Your Prayers Matter

Our text for the preaching this morning is found in second Thessalonians in chapter 3

I'll preach from verse 1 to the first few words of verse 3 But I'll read from verse 1 through verse 5 again

Just so we have some context and background of the Apostle Paul's train of thought

So second Thessalonians chapter 3 verses 1 through 5, please stand in honor of God's Word as we read it

Finally brothers Pray for us that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you

And that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men for not all have faith, but the

Lord is faithful He will establish you and guard you against the evil one and we have confidence in you in the

Lord about you That you are doing and will do the things that we command May the

Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ May God bless the

Reading and now the hearing and preaching of his word. Please be seated And once again, let's go to the

Lord in prayer and ask his help our Heavenly Father You do pray that as your word is proclaimed that you bless your word that it would accomplish that for which you sent it

That sinners would be convicted of their sin and would turn in faith and repentance to the

Lord Jesus Christ That those who are in the Lord Jesus Christ your children here father would be edified and brought ever closer to his image in conformity with your will and what

Jesus Christ is and Showed us in his life and in this word that we have before us so once again

May the words of my mouth made meditations of my heart in having prepared this message for this people

For the honor of God may be pleasing in your sight father and may you use it to your glory

Who we ask it on Jesus name? Amen So Paul says finally he says finally brothers.

He seems to be drawing this letter to a close and if you look ahead Indeed he is there's not there that much more to go, but he says finally, but he does not conclude

He doesn't say finally and then give these few words that I read to you this morning For example and say amen he goes on for quite a ways after that not only in the immediate context

But then right after this at right after verse 5 more commands for the church more ethical commands more commands for the administration of the church and so forth

And so by finally he does not mean a quick end to the letter is coming by finally.

He means something quite different He means finally here's something you need to really pay attention to Finally as in of utmost importance finally as we say today.

This is your take home Do you want to know what this is all about? Do you want to know what to do with everything that preceded?

finally brothers pray for us as Of the utmost importance the

Apostle Paul Pray for us. I Ask you before we even begin to tear into this text

Where is prayer in your list of priorities? for yourself personally

For the families that you lead for the church that you attend Where does prayer stand in your priorities?

Where does it stand in your Christian life? Where do you see prayer in your continuing conformity into the image of the

Lord Jesus Christ? Well, the Apostle Paul puts a very high emphasis on prayer and we know that from so many places in the scripture

We're gonna stay focused right here in 2nd Thessalonians. He puts an extremely high emphasis on prayer

He habitually reminded churches to pray for him. He habitually reminded churches of his prayers for them

Prayer is the lifeblood of the church Brothers and sisters in the

Lord must pray to God We are commanded to pray and prayers for our good

By prayer we commune Communicate with God by prayer we lift up and edify one another

Prayer is the lifeblood of the church without prayer. We are lost without prayer.

We are not communing with the Lord We're not receiving from the Lord or at best.

We're receiving less Em bounds who died in 1913 was very famous for his books on prayer

He wrote this What the church needs today and remember this was in night.

He died in 1913 He probably wrote this in the latter part of the 1800s What the church needs today is not more machinery or better not new organizations or more and novel methods

But men whom the Holy Ghost can use men of prayer men mighty in prayer

The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods but through men. He does not come on machinery but on men

He does not anoint plans but men men of prayer Before we move on When I read in bounds there

He means by men the same thing that Paul meant in first second Thessalonians 3 when he says finally

Brothers does he mean only the male people? No, he means brothers and sisters in the

Lord He means the entire family of Christ bound together by faith in Christ praying to God in the name of Christ It's all about Christ Jesus.

It's all about Christ building his church But he's left the labor of building the church to us.

He is building his church But the hands and feet are ours

The church grows not by programs the church grows not by our methods

Not by the wondrous kind of a show that we can put on the church grows

By faithfulness to God the church grows by prayers lifted up to the faithful Lord and Paul sees no other way

Where is prayer in your life Where do you see prayer in the life of the church

Disappointment in your own growth in holiness and sanctification

Do you pray Disappointment in perhaps the direction of your church or the progress of your church

Whether it's this one or wherever you come from. I ask again But do you pray?

Do you pray and do you join in prayer? This is what the Apostle Paul would ask for as he goes into deeper and deeper enemy territory so the verses before us this morning are not so much a

Formal way of concluding the letter the importance placed on the duty of prayer is of such high importance that comes only after finally

Only after all the doctrines have been laid out all the duties have been given to it Not all we have more to follow but those which preceded finally as a result of all that finally brothers

What does it all mean? I?

Titled this message your prayers matter and I picked that title very simply because your prayers do matter

Your prayers do matter They matter to yourself They matter to everyone who you're joined together with in your local fellowship.

They matter to God That he hears your prayers in the name of his son Jesus your prayers matter

And so from 2nd Thessalonians 3 and the first three verses there What do we find?

We find this we find that you should praise though God's decision and the fate of the issue at hand depends entirely on your prayer

You should pray as if it all depends upon you whether you're praying for healing praying for salvation

Praying for your growth in the Lord Jesus Christ, whatever the issue at hand is You should go to God as though he is going to decide based upon your prayer

Now don't be alarmed because I keep saying as if Through this message.

I'll say as though and then at the end of the message I'm gonna say again I said as if because God is sovereign and God will do as he will we're gonna make that plain with some scripture verses

So don't be alarmed But the Apostle Paul says here to the Thessalonians and to us he says brothers pray for us

What that the word of the Lord can I summarize and say we'll have? Success that it will accomplish the purposes for which

God sent it pray to the Lord that that happens For this message pray as if it depends upon you pray as if as if it wouldn't happen

Without your prayer without your prayer this is the kind of prayer

Paul asks for for his brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for him as though if they Didn't pray the

Word of God would not speed ahead as if the Word of God unless it is energized by your prayers would fall uselessly to the ground as if Prayers the lifeblood of the

Christian life and the church without it. We're stymied in our growth individually and staunched in our outreach as a church

Except for prayer we are floundering except for prayer we are trying to accomplish in the flesh what is possible only by the

Spirit of God and His chosen means is prayer Where's prayer in your life?

How important is prayer to you? I? Want to look at this first. I want us to see first who is who's asked by the

Apostle Paul to pray He says brothers and we'll develop that very quickly and Second is the purpose of the prayers that Paul requests.

What is he asking for? very directed very purposeful prayers And there's two things he asked for for the

Word of God to have success and that his partners Silas and Timothy and himself Be delivered from enemies to of the gospel

Enemies that they're sure to encounter and have encountered or I should say will continue to encounter

And the third thing we need to look at here is faith Faith, especially the

Lord's faithfulness, but the faith that is needed in our prayers Brothers and Lord have a common duty to prayer

Brothers pray for us You know brothers by birth and brothers who are actually associated with one another by blood

Can have different priorities and different agendas it can have completely different Personalities as can brothers and sisters together in the

Lord And this difference between brothers who are raised together by the same parents is often the tension point in some of the great works of literature some of the great movies

Probably don't remember a rich man poor man was like that two brothers raised together But went totally different directions a river runs through it is like that two brothers raised by a

Presbyterian Pastor and they went completely different directions in life. I Once had the misfortune in eighth grade of having one teacher my home teacher

Who had also taught my brother two years before? My brother was then starting his high school careers.

I'm finishing my junior high school career that teacher He was amazed at how different we were

He was just shocked to meet me and see how little I resembled my brother in personality in build attention to studies

I Won't tell you who was inferior or superior, but that teacher was just amazed.

He couldn't believe we were actually brothers and combat veterans will speak of men and Who went into combat with them they survived together they went through the dangers together, and they call them brothers

This is one reason the Apostle Paul so often uses military motifs to describe the

Christian life because we are in this together We're facing the dangers together and therefore brothers and remember, please

Brothers and sisters was meant every time that word or brethren is used

So what Paul means is men women bound together by blood and Still with differences among us but bound by together by the blood of Jesus Christ more than our parents

Brothers together in Adam when he sinned brothers forever in Christ when he obeyed brothers because by faith in Christ We are his brethren and therefore each other's

We have a common and equal claim on the Lord as brothers together And so as that family of Christ we have a common and an equal expectation that we're all engaged in this one great activity

Which is prayer prayers for all who are in Christ? And you'll notice here that Paul does not leave prayer to the elite few

He does not say okay brothers in the church. I want you to find those few who really know how to pray those people who who have those words that just kind of draw you up and Bring you to the heavenly throne and you can feel the eloquence and the biblical foundation of their prayers

I want you to set those few aside Name them your prayer warriors and would you have them pray for us that the word of the

Lord might speed ahead and Be glorified or be honored No, he doesn't do that.

Does he? Nor does he say to the church? Well, you know you common folk out there You set your pastors aside and they will do all the praying for you

And you can just kind of bow your house heads and and think these little arrow prayers as they pray But you all have to keep quiet because we're gonna have the ones who are trained pray for you

No He calls to the whole church. He calls to everyone who is in Christ He calls to you who you think you're so meek and mild you sit there and who'd want to listen to you

God would we would He speaks to you the well -educated

Says yes, you pray along with them, too Because in Christ we are all together and the prayer rises up to God as an incense as a pleasing aroma to him

No, not just the few Brothers and sisters pray is what the

Apostle Paul says The Apostle Paul directly inspired by the work by the

Spirit of God Who knew as he wrote some of his letters? He knew that they were the inspired

Word of God. They were scripture as Peter confirms for us the Apostle Paul who had visions and heard things in those visions that cannot even be repeated the

Apostle Paul Who met the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ personally? What a great man so often we hear of Analyses of him and people say well, he was a genius.

He was just an intellectual giant I can agree with that and most of you can if you've read his letters carefully

He was a bright man Superior in many ways. What does he say pray for us?

Because without your prayers, I'll just leave it at that That great apostle that mighty man who withstood beatings and shipwrecks and stonings pray for us

Pray for the progress of the gospel pray as though the success of the gospel Depends upon your prayer

Pray as though the success of God's Word God's Word Depends upon your prayers

He says pray for us that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead and be and be honored as happened among you

And that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men Now Paul's purposes he gives here for prayer

They tell us a great deal about the true power of prayer as I call upon you to pray

Think in terms of what Paul's asking for prayer. He's not throwing it out as a platitude

He's saying this is the necessary prayer I need to know that you're praying these things for me

Because there's power in the prayer not because of the prayer itself not because of the words we speak

You timid one little one over there. I mean to keep poking it on this side You Tim would own over timid on this side and you mighty one on the other

No, the power is in God The power is in God who accomplishes his purposes

And the power is in God who's accomplishing his purposes and he's chosen to accomplish them largely through prayer

Let's pray that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you

So one he prays that the Word of the Lord as we would say today would have wheels that it would move ahead

And then it would be honored and that word honored comes from the same word where we normally get glorified the

Word of God would be honored and glorified we could say And the enemies of the gospel would not succeed in halting its progress that the

Word of God would have its success that it would succeed Then it should have wheels again is the way to put it

Paul would have the gospel salvation Jesus Christ go forward without impediment Pray that the

Word of the Lord may move ahead without impediment and receive its rightful honor the honor of the

Lord who sent it Now sometimes we have the fatalistic kind of thought

That what God is sovereign God is going to accomplish his will God is mighty and I am

NOT God is powerful and I am NOT all of it rests on Christ Jesus Christ is building his church and what

God is going to do. He's going to do So why pray

Why pray if the sovereign God the sovereign and mighty omnipotent God is going to do his will anyway

We think of Isaiah 55 10 through 11 one of the go -to places about the power of the word

God says for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there

But water the earth making it bud forth and sprout Excuse me giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater

So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth It shall not return to me empty But it shall accomplish that which

I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it Pretty good words, right?

so Let's go home and relax and have dinner Maybe watch the

Sunday night football game because God is going to accomplish his purposes He sent his word his words gonna do it.

He sent it for God is mighty. I am nothing so Because that word which he sends that word which he is sent

Tells us to pray There's one good reason to pray We don't want this fatalistic view that says well if God's going to do everything and he is

Therefore my prayers don't mean anything That's wrong thinking God makes certain that his word accomplishes what he intended and God the same

God who will accomplish what he intends by the word that he sent Says that he's going to accomplish it by means of the prayer of his prayers of his people

Now how God's sovereign purposes somehow depend upon prayer is something. I don't think we'll ever quite figure out.

That's a mystery It's not like God needs prayer God needs nothing God exists completely outside of anything

Excuse me again God exists outside of any without anything outside of himself

His eternality is his own his holiness is his own. He doesn't depend on anything

Much less our prayer, but is ordained prayer and that should be enough for us The psalmist says all he does all that he pleases the psalmist says whatever the

Lord pleases he does in heaven and on earth The Prophet said Zechariah not by might nor by power, but by my spirit says the

Lord of hosts So it sounds like we're out of the equation, right? We have nothing to do with it, right?

No, that couldn't be more wrong Why pray for what God already intends to do what

God by his power will certainly do Well first God commands us to pray

He commands us to pray in so many places Paul's word here in 2nd

Thessalonians 3 is really in the command form But think of it this way Do we serve a good

God? Is there anything God does that is not good Well, of course not a good

God sent his son Jesus Christ to die for your sins To go to the cross and there take the punishment for your sins, that's a good

God the good God resurrected him because he could be so you can be sure that your sins have been accounted for and the good

God sent his spirit after Jesus ascended to his right hand and sat down at the right hand of majesty and power and Sent his spirit to us to empower us to give us all that we need

In order to accomplish his will and his purpose is here He's a good God And a good

God commands only good things therefore prayer is good because it comes from the mouth of a good and holy

God And think also of Jesus Christ when he walked this earth in the example, he said

Jesus Christ fully man fully God and Yet bent his knee and prayed in Luke chapter 6 verse 13.

What do we find that Jesus Christ prayed all night long? Before he went down from the hill and named the 12

Apostles Is there any aspect of the God's will that Jesus didn't know or doesn't know or?

always didn't know of course not and Yet the Lord Christ himself

Prayed all night before naming the Apostles according to the will of God, which he knew

So that's one reason to pray because a good God Commands it for our good a

Good God commands it for our good. So there's we pray. We're more like Jesus Christ who prayed

Second reason is you and I don't know God's will not specifically. We don't have the details We know it's

God's will to save people. We don't know who will be saved. So we preach emphatically we preach enthusiastically we preach confidently that God will use the words that we preach and And proclaim

To bring about his will to save sinners, but we don't know which ones right? We know his will only in the general sense from what the word gives us

So we pray We pray as if the incense that arises from our prayers actually accomplish what we pray for Knowing that is

God who accomplishes anything. We pray as if there's a great example of this in Genesis chapter 18

You don't have to turn there. I'm going to summarize it very quickly. But this is where Abraham stands before the

Lord and Bargains if you will negotiates if you like for Sodom Remember, he says if you find this many if he's fine 45

What if you only find 40 would you destroy it for the lack of five and he goes down down down till he gets to?

10 well What if the Lord had found ten righteous men in this men in the city

Well, according to God's own word he would have spared the entire city that he had come to destroy entirely had he found ten so God always knew what he was going to do and Abraham knew that God would do what he's going to do and Yet Abraham prayed as if his prayers could actually change the mind of God This is kind of prayer we need to pray

We need to pray as if I keep saying as if and as though because I want to be cautious here God is sovereign.

God will do as he will and he will do it through his Lord his Son Jesus Christ we need to pray as if it all depends on us as if You know in 2nd

Chronicles 714, here's a well -known prayer often cited even today If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways

Then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land What's God saying here?

Well, God loves to save rather than condemn. He loves to forgive rather than condemn

Ezekiel 18 32. I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked second Peter 3 9

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness But is patient toward you not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance

And I proved his patience with us He proved his desire to save rather than condemn when he sent his son

Jesus Christ That all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting or eternal life

Yet here in 2nd Chronicles 714 he says if if My people will pray

And if they don't pray if you don't pray If they don't acknowledge their need for healing and forgiveness then what would have happened

I Just leave the question Unanswered for you.

Just consider it What happens if I do not pray?

Paul goes on says that the Word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored pray that as the word Hastens to God's purposes that it will be honored

They'll be glorified that it will be lifted up that people hear it as the Thessalonians did in the first book to the

Thessalonians You heard it not as the Word of Men, but as what it really is the Word of God as Jesus said that men will see your good works and will glorify your father who is in heaven

That the Word of the Lord may speed ahead they will have access that will have wheels that it will move

Freely and quickly and leave in his path in its wake nothing but sinners saved by grace

Pray that the Word of God might receive from men the honor and the glory that is due to its author and Pray as if if you didn't pray it wouldn't happen

Pray for the safety of God's heralds He says in that we'd be delivered from wicked and evil men for not all have faith

But God is faithful pray for the safety of our missionaries pray as if it depends upon you and nothing else

Do you pray for your pastors? We have two pastors in this place and soon

God willing. We'll have three Right now you have me pastor Josh. You have pastor

Owens and press it pastor Brian. God willing. We'll be here soon Do you pray for our safety?

Do you pray for our spiritual safety for our physical safety? We'll let you know when pastor

Brian is starting his drive from Wisconsin The Apostle Paul says pray that we've been delivered from wicked and evil men

Pray that he delivered from weather From reckless drivers on the road or whatever the case may be

There's so much to pray for and do you know that I don't believe for a moment that Oh pastor

Owens or I would be able to stand confidently at this pulpit and Proclaim God's Word To you if we didn't trust and know that you're praying

Even as we preach Even as we proclaim even as we study during the week

Paul says pray for this deliverance Pray for our protection from the enemy And when you take on the position of being an officer in the church, whether it be pastor or deacon

You just put a bull's -eye on your back for the enemy Strike the shepherd and you'll scatter the sheep

Do you pray Paul asked for prayer Deliverance from wicked and evil men which he had known so many times so many times.

He'd been delivered He says five times. I received the 39 lashes Do you know what that's from in Deuteronomy says when you have to beat a man for his for his iniquities

You beat him 40 times you give him 40 blows Well, the Jews would then count to 39 and stop in case they missed a count somewhere

So that's why he got 39 five times. He's beaten with lictors rods. He was stoned and left for dead

He knew the deliverance of God and yet he says pray that we were delivered Pray that we be delivered and that there's no impediment to the success of the

Word of God Pray as though it all depends upon your prayer as if as if if you didn't pray

Nobody be able to come to this pulpit even make it here physically without your prayers pray as if Without your prayers.

He says to the Thessalonians We won't be able to do this and we won't have deliverance from our enemies

And what is it about having wicked and evil men stand in the way of the gospel? What is it about that?

There's something about the gospel. It brings out the worst in evil and wicked men. It brings it out in them

They're already wicked. They're already evil But something about hearing the goodness of God About standing next to that holiness as much as we are able to exemplify it

Just brings out the badness the

Apostles of old missionaries through the ages your pastors today would give all they have for the gospel speed ahead and During all that men when they hear the word of truth

That they are sinners that they're wholly unable to correct their position before God They're condemned to hell if they refused our salvation stirs in them the desire only to be entrenched in their ways

Only to see the mouths that brought the offense to them stopped The word wicked comes from an interesting word is apostas

Excuse me a tapas a tapas Tapas is place and then they put the alpha in front of it and it negates the place like an atheist the theist believes in God an atheist does not

So a tapas is something out of place something unbefitting something unbecoming

Improper in the moral or the ethical realm and these are the men that Paul asks to be delivered from But this is what the opposition to the gospel is like it's out of place it's unbecoming

By such men in whom the image of God survives only as a dull glimmer Paul suffered stonings and riots and beatings and hatred and accusations

You ever wonder why can't men just let it go? Why can't they just as I often say just just shrug just take a breath

Okay, if you don't like it, just just pass on I'm not gonna follow you home or anything with this

Why can't they just shrug it off? Well, you know no other religion no other kind of faith

Convicts the way the gospel of Christ does Other faith glorify men by showing what they can do to better themselves

Before men and before God you can decide to become a Muslim You can decide to be a

Buddhist or even a Mormon if it seems right to you if it fits your needs if you think It's going to improve you in the way you want to be improved

The true Christian faith takes away all that pride of choice By grace, you've been saved through faith and it's not of yourselves as a gift of God not of works

So no one should boast. It's all of God. So we call monergism mono monergism only

God creates The new birth only God can give you faith to believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ It's all of him. It's none of you Other faiths you join because they seem right to you you become a

Christian because God is right You become a Christian because God before all time before you even existed before the world existed

Chose you to be in Christ Jesus to have faith God not you not to him who runs or works says the

Apostle Paul, but to God alone So, do you pray

Do you pray in this place specifically for your pastors our studies our spiritual health

If we're not progressing in the Lord we have nothing to give to you We need as much protection from the enemy as anyone does and more so because that bulls on your back as leaders in the church

Do you pray? Paul's immediate concern was for his work in Corinth where his new converts awaited him

And we know this because Jesus told him in a vision Do not be afraid but go on speaking and do not be silent for I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you for I have many in the city who are my people a

Vision a direct revelation from Jesus Christ promising him that wicked and evil men in that place

Would be stymied in their attempts to harm him That the Word of God is going to have success

That those people who are Jesus's are going to hear the Word of Jesus from the mouth of Paul So he says don't be afraid go on speaking

And what does Paul do with that? Was he not afraid I'll bet he was not afraid.

Did he go on speaking? We know he went on speaking because it records that in the in the book of Acts But what does he do?

He tells the Thessalonians Pray for me brothers that the

Word of the Lord might have success. He was just promised success What does he say pray for success?

Jesus just told you you're gonna have success Paul all the people in that city who are his you're going to convert

Right. I heard that from Jesus. He told me that Pray for success.

Do you see how this works? Can anybody nod their head and tell me they see how this works I got a nodded head.

Please. Tell me during lunch how this works Because honestly, I don't quite get it The Lord Jesus Christ promised him.

He told him you're going to have success with the gospel. Well, Jesus is gonna have the success and Paul immediately says pray for success

I'd love to be able to put those together more eloquently than I'm able Let's pray like that Let's pray with our

Bibles open trusting the promises in the Bible Trusting God's Word that has the power that God sends it with that.

It will not return to him, but it will accomplish his purposes Every word Jesus Christ says he is building his church.

Yes. He's building his church. And was he say pray for the church to be built Paul's promised converts in Corinth.

What does he say that Thessalonians pray for converts in Corinth? Pray like that according to the revelation of God in the scriptures with faith and the promises and Intensity that would make it seem as if the whole outcome depends upon you

You great prayer warrior you timid little person All those prayers when they rise up to God are one in the same because they're in Christ Jesus by faith

He says but God is faithful And here is the hope that keeps our knees bent and our spirits fervent and our hearts expectant.

It's God's faithfulness It's God who is faithful not all have faith. That's why there's wicked and evil men out there

That's why there's such resistance to the gospel That's why men are convicted But God is faithful That not all have faith is obviously true running them every day friends and family who commune with God their way

Decide I'm gonna do it my way. I can worship God on my own. I can wash it on YouTube I could do whatever always inventing ways that are out of step with the scriptures

People for whom life is purely physical and they here and now With a there and then denied and mocked

So they're here and now in this world but there and then meaning heaven they deny it they do write it they mock it

But God is faithful Whatever resistance you have whatever wickedness and evil you have to contend with as the

Apostle Paul did Remember that God is faithful. Not all have faith. We're gonna run into them every day at one point.

You had no faith But God gave the faith

God is faithful to his word do you believe in the power of prayer? You know, my wife had a group of friends prayer warriors we could call them who a long time ago started back in the late 80s prayed earnestly for a particular person

These got together and prayed earnestly Some of them were very Arminian Said Oh Lord that this one might choose you

Some of them were more informed. Oh Lord that you might give faith. It mattered not These people got together and prayed and prayed and prayed

Years later in the middle of 1992 This one they were praying for stood before church and gave testimony of faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ and repentance for sins in 1999 began to go to a seminary be trained in the

Word of God and theology and then in the latter part of 2004

I Was called to become the pastor of this church Do you believe in the power of prayer?

I? can give you testimony of prayer and people who wouldn't stop praying you know in this very place a member of our church had a husband who had a glioma and I'm gonna butcher the

Preceding adjective of the glioma. I think was blasphemy Blasphemy glioma the worst kind and this one came to him from an expert at Stanford And what that man told him what that doctor told him was get your affairs in order

There's nothing we can do you are going to die and We prayed and we prayed as if his life depended upon our prayers

What depends upon God and his sovereignty, but we prayed as if it depended upon us And do you know

Inexplicably at least to the doctors It's gone That was years ago.

I can't count how many years ago that was Do you believe in the power of prayer is

God who is faithful He gets all the glory. It's not the power of our prayer, but there's power in prayer

It's not the power of the one praying we have to make that so clear. It's the power of him to whom we pray

That not all have faith is exactly why we pray Jesus said the harvest is plentiful

But the laborers are few therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest

You know, you look out at the world. It could be pretty disheartening but Jesus Christ Who knows that God's going to have everyone?

All that the Father gives to me will come to me and whoever comes to me But what does

Jesus himself say? Pray to the Lord of the harvest pray to God that people will come to Jesus Christ and Jesus himself says they will come to Me the

Father God the Father who created everything Will bring them to him

Surely bring them to him What does Jesus say? Pray for it

How then do we pray we pray as though they're coming to Jesus Christ will come only by our praise as if Jesus said they will come and he says to pray that they do come pray that God because pray because God is faithful and because God will surely draw to Jesus each one who he determined for salvation

Pray as if without your prayers to our faithful God, they won't come Pray as if without your fears to our feet or without your prayers to our faithful God Your brother your sister your wife your husband your father your mother won't be healed

Well, let's finish up with a point of clarity I've emphasized the what if so that you know that I mean that we pray as if God is what we call impassable impassable that means that his actions his

Determinations are not influenced by anything outside of himself His will is eternal he's determined in eternity past all things whatsoever shall come to pass throughout eternity and that's why

I've been so careful to say as if as if as though as if as though it depends upon you and then

When God marvelously answers he gets the glory and you get the bolstered confidence to keep praying

He gets the glory You get the confidence He gets all the credit

We get the increased fervency in our prayers So what hinders our prayers? What slows you down?

Paul says it's happened among you. Did you forget about your own conversion? Did you forget about your black heart your hatred of God and how

God? Pulled out that black heart and gave you a fleshly heart as it says in Ezekiel 36

That God himself made you able to believe this gospel of faith or gospel of salvation

To forget what you were before he changed you and made you a new creation

Do you remember the answers to prayer that you can read in the biographies of the great missionaries who went to foreign lands and dangerous lands

Forget the answers to prayer that we've had in this very place. What hinders our prayers is it disbelief?

Is it because God is too slow for you? You need to repent of that God is faithful God will accomplish his purposes and he has said he's going to accomplish it through prayer and even

Jesus Knowing that God will give to him all who were determined to be given to him

Said pray that they're given to me if I can Summarize it that way

It's incredible that God actually listens to us and moves on our behalf or even because of our prayers yet This is what the scriptures teach

Charles Spurgeon put it this way Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence

Even your or my short or weak or faltering prayers Whether we like it or not

Spurgeon again, whether we like it or not asking is the rule of the kingdom and did not

Jesus say asking you shall receive and James said you do not have because you do not ask

Finally this quote Men and women are needed whose prayers will give to the world the utmost power of God Who will make his promises to blossom with rich and full results?

God is waiting to hear us and challenges us to bring him to do this thing by our praying brothers and sisters in the

Lord pray Amen Heavenly Father we thank you for this word for this encouragement to prayer for the faithful God who accomplishes his purposes even through The prayers that we offer up to you

Weak and faltering as they can be but Lord because they come to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ We thank you that we're sure by your word that you accept them