The Heaven Side of Unyielding Prayer — Carter Conlon

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The Heaven Side of Unyielding Prayer

I have a message tonight that's called the heaven side of an unyielding prayer. That means the prayer that doesn't give up. There is a heaven side to it, and I'm trusting the Holy Spirit to make that known to us tonight.

This was put on my heart in in Latvia. Luke, Chapter 18, if you go there with me, please, Luke, Chapter 18, and we'll pray together the heaven side of the heaven side of unyielding prayer. Now, Father, I thank you, God, from the depths of my heart, I thank you for the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, if you don't come, this word is powerless, it's fruitless.

It's only knowledge. There's no transformation if you don't come. Lord, I thank you that you've never failed us, that your manifested presence is here in this house and Lord, you reveal yourself not just by your word, but by your actual presence.

You reveal yourself and God, you change lives, you transform people. I thank you for the anointing that causes those that speak, including me tonight, to go far beyond natural ability, far beyond any natural intellect, got into a realm of eternity, the realm of divine life.

I thank you for quickening my mind and physical body tonight. I thank you, Lord, for quickening the hearers. Jesus, we love you. Now, Holy Spirit, we honor you. We bend our knee before you tonight, O God, and we acknowledge your presence and we ask you to do what only you can do.

Lord, we can talk about you, but it has to be you that comes and does the miraculous. Lord, the kingdom does not advance by argument. It's your presence, it's your power. And I ask you tonight, O God, to so work with us, work with us, Holy Spirit, draw us, mold us into the image of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I cry from my heart and say, O God, let your kingdom come, let your will be done in us here on earth as it is in heaven. God, let your will be done. Father, I thank you for the anointing. Break every yoke of darkness.

Jesus’ Parable of the Persistent Widow

And Father, I praise you from the depths of my heart in Jesus name. Luke, chapter 18, beginning at verse one, one of the several instructions that Christ had on on prayer and the beginning of verse one, it says he spake a parable unto them to this end or for this purpose that men are always to pray and not to faint.

Now, the word faint means in the Greek text means to lose heart. Now, this was the purpose that he spoke this parable. So it's important to understand that as we read it, that it's he's saying, I want you to pray and I don't want you to lose heart.

And he says there was in a city a judge which feared not God and neither regarded man. And there was a widow in that city and she came to him saying, avenge me of my adversary. And he would not for a while.

But afterwards, he said within himself, though I fear not God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming, she weary me. And the Lord said, hear what the unjust judge sayeth and shall not God avenge his own elect, which cried day and night unto him, though he bear long with them.

I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? That's incredible truth in these eight verses of scripture. It's it's it's going to be difficult really to unlock it all.

But there's incredible truth here about prayer. Now, Jesus said in the beginning, I want you to pray and I don't want you to lose heart. Now, many, many people lose heart. They begin to pray. And and because we don't see instantaneous results, we draw some wrong conclusion, perhaps about God or our own walk with him and simply cease to pray.

There's an absence of faith when that gets into the heart. There's an inability to even trust God or to believe what he says. And we can end up like Mary in the story of Lazarus, just sitting still in the house.

Christ comes. His glory is manifested. We sing songs about him. His word is open. But there's just that stillness in the heart, because there are those who can say, I have prayed, but I lost heart. I didn't see it.

I didn't see the manifestation of what I was asking for. And I didn't see it come when I thought it should or in the way that it ought to. Now, he shares a parable, and every time Jesus shares a parable, it's it's it's something about God.

It's about his heart. It's about his kingdom. And he said there was in the city a judge which didn't fear God and neither regarded man. In other words, this man was, in a sense, complete in himself. He didn't have any reverence for God and couldn't care less about individual people.

But and he was placed in a position of authority. And there was a widow in that city. And she came to him and said, avenge me of my adversary. Now, this becomes the first key of this particular parable.

Avenge me. The word adversary in the Greek text means an opponent in a lawsuit. This man, perhaps a man of influence and some power, had brought a lawsuit or a legal argument against a widow who is a type of a person who's defenseless.

She had no financial backing, perhaps no family backing, no authority. Nobody could fight for her. So finally, she comes to this unjust judge. And she says, I'm being opposed by someone who's found fault with me.

According to the law, I'm being constantly accused and I'm without power to withstand the force of force of these accusations. Now, I think many people could stop there tonight. And many people would say, you're right where my life is.

I find myself constantly being accused by an accuser and I have no power to withstand these accusations. And now this widow stands before this unjust judge and says, I call you. You have authority for this purpose.

I call you to deliver me from my accuser. I call you to take away his legal argument and to break his power over me. Verse five, verse four tells us that the judge for a while hesitated. He really wasn't about to do anything about it.

But then he said eventually in verse five, he said, because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming, she weary me. Her continual coming. Now, here's a powerless person, as it is, who is under the condemnation of an accuser.

But she comes to this unjust judge and she acknowledges his power. She acknowledges his position. She says that you have the power and you've been placed in authority over my accuser. That's why you've been put there.

It's an amazing thing. I can picture this in my mind, this widow coming in every day, this man of influence and power who's sort of self-occupied. And she comes in and says, listen, I'm being accused.

Somebody is taking me to law. I have no power over it, but I know who you are. I know where you've been placed and why you're there. And my cause is just. She says, I know my rights and I will not be denied.

I will not be denied. And the judge eventually says, well, she's going to weary me. This woman just won't go away. And so rather than have her come here every day and point out my position and my authority and her cause, I will avenge her.

Now, we'll leave that for a moment. We'll come back to it a little later on. Now, a lot of people today faint in prayer. Jesus told this parable so that people would not faint. And many, many people today, they get all zealous for God to go out to the occasional prayer meeting and and just scream and rant and rave at heaven and then just give up eventually.

Reluctance to Fully Follow Christ

Oh, I've been there. I tried that. It didn't work. Now, I'll talk to you about three reasons why people faint in prayer. Firstly, they are reluctant to completely follow Christ. Paul, the apostle, said in Romans 10, 16, they have not all obeyed the gospel.

And the word obeyed means that it denotes the continuous subjection of faith under the preached word. They've not all obeyed. There's been a reluctance in them. They've had a double mind, a double heart, want to be called by Christ's name, love the idea of heaven, but are not too crazy about the idea of a surrendered life to the purposes of God.

So then Paul says faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word of God. In other words, if the word of God is not cherished, if the word of God is not adopted as truth and an absolute and indispensable guide in the Christian life, then there is little chance that faith will ever find a place of in your heart.

In other words, if there is no there's no surrender, there will be no victory. You cannot have faith until you get to the place of saying, I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to yield my life.

I have decided because the word means nothing. The word can't be understood if your heart is divided. It can't be comprehended. There will be all types of scriptures that will mean absolutely nothing to you because your heart is not surrendered.

You cannot live with one foot in the world and another foot in the Christian church because you end up among those that say, well, I tried Christ. It didn't work. Folks, you don't try Christ. He is God.

He's the God of the universe. We don't try him. We don't try him. We bend our knee to him and say, God Almighty, God Almighty, thank you for your mercy. I deserve hell. But you became a man and went to a cross and paid the price for my sin.

And you invite me to your table. We don't try Christ. That's foolishness to even speak that way. We yield to Christ. We give him our lives. We acknowledge that not only has he come and become our savior, but he has the lawful right to every one of our lives.

He has the right to our future. He has the right to everything we are and everything we will be. And he has a plan for our lives. The only plan that unlocks the word of God. Every other plan will cause there to be when we try to interject our plans and ambitions into God's pattern for our lives, we end up with confused minds.

We end up twisting scripture, as Paul says, to our own destruction. We end up deceived and being deceived because we're trying to take another agenda and cause it to cause it to fit the call of Christ.

And it doesn't. There's no other agenda that can produce faith, but the agenda of God. When we are fully yielded to God, then faith begins to unlock in each one of our lives. James said, if if a man, for example, lacks wisdom, let him ask, but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.

He goes on to say that he that has a double mind is unstable in all his ways. Double mindedness produces a great deal of instability. I can't help but wonder how many people we counsel in the church who are simply just double minded.

There's nothing else. They come in and they're they're confused about this. They're confused about the direction of God. They're confused about their homes. Just confusion seems to reign and abound in their lives.

And we're always trying to patch up all the little issues of confusion. I often wonder, is it not just double mindedness? Is it right at the root of it in their heart, deeply in their heart? They have not they have not yielded their lives to the purpose.

They don't trust God. They don't believe that yielding to Christ is a richer life than taking our own plans and objectives and somehow trying to cram them into the kingdom of God. They don't believe it, that fulfillment is found on the mission field of Christ should so lead in that direction.

They believe that fulfillment can be more found in the in their personal pursuits and objectives that they have always thought that we're going to bring them happiness. And so they move in that direction and an instability, a deep spiritual instability gets into their heart.

They can never hear the word of God and they can't pray because if they do pray, you have to live in truth to pray. If you're not living in truth, how do you pray? How do you convince God to yield to your will?

Try it sometime. It's absolutely impossible to get God to change his mind. He's given the full revelation of his mind. Try it. You can't get him to change his mind. It's futile to even try. How do you pray if you're following your own path and spending all of our time trying to get God to agree with a false path, a false theology?

It just doesn't work. It's the yielded life that begins to praise the yielded life. It's the man or woman who says, Christ, you gave me your life and you've given me you've given me your life to live on this side of eternity.

And God, my fullness is found in you. My hope is in you. My life is in you. Paul said it in the book of Acts. In him, we live and move and have our being. It's all about Jesus Christ. It's Christ in us.

That's the hope of our life and the hope of the glory that God wants to reveal in us. People have a hard time to pray or they they cannot pray or they faint in prayer because they're not fully convinced to yield their all to Jesus Christ.

Prayer for Unjust Causes

And secondly, people have a difficulty or they faint in prayer because their cause is not just. And there are many, many people praying unjust causes. Remember the James and John, I believe it was, said, Lord, should we call down fire on this city because they've not received you?

And there would be their cause in their sight, in a sense, was just, but it was totally unjust in the sight of God. He said to them, you don't understand what spirit you're up. How about if you go to the Lord in prayer and say, oh, God, just cause that that awful neighbor just to get hit by a car, just do something nasty to them.

Well, folks, the people pray like that. They pray for destruction over their enemies. When Jesus clearly says in the word, you're to bless them. You're to pray that God's hand of goodness comes on their lives.

And even beyond that, you're to pray that perhaps God will make you the instrument of that goodness to your enemy. That's the way that the word of God says we're to pray. Any other way that people begin to pray is not a just cause.

Jesus said it this way through James or James actually said it. He said, you ask and you don't receive because you ask you to miss that you may consume it on your lusts. Well, you think about the lust of the flesh.

One of those, of course, is envy. One of there's so many of these lusts and you ask for something, but you're asking to consume it on your lust. So you will eventually faint in prayer. You will you will you will not receive anything that's of the life of Christ.

It's tragic today that in much of the Christian church of our generation, the enemy has succeeded in focusing the minds of the body of Christ on their own lusts, their own desires. The concept of the yielded life, as we heard so well this afternoon, is gone from so many people and false prophets have arisen and convinced multitudes that the whole reason to exist, the whole reason to come to Christ is because he's some kind of a cosmic Santa Claus that you can just command and he just gives you things and he he makes you he takes you to your destiny.

But, you know, the concept of destiny is always greatness, influence, power. It's the slice of the social pie as it is. What if your destiny is jail? I preach this in Ireland. How does that how does the theology fit then?

Trusting God’s Heart in Prayer

How does it fit Paul's life, whose destiny was to go to prison and ending up writing some of the most powerful epistles that we have in the New Testament today? That was his destiny. And thirdly, people faint in prayer because they're unpersuaded of God's heart for them.

You see, a persuaded man or woman cannot be turned aside. Go to the book of Luke, just go backwards to Luke chapter 11. They're not persuaded of God's heart. Now, Luke chapter 11. Verse one, it says it came to pass that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

Then, of course, he goes on from there and teaches them what we know today to be the Lord's prayer. And then he goes on in a further way of illustration of that request in verse five. And he says to them, in which of you shall have a friend and shall go to him at at midnight?

And say to him, friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine in his journey has come before me and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not. The door is now shut and my children are with me in bed.

I cannot rise and give thee. I say to you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will arise and give him as much as he needs. In other words, you know, the word for importunity means is recklessness.

He just simply will not go away. Christ said this is the and then he goes on. He says, Now I say to you, verse nine, ask and it shall be given you seek and you shall find knock and shall be open. Everyone that asks receives he that seeks finds and he that knocks it shall be open.

He said, If anyone of you ask bread of a son, ask bread of a father, will he give him a stone? If he asked a fish, will he give him a serpent? If he asked an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you know, then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.

How much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? He said, This is how I want you to pray. God, I have a neighbor that's moved in next door to me who needs to be experience your love.

But God, I don't have it. I can't do much more than tolerate the person. I don't have your love. I need three times more than I have. I need 30 times more than I have. But God, you've got to somehow put within me that which I don't have.

He comes and he said, A friend is before me and I've got nothing to set before him. I'm bankrupt in this area of my life. Lord Jesus, I come to you for that which I need. And he says, even though he won't get up and give him because he's his friend, yet because of his recklessness, that's what importunity means, a shamelessness.

It means a recklessness. He will rise and give him as much as he needs. And he said, I say to you, ask, I say to you, come to the throne. I say it's important that you understand my heart for you. God's heart is to give us himself.

It's not knowledge about himself. As wonderful as that is, his heart is to give us himself. The love that we need is Christ. It's his love in our heart. It's his ability to surrender to the will of God.

He's the one that won the victory over death and the flesh and sin. And he comes to live that life out through us and within us. And he says, I tell you to come recklessly to the throne of God. Say, father, I will not be turned away.

I will not take no for an answer. I will not go away because I have read my legal rights. I have read what is mine. I know my heart is in line with your heart. I'm asking for something that is according to your will.

It is your will that I love my enemies. It is your will that I have a generous spirit. It is your will, O God, that I have the courage to be a bold witness for you. It is your will. And there are many, many things we can point to in the word of God.

Say, God, it is your will. And the Lord says, I want you to come to me. If you find yourself with nothing to set before those that are before you in the midnight hour, I ask you to come to me and come boldly, come knowing what is yours and don't be turned aside from it.

Jeremiah, the Lord said to Jeremiah, I know my thoughts that I think towards you. Thoughts of peace and thoughts of good to give you and to bring you to a desired end. John 15, 7, Jesus said, If you abide in me, my words abide in you, you will ask what you will and it shall be done unto you.

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, if my truth, if this the revelation I've given to of myself, if it has found a dwelling place in your life, if you are yielded and if you are willing to make that transference from your will to the will of God, your life to the life of Christ, if you have embraced Christ as the pearl of great price, if you're willing to sell all that you might have them ask what you will and it shall be done.

Now, I've lived this. I've seen this. I've known this to be true. I've seen God do the miraculous in my own life over the years. I've asked that he might use me for his glory when I had no ability to be used, no natural ability whatsoever.

And I saw God do it. I asked him to deliver me from fear and I watched God deliver me from fear. I asked him to help me to love my wife and he taught me how to love and to cherish my wife as Christ loves and cherishes his church.

I asked him to help me be a father to my children, for I had little knowledge of how to do these things. And God gradually opened his heart to me and opened my heart to my own children. I asked him to give me courage to trust him when all hell seemed to be against me and all adversity seemed to be blowing on every side.

And he did. And he has proven himself to be faithful. I know this word to be true. There were times when hell said, give up, there were times when my accuser said, you'll never change. Don't bother asking for this anymore.

Oh, I'm telling you, I've been down a corridor of of darkness and times in my life, especially the younger years as a Christian, when hell came against me and tried to tell me everything that hell has in its arsenal that I'll never change, never amount to anything.

God’s Speedy Avenging and the Work of Character

But I read something in the word of God and I was willing to exchange my life for this life. Back in Luke 18, again, verse seven. Jesus says, well, verse six, he said, now here, hear what the unjust judge says.

Remember, the unjust judge said, I'm going to answer this petition because this woman is going to weary me by her continual coming. And Jesus said, I want you to hear what the unjust judge says. And he says now, shall not God, in other words, if an unjust judge will answer a continual plea, how much more will God answer it?

That's really the inference he's making. He said, shall not God's avenge his own elect, which cried day and night to him, though he bear long with them? Now, the word avenge has two meanings in the New Testament.

Number one, it means to avenge. It means just to pronounce a judgment. But the second meeting means to endow a person with a certain quality to do something once and for all the producing and bringing forth is something which, when produced, has an independent existence of his own.

The vengeance, the way God avenges us is to cast down our accuser and he does it by bringing forth the change once and for all. That's how he avenges us. Oh, yes, the devil accuses us. The devil says you're this.

The devil says you're that. And quite often he's right. I mean, he has a lawful accusation against us. If we're stingy or mean or we're fearful, he comes and says, this is what you are. And the reality is, if you were under the law, we're not today.

But he has a legal accusation against some because that's, in effect, what we are. So we come to Christ, say, cast him down, cast him down, avenge me, avenge me of this accuser. I have no power before him.

And the way he avenges him is by casting him down, by giving you and I the very thing the accuser accuses us of not having. That's how he avenges us. He gives us the very thing the accuser says we don't have.

It's amazing. The accuser comes and says, you are fearful. God says, all right, we come to the Lord. We pray. God, I've read it in your word. You've not given me a spirit of fear, but power, love and a sound mind.

Cast him down. He's accusing me. Cast him down. Avenge me of my accuser. He's he's got something on me. This is a reality at this point in my life. Avenge me. And God says, I come and I avenge you by giving you the very thing that he says.

That you don't have and he said, shall I not avenge his own elect, which cried day and night to him, though he bear long with them, I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Now, this seems to be a contradiction when you look at it.

He says he will do so. You remember the unjust judge for a season didn't do anything. When we read verse seven, it appears to be that the elect come and cry day and night. So this is an ongoing prayer.

It's not just a one time thing. And there seems to be a long time or a long time of bear long means to be long suffering as opposed to being hasty and acting in anger or punishment. He will avenge his elect, though he bears long with them.

But I tell you, he said he will avenge them speedily. I don't understand how that comes. Sometimes when we pray, things don't happen the way we think they should. You see, God's ways are not ours, his thoughts are not ours.

I'd like it now. Lord, you've heard that prayer. Lord, I want patience. I want it right now. I want patience, though we bear long. There are often things in us that are not quite in line with Christ. And as we approach his throne asking him for things, he said, well, I'm going to do it.

As a matter of fact, I'm doing it. But there's something I have to get at in you. You see, if we get things too easy, quite often they're not appreciated. That's a reality. We tell our own children, I don't just hand money to you, you're going to work for it because you won't appreciate it.

It will be it will produce a deficiency in you if it's handed to you all the time too easily and you never have to earn it. Now, I'm not talking about our salvation. Please don't misunderstand me. We obviously don't earn that.

Carter Conlon’s Testimony of Deliverance

I remember when I about over a little over 20 years ago, maybe 21, 22 years ago, I was touched by the Holy Spirit in an incredible way. It's only been a one never happened again nor before a wonderful one time touch of God's spirit that I will never forget for eternity.

I was at my home and I was praying and I was praying a specific prayer just sitting in my kitchen. My wife was with me and I said, oh, if you'll just set me free. I will give you all of my life. You can use me for your glory.

You can do whatever you want with me if you'll just set me free from all of the bondage and everything that oppresses my mind and everything else. And I cried out to God and I can't quite explain to you what happened other than to say God touched me.

I had an encounter with Christ. It was the most terrifying moment of my entire life, but it was a strange kind of a terror. I was never more afraid in my life. But yet there was a deep sense that I was in the hand of God.

I knew that if he didn't lift his hand off of me, I would die. There was a strange experience. Just God's presence just came all over me. I I ended up on the floor shaking like a leaf. And when I stood up, something had so happened in my life.

It was incredible. The next week or two. It's like I walked in another realm, I can't quite explain it. It seemed to have the ability to see right into people's hearts. I led I don't know how many people of Christ.

It seemed everybody I talked to came to Christ. They break down weeping and I'd be able to speak right into their heart. I walked into a room one time of twenty eight people and twenty seven broke down weeping and gave their lives to Christ.

It was an amazing time with God. I understood the scriptures. I opened the Bible and just everything was just just jumping off the page. I saw revelation, understood some things about the scriptures that it's like he had unlocked my mind and opened my spirit.

And one day we were driving in the car, my wife and I, and I said to her, it's been such a strange couple of weeks for me. There's been such a transformation that I find myself missing my old self. No, that was the most foolish thing I think I've ever said in my life, because I woke up the next morning and guess who was back?

And I cried, I wept, I went before God, I said, God, you knew how stupid I was when you touched me, Lord, forgive me for this. Oh, God, just I don't want my old self. And and I would I would sit in the same chair in the same spot.

OK, do it again, God. I will. You'd be surprised how many times over the years that I've done this and the Holy Spirit came and told me clearly, you will have that touch of God again in your life, but you will have it when you appreciate what I had done for you.

You'll have it when there's a little bit of a knowledge inside of you that you don't ever take for granted the holy things, especially the Holy Spirit. You don't take for granted the anointing of God, the touch of God that comes into your life.

Even up to several years ago, I'd lay prostrate on my floor and weep and cry and do everything in my power to even try to imagine being touched by God like that again. And I'd stay until I'd sweat, but nothing happens.

God says, no, you're it's not going to happen. But he says, I will avenge them speedily, though he bear long. It's not good to have things sometimes happen too fast. There has to be. Issues of character worked in.

And the Holy Spirit knows how to do that, and here's where it gets interesting. He says, I will answer them speedily, even though there seems to be a long time between when the prayer is prayed and the answer comes.

David’s Psalm 18 and the Heaven-Side Battle

The only best way I can explain it is if you'll go with me to the Old Testament, the Psalm 18. This is a psalm of David. Now, this psalm is written in retrospect, which means that the battle is over. The victory has been won and David is thinking back.

Now, this has been a long standing battle. He has been pursued by Saul. He's had enemies all around him. He's gone for days, seemingly in his own mind, without number in the wilderness, fleeing around mountains, running into foreign king's territories, behaving like a madman, even at one time at a king's gate to save his own skin, all of these things that he had to go through.

But now, in retrospect, he looks back. And if you believe the word of God is revelation, then you have to believe that God gave revelation to him, that when he prayed, there was something going on. And it's I'm talking tonight about the heaven side of unyielding prayer.

Something happens in heaven when we pray. That is how he answers us speedily. He avenges us speedily, even though for a season there seems to be a long suffering that's going on as God is dealing with some issues in our character before we actually see the manifestation of our prayer.

We see that which we're asking for actually come to us and we can say, I've got it. And David's at that point now and he writes a song about a long standing battle. And he's looking back over a long period of time and the Holy Spirit gives him an incredible revelation.

And this is what has to be in our hearts. This is what goes on in heaven when a son or daughter of God goes to the throne and says, Lord, I will not give up. I will not go away. I will not let hell have my sons and daughters.