Welcome to First Thessalonians, Chapter 5. We'll bring our studies in this book to a close this morning. I'll read to you from verse 23 through the end of the chapter. First Thessalonians 5, beginning reading at verse 23. Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. When we were last in first Thessalonians chapter five, we took up verse twenty three and twenty four, which was the apostles concluding benediction. At least we thought it was or we could have thought that it was it would be, indeed, by our reckoning, a fitting way to end this letter, a formal and full word of blessing to the people. But after having written those things, there are several other urgent things that break in on the apostles mind. Just as he's about to close the letter that happens to us, of course. You know how it is. You're perhaps about to leave for a time away from home. You're leaving the children. You've set them down and said all the important things. You've told them about what numbers to call if something happens. They're told about how to treat each other. They're told that they are loved when you're getting in the car. And as you drive out, you roll down the window and say, and don't forget to lock the doors or whatever the case may be. Not trying to unduly humanize. of the Word of God, but we hear in these letters the personality of the Apostle Paul as he structures his letters. Indeed, when he seems to be bringing everything to a close, there are several brief but urgent things he'll slip in before he once again closes with a briefer benediction. The very last verse of the letter. There are three things I'm not going to take up. All three things we've referred to a couple of them already in the series, I want to single out this morning as we conclude our studies in first Thessalonians, the shortest, the briefest of the three words, but it happens to be the one that's most characteristic of the Apostle Paul. As he thinks of things to say at the conclusion of his letters, we're looking at verse twenty five brothers. Pray for us. I want to say to you, there are three things that we will be able to see in those three words, not one thing per word. This is not an exegesis of those three words that would take about two minutes, maybe not even that long. What we're doing this morning is, in fact, examining the man. Who is so shaped by the gospel? That stands behind those three words, we're going to hear those three words in light of things which he frequently says when he's writing to the churches under his care. The question for this morning is what do those three words reveal about the Christian convictions and experience of Paul? Or, if you will, what's true of this man that makes prayer so important to him? We're asking Paul, why prayer? As you're about to sign off, the first of the three things we'll see is this. These words reveal in Paul an abiding sense of dependence upon God. When the apostle speaks this way, as when he references prayer in every turn in his letters, he is exhibiting something about himself. It is that he's come to be someone so profoundly aware of how much he depends upon God that he's constantly referencing that in his appeals for prayer. And normally, when Paul writes letters, he begins his letters by telling them how much he's praying for them. We saw that in First Thessalonians. Since we're at the end of First Thessalonians, you can look ahead just on the other side of the page, probably in your Bibles to Second Thessalonians. You see the pattern again. Chapter one, verse three, he references prayers for the ones to whom he writes. We ought always to give thanks to God for your brothers as his right. He's reflecting on his prayers for them. The beginning of his letters, he talks about his prayers for the ones he writes to at the end of his letters. He very typically, as he does at the end of second Thessalonians as well, ask for prayer. Look at chapter three, verse one. Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as it happened among you and that we may be delivered from the wicked and evil men. Sisters, what the apostle is showing us is that the very soul of Christian religion has become his soul. Do you know what that is? Put your finger on what is the soul of true religion? You do well to say it is utter dependence upon God. That's what Christianity is all about. You recognize that the Christian faith places a strong emphasis upon faith. That's how we receive all the blessings that we need for salvation. And if you think of faith and its prominence in our religion as directly connected with prayer and its prominence in our religion, you do well because prayer is simply the expression of faith. Faith is reaching out to God for that which he alone can do for us. It's a reaching out in a sense of need and dependence upon him for what he can do. And prayer is the uttering of faith. Prayer is the expressing of it. For an illustration that some of us might have seen recently, this being the spring season, you could hardly get a better depiction of what the Christian is than that little nest built outside your window with those three or four birds ugly as can be with misshapen form with eyes still shut. And they seem to be all mouth. That's one thing they've got. And they've got this ability, not much any other ability, but this they can make noise to show their need. Now, that's a pretty good depiction of the Christian, especially in this season. Short of glory, we're ugly and we are unable to do anything of ourselves, but faith brought worked in our hearts, gives us the mouth. That's one thing we've got and gives us the noise of crying out to God for the things that alone he can give us. The brothers, there's a lot of. War in our hearts to maintain that sense of dependence, there are enemies to that sense of dependence in us. There's something very powerful It work in us that moves us to the opposite of dependence. It moves us to self-reliance, to a seeking of the resources for what we need in ourselves. And you have that within your own heart and you live in a society, you live in a world that urges you in every way to that kind of self-reliance. What's the sense that comes to your mind when you hear the word dependency? It's generally a negative word, isn't it? Our day. There are various kinds of dependency and our day, and they're generally all considered to be bad. And so there's a variety of ways their efforts made to encourage individuals, human beings to come to a place of self-sufficiency and dependency there to be empowered, you see. There to be enabled. Everything about the current of that, to find resources in yourself, is contradicted by the very soul of true religion, which is dependency on God. And prayer is the expression of that. You see, the Apostle Paul, if you were to meet him, I think you'd be impressed in many ways. He was a man that would have been impressive. And yet, he has the awareness throughout his ministry that he is dependent on God for everything. He writes, for example, to the Ephesian Christians, pleading with them to pray for him that he will have courage. She says, pray for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I'm an ambassador in chains. If you don't pray for me, I'm afraid I'm not going to be bold enough to do it. I don't have it in myself. to equip myself well in this place of prison. He asked the Thessalonians, as we've seen, to pray for the success of his gospel. He's had tremendous success, but he doesn't attribute that to the potencies within himself. He says, pray for us to the Lord. The word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored. He asked the Colossian Christians to pray that opportunities would be given to him. He's dependent upon the Lord just to enable him to do what he's seeking to do. Pray for us, he says to the Colossian Christians, that God may open a door for the word. He was aware that his life will be snuffed out if it's not for the Lord's help. He asked the Romans, I appeal to you, brothers. by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with me in your prayers to God in my behalf that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea. So thus far, I've been reminding you of something, brothers and sisters, that you know well. I doubt that I've had to convince anyone here who professes to be a Christian. You recognize that this is warp and woof of our Christian faith. But here's the rub, brothers and sisters. You may not find anything objectionable to these things. They will ring true to you if you're a Christian. You'll accept it. We're totally dependent upon God. But do you understand what explains the lack of prayer in your life? What explains the lack of prayer in my life? You know what explains that? We do not believe this, in fact. We do not, in fact, believe that everything we need comes from him and that we are utterly and profoundly needy. Now, there are times if you're a Christian, God is at work in your heart. And there are times when you are overwhelmed with that sense of need. You know what that's like. And when that happens, you turn to God in prayer, don't you? The prayers that happen throughout the day. I'm entering into a specific kind of meeting that's going to require more than I have. Give me help. Give me words. Give me what have you. I'm going into this situation. I'm struggling with this passage. You have the same experience. There are times when your need confronts you, but then there are other times. And they're not few when things are going swimmingly, you're going through your duties, you're going day to day, and you get the sense that you have those resources in yourself. And the symptom of that, the proof of that is that you leave off prayer. It's not as obvious to you that you are utterly dependent upon God for everything. And here's the perversity of it. Satan can actually use his provision, his gifts to you to further underscoring your own mind that you have what you need. So we can have seasons of prayerlessness and they are seasons. I want to say always, virtually always, I would assert to you, they're virtually always times. when we have slipped from our full and sincere faith that we are dependent upon God for everything. Circumstances have veiled it from us, and our heart, which loves to run into the self-reliance mode, has crowded that truth out. Brothers and sisters, it's a mercy of God when He does strike us in the midst of those prayerless times. strike us with some profound neediness that doesn't make, if you're thinking correctly, doesn't make it clear that all of a sudden you need God, but makes all of a sudden clear you've always needed God. And he's saying you need to be back on your face. and seeking me in prayer. The Apostle Paul was not a flawless man. He was not a perfect man. We just know him through his letters. But apparently, what's revealed to us about him through his letters is that he lived in the highs and the lows of his ministry in the successful days, like writing to the Thessalonians, in the seemingly not so successful days, like writing to the Ephesian Christians. In prison, he's dependent upon the Lord. As goes your faith, goes your prayers, brothers and sisters, and faith is but an expression of a sense of dependency upon God. So we see in these words of Paul, an abiding sense of dependency on God. Second thing we see. Those words, those three short words reveal in Paul, secondly, an awareness of the necessity of brotherly intercession. Having emphasized the most profound need that we have, we have to recognize there's another kind of need that Paul is exhibiting in his prayers, as I've shown you now, frequent prayers or requests for prayer. Paul has a sense of dependence upon God. And that drives him to prayer. But he also has a sense of dependence upon others to pray for him, and that drives him to ask for prayer. That's what he's doing in 525. Brothers, pray for us. Now, this is what intercessory prayer is. That fancy word simply means approaching God on behalf of someone else. You're going to God now not to ask for things for yourself. You're going to God now to ask for things for your friend, for your brother or sister. That's all that intercessory prayer is. When Paul makes this repeated plea for his brothers and sisters to pray for him, he's not just manifesting that he's dependent on God. He's also manifesting a whole other realm of dependence. He's dependent upon his brothers and sisters praying for him. I'm calling that a whole nother realm of dependence. You're not only dependent upon God, most fundamentally, you're dependent upon the rest of us. And others who can pray in your life to get from God the things you need. The apostle speaks this way frequently in his letters, for example, he's constantly asking for prayer from others. We've been looking at that. Second Corinthians is another case, he says. You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted through us, through the prayers of many. You hear him. He's dependent upon their prayers, which is a roundabout way of saying he's dependent upon God for everything, but he knows he will get certain things from God only as others seek them from God on his behalf. Other times he expresses great gratitude to those whom he writes for their prayers. I know that through your prayers, he tells the Philippians and the help of the spirit of Jesus, this will turn out from my deliverance. Do you hear the sense of dependence on others prayers? It calls upon us to pray for each other. With that sense of dependence in mind, Ephesians chapter six. Pray at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplications, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. Can I say to you, dear ones, I think there are many Christians for whom this would be downright unsettling if they'd ever actually pause to think about it deeply. unsettling that you and I are dependent not just on God, but dependent upon each other in receiving from God the blessings that he gives. There's something insufficient about my going to God in prayer. There are things that I need that I might not be able to get from God unless others join me in going to him in prayer. There are others. Who have to pray for me in order for certain blessings to come to me? We don't typically naturally think that way of prayer, do we? We tend to think of prayer is more in the realm, prayer for each other, an accessory prayer, more in the realm of encouragement. We think of prayer for each other as a mechanism by which we comfort them when there's something very true about that, of course. When you say, I'm praying for you, you you do intend for your brother to be encouraged by that. That is a great encouragement for brothers and sisters. That's not why Paul says brothers pray for us. I need to encourage him and I need to know he's asking for prayer because he knows there are certain things he won't receive from God unless there are others praying with him. For them. Let me say to someone else, we're praying for you, we we often rightly want them to know that we're We're supporting them, we're empathizing with them. Paul didn't let that stop him. He prayed for people who would never know that he was praying for them. Clearly, he wasn't just in the realm of empathy or sympathy. I can't say everything there is to say this morning about this much larger subject. called intercessory prayer. But there are certain, it seems, laws in the Bible about intercessory prayer. A couple of them that come to mind is that if you want certain blessings from God and you want them badly and they're that important, you need to have not just someone else praying for you, but someone who's righteous. That's one principle of intercessory prayer, that those who pray for you, if they themselves are close to God, If they have come to have a certain intimacy with him, a certain familiarity with prayer, then their prayers for you will be more effective. We're told by James in chapter five, pray for one that you may be healed, the prayer of a righteous person has great power. Another principle in the Bible about intercessory prayer is that the more righteous men or women that are praying for you, the better. Two of you agree, Jesus says, I'll answer your prayer. You see the church saying, well, two is good and ten is better and fifty is even better. And so we'll band together for prayer. This is a principle I'm not sure we've thought sufficiently about that there are certain things. That we may not receive from God. Unless we enlist the prayers of others. Otherwise, why is Paul so desperate for intercessory prayer? I realize this can be abused. I'm aware of that. There are those who've latched hold of certain principles that I'm just now reminding you of, and they have put themselves on TV and said, look how my prayers are special. You send me your little prayer request and I'll pray. Send some money, too, and I'll make sure that your prayers answered. God has given me a ministry of prayer. It's an abuse. Certain traditions of the church have taken this principle and said, well, if a righteous prayer avails much, then maybe those who are perfectly righteous need to pray for us. Maybe we need to spend most of our time praying to the saints instead of God. That's a great perversion of this principle. Because there are perversions of it, it's not warrants are ignoring it. Just strange to you at all, this principle. That it's not enough for us individually To seek from God the things we need. There are certain things we need others to seek from God for us. It's a whole nother measure of dependency, isn't it? Dependent upon God, that's the soul of true religion. Dependent upon each other for intercessory prayer. I can't tell you that I know entirely why God's made it this way. I would be presumptuous to say and tell you exactly why that is. I have a couple of hunches why he builds into our experience, not just a dependency upon him, but a dependency on each other in this area of prayer. One of them, I'm sure it has something to do with the glory of God. You recognize that there are certain things God. Reserves to give to his church when they band together and pray or reserves to give to individuals when multitudes come together to him to pray. I think that perhaps what God is after, in part, is reminding us that he is not just some heavenly vending machine. And any one of us has got a quarter can just stick it in there and get what he needs just like that. Just show up. Take a minute. I'll get it to you. No, he's a king. He is the king of all the earth. He's a good king. He's a fatherly king. You can go to him by yourself. He'll give you things you ask all by yourself. But don't forget, there's another dimension. There are certain things that he gives. He's pleased to give only as his people band together and petition him. That's what kings receive. They receive petitions signed off by many in prayer. Surely this principle at work in prayer, as it's laid out for us in the Bible, glorifies God and surely it also strengthens the church. Isn't that obvious just with a little bit of thought? Isn't it obvious how this neediness on our part for the prayers of others, for receiving from God things that they seek from God, doesn't that knit us together in a way that would not be possible if there wasn't this dynamic in prayer? Underscores that we're a community of people. It may be a strange thing to those who pause to think about it long enough, this reality of intercessory prayer that you have to go with help to God in prayer. There's also something wonderful about it. You've experienced it, haven't you? You've experienced what it was like to go to the Lord, galvanized to prayer, united in ways you can't fully express in words, and recognize that God granted things to us when we stormed together His gates for one of our number. This awareness of the necessity for intercessory prayer, brothers and sisters, does exactly two things. When it's born home, the heart of a Christian, you become aware of the necessity of intercessory prayer. You'll have a deep desire for the prayer of others. And secondly, you'll have a real readiness to pray for others. Both of those things, exactly those two things. Let the sense of need that the Apostle expresses in verse twenty five brothers pray for us. Kindle in your heart a desire for the prayers of others. And by the way, can we can we distinguish something a little more clearly in our talking with each other, not thinking about each other, can we distinguish when we're asking for prayer for others, our genuine desires for their intercession for us and our hope for sympathy and And a very appropriate kind of empathy. Sometimes they get all kind of muddled up, don't they? Hey, I'd appreciate your prayers for something. Well, which is it? You want me to know about something and offer my counsel and sympathy or or are you actually asking me to commit to praying because you realize you desperately need an intercessor on your behalf? As you say this with one another. Be very intentional and say it and say it and mean it. Brother, I need you to pray for me. Now, here's the most common form that that plea for prayer takes in our midst as a congregation. Very naturally, it's when some calamity strikes us, some job like calamity. We're facing prospective death. And that's intuitive to everyone. It's intuitive to the one who needs the prayer to ask for. It's intuitive to those who respond in prayer. And it's a blessed thing. These things are born home on us, isn't it? In those times. But some of the biggest issues of need in our lives. Are some of the things we're least willing to seek prayer for from others. Am I not right? Is this not so? Brothers, I've asked you to meet with me today because I have a problem with lust that I cannot conquer. I'm asking you to pray for me. I'm meeting with the elders Because I have struggles that have mastered me, and I need righteous men to lay hands on me and pray. Nothing's wrong with my body that I know, but there are some things wrong with my soul, my marriage, my family, what have you. Brothers, will you pray for me? Stand up in prayer meeting, no less. My wife and I are going through some hard times. Would you pray for me? Would you pray for us? Brothers and sisters, if it's born in on you that there is this necessity that for certain blessings to be received from God, others join you in asking him for them, then you will show a deep desire for the prayers of others. And it will manifest itself in any number of ways. I'm not prescribing them this morning. I'm enlarging, I hope, the horizon of your thought about how that would go. Let's be very intentional. Let's be very deliberate. Let's be very earnest. Let's be very decisive. And let's ask one another for prayer. The second thing that this necessity for intercessory prayer brings home to us is a readiness to pray for others. This is Born Home, brothers and sisters. You'll recognize that your prayers for your friends For your brothers and sisters in this congregation are not just little private proofs that you love them. They are that they're not just the necessary prerequisites to your being able to encourage them. You know, you have to pray for somebody to be able to say that I was praying for you. They are that they're not the least you can do for your brother or sister, which is often the way we think. I don't know what to do with this person. I guess I will pray. Also, Paul recognized that fervent, persuasive, prevailing prayer for a brother or sister is the most powerful form of ministry to him. Do you know why that is? Do you understand why that is? That's not just a platitude you hear from preachers. Do you know why the thing that you do best for your brother is pray for him? Do you know why? Thankfully, we're seldom in the opportunity of only praying or doing something tangible. We can often do something tangible for him. We can bring a meal and we can pray. It's not an either or. We can say the words of comfort and we can also pray. We're typically not actually having to decide between prayer and some other form of ministry. But if you had to decide, do you know why prayer is the most vital form of ministry to a brother or sister? I'll tell you, one of them is you are acting for that brother, for their good. The other is prevailing upon God to act for your brother for their good, which is more of a blessing. It becomes a no brainer, doesn't it? We bear this in mind. Prayer is seeking God to act for good. The life of a brother or sister, you have the ability to act as well, but it doesn't compare to God acting, if you can pray for your brother. You can have a part in God himself acting. His life. And so let's go back to our prayer list with that in mind, shall we? Shall we do that? Fellow elders, let's do that. Let's go back to our shepherding lists. Sisters, girlfriends, go back to prayer for each other with that in mind. Brothers. Take up prayer for each other with that in mind. You need to do a lot of things for your brother. This is the most fundamental thing that you can do. We actually got to do it, don't we? As a church, we vow to pray for each other. You ought to think of our praying for each other, particularly the times we do it together here, coming to prayer. I mean, you ought to think of that as it's like a modern day barn raising. The barn raising is right. Farmer Joe can't do it on his own, he can't pull together all the supports, all those massive beams of a barn by himself. There's certain things that are not going to happen if Farmer Joe and his boys are out there by themselves. So the church or the community says, we'll meet you there on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and we'll all together do what you couldn't do by yourself. We'll get your barn up. That's what we're doing when someone says in a prayer meeting, I need this for prayer. We say, let's go. We'll get that barn up. What you can't do by yourself, we'll do. That's why we're here. We're here to pray for you, to gain the blessing that only comes through intercessory prayer. So Paul is manifesting in these words his own sense of dependence upon God. which is the soul of true religion. He's also manifesting a sense of dependence on the prayers of the saints. And lastly, and most mysteriously, these words reveal in Paul the conviction that God, our God, is a movable God. I find myself thinking that prayer, as simple as it is, as basic it is to our Christian experience, actually ultimately defies all explanation. That is to say, how it works. Central to our faith and experience, do you know what? It also finds itself right in the center of all kind of theological conundrums people have raised. For example, The tension between what the Bible teaches about God's sovereignty, his rule over all things and our responsibility that we must do certain things in order to receive certain things. Prayer is right the center of that. We're in the tradition of Calvinism. We emphasize the sovereignty of God, and we like to say to those who don't have as healthy an emphasis on the sovereignty of God. There's a name for that tradition, Arminianism. We like to say, you know, every Arminian is a Calvinist on his knees. That little saying of ours is reflection of the fact that when When Christians go to prayer and they pray for brothers and sisters, they pray that God will save their souls. They're acknowledging in their praying that God has control of the very heart of man, that man can't do anything, even want to be saved, according to God, doing something. And so we pray, all of us, all of us. Lord, save my brother, my sister, my neighbor, what have you. I wonder if I mean, brothers who tend to emphasize the responsibility of men ever point out about us. But you know what? When you pray, you're also emphasizing something else. You're emphasizing that that God is not going to act in certain ways unless you ask him. You've got to take that initiative to ask him and he will actually respond to what you ask for. He's waiting, in fact, the Scripture says, to answer prayer. find prayer to be increasingly a mystery. Since I'm talking to Presbyterians this morning, let me simply emphasize this to you in light of the apostles obsession with prayer. Brothers and sisters, fatalism. Fatalism is the mortal enemy to fervent prayer. Fatalism, that's the notion that whatever will be will be. Nothing you and I can do to affect the course of events in this world. That's what fatalism is. Case or whatever will be will be many a Calvinist has fallen into that, despite John Calvin's fervent efforts to warn against it. Fatalism in prayer looks like this reduces prayer, reduces prayer to simply an edifying exercise. It's. A good thing for us to pray because good things happen to our souls. We surrender ourselves to God and his will. We come to him with all these requests, but we end up saying, yeah, but but I know whatever will be will be. And so I'm OK with that. And prayer just gets us to that place where we say, I'm OK with that. There's a lot of truth to that. Prayer is good for our souls and prayer brings us to a place of surrender. And we do pray at the end of the day, not my will, but your will be done. Brothers and sisters, prayer is not just therapy. When Paul says, pray for us, pray that doors will be opened for us, pray that I'll be given courage, pray that God will give success to the preaching of the Word, he anticipates that God in heaven will be moved by the prayers of His people. You fit that in your theological system however you can, but you must. Our prayers. That's one of the great privileges of prayer. Move God. Yes, it's right to love to pray because it's. Edifying. It's like it's it's good for you to be looking forward to lunch here in just a little while, because you anticipate it's going to be delicious. That's a large reason why we go to lunch, isn't it? It's delicious. It's not the most fundamental reason. Most fundamental reason you go to lunch is because over time, not going or going is a matter of life or death. That's why we go to prayer, not just because it's good for our souls, but because God has assured us in countless ways in His Word that He responds to our requests. Do I need to remind you of that? Old Testament, New Testament, how many times this is emphasized about prayer? Moses, great heroic prayer there on the mountain when God has said, I'm set up, I'm going to annihilate the whole people. Moses moves God. By prayer, Jesus emphasizes this in his teachings about prayer, he does in the most unorthodox way we might be tempted to say he depicts God in heaven as the unjust judge, the widow. who encounters him initially seems to be fixed. He seems to have absolutely no intention of doing anything. And the widow comes and prevails upon him and moves him to prayer. I'm emphasizing this this morning, brothers and sisters, because this is one of the reasons are failing to see this are slipping into a fatalist perspective, whatever will be will be whether I pray or whether I don't pray. It's all the same that Cuts the nerve of our fervency for prayer. There's a lot of reasons why it's hard to pray. We're more affected by sin in our prayers, arguably, than anything else we do that makes it hard to pray. Because faith is what is being expressed in prayer, it's hard to to believe, and so it's hard to. Pray. Not only that, but God sometimes doesn't move. And so we've asked a lot. It makes it hard to pray. But one of the most fundamental reasons that we weary of prayer is because we've lost the sense, the thrill of realizing that God in heaven is moved by the prayers of his people. Best I can, I'll capture this mystery. He is a king. who rules over all things. None can force his hand. That's what it means to be sovereign. But he's a king with his favorites. And he has granted to his favorites this privilege. You come and ask me. And by your asking, I will move my hand to do what you've asked. And so he grants to certain people, to his children, the privilege. of forcing his hand, but yes, of moving him in prayer. So let's go to it again. In our private lives, in our family lives, in our corporate and church life, let's go to prayer, let's indeed show what is evident in the Apostle Paul, an obsession with prayer, and specifically intercessory prayer, one for the other. Amen. Shall we pray? You learned a long time ago, Lord Jesus, that we don't have to understand everything in all its depths to do what you invite us to do. How is it that God of heaven and earth, by his own reckonings, moved by our feeble requests, we don't understand. We embrace again the privilege you've afforded to us. Confess to you in this very prayer that we're dependent upon you for everything we have and are. We recognize that even the will to pray, even the words in our mouth come from you. They are your handiwork. We come to you to ask you to give us everything necessary for life and salvation, and we resolve afresh, that those things which we have not yet received from You will enlist the help of other righteous men and women to gain them from You. We pray that You will, if not hear one of us, hear many of us. That if You will not hear one, You'll hear two or three. But that You will hear our prayers. We ask that You would make us mighty in prayer, not only for the good of our own souls, expansion of your kingdom, the kingdom of your Son. We ask you to fulfill in us all that was found in this great Apostle's heart when he cried out. Brothers, pray for us. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.