Oh, they're coming. Yeah, good question. God is not what we believe. By faith, we believe what God is, as revealed in His Holy Word. When we begin going to God in prayer, we do not go to a God of our belief system. We believe who and what God is according to the Word of God. Our thoughts about well I believe this, well I think that, and then we just all pull our beliefs together, and based on a common understanding, we come to an agreement on what prayer is. No, that's not how we learn about prayer. We go to the Word of God, and God reveals to us who God is and how we approach Him. You see, God's will is not what we believe. By faith, In God's revealed will, His Word of God, we know His will. Well, I just believe God wants me to date and marry this non-Christian. Well, no, that's not true, is it? No, it's not. I believe God wants me to divorce my wife. I married the wrong person. No, that's not true. That's not true. Well, I just don't believe a loving God would send me anyone to That's not true, is it? God's will, what God does, God's will for our lives, God's eternal will, it is not what we believe. Rather, we, by faith, believe what God is as revealed in His word, and we, by faith, believe what God's will is. as revealed in his word. That's how we know it. God does not do what we believe. Rather, by faith, we believe what God does as revealed in his holy word. Faith is not the ability to gift God to do something, nor is faith the ability to gain merit. by which God answers our prayer. Prayer is all our merit based in. It's based in the blood of Christ, isn't it? There is no merit in the works of man. There is only merit in the blood of Christ. So, we do not go through disciplines of faith whereby we become more and more pleasing to God until finally we have gained enough merit or enough prayer credits by which God begins to answer our prayers. No. God doesn't do what we believe. Rather, by faith, we believe what God does, as revealed in this holy, eternal, inerrant Word. By a Word of Faith command, God doesn't do our bidding. Rather, by faith in God's revealed commands, his written word, we do his bidding. It makes the modern Pentecostal Charismatic Movement one of the primary reasons I have difficulty teaching on prayer, is the Protestant and Catholic Church together have become permeated by the conviction that if we learn the correct mystical slash spiritual secret, God will do what we say. He'll just do it. He has to do it. He's constrained himself. He's painted himself in the corner, and he will do it. And the Christian church is divided up between those people who know that secret of getting God to do their bidding, and those people who do not know that secret. But that simply is not true. We don't give God commands in prayer. We don't do it. God gives us commands. And as you think about the audacity of any Christian shaking their fist while they talk to God, that's non-verbal communication, isn't it? I defy you to find me anywhere in scripture you find somebody addressing God in that manner. People prostrate themselves, they kneel, they weep, they tear their clothes, they cover themselves with sackcloth and ashes, but I never see anywhere in Scripture people shaking their fists and giving God orders. It just doesn't happen. And yet, the Protestant 21st Century Church is rife with illustrations of people doing that. Making claims and demands on God. We don't do that in prayer. By a word of faith command, God doesn't do our bidding. Rather, by faith and the commands of the Holy Word of God, we do His bidding. The objective of prayer is not to get God to conform with our will. The objective of prayer is the worship and glory of God and the conforming of our life with His will. That's the objective of prayer. Faith is not the ability to get God to act on our behalf. Rather, by faith, we believe that He has acted and is acting on our behalf, and trust in His sovereign good and holy will. When did faith become getting God to do things and cease to be trusting that He's doing things? The whole word of faith movement is predicated on the assumption that things need getting done that God's not doing, isn't it? People need to be saved and God's not saving them. People need to be healed, but what's God doing? Cornelius? He's not healing them, is he? People need to be fed, but what's God doing? He's not feeding them, right? You need prosperity, what's God doing? The whole Word of Faith movement is predicated on the assumption that things need to be done, God is not doing them, and He won't do them unless you figure it out. Now let's think of that. Your daughter is sick. She's remaining ill because you haven't prayed correctly. Let's think about that. So, he's going to spend eternity in hell because of you. Let's think about this. You own a company and that company is not prospering. People are going to lose their jobs. People who've invested in it are going to lose their investment and it's all because you don't know how to play properly. Let's think about this for a minute. Thousands of farmers, people just working, minding their own business, they're all going to lose their crops and starve because you don't have a prey crop properly. What's the best thing for you to do? Commit suicide, isn't it? The best thing for you to do is take yourself out of the picture. If you believe somebody will go to hell if you don't witness properly, you know, you need to exit. stakes are too high to believe your daughter is going to remain sick, because if you believe, if you believe, the whole Word of Faith movement is predicated upon an underlying belief that there is an indifferent God, and that we have to step in and make things work. He's got things in heaven, but is He releasing them? No, He's not. And he's indifferent. And there are a few people who figure out the secret and the doors of heaven open, but for the rest of us, it's too bad. You see, God is a God where his children ask him for bread and he gives them a snake. Is that who God is? No, he's the exact opposite of that. He is the exact opposite of that. God can do anything, can't he? He doesn't do anything. He only does his good, holy will. That's all he will do. He will never do your will. He will never do it. He will only do his will. And what he wants from you is conformity to his will. So when we start talking about prayer, I just want to lay the groundwork right now. This is not going to be a message series by which you get your miracle. Because I am indifferent to whether you get a miracle or not. I am completely indifferent. Who is the greatest prophet ever to live? Remember who that was? The Bible tells us. He is one of the greatest. What are the top four? Moses? Elijah? One of the greatest? But no, the Bible tells us Jesus Christ told us who the greatest prophet was. John the Baptist. John the Baptist, the word of God says, was the greatest prophet who ever lived. Did John the Baptist do a miracle in his entire lifetime? No. He did not do a single miracle. I am indifferent towards miracles in your day-to-day life. I'm completely indifferent. And when it comes to prayer, I'm indifferent towards that. If you want to know how to pray so that you can do miracles, you're in the wrong place. You're in the wrong place. Because I don't know what God's will is for your life, but I do know He will only do His will. And that that will entails miraculous events that are going to happen. And if it does not impale that, they are not going to happen. But your prayer life and your ministry, there is not a dividing line. It's not verified. It is not affirmed by the doing of miracles. Otherwise, John wouldn't have been the greatest prophet, would he? Did Samson do miracles? Yeah, but he wasn't a very nice guy, was he? He wasn't a very nice guy. Will the Antichrist do miracles? Yeah. He's not a very nice guy. Will the false prophet do miracles? Yeah. Miracles are neither here nor there. They are simply spiritual occurrences. They may be of God the Holy Spirit, or they may be of some false demonic spirit. I don't know. We're going to study that later on when we talk about testing the Spirit. This prayer series is not to help you learn how to pray so that you can get your miracle, because I am not concerned about you getting anything. My concern is with you conforming to God and bringing glory to His name, that Christ would be the center of your life and you would experience the spiritual power of the Lordship of Christ in your day-to-day life. That is the burden of this. So, when we look at that, that is the constraint that we place upon ourselves. God can do anything, but he doesn't. What does he do? His holy and good will, his just will. bringing glory to God and conforming to His holy and good will, not getting God to conform to our holy and good will. And we can see just the nonsensical nature of the Word of Faith movement. This Saturday, there's going to be a conference out here on the grounds, so what kind of letters do I want? Julie, from Pennsylvania, starting to become the fall, isn't it? Leaves are turning there around Penn State, aren't they? It's October, football weather, looking for that first snow, maybe some snow flurries before Thanksgiving, yeah, wouldn't that be great? So what's Julie praying for? A good, a hard frost, all the leaves turn, snow falls. Just a life dusting. You know, I'll be gone by noon. Cornelius here. He's thinking, you know, I have a garden, you know, and the light rains haven't come here to Nairobi yet. I'm kind of worried about my garden. I'd like a nice hard rain and followed by sunshine and real humid weather to make my garden grow. Then we have Kesuke. Gus is thinking to himself, you know, I'm taking my little niece to the park and she likes to fly a kite. and I bought a kite, I would like really windy weather. And my cow is thinking, you know, I've got some furniture, some old chairs, and an old table, and I've sanded them down, but they really need painting. So, I'm going to do that outside, and I would like real still weather. I don't want the wind blowing dirt, dust, and leaves on it. So, I want a real hot, still day. That's what I want. And Tony here is thinking, you know, I'd like to go fishing. I'd like to go fishing today. I would like warm weather, but partly cloudy so when I'm around the bank fishing, you know, I'm not reflected in the water and the fish can't see me. Just a light breeze, you know, that's what I would want. Well, so we all pray that. Now, according to the word of faith, if we pray in faith, what do we get? Yeah, if we're filled with the Spirit, if we use the right combination, whatever Holy Spirit, Miracle Crusade, Tent Revival you happen to attend, where they taught you the spiritual secret, and laid hands on you, and gave you your prophetic message, you know, whatever combination of those things came together, all of those things should happen, shouldn't they? Shouldn't they? And that's just this room, isn't it? Isn't it? Now, we're going to multiply all these, and what we're going to do when it's not happening is we're going to walk right out there and shake our fists and get our hair off our way. Aren't we? Well, no we're not, because that's not what prayer is. Prayer is not giving God to do our will. God can do anything, but He doesn't. He only does His good, holy, eternal, and errant will. So we'll go now to John 15.7, please. And when we start talking about prayer, the thing we have to always go back to is the Word of God. Turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles to John 15.7. Okay, it's okay, we've done 15 seconds, please. Prayer is inseparable from the Word of God. That has to be our orientation. When we go to look at prayer, we go to God's Word. We don't go to experience. Why can't we go through experience? Yes, that's exactly right. How do we understand experience? Turn to 1 John 4, 1 and 2. Cornelius, if you would read 1 John 4, 1 and 2, please. There are many false spirits, I think. And if we develop our doctrine of prayer, on the basis of physical manifestations, we are easily deceived, aren't we? Macau, would you please read Matthew 7, 21-23? Okay, now let's stop there. In 1 John 4, 1 and 2, we differentiate deceiving spirits from the Holy Spirit by the Lordship of Christ. Like Jesus Christ said, we make a differentiation between the verbal and the lifestyle, belief system, and living out of his Lordship. So we don't test the spirits, we don't test prayer simply because Jesus' name was evoked, do we? We take it far beyond that. Keep going, I'm sorry. Okay, so, prophecy, Expelling demons and the performance of miracles. Aren't those the big three? It's kind of like the big five at the game park, isn't it? What are the big five? The elephant, the lion, you know, what else? The rhino, the giraffe, you know, the water buffalo. You know, you pick the big five. Everybody has their own. They all want to see the big five. Well, in church, you know, in the Holy Spirit's miracle crusade, what are the big three? Yeah, I think. Casting out demons, prophecies, and miracles, I think. Now, what is the problem with verifying that prayer, or defying prayer on those three things? Keep reading. That's exactly right. That doesn't mean anything, does it? Now, did David leap and dance? before the ark when it was coming in? Yeah. And didn't his wife laugh at him? And that was a bad deal, wasn't it? And I always tell people, if you go into a church and they're leaping and dancing and there's some excitement going on, don't jump to derision. Don't jump to laughter and judgmental spirit, because you could fall in the sin of Micaiah, couldn't you? But we also don't accept it simply because there's jumping and leaping. As the priests of Baal were calling upon Baal to call down fire from heaven, were they jumping and leaping? They were. Did Samuel jump and leap? No, he didn't. He was boring, wasn't he? He was methodical. Wasn't it? All the excitement was over there, wasn't it? Jumping, leaping, shouting, chaos, cutting themselves, music, the masses. It was an event, wasn't it? What was Sentinel doing? Going to the well or the trough, getting the pot, putting it on the shoulder, coming back, seeing that the altar was soaked, overseeing its building, stepping back, calling upon God. Kind of boring, wasn't it? Well, we have to be careful then, don't we? We have to be careful about judging people in the way they pray, but we also have to be careful about, in a blanket manner, accepting how they pray and their doctrine of prayer based on prophecy, casting out demons, and the ability to perform miracles. Or their ability to engage in ecstatic worship. Because none of those things are to be a road map to prayer. God's holy, eternal, inerrant word. This alone as our roadmap to prayer. So that's going to be our orientation. In a moment, we're going to start on the next lecture just a biblical overview of prayer. But before we do that, I wanted us to all be in agreement. We are not simply trying to teach people a discipline. We begin with Christ the sinner. we have to reconcile ourselves to those constraints. You are not limiting God by placing constraints on prayer, but God does limit man, doesn't he? God is unabashed about his limitations of man on prayer, and the historical revelation of Scripture is full of the tragedy of human life when man does not limit himself in the area of prayer. What are some examples of men who did not limit themselves in the area of prayer, and therefore ended in tragedy? What are some examples of that? Well, Saul, didn't he? Saul didn't limit himself, did he? Edoai's sons didn't limit themselves, did they? Huh, when they were moving the Ark back to Jerusalem. Yeah, they didn't limit themselves, did they? Sacrificing on the high places. Jephthah sacrificing his daughter needlessly. Jephthah had known, Jephthah made a rash vow, didn't he? All he had to do was know the Book of Leviticus. There is a monetary value given for rash vows, and there's a monetary value when a rash vow is made for a member of your family, specifically your daughters and sons. And all Jephthah had to do was confess his rash vow and offer up that monetary sacrifice to God and move on. Now, the Bible is full of human tragedy when men do not place themselves under the constraints of God. when it comes to prayer. And the 21st century church is full of confusion and misinformation because everybody wants to get, just as quickly as they can, outside of the box that God has placed in them. But God has placed constraints on prayer. There is a box. It's a very big box, but it nevertheless exists. the Word of God, simply because we are so gullible. It has to be the Word of God. So we'll define prayer. Prayer is man communicating with God and God receiving that communication. And with that, we'll take a break.