August 15, 2017 Show with Paul Tautges on “Pray About Everything”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 15th day of August 2017.

And I have back on the program someone who has certainly proven himself to be an excellent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, that's

Paul Tauches, who is senior pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, series editor for Lifeline Mini Books, he's a blogger at counselingoneanother .com,

an author of many books including Comfort the Grieving, Counseling One Another, and Brass Heavens, excuse me.

Today we're going to be addressing a book that he has written titled Pray About Everything, and the subtitle is

Cultivating God Dependency. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Paul Tauches.

Thank you Chris, it's great to be on your program again, appreciate it so much. And in studio with me is my co -host the

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, it's good to be here again. And if anybody would like to join us with a question about prayer, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you're living outside of the

USA. You may remain anonymous if this is about a personal and private matter that you are asking about.

And first of all, Paul, why don't you let our listeners know about Cornerstone Community Church in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.

Yes, Cornerstone is a Bible -preaching church, gospel -loving church.

We are part of the Evangelical Free Church of America, which is a fellowship of about 1 ,500 different churches throughout the nation, and we are a gospel -centered,

Bible -loving congregation, and it's a great privilege to be serving here for the

Lord. Wow, I would have guessed that the number of EV -free congregations in the United States would have been higher than that, because in the places that I've been,

I typically see a number of them. I haven't been all over the United States, though.

Yeah, 1 ,500 is the last number I heard back when I was going through the ordination process shortly after coming here a couple years ago.

Yeah, and the Bible Belt, when it comes to Baptists, I think there's about 1 ,500 every five blocks.

Well, this is a book that is obviously of great importance because of the vital role that prayer plays in the lives of every

Christian, or should play in the life of every Christian. If you could, this may sound like a silly question, but if you could define prayer for us.

Yeah, prayer would be a communication based upon relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

It is the only way that we have to communicate to God. God communicates to us through His Word, but we fellowship with Him through prayer.

It's an attitude, it's an atmosphere, it's a state of dependency upon God.

Yes, and I see that this book that you have written, Pray About Everything, your forward was written by the late

Jerry Bridges. What a blessing to the church Jerry Bridges was. I had the privilege of interviewing him on a couple of occasions, and what a great man of God and a very humble man of God, which is a rare combination.

Yes, Jerry was a man that I was only unfortunately able to correspond with through writing.

We were supposed to meet in person the fall of the year that the Lord took him home, so meeting him is

Jerry was instrumental in my discipleship as a brand -new believer in the mid 80s through his writings and through his involvement with the

Navigators, and he has been an unseen mentor to me in many, many ways.

Yes, I had the privilege of seeing him in person on a couple of occasions at Bible conferences where he preached, and it was an honor to meet him.

And Mark Dever says that this book, Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency, he says this is one of his favorite books on prayer, which is quite an endorsement coming from Mark Dever.

Why did you find the need to write this book? What motivated you to write this book, knowing that there are a number, quite a number of books on prayer going way back to the 17th century that I'm aware of?

I'm sure that there are books even earlier than that, but that I'm aware of. We have books spanning the centuries for hundreds of years to the present day on prayer.

Why the need for this book that you felt compelled to write? Well, this book grew out of my ministry in teaching at prayer meetings in Wisconsin when

I pastored there for 22 years, and what I noticed is in the

Evangelical Church as a whole, in our nation, we have become a prayerless church, and we've become an over - programmed, pragmatic church that relies heavily upon our own skill and our own abilities, and it seems as though prayer is becoming less and less important in the

Evangelical Church, and so that caused me to really consistently teach and preach on prayer at every prayer meeting for 20 -some years, and that is the material that really became this book grew out of that burden, and so not only did

I notice that that was a need in our own church, it was a church that loved prayer, and thankfully we were able to maintain that and grow in that over a couple decades, and yet as you look at the prayer books, quote -unquote, that are out there, there's a lot of great books on prayer, but I couldn't seem to find one that addressed the issue of prayer in the church, prayer in the life of the church, the family of God, and the corporate church, gatherings of the church, and so I felt burdened that this book may be used by the

Lord to fill a gap. Now the subtitle is Cultivating God Dependency, so I guess in the

Christian life we're not supposed to just pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, I'm assuming. Exactly, and also in the church, corporately, it seems as though we talk a lot about prayer in our personal lives as believers, but we don't talk a whole lot about prayer as far as being a part of our life corporately as a church family, and yet when you look at the early church in the

Book of Acts, you see that they often gathered for prayer together, and you also see a great many times mentioned in the

Epistles that the Apostles believed in the priority of prayer, and in its part in the work of evangelism, but also in the work of edification, the building up of believers in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Yeah, dependency is typically used in a derogatory way.

Codependency is a common buzzword used today, viewed as an addiction of one person to another, but God dependency, according to you, is something that we need to possess, and if we don't already possess it in sufficient measure, we have to cultivate it, according to you.

Tell us about what you exactly mean by that. Yeah, and that's exactly why I chose that language, is because dependency has become a negative word in our culture.

Obviously there are some negative connotations to it, but for the Christian, we ought to be

God -dependent, first of all, and then interdependent. So God -dependent meaning to recognize the truth of what

Jesus said in John 15, that apart from me you can do nothing, I am the vine, you are the branches, and unless we maintain a state of dependence upon God, dependence upon Christ being the vine and us being the branches, we are not going to bear much fruit.

And so prayer is a part of our fruitfulness as believers, to recognize that yes, we have responsibility in evangelism and edification, responsibility in our own spiritual growth.

We are not the one who determines the end result, that's God. In evangelism, we plant and we water, but God gives the increase.

In our own Christian lives, we work hard to put sin to death, but ultimately it's the

Holy Spirit who brings the fruit, and that's why it's called the fruit of the

Spirit. So there's a sense in which we need to recognize that apart from Christ we can do nothing, and therefore we need to maintain a state of dependency upon God.

But as I also mentioned, there's that interdependency, not independence, but interdependence that is part of the fellowship we enjoy together as fellow

Christians, and that's where I think that this element of praying together is being lost in our churches, and I pray that God will continue to increase it, that we become people who don't just pray for one another.

It's easy for me to say to you, I'll pray for you this week. It's another thing for me to call someone up and say, hey, let's meet together this week and pray together.

We don't do enough of that as believers. We have a listener named

Josiah in Esanti, or Esanti, Minnesota. I'm not sure how the

Minnesotans pronounce that, or is it Minnesotians? But it's either

Esanti or Esanti, I assume. Josiah says, it is often easy for Christians to see their need to depend on God when times are hard, and when they are going through storms.

But on the flip side, it is easy for a Christian's prayer life to dwindle when things are going well.

What are some practical ways to cultivate a consistent prayer life and everyday realization for our need to depend on God, even when things are going well?

That's an excellent question. That is an excellent question, and I think the key there is discipline.

To recognize prayer as one of the essential spiritual disciplines. You know, we live in a culture in which discipline is kind of getting a bad rap in the

Christian circle, because it tends to imply that we're not being sensitive to the leading of the

Lord and the leading of the Holy Spirit, and we're being too rigid and perhaps even legalistic.

And yet, you look at the Scriptures and you see that even Jesus had a discipline about him.

He was disciplined in his prayer life, morning and evening, and sometimes even all night long.

So I think that, first of all, there needs to be some practical disciplines that we have in our lives.

You know, Scripture speaks of the prayer closet. In other words, there's benefit to having a specific place where you go each day to pray, wherever that is in your house or outside of your house.

Sometimes I find myself praying on my morning walk. I wish

I could say I walk, you know, every morning, but I don't. But when I do walk, that's when

I have my prayer time. So there needs to be that time, regular time, regular place is helpful.

Journaling also is very, very helpful. Having a journal that you keep of your prayer requests, requests and answers, by the way, because I think that sometimes we're good at keeping, accumulating endless lists of the people that we pray for, but we rarely go back to those lists and make comments about how

God answered. And so a prayer journal is a very practical thing, and that could just be a spiral notebook, or it could be just something that you, an empty journal that you buy at Barnes &

Noble, but some kind of a way of interacting with the requests that we make of God.

I find personally praying Scripture to be incredibly helpful, because my mind gets distracted easily, and so if I have a passage of Scripture that I'm praying through, it will lead me in many times unexpected directions, but it'll be a way that I maintain the confidence that I am praying in God's will.

Yeah, I interviewed somebody recently, and I can't remember right now who it was, but I distinctly remember a crucial part of the discussion involved his belief, his strong belief in praying back to God his own words.

Yes, yes, that may have been, it may have been Brian Chappell who wrote Praying Backwards, that may have been

Donald Whitney who's written about praying the Bible, in other words, and I think that comes from Psalm 19, at the end of Psalm 19, where David says, you know, his desire is that the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart would be acceptable to God.

Well, the easiest way to be sure that the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart are acceptable to God is if they are in line with his word, and I think you find a biblical precedent for that as well.

You find the psalmists, you find some of the patriarchs restating the promises of God back to him.

Yeah, Jesus Christ on Calvary was repeating David. Absolutely, I think every time you find

Scripture being quoted in Scripture itself is an affirmation that we ought to be talking

God's Word back to him. Thank you so much, Josiah, for the excellent question, and please give us your full mailing address in Asante, Minnesota, so we can have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service mail you a free copy of Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency, by our guest

Paul Tauches, and we want to thank Todd and Patty Jennings, owners of CVBBS .com,

that's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service .com, for their faithful support of Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, and mailing out all the winners in our audience their free

Bibles and books for submitting questions to our guests. We have another listener with a biblical name, we have

Jeremiah, and Jeremiah is in Charlestown, New Hampshire, and he has quite a lengthy question, and that I have to enlarge because the font is too small.

One of the most striking aspects of the early church is their devotion to corporate prayer.

Just to list a few examples, they devoted themselves to prayer before they chose a replacement for Judas Iscariot in Acts chapter 1 verse 14, they prayed for boldness after Peter and John were threatened by the

Sanhedrin in Acts chapter 4, and the believers in Antioch prayed for God's direction for the future of their church, which resulted in God setting apart

Paul and Barnabas to bring the gospel to the Gentiles in Acts chapter 13.

When we look at the American church today, the prayer gatherings, if there are any at all, are sparsely attended, often devoid of passion, and can frequently be full of prayer requests that don't have a kingdom mindset.

Why is it that the American church struggles to pray corporately? What can leaders in a church do to encourage a devotion to corporate prayer?

And I wonder if this is a unique problem for the American church, knowing that Europe is nearly barren of genuine

Christianity, and I know that Asia, the church is exploding in certain areas, but but if you could answer

Jerry or Jeremiah to the best of your ability there. Well I think that he has definitely hit on something that is a key problem in the

American church, and I think that in not only the American church, but I think the European church before us,

I believe that prayerlessness is one of the indicators that we are on severe decline away from God, and so I think that it's a symptom of a deeper issue of pride, self -sufficiency,

I think that we see the self -sufficiency that Jesus rebuked in Revelation 2 and 3,

I think that we see that currently in the American church. I think that what we have to do is, we as pastors, we as leaders, must call the people of God back to prayer, but I think we have to do it more than just preaching about prayer,

I think we have to model prayer. One of the things I say later on in this book is, in one of the appendixes, is the importance of the pastoral prayer that has been really eliminated in many, many churches, many evangelical churches no longer have a time of prayer in their

Sunday morning service, a time in which people in that congregation are lifted up to the

Lord, perhaps other area churches, things going on in the world, things that the pastors desired

God to do in that particular congregation in the sense of spiritual work, like following the pattern of the

Apostle Paul and the way that he prayed for local churches. So I think that the prayerlessness that Samuel considered a sin, it was a sin he considered to neglect to pray, that sin of prayerlessness is infecting the churches in America.

When I travel overseas, when I began traveling overseas in the year 2000, my first trip was to Ukraine, and when

I came I felt, when I returned, when I came back to the U .S., I felt encouraged and deeply rebuked by God.

I was encouraged by the depth of the spiritual life of these people who had lived for 70 years in Soviet bondage, and I felt very rebuked that we in America, we were...

the church in other places of the world, they do a lot with very little, and I came back to the

United States convinced that many of our churches do little with a lot.

In other words, we have been blessed so abundantly, we have so many resources, and yet we don't do as much with them.

And I also felt rebuked because I saw the way that they prayed, and the time that they spent in their worship services praying.

So I think that as leaders, as pastors, we need to call the church back to prayer, but again, do more than teach and compel and preach, we need to model it.

We need to pray when we're together in our services, and I think we need to have special times of prayer as a church, and God's people will be tremendously blessed.

Amen. I just wanted to announce something, since you mentioned the Soviet Union, before I forget to.

Some of our listeners might find this fascinating. This Thursday on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, we're going to have in studio

David Glantz, who is an American military historian known for his books on the

Red Army during World War II, and he is the chief editor of the Journal of Slavic Military Studies.

But he is one of the most knowledgeable experts on the

Soviet Union and Russia in the United States, and I happened to discover just a few months ago that he's a usher in the church where I'm a member.

I had no idea that this kindly, quiet, elderly gentleman, just quietly passing a plate around, was this knowledgeable about that subject, or those subjects, and was just informed about his knowledge from one of my elders at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle.

So I said, I gotta get this guy on the program. So David Glantz will be our guest right here in the studio this

Thursday. We have, oh by the way, I want to let

Jeremiah know that he has also won a free copy of Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency by Paul Tauches.

We want to thank also Shepherd Press for providing us with these books that we were giving away.

But Jeremiah, if you could provide me with your full mailing address there in Charlestown, New Hampshire, so we could have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, ship this free book out to you.

Let's see here, we have Brandon, and well, you know, in fact, what

I'm gonna do is I'm going to go to a break right now before I read Brandon's question, and when we return we'll pick up with Brandon's question when we return from this brief break.

I didn't want to cut you off in mid -sentence while you're answering Brandon's question. If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. You may remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter that you are asking about.

So once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Paul Touches. Tired of box store

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in today, our guest for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is

Paul Tauch's senior pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, and we're discussing his book,

Pray About Anything, About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency.

And if you'd like to join us with a question for Paul, you can email us at chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And before the break,

I was just about to read a question from Brandon in Franklinton, North Carolina, and I will read that now.

Could you ask Pastor Paul to elaborate on what the Apostle Paul means when he commands us to pray without ceasing?

What does this look like throughout the average day in the life of a believer? Could you provide any insight on how you structure prayer meetings within the local body?

Those are actually two different questions. So the first would be, could you elaborate on what the

Apostle Paul means when he commands us to pray about ceasing? Yes, actually

I just preached on that a few weeks ago from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, because we have at the end of that letter kind of a bullet point list of commands from the

Apostle, and one of them is to pray constantly. And so he commands us to rejoice in the

Lord constantly, to pray constantly, to be always filled with thanksgiving, and the understanding there is that it's really speaking of a mindset of prayer.

So not only do you have disciplined times of prayer, as we talked about earlier in the program, that need for the spiritual discipline of prayer, but there's also this spirit of God dependency whereby you're going throughout your day recognizing that apart from Christ you can do nothing, and so you can be praying at any time throughout the day.

Obviously Paul is not advocating there that we quit our jobs and just sit around and pray all day, because he actually rebukes that, that practice that was happening in Thessalonians.

There were people who were quitting their jobs and sitting around waiting for the Lord to return, and he sharply rebukes that, so that's obviously not what he's talking about.

But he is talking about having this attitude of rejoicing always, even in the midst of trials, to constantly be praying unceasingly.

This is God's will for you, he says in 1 Thessalonians 5 17.

It's God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So prayer is not only the means whereby we speak to God, but it is a means by which we are nurturing our relationship with him, our fellowship with him.

We need to recognize that God wants us to be dependent upon him, to have this attitude of dependency.

It's a prayer is really, as A .W. Pink said, prayer is a confession of our weakness.

It is a confession to God that we recognize as creatures.

What God already knows, which he says in Psalm 103, that we are but dust, and so God recognizes that we are weak.

Prayer is our recognition of how weak we really are, and that has led me to the conclusion that when

I am a prayerless Christian, then I'm a proud Christian, and a proud

Christian is an oxymoron. That is something that simply should not be.

Humility should be one of the marks of our lives.

And there are really many practical benefits as well to this state of dependency and constant prayer before the

Lord. For example, I remember in one of the Gospels, Jesus, in coming back from a time of prayer, he finds his disciples sleeping, and he says, you know, why are you sleeping?

Well, can you not stay awake for an hour? Can you not pray for an hour? And he says, the

Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And he commands them, his disciples there, to be in constant prayer, that they will not come into temptation.

One of the reasons why we find ourselves so weak in the face of temptation is because we are prayerless.

And so it's more of an attitude, an atmosphere, a mindset of constant dependency upon God and recognizing that because Christ is our

High Priest, we have constant access to the throne room of God. So it doesn't matter if we're driving down the street in our car, or whether or not we're in the midst of a difficult meeting at work, and we can immediately communicate with God, and we can pray for his help.

We can rest upon him and become more and more dependent upon him. Now, what was the second part of that question again?

The second part was, could you provide any insight on how you structure prayer readings within the local body over there in Ohio where you pastor?

Yes, in fact, we just had a wonderful praise and prayer night on a

Sunday night a couple weeks ago, where the entire evening was dedicated just to this, singing songs of praise and then praying together.

And we broke it up into four different segments. This is actually one of the appendixes in the book, is several examples on how to run a prayer meeting.

And what we did is we had four particular emphases that night.

We began with reverence, and so we began with just people in the congregation praying a few sentence prayers of reverence to God, praise to him for who he is.

That was then followed by a time of confession, whereby we had quiet, private, silent time for each of us to confess our sins to the

Lord. And then that time was wrapped up by me leading a

Nehemiah 9 kind of prayer, whereby we confessed our sin to God corporately in the ways that we often, as a church and as Christians, we sin against the

Lord. That was then followed by a time of bringing our requests to the

Lord, specific requests. And here we broke up into just small groups.

We turned to the right or to the left or to the front to the back of where wherever we were sitting in the congregation, and we joined our hearts and we prayed together as little groups of two, three, and four.

And then finally we ended the evening with a time of thanksgiving, whereby we gave specific tangible answers.

We thanked God for the specific tangible ways in which he has heard us and answered us and provided for us and cared for us.

And all four of those times were mixed together with Scripture reading and singing.

So it was four little units of reverence and repentance and requests and rejoicing.

And we read Scripture together, we sang together, and we prayed together. And it was a beautiful evening.

I can't tell you how many people have said to me or to other staff members how blessed they were to be in the presence of the

Lord in that way, together as a congregation. So I would really encourage you to try to encourage that kind of practice.

If your church isn't ready to do that corporately, then begin doing it in a small group.

Just begin doing it on your own and gathering a few believers in your home for that kind of a prayer meeting, and it'll be a tremendous blessing to the people.

Well, thank you Brandon in Franklinton, North Carolina. Please give us your full mailing address, because you have also won a free copy of Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency, compliments of Shepherd Press, and compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

We'll be shipping that out to you. So please make sure we have your mailing address in Franklinton, North Carolina.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor had something to say. Well yes, I of course have to ask a question so that I can get a book from Chris.

Still won't happen. But of course you just brought up another thing that led to a second question, so I'm gonna have to make this quick.

But my original question was, since the last questioner asked about what the

Apostle Paul has written concerning prayer, I wanted to elaborate a little bit on the passage where we're told to pray in the spirit at all times, specifically because I know that there are some brethren, specifically of the charismatic persuasion, who would define that as praying in tongues.

And you know, I just, you know, I have trouble accepting that interpretation obviously. So if you could elaborate a little bit of what it means to pray in the spirit at all times.

And then also you just mentioned about how you structured your prayer meeting there, and I sort of recognized that little outline that most of us have heard about ACTS, A -C -T -S, but you reversed the last two letters, so you destroyed the acronym.

But you mentioned that you have people praying brief prayers in each section there.

So what you did not have, if I'm understanding correctly, is a whole bunch of people together where people stand up, and some people are just very good at making speeches when they pray, and it's very intimidating to others who are not able perhaps to make those kinds of impressive speeches.

Could you address that? Yes, yes. First of all, whenever I open, let's say it's an open floor in the sense that anyone can lead out in prayer,

I do give some basic instructions. I gently, graciously make it clear that our purpose is prayer, and that is so we are talking to God, not to one another, so we're not preaching while we pray.

I also make it clear that we need to allow time for as many people as want to pray to be able to pray, and so we try to keep it...

I instruct the people, keep it to two or three sentences, and be specific in what you are praising

God for, what you are asking God for, and let's make sure that God is the one who is glorified as we pray.

So I answered your second question first. Go back to the first question, having to do with pray at all times in the

Spirit, that would be the end of, close to the end of Ephesians 6, so that would be at the wrap -up of the

Armor of God passage, and I appreciate you asking that, because I think it's one of the most neglected verses, because I believe that most of the times that I have heard the

Armor of God passage preached, the preaching ends before that verse of prayer, and I'm convinced that that prayer is a part of the

Armor of God, it's a part of the protection that God has provided for us.

Going back to what I said earlier, where Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark to his disciples that the

Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and so they need to pray and guard their hearts from temptation.

So to pray in the Spirit, though, in the context there is in agreement with, we pray in the

Spirit as we pray in agreement with the book that the Holy Spirit inspired, which of course is the

Scriptures. So the Scriptures provide the boundaries for us of a biblically acceptable prayer, just as let's say a fence provides a boundary for the sheep to graze within the pasture, so Scripture is the truth that provides the boundary for biblically acceptable prayer.

That's why even you find in 1 Corinthians 13 that love rejoices in the truth. In other words, true biblical love functions within the boundary of truth.

The error concerning the whole area of praying in tongues,

I think, comes out of a misinterpretation of Romans 8, where I have an entire chapter on that issue or that passage in this book, and it's called

When the Holy Spirit prays for us, because if we understand that text properly in Romans 8, the

Apostle is actually saying there that when the Holy Spirit prays for us, he is silent.

It says he prays for us with words that are, it's so intense, it's beyond words, and actually if you look at the

Greek in that text, it's talking about silent prayers. So the

Holy Spirit isn't even speaking. I'm convinced that most of the time when the

Holy Spirit is praying for us, we aren't even conscious of it. There are times in our lives,

I think, that God brings us to a place of such utter need and dependency upon him that we don't even know how to pray.

We don't know, the Apostles, we don't know how to pray as we ought, and it's in those times when the

Holy Spirit silently intercedes for us. If you go on in the text, we are assured that when the

Holy Spirit prays for us, he always prays according to the will of God.

Why? Because he knows the mind of God. Why? Because he is God. And so this is an incredible, incredible comfort to us as believers, and it should compel us to pray.

It should compel us to pray more, knowing that as we pray in agreement with the

Scriptures, we are praying in agreement with the will of God, and we are praying in the Spirit. And the

Holy Spirit is praying for us. We have Daniel in San Jose, California, who says,

I am in full agreement that we should pray about everything, but in the case of a loved one who has heard the gospel, rejects it, and continues in a life of sin, is it wrong to pray that the

Lord, is it wrong to pray to the Lord to break that person of everything until they repent?

Or would that be a wrong imprecatory prayer? I'm assuming he is asking about a prayer that the person be, you know, be brought to ruin, perhaps, you know, break them of everything, perhaps lose their job or whatever it is, lose a lot of the things that they cling to as idols, perhaps, until they are brought to the rock bottom, as they say.

Is it wrong to pray that in regard to a person? No, I do not believe it is wrong to pray that way.

I think that it would be wrong if your heart's posture toward that person was one of hatred or personal vengeance.

But if your heart's desire is for that person's salvation, that the

Lord would bring them to repentance, then I do not believe it would be wrong to pray that God would do what is necessary to bring them to a place of genuine repentance.

What I often find myself praying is, I will pray according to 2

Corinthians 7 verse 10, because the Apostle there draws a contrast between two kinds of grief.

There is a grief that leads to salvation without regret, and that is, it's a grief that's a sorrow that God brings about in an unbeliever's life, which brings them to genuine repentance.

There is also, Paul says, a fake kind of sorrow, or a sorrow that is a worldly grief, he calls it.

It's a sorrow that comes short of repentance. And I think we see a lot of that in the world, where people, they are sorry for their sin, but not to the point where they will actually turn to God.

And so I believe it's perfectly acceptable that we pray that God will do what it takes in a person's life to bring them to a place of genuine repentance.

Again, guarding our hearts, making sure that there is no personal hatred or personal desire for vengeance when we pray that way.

I have a question of my own to follow up on that. There's a lot of controversy surrounding this topic and a lot of disagreement, but is it appropriate to pray that if the

Lord does not bring a certain individual to repentance, that the Lord basically brings an end to his life, his or her life, if this person is causing great harm and calamity either spiritually or physically in the lives of others?

To give you an example, there was a very well -known

Christian radio speaker, I'm going to try to keep this person anonymous, and this person had a lot of influence globally, but perhaps especially in the

United States, and was leading a lot of people into heresy, even entire churches into heresy.

And I was at a meeting at a very solid Reformed Church that involved the general manager of a radio station that was owned by this individual.

This general manager was rebelling appropriately against the station owner that was the one leading multitudes into heresy.

During that meeting, the pastor of the church that was hosting that meeting, or should

I say at the end of that meeting, the pastor of that church prayed that the

Lord either bring this person to repentance and to sound theology, or that he bring him home, you know, that he bring him home to heaven by bringing an end to his life.

And of course, praying that somebody dies doesn't always mean they're going to heaven. You might be praying for the death of someone that is certainly demonstrating that they are not saved and will not go to heaven, that you might have, in fact

I know of a woman who her ex -husband is causing such grief and pain constantly for decades into the lives of her family that she was wondering if it would be appropriate to pray,

Lord either save him or bring an end to his life. And I'll have you answer that when we come back from the break.

We'll give you time to think about that, mull that over, and pray about that, and then you can answer when we return.

If anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you have a question of your own, don't go away. God willing, we will be right back with Paul Tauches and more on prayer.

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I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study every

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, and now begins our second hour of our interview with Paul Tauches, Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, series editor for Lifeline Mini Books, blogger at CounselingOneAnother .com,

and author of many books, including Comfort the Grieving, Counseling One Another, and Brass Heavens.

Today we are addressing his book, Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency.

If you'd like to join us with a question of your own for Paul Tauches, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and we will return to that discussion with Paul momentarily, but first I have to make some announcements, some exciting announcements about events that some of my sponsors are having in the near future.

The Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York, in cooperation with Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship, present the

Gospel of the Reformation, a 500th anniversary, featuring a guest speaker who is a dear friend of mine,

Dr. Tony Costa, who is on the faculty of Toronto Baptist Seminary as a professor of apologetics and Islam.

This event, this Gospel of the Reformation celebration is going to be held on Friday, September 29th, and Saturday, September 30th, and it will also feature on the roster

Pastor Caleb Bunch, Pastor Bruce Bennett, Pastor Dave Corson, and other speakers.

The event is free and a love offering will be taken. If you would like more information about the

Gospel of the Reformation 500th anniversary celebration with Dr. Tony Costa, you can go to wotchurch .com,

that's W -O -T, which stands for Word of Truth, church .com, wotchurch .com,

or call 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614.

The very following day on October 1st, Sunday, October 1st, Dr. Tony Costa will also be speaking at the

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Medford, Long Island, New York, at their 11 a .m.

worship service. For more details on getting to Hope Reform Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, go to hopereformedli .net,

that's hopereformedli, standing for Long Island, .net, hopereformedli .net,

or call 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

And then, following that, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology. That will be November 17th through the 18th at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The theme is, For Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan from the classic

Reformation hymn, A Mighty Fortress, by Martin Luther. Speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

If you would like to join me at that conference, where I intend to have an Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitors booth, go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org, and then click on Events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

And another conference where I intend to have an exhibitors booth is the

G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, G3 standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory.

The G3 Conference is on the theme, Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship, and will be held

January 17th through the 20th. January 17th is exclusively a

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and the 18th through the 20th of January is an exclusively

English -speaking conference, featuring Stephen Lawson, Votie Balcom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P.

Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Byas, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Matheny, and Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, and Martha Peace.

If you would like to attend the G3 Conference on the theme, Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com, and if you contact any of these organizations to either register for the events

I mentioned, or just to find out more information about them, please always remember to tell them that you heard about those events from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

Now I have to do that uncomfortable task, perform that uncomfortable task of begging you for money.

Iron Sharp and Zion is in serious financial difficulties right now, and we urgently need your donations and advertising dollars if we are to remain on the air.

I have been urged to make these public appeals by those who are currently advertising with me to further ensure that we remain on the air for a long time to come, and those of you who have listened to this program going back to the days of broadcasting out of New York, 2005 -2006, you know that I went for years without making one single appeal for donations or advertising, but I'm respecting the wishes of those who are advertising with me now, who are helping me or enabling me to remain on the air.

I'm honoring their wishes by making these public appeals. So if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and your home, because those are two things that are commanded by God, that you cannot cut into those financial obligations by donating to Iron Sharp and Zion.

We would never want you to do that, but if you're blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and home, we ask of you to please consider sponsoring

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click on support, and you will have an address where you can mail a check for any amount made payable to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio or Cruciform Media, C -R -U -C -I -F -O -R -M

Media, but it's just easier to remember Iron Sharp and Zion Radio. If you want to advertise with us, whether it's your church, your parachurch organization, your business corporation, professional practice such as a medical practice, a law firm, a dental practice, a chiropractic office, whether it's a special event that you're having, as long as whatever it is you're doing is compatible with the theology expressed on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, we would be more than happy to discuss with you advertising, and of course you don't have to believe identically to me or the predominant theological makeup of the guests that I have on here, although I do have a mixture of theological opinions on Iron Sharp and Zion, but as long as it's compatible with the theology expressed,

Reformed theology, I would be more than happy to speak with you about advertising.

Just send an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line.

We are now back to the discussion with Paul Tauches on Pray About Everything.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com,

and please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. And before we went to the break,

Paul, I was asking you about imprecatory prayer that actually involves the death of someone.

I mean, if you want to take it to its extreme, you might say, was it a proper prayer for the

Christian living in Nazi -occupied Germany for the death of Adolf Hitler if he did not come to repentance and faith?

But even on a more common level, somebody who has an ex -spouse, for instance, like I mentioned, who's wreaking havoc in the family, doing great harm to the family, and the the ex -wife of this individual asked me, is it proper for me to pray that the

Lord either saves him or brings an end to his life? Is that appropriate? I'm going to answer that very carefully.

I'm going to answer it by saying that I don't believe it to be a regular way that we pray, a posture of our heart, but at the same time, there may be a time when that is appropriate.

Let me give some context to why I'm answering that the way that I am. I'm thinking specifically of 1

John 5, where it speaks of the sin leading to death, which I understand to be God's ultimate form of disciplining the believer who has become hard -hearted and refuses to repent, and in that context, the

Apostle John says that he's not saying that we should make a request for that.

So the way I understand this is that in the Scriptures, in the

New Testament in particular, we do find some examples of God using death as the final discipline of a disobedient believer.

We see it in Acts chapter 5, where God is the one who brings the death of Ananias and Sapphira.

God alone is the one who knew the motives of their hearts. Of course, he revealed that to the

Apostles, and therefore the Apostles were able to confront them of that. We find in 1

Corinthians chapter 5 that he says that he turned unrepentant believers over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh.

That can only mean death, and when you talk about the destruction of flesh, the ultimate destruction of flesh, of course, is death.

We even find God doing this in the Church at Corinth later on in 1 Corinthians 11. Paul exhorts the believers to be very careful the way that they approach the

Lord's table, because there were some in the Church who were sick, and even some who had died, and because of their refusal to repent of their sin.

So it does seem that there are times in which God will bring a believer to the place of taking their physical life because of the hard -heartedness.

At the same time, I think we must be very careful if and how we pray for that, because we do not know when a person has reached the point of no return.

So I think that when it comes to an unbeliever, of course, we're praying for their salvation, we're praying that God will bring them to repentance, but if they have...

I have sometimes prayed, actually, for government leaders this way, wicked government leaders.

I will pray even publicly in our Church, Lord, that if we're praying for their repentance, we want their salvation.

But Lord, if you know that they have reached the point of no return, that their heart is like Pharaoh's, the heart of a

Pharaoh or the heart of Esau, that the heart has come to that place whereby repentance is no longer possible, then

Father, that you would take them out of this world. But again, being very, very careful how we pray that way, that there is no hint of personal hatred in our hearts, there is no desire for personal revenge in our hearts, but Lord, we come to you in a submissive way.

We long for this person to come to repentance. We long for them to be made right with you, but Father, if preserving your glory, preserving the honor of your name is what is at stake here, then

Father, do what you have to do. So I think that in that response, we are still leaving the ultimate decision, of course, with God, and we're coming to God with a humble, submissive heart, understanding that at the end of the day, when we are praying, we are praying,

Lord, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. I think that's really the issue, is the state of our heart, humble, broken before God, and we are actually, truly in our hearts, being submissive to what

God decides he will do. And by the way, I forgot to tell

Daniel in San Jose, California, who asked the question prior to my own.

Daniel, you have won a free copy of Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency, by our guest

Paul Tauches, so please make sure we have your full mailing address, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com,

CVBBS .com, and ship you out your free book. Can I just add one more thing,

Chris? Sure. I think that a clear indicator for us as believers is, again, as I said, the posture of our heart.

If we are praying that kind of a prayer with an angry heart and an angry spirit,

I think that's a clear indicator that we are in the wrong, that the posture of our heart is not right before God.

But if in a state of brokenness before God, and just deep grief, we come to the point of saying,

Lord, we long for the repentance of this person, but Father, if they are never going to come to that place of repentance, and it will bring you more glory, and it will protect the honor of your name more for that person to be taken out of this world, then

Lord, your will be done. So again, the posture of our heart,

I think, is a factor, and whether or not we are fully surrendered to God doing

His will. Amen. And we have Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania, who asks,

My non -Calvinist friends are under the impression that Calvinists need not pray to God because they believe that since Calvinists believe that God knows everything, then why bother praying since God has predestined us already to receive whatever

He predestines us to receive? My argument that prayer is not only a commandment, but it is a form of communion we have with the living

God, as well as focusing on the dependence we truly need for God. What do you suggest on how

I can expand further in my response to non -Calvinists? Yes, well,

I think that the best thing that we can say is that God is sovereign, and in His sovereignty,

He has determined the end of all things. However, He's also determined that in the execution of the end of all things, there is a process that He has also ordained.

For example, in evangelism, you know, God has... God is sovereign in salvation.

We really, if we're honest with the Scriptures, we have to come to that conclusion. However, God has also made it very clear in the

Scriptures that the salvation of others will not happen without the preaching of the

Gospel, and that's Romans 10. So we can say we believe in the sovereignty of God in salvation, but if we don't preach the

Gospel, then we have a very errant view of the sovereignty of God.

You apply that same principle, then, to prayer. God, yes, God has ordained the beginning and end of all things.

However, He has also ordained that the means by which some things are accomplished is through prayer, just as He has ordained that the means by which

He saves people is preaching the Gospel, and prayer, by the way, praying for God to work in the hearts of the person and to draw people unto

Himself. So God has not only ordained the ends, but He has ordained the means, and I think that is the way that we maintain this mysterious tension between God's sovereignty and our human responsibility.

I know that the Reverend Buzz Taylor has a question, but before he asks it, I have the same question to non -Calvinists.

If God basically cannot impose himself upon a lost person, so much so that the person's alleged free will has been stripped of him, that basically the final arbiter of somebody's eternal destiny is that person's own free choice, then why pray for somebody's salvation?

I mean, what is God going to do? Yes, that's exactly, that is exactly the point.

We pray for people's salvation because we know that God is the only one who can save them, but we preach the

Gospel to them because we know that if we don't, we are disobedient. Yeah, I've heard many an

Arminian pray, Lord, please open Joe's eyes. Lord, please give

Joe new ears to hear the Gospel. Please, Lord, give Joe a new heart.

Things like that. Why are they praying that way if they don't believe that God does those things in order to bring someone to obedience to the

Gospel? If you follow what I'm saying, they believe that somebody is regenerate and has a new heart after they already demonstrate faith, so it's interesting that people who are enemies of Calvinism pray that way on many occasions.

And I think it is the mystery that we need to, we need to let

God maintain the mystery that he has created. He's created a mystery in the whole issue of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.

He's created that mystery, therefore we need to leave the mystery there, and I think that one of the ways the mystery is left there is through prayer.

We pray because we are not God, and God is. God is

God, we are not, and that is why we pray. Amen. And Reverend Rose Taylor? Of course, that gets back to praying

God's Word back to him also, knowing what to pray for, as you were saying earlier. But it says in 1

John 5, 14 and 15, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, we know that we have the petitions that we've desired of him.

So as we're acknowledging the sovereignty of God, would you explain, expand a little bit on 1 John 5, 14 and 15, what is it to pray according to God's will and to know that he hears us?

Yes, and I believe that's where the Word of God comes in. You know, the only way that we know the will of God is through the

Word of God, and that's why we must be Word -centered believers.

You know, when you look at Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, the praise and thanksgiving, which, let's just call it prayer, because that's what it is, was singing.

You know, the Psalms are singable prayers, that's what they were.

And so the singing and the thanksgiving that is spoken of in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 all come out of the

Word, our relationship to the Word. So the only way to know the will of God objectively in our lives is through the

Word of God, and so therefore we pray according to the will of God, we pray according to Scripture.

So this isn't talking about just, well, you know, I didn't know whether I should start a Christian camp or something like that, you know, well, if God wills it, he'll hear me, but if he doesn't, well,

I guess he won't, or anything like that. You're saying that is in reference to praying the

Word of God, and of course you mentioned the Psalms, which is loaded with prayers that we have to admit are according to God's will.

Yes, and of course we all understand that there are many subjective decisions that we must make in our lives that we pray over, and we honestly do want, for example, let's say,

Lord, we do want to know your will. We sense this burden in our hearts for this need for this

Christian camp, and we're praying that your will would be done. But the subjectivity of our praying for the will of God rests within the boundaries of the objectivity of Scripture.

So as long as you're praying according to biblical truth, according to biblical principles, we're not violating the

Scripture, then we can rest in knowing that we are praying within the will of God, and we wait upon him then to demonstrate the answers to his prayer, to our prayers, which influences, obviously, his leading in our lives.

Another thing occurred to me that Arminians really are left with the same dilemma, if there is a dilemma, because even as Jenny built into her own question when she was saying that Arminians say that since Calvinists believe that God knows everything, well

Arminians believe God knows everything. So why are they even asking God to do things in prayer?

Because if they know and they believe that God knows everything, then he knows what will happen in the future, and therefore why are they asking him?

So they're really, they don't have a ground or any ground to stand on to bring that question against Calvinists as if this is some kind of a revelatory question that reveals that we are in some kind of a predicament that disproves our own theology, if you follow what

I'm saying. Yeah, I do, and I think that as long as we're honest with, you know, church history and we're honest even with the

New Testament, the Apostles, you know, I mean there's no stronger defender of the sovereignty of God in the

New Testament than the Apostle Paul. I mean, second to Jesus, of course, but the

Apostle Paul. And who do you find praying constantly in the

New Testament? It's the Apostle Paul. So Paul understood there was this tension, there was this mystery, that God is sovereign and his will will be done, but part of the carrying out of his will is the crying out of his people for him to do his will.

And that is all part of the carrying out of his will, and it's all part of the maintenance of a healthy relationship with God.

In fact, there is a heresy that you are probably aware of, well, open theism, and they identify themselves, those who are open theists, they identify themselves as consistent

Arminians, because they don't believe that God knows all future events.

And that's one of the reasons that they say they pray, because that God is going to possibly bring about something as an answer to prayer, because the future is not settled, it is not preordained.

So that's why this heresy, those who adhere to it, say to the

Arminians, hey, you guys aren't being consistent with your theology, we are bringing it to its logical conclusion.

Wouldn't you agree with the open theists? Although they are wrong, they are heretically wrong, but they are right in that logical assumption, aren't they?

Yes, they are. They are right in the sense that they are bringing their small God theology to its logical conclusion.

That's right. And by the way, Jenny, you have won a free copy of Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency, by Paul Tauches, and so make sure that we have your full mailing address, so Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship that out to you, cvbbs .com,

cvbbs .com, and we thank again Todd and Patty Jennings for shipping out all the books to our winners, and also we want to thank again our friends at Shepherd Press for providing these books.

And I'm going to read a question by our last book winner, and you can answer it when we come back from the break.

John in Simsbury, Connecticut says, I would like to know your thoughts on continued prayers day after day.

Should we ask for the same things, or should we expect God to answer our prayers with confidence after asking once?

And we'll have you answer that after we return from our very final break. And if anybody else wants to join us with a question of your own, now is the time to do it before we run out of time.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with one hour to go,

I'm sorry, with 25 minutes to go, is Paul Tauches, senior pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.

We are discussing his book, Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency.

If you'd like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And if you intend to send in a question, I would do it quickly, because we are rapidly running out of time.

Before I return to my discussion with Paul Tauches, I just want to inform you that tomorrow our guest on Iron Sherpins Iron Radio will be

Michael J. Kruger, and he is the president of Reform Theological Seminary and the author of the book that we are going to be discussing tomorrow,

The Heresy of Orthodoxy. Now this is not going to be in regard to Hank Hanegraaff's conversion.

This is actually sort of a tongue -in -cheek title,

The Heresy of Orthodoxy, How Contemporary Culture's Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity.

And so we hope we receive questions from you tomorrow for Michael J.

Kruger. And Thursday the 17th of August, as I mentioned earlier,

David Glantz, who is an American military historian known for his books on the

Red Army during World War II, and the chief editor of the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, he is going to be discussing the

Soviet Union and Russia tomorrow from a Christian perspective. Should we be so afraid of the

Russians? Well, we'll find out tomorrow. At least we'll find out David Glantz's opinion on this from one of the foremost

American experts on the Soviet Union and Russia. And then on Friday the 18th of August we have

Tom Askell, the president of Founders Ministries, which is the theologically reformed wing of the

Southern Baptist Convention, a remnant of Calvinists that want to see that convention returned to its theological roots, which was thoroughly

Calvinistic in spite of what the majority of Southern Baptists may want to tell you and may want you to believe today.

So make sure you tune in those three days if possible. And we are now back to our discussion on prayer, and before the break

I asked a question by John in Simsbury, Connecticut. I would like to know your thoughts on continued prayers day after day.

Should we ask for the same things or should we expect God to answer our prayers with confidence just after asking once?

All right, well my answer is definitely God wants us to continue to pray day and night constantly, and there are three scriptures that come to my mind as I think through that answer.

The first would be the Matthew 7 passage, where the Lord Jesus says, ask and it will be given, seek and you'll find, knock and it shall be opened to you.

There's a present tense constancy in that exhortation. In other words, keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, and he roots that in the goodness of God.

Later on in the passage he says, which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will he give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

So the goodness of God as our Heavenly Father is the grounds by which

Jesus encourages us to keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. And perhaps even more clearly pointed would be the parable that we find in Luke 18 of the persistent widow,

I like to call her the nagging widow, because there is a positive nagging going on in this parable, where the widow just will not give up as she seeks for justice, as she seeks for help from the judge.

But Jesus interprets the parable for us, and he does that many times in the

Gospels. Not always is the interpretation given to us, but clearly in the very first verse of Luke 18,

Jesus says, or Luke says, he told him, Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

So the whole point of the parable is that we will keep on praying, and the illustration here is of the widow who keeps on asking for help.

So I think, again here, God is concerned about the posture of our heart when we pray.

And I think that if our heart is humble before him, and we really want to seek his will, and it's a need, we believe that it is a need, and it's something that we really do believe fits in with the will of God, then we should keep praying, and we should keep pleading, we should keep showing our dependency upon him.

However, if we detect in our hearts that our prayer request is fueled by perhaps a low -grade anger toward God that he hasn't answered yet, or it's coming from a troubling state of discontentment in our hearts, that we're frustrated, rather than that heart of submissiveness before God, then

I think we need to check our spirits. We need to evaluate where our heart's at, because there's a point in time in which prayer becomes perhaps putting

God to the test, or wrongfully demanding from God something that may not be his will.

I think that's where the Apostle Paul came to in 2 Corinthians 12, when he prayed for three times that this thorn be removed from him, and the

Lord assured him that it was his will that he have that thorn, because it was doing more for him internally in changing who he was as a man, than if God were to answer that prayer and to take that thorn away.

So again, it's somewhat of a yes -no answer.

It's a yes. We should habitually, continually pray. At the same time, we need to be aware of what is the posture of our heart toward God as we are praying to him, because that is infinitely what

God constantly is concerned about. What is the state of our heart as we are calling upon him?

Does that help? Yes, well, I'm assuming it helped John, I don't know, because he's obviously not in the room with me, but it helped me.

And by the way, John, don't ever ask that question again. I'm just kidding. John, you have won our final copy of Pray About Everything, Cultivating God Dependency by Paul Tauches.

Thank you for providing us with your address in Simsbury, Connecticut, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

God willing, we'll get that book off to you in the mail, hopefully very soon. I was just going to say,

John just won my copy, right? That's right. In fact, John won my copy. Well, send me one too, because I gave away even my copy today.

There were so many listeners, because there were even more that we couldn't provide books to that are waiting for their questions to be asked and answered.

Oh great, I'll do that. I wanted to ask a question of my own first that hinges on John in Simsbury, Connecticut's question.

How do you respond to somebody who may be improperly exegeting or perhaps eisegeting the passage in Matthew chapter 6 verse 7, and they may be wrongly applying it to what

John was asking about? We have in Matthew chapter 6 verse 7, and when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the

Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.

How is that not to be applied to what John was asking about? Yes, excellent question, you know, because the context of that verse obviously always must be considered, and the context is the

Lord Jesus is exposing the outward ritualistic form of the

Pharisees that did not have the right heart behind it.

So he tells his disciples to beware of practicing righteousness before people in order to be seen, that phrase is repeated, in order to be seen, which tells us that the issue isn't outward forms of righteousness, because Jesus does say elsewhere, let your light so shine that all may see and glorify

God. So he's not concerned that our works do show forth that they are seen, he's concerned that the motive should never be to be seen by men.

And then he, of course, gives illustrations of the hypocrites who stand on the corner of the streets and pray nice and loud and for all to hear so that they will be praised, or those who give, and they make a loud clanging sound as they put all their money in the offering plate, so to speak, in order to be seen.

So the issue here that Jesus is confronting in the context as he teaches then his disciples how to pray is, don't pray with meaningless ritualistic religion, thinking that God is going to hear you because of your religious rituals, your repetitious prayers, but realize that your

Heavenly Father knows you, loves you, wants to provide for your needs, pour your heart out to him, and God will see your heart.

God is the one who judges the posture of our heart as we come to him in prayer.

I remember the first time I stumbled upon this verse as a brand -new believer because I was saved out of Roman Catholicism, and so I was taught,

I wasn't taught to pray, I was I was taught to say prayers.

Yes, you would even, I was raised Roman Catholic, I would be taught to pray the

Our Father, or pray the Hail Mary, which is obviously something that no

Christian should pray, but it was viewed almost, even though they would never describe it in these words, it was obviously viewed as a nearly as a magical incantation or something like that.

Yes, yes it was, and we were taught to do it repeatedly. For example, when I would go to the priest and confess my sins to him, and he would say to me, you know, go and say ten

Our Fathers and, you know, maybe twenty Hail Marys or whatever it happened to be. And so we were trained to say particular prayers in a repetitious way, and I found it so ironic when

I first became a believer at the age of 19, and seeing this passage of Scripture, that within the very text that is called the

Our Father text, is this command from the

Lord Jesus not to pray with meaningless repetition. And I found my eyes were so opened as I was reading that, and I realized, okay, that's not what the

Lord wants, the Lord doesn't want me to pray meaningless prayers back to Him in a repetitious kind of way, but what

He wants me to do is to come before Him in a submissive kind of way, praying to Him as my

Father in Heaven, that holy is His name, His name is to be exalted, that His will,

I want His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, which means I want

His will to be done in my life and in my heart, I need to be reliant upon Him, dependent upon Him for my daily bread,

I need to realize that forgiveness only comes ultimately from Him, not from the priest, and therefore then, as I expect and desire to be forgiven by God through Christ, so I must grant that same forgiveness to others, and I also need to realize that God is the only one who ultimately can protect me from the evil one, and so I need to be praying that I will not enter into temptation, and so through that comes the realization that prayer is part of my relationship with God, part of my expression of dependency upon Him.

The Reverend Buzz Taylor has a question or comment. Chris, you just brought this up, so, but there is,

I've heard back and forth on this, and I'm asking you this as a pastor, and when we talk, we talk about vain repetition and praying, the our

Father, of course there are some who say Jesus was just giving us an outline of prayer, what to pray for, others say well he said when you pray, say, and then you get the

Lord's Prayer, so what is your thought about praying the Lord's Prayer repetitiously, or even as part of a particular worship liturgy?

Yeah, I don't think that there's anything unbiblical about that, provided that what's happening there is we are praying

God's Scripture back to Him in a way in which our heart and our mind is honestly interacting with what

God is saying there, and it is an expression of our heart's worship of the

Lord. But that's very different than what Jesus is condemning here, which is the meaningless repetition of empty phrases.

Well right, we could even take the Lord's Prayer or the Disciples Prayer as some have called it, or the

Our Father, we could take that prayer and turn it into meaningless phrases, even though the words that are

God -breathed have a meaning, but we can turn them into sounds. I can remember clearly as a

Catholic young man, and as a boy, a little boy, praying as fast as I could to have the appropriate number of repetitions that I was required to pray, like if it was after confession or something like that, where you would be saying the words of the

Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary Prayer, you'd be saying them so fast that they were really just phonetic, you know, combinations of phonetic noises rather than actual words.

Well yes, and it was also then, speaking for myself in my own experience, it was also, you know, my means of being accepted by God and being forgiven.

Yes. It was a duty that if I didn't do this, I wouldn't be forgiven. I wouldn't be accepted by God.

You know, so I mean, you could take any Scripture and turn it into meaningless repetition.

I mean, I think Psalm 51, Psalm 23, these are beautiful psalms that are directed to God, and I pray them, but I pray them in a way that I'm interacting with them in a worship of the

Lord, that the Lord is my shepherd. Now, that psalm could just as well as Matthew 6.

It could be taken and repeated over and over and over in a meaningless, empty kind of way, and that would be displeasing to the

Lord. But it could be sung and it could be prayed to the Lord in a very meaningful, heartfelt kind of way that is truly a part of worship.

So whether it's vain repetition or not is really a matter of our own heart. Absolutely.

Yeah, I can remember my mother when she was on her deathbed. She was a Roman Catholic who came to a true understanding of the

Gospel six weeks before she entered into eternity with Christ, and I can remember

I gave her, I believe, Valley of Vision, just as like a guide to praying, since she was so used to praying in that stilted

Catholic way of rehearsed prayers. But then she was under the wrong assumption that she was to use that Valley of Vision book in the same way, and she said to me,

Chris, I really want to pray to the Lord, but my eyes bother me.

I can't read the prayer book too long and I get a headache. And I said, Mom, just talk to God like he's your father, because he is your father.

You're his child. He's your father. Just cry out to him as a child, like a little child crying out to her daddy.

And it was like these scales dropped off of her eyes, and she began to pray in a way that she had never prayed before, and it was something that revolutionary happened in her life.

Yeah, I believe that's just one of the beautiful things that happens when we understand what prayer is.

And even, you know, those of us as gospel preaching evangelicals, those who believe in the altar call kind of evangelistic strategy, if they're not careful, they can continue that same mentality.

Instead of just telling a person, you know, confess your heart and your sin to God right now, instead we give them a new formula.

And I'm not against us learning how to pray from other people, but I think there's really a danger point when we begin to adopt just new formulas for prayer.

We have CJ in Lyndonhurst, Long Island, New York, and CJ asks,

I don't know if you remember the radio host Bob George of People to People, but he used to instruct his listeners that it was actually a sin to ask

God for forgiveness if you were already born again, because that meant you were doubting the salvation that he provided through his death for you.

Can you respond to this? It sounds like crazy heresy to me. Yes, it is crazy heresy.

You only need to read the end of 1 John 1 and the beginning of 1 John 2 to understand that there is an expectation in the

New Testament that we, even we as believers who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, forgiven by God through Christ, that we will continue to battle the flesh, and we will continue to sin, and when

God makes us aware of that, then it is our responsibility to confess our sins to God.

And in so doing, when you're confessing sin to God, there's something else that happens at the same time, which is obviously you're asking him for forgiveness.

And even Jesus, again there in Matthew 6, he instructs us to ask

God to continue to forgive us. So yes, that is very bad teaching that I have run into over the years.

Yes, in fact, Bob George, I remember him being on a station that I worked for for 15 years.

I'm not saying that he was on the station that long, I think he was taken off the air for a period. But Bob George even used to say that it was a sin to pray the

Lord's prayer, because that prayer was instructed by Jesus while he was still alive prior to his death.

So really crazy stuff. Well, I want you to now conclude with a summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Well, it would be this, that those of us who are trusting in the

Lord Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross as the atonement for our sins and we believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ being the only means by which we are saved, that we understand that that is also the only means by which we have access to the throne of God.

We come to the throne of God in prayer through Christ. That's what it means to pray in Jesus' name, recognizing that it is in and through Christ and his finished work that we have access to his throne.

And prayer is a privilege, a great privilege. We do not need other priests, because Jesus is our

High Priest, and every true believer is his or her own priest. And as a priest, we come and we bring prayers to God, and he delights to listen to us pray and to answer our prayers according to his will.

This is a really important discipline and part of our spiritual lives that needs to be constantly cultivated, and I need to grow in it as every believer does, and so I would encourage, let's not give up, let's endure and continue to pray.

Amen, and I know that your blog site is CounselingOneAnother .com,

CounselingOneAnother .com, and I know that the website for the church where you pastor is

CornerstoneMayfield .org, CornerstoneMayfield .org,

and if you want to look up more information about Pray About Everything, Paul's book that we have been discussing today, you could go to ShepardPress .com,

ShepardPress .com, and as always you can order all the books discussed on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through CVBBS .com,

CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com. Any other contact information you care to give,

Paul? No, I think you've covered it all, thank you. Well I want to thank you so much for being our guest today,

I want to thank the Rev. Buzz Taylor for being my co -host today, and I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in questions, and all of you who have written in questions today will get a copy of Pray About Everything Cultivating God's Dependency by Paul Tauches.

Due to his kindness and generosity, he's sending us extra books, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater