05-17-2020 (Online Church Service)

All right, let me share my screen. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Ben and Kenner.

That was awesome. And of course, Brother Bill, thank you as well for our

Sunday school lesson today. It was awesome, as usual. How's that,

Dave? Does that look good? It looks fantastic. All right.

Do they have everything we need going there then? That's great. Move one other object here.

Okay, all right. So great to have all of you with us again today.

And we saw a lot of the prayer requests and our church will be praying along with you guys and even a couple of folks that have the virus in our midst today.

So we'll especially be praying for you guys and for our whole nation as well and the leadership of our nation.

So it's good, I think, that our topic today is on prayer, how about that?

So we've got about 10 topics on prayer that I like to teach and you can't put everything in those 10 topics, but that's a lot of the major points on prayer.

We're really focusing on the number 10 down there at the bottom because that's the one that happens to be in our passage in Romans chapter eight, verses 24 through 28.

And we're going verse by verse through the book of Romans, of course, and we landed here in the middle of the chapter.

And if you've been with us in recent Sundays, you know that the context right above verse 24, the verses right above that, literally deal with the second coming and the rapture of the church, which

I think a lot of people, including myself, didn't really notice that a whole lot in the past.

I certainly didn't think of it as speaking of the rapture, but it actually is. And that's important to know,

I think, when we look at the context that the teaching we're about to go into on prayer is right in the context of the rapture and the second coming and that's sort of been known as the great hope of the church and every generation since the apostle

Paul, every generation has hoped that the Lord would come back in their generation, of course.

And so we have that hope. In fact, there are a lot of signs that had not happened in Paul's day, in fact, hadn't happened in my grandmom's day.

She expected to go up in the rapture as well, but a lot of signs have happened since her time, even that had not happened yet.

So the Lord is still providing the signs that he gave us. He said, we can't tell the day or the hour, but we can see the buds on the trees and know that summer is nigh.

And I think summer is nigh. And I think the coronavirus is just one of those things that Jesus talks about in Matthew 24, when he says, be not overly concerned, the end is not yet, but these things must come to pass, he said.

And I do think it's a wake up call for all of us. It's the Lord telling us, these are the kinds of things that are gonna be happening.

You need to learn how to deal with them, with your family, deal with them individually and walk with me more closely than ever.

And I think those are some of his messages. Well, let's review just a little bit.

And today, as we go into today's message, I blocked out most of those 10 points of prayer.

We will be referring to number three and number nine a little bit, as we talk about mainly number 10. But we'll talk a little bit about praying as an envoy and also the prayers of David, because I wanna bring a little bit of that into this lesson to make it mesh together well.

But today's lesson is the power of prayer while in the presence of God. And of course, that's the only kind of prayer that's real anyway, isn't it?

And so let's talk a little bit about this power of praying as an envoy.

Remember what Jesus said. He said, truly, truly, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my father.

And then he said this interesting statement. And whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will

I do that the father may be glorified in the son. And that's what we mean by praying as an envoy.

We are sent here by the Lord as his ambassadors and on this earth.

And as I've heard Dr. Myron Golden speak so many times on the point that we are supposed to occupy until he comes back.

He sent us here to occupy this kingdom, this planet. And of course, Lucifer has his people here to try to occupy the planet.

And sadly, since they've controlled the money so much, Lucifer's group controls so much of what goes on in the institutions in this world.

And I think a lot of that he's been able to accomplish by convincing Christians that money is evil and that seeking wealth is evil for a

Christian, but it's okay for everyone else. And of course, that's Luciferian doctrine as well. The Bible does not teach that.

Jesus certainly taught that it's not right for Pharisees to rob widows to get rich.

That kind of riches is evil and loving money is evil. But when we understand money is a tool that God uses through us and with us to change the world, we kind of need to get everything in context and understand how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of verses there are that talk about that when

God blesses us, he blesses us not only with spiritual things, but also with physical things such as wealth, such as lands and money, treasures in our homes, when we fulfill the conditions that he lists.

And there are quite a few, seven or eight conditions. And we talk about that sometimes, not so often on Sunday morning, but if you hang out with some of our

Tradeway friends, and we wanna welcome all our Tradeway friends today, by the way, and we loved having you with us.

We always love it when you can physically come to Church Course Canada, when there's a big event in Dallas, but this is just as great.

And wanna say hi to our home folks too. You are the pillar and the foundation for all the ministries that go out from here.

So thank all of you for being with us. Now, think about this, Jesus has sent us as ambassadors or envoys into this land, this earth, this planet.

And when we pray, Jesus said, if you'll pray for things that I would have wanted done, or that I want to have done in my kingdom,

I will answer that prayer, yes. Isn't that what we see in verse 13? But I think the question is, how do we do that?

And that's where point number 10 up above there is gonna come into play. What is it all about? How does this work?

What are the mechanics behind it? How do we know that we're praying in God's will?

And I think, if you don't know the answer to number 10, then all of a sudden number three up there doesn't have a whole lot of meaning from the practical point of view.

You just don't know what it means to pray in Jesus' name sometimes. I'll tell you what it doesn't mean, and I'm okay with this, in fact,

I do it most of the time. When I pray, I end in Jesus' name, we pray, amen. But that's not what this means, that you have to say that at the end of your prayers.

That's not what it means at all. What it means is you're praying in his place, you're praying with him, you're praying with him for things that he is wanting to do and is doing on the planet in space and time right now in your generation.

And that means you're praying as his ambassador, okay? If you ask anything in my name, he said,

I will do it. You wanna get prayers answered? Learn how to do this. But I don't think it's possible to learn how to do it if we don't understand number 10, which is what our main topic is, the power of prayer while in the presence of God.

Now let's look at this, Matthew 6, 9 and following, it says, after this manner, therefore pray.

So Jesus taught his apostles how to pray, his disciples how to pray. And he said, our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So we are to pray in God's will if we're going to have our prayers answered.

We find a wonderful teaching about this topic. And I put this in the categories of prayer.

I put it under this envoy praying part as far as praying in his will.

You obviously can't pray in his name if you don't know his will. First John 5, 14 says, and this is the confidence that we have in him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

And if we know that he hear us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the requests, the petitions that we desired of him.

So there's answered prayer right there if we pray in his will. Now, have you ever honestly asked yourselves how do we do that?

That's what this message is about. Now, if we review a little bit from last time, we went into this passage of scripture and I wanna read it for those of you who weren't here just by way of review.

So this is our key passage on how to pray in the presence of God, how to get all of these other aspects of prayer, how to pray in Jesus' name, how to pray in God's will, how to tie all that together and understand the practicality of how we actually can do this.

Let's pray first. Father, we now ask you to bless the Bible teaching time of our service today.

Thank you for the beautiful music we've heard. Thank you, Lord, for music and how it stirs our hearts and our minds and our souls.

And Lord, we just thank you for the presence of each person. And we know that one thing we can do is we remember

Lord the Apostle Paul saying, I'm with you in spirit, is even on a Zoom meeting we can be together.

And that's amazing. The world doesn't know anything about that, but we can literally be one and in unity together and sense the presence of one another.

Thank you that that's possible. And Lord, who knows whether the church will have to meet more and more in this fashion moving forward.

We just don't know those things, but you are preparing us. And so Lord, we ask you to bless the

Bible teaching at this time. May your Holy Spirit be our teacher in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Now, when you can match your prayers with scripture, that's one great way to know if you're praying in Jesus' name, right?

And so, all right, let's look at this. Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities.

We're in Romans 8, 26. The Holy Spirit helps our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the

Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

This is not speaking of modern tongues, by the way. If you read this as plainly as you can in the

Greek and in the English, it is simply not talking about that. Some people use it out of context to try to prove that, but that's not what this is about.

That's a whole nother lesson. I like to spend about a year teaching on that one. I think it's hugely important, but not important enough for today, okay?

So, right now, we're gonna focus on what this actually is talking about. Look at verse 27. And he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the

Spirit. Now, we have to understand in the context here, he that searches the heart is the person we're speaking of, which is the

Holy Spirit. And when he speaks of the Spirit in verse 27, that is the

Father in this sense, because the Father is an invisible spirit being who is not in a place and is not in time.

And he is beyond all of this. And he interjects himself into space and time through his son,

Jesus, and through the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit searches the hearts.

And I like to point out that's plural. So it's not just talking about the one praying his heart or her heart, but it's also talking about the one to whom we are praying, the

Father's heart. Now, you think about the power of that, because this is where we're going with this, is the

Holy Spirit searches your heart and the Father's heart. He searches your mind and the

Father's mind. And the Holy Spirit speaks both languages. That's actually what the

Romans, which cannot be uttered as a reference to, is that the Holy Spirit will translate our meager little human languages into God's infinite language.

And the Holy Spirit does that for us. Without that, our prayers would be like a two -year -old child trying to mutter and the parents not even understanding what he's trying to say, or even hearing what he's trying to say, not that the

Father couldn't understand, but the Father chooses for it to be such that the

Holy Spirit magnifies our language and translates it into his full, infinite language.

Is that a beautiful thing or not? Getting ahead of myself a little bit. But verse 27 says, and he searches the hearts and he knows what is the mind of the

Spirit, that's the Father, because he makes intercession for the saints, that's us, according to the will of God.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love

God, to them who are called according to purpose, to his purpose. Now, that verse is taken out of context and used for a thousand different things, but you can't take anything out of context.

This is the context verse 28's found in. It's found in the context of answered, powerful, connected prayer.

Okay, so last time, let's see if this is working right.

All right, so let's, the mechanics here, let's go back now, I'm gonna make sure

I didn't skip something, I'm sorry. Didn't perform quite right. Okay, all right, so let's go back now at the first verse.

Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities, for we know not what to pray for as we ought.

Likewise refers to hope being not by sight but by faith.

Now, when you see the word likewise in a verse, at the beginning of a verse, it means you shouldn't start teaching with that verse.

You should go up, go up in the context and read what was before it. But we spent a whole hour last

Sunday and a whole hour before that, the previous Sunday, talking about the verses prior to this.

And you can go back to heartmetalschurch .com and watch any of those sermons and get that part.

But it's very important to understand what was it said immediately before this. Likewise, that's what it's referring to.

And it was the fact that the Apostle Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said that hope, if you see it, it is not hope any longer.

Hope is very similar to faith. I would say it's virtually a synonym in the Greek and in the

English New Testament. So faith, if you see it, it's not faith anymore.

And that's how Paul defines faith. Faith is that which is not seen, but it's real. Faith is the evidence of things not seen.

And the heavenlies that are more real than the things we see here, because they outlast the things that we see here is one reason.

They are more real, if you want to put it that way. I know they're not more real, but they, we certainly, sometimes things we can't see, we don't consider to be as part of reality as things we can see and touch and smell and feel and so forth.

But Christians know that's not the case. The things in the unseen world of the heavenlies are where all of this comes from.

So it has a higher degree of reality in my mind. No, that's kind of like saying the glass is more full.

And my teacher in elementary school said, David, it can't be more full.

It's either more nearly full or whatever, but it can't be more full because either full or it's empty, right?

Or it's not full. Well, things of heaven are the reality of everything and where everything comes from.

We need to remember that when we're talking about prayer because that's also what we're going to see here. So likewise means that we're now in the context of talking about things that are not by sight, but rather by faith.

True prayer does not originate from the seen world, but from the unseen, which is odd when you think about it because we've always felt that we originate the prayers.

We are the one asking. So we originate the prayers. This passage in the middle of this amazing chapter eight of Romans is going to teach us otherwise.

And once we grab hold of this great truth, it can totally change our prayer lives. It totally revolutionized our prayer lives.

It pulls all the other aspects of prayer and those other 10 points that we won't have time to cover, but how to pray in God's will, how to pray in Jesus' name and all the other things that pulls them together.

It's the great unifying factor. These few verses, these three verses in Romans chapter eight, 26 through 28 are the unifying factor for all teachings on prayer in the whole scripture.

That's my opinion. I believe that is the case. And I believe you will see that's the case as we continue.

Now it's interesting, it says that the Holy Spirit helps. This word in the

Greek means to take hold of in turn together. So prayer is not just us praying, but neither is it just the

Holy Spirit only working. It's us plus the Holy Spirit working together.

The Holy Spirit works with us in our prayer life. And that's what it means when it says he helps.

He takes hold of our hand. He takes hold of our mind and our hearts and he prays together with us.

And that in itself helps our infirmities. Now this word infirmity, if you remember from last

Sunday means feebleness. Literally, that's what it means. And it is feebleness with regard to our spiritual knowledge and understanding.

Now, if you look at the actual Greek word, you see the little ah in front of the rest of the word, that ah is what negates a word in Greek.

So thanos means strength. And when you put ah in front of that, it means lack of strength. So the

Holy Spirit has to pray with us because of our total lack of strength and ability and our feebleness when it comes to praying.

Don't tell me you haven't noticed it. No sooner do we get alone in prayer than our mind wanders.

Our minds all wander all over the place. We have to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help us to rebuke

Satan and his demons and send them away from us and give us clarity of thought and all these things that we have to do just to focus for a few moments.

Look at the apostles when Jesus was praying before his crucifixion in the garden, they just fell asleep.

They couldn't focus for 10 minutes. That's our infirmities. That's part of it.

The other part is that if we're not careful, we pray outside of God's will.

We pray for stuff we want. And you know, it's okay to pray for stuff we want, but there's no guarantee we get that.

There's no guarantee of a yes answer. And we've all noticed that too, haven't we? We'd be honest. We'd be honest about it.

A lot of the things we pray for, the answer is no. And the scripture says, sometimes that's because we ask amiss.

And what does that mean? We're not praying in God's will. And in Jesus' name is exactly what it means because we haven't figured out this wonderful point, number 10, on how to pray in the presence of God.

But hopefully after today, we will come a lot closer to understanding this. Now, where it says that he pray, he helps us with our infirmities because, now it gives us the reason why he has to do that, for, because, we don't know what we should pray for, as we all.

Now, we think we do because we pray for stuff we want, right? We pray for stuff, whatever our immediate need is.

You know, I learned many years ago in ministry, I had the opportunity to visit with the sick and pray for them for healing and so forth.

And I learned a long, long time ago that it's far more difficult to pray for my own family members when they're ill or in danger than it is for others because I'm so emotionally attached to my family, or if it's church members in our little country church,

I'm so emotionally attached with these individuals that I tend to just pray for what

I want. And it's hard for me to seek the Lord's will like we're supposed to here.

And let me say once again, it is okay to pray for what we want. Sometimes that is the starting place.

I mean, it's the human starting place. And I'm not saying don't do that. Please don't read anything between the lines here.

I'm not saying don't pray for what your needs and wants and desires are. We certainly have permission to do that.

But if we want to have yes answers, then the great secret is to begin to understand that we don't know what we ought to pray for.

We don't know what to pray for as we ought. Now this word ought means things that are necessary and needful.

So literally, the scripture tells us we need the Holy Spirit to help us with our infirmity.

And the infirmity is that we don't even know what to pray for that's necessary in our realm of time and space, in our world, in our family world, in our church world, in our nation world, where we are.

We don't know what's necessary to pray for if we're just on our own.

And we're not supposed to be just on our own. And that's what this lesson is all about. So true prayer does not originate from the seen world, but from the unseen world.

And in the light of our feebleness and our lack of spiritual knowledge, we do not know what is necessary and needful for us to pray for, and that is part of our infirmity.

But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now, intercede, what does it mean? If you just look that up in Webster's, I looked it up in Greek, naturally, and guess what it means in Greek?

It means to intercede. Okay, so when that happens, then I look it up in Webster's. I wanna get all the

English synonyms I can find to wrap my mind around the different colors of meanings of this word if I can't find a lot of different Greek to do the same thing.

In this case, English helped a little bit more. It means to intervene, for one thing, to become a third party in a legal proceeding.

Now, think about that. The Holy Spirit has already become a third party between us and God because it's the

Holy Spirit, and this is not taught in churches today, in so many churches, and it's sad because it's always been universally taught going back 150 years ago, back 2 ,000 years, is that the way salvation works is that while we're yet in our sins, has he quickened us, brought us to life?

That's the Holy Spirit, and he quickens us when he calls us. That's called the effectual calling in theology.

There is a general calling where the gospel goes out to the whole world, but there's an effectual calling taught where the

Holy Spirit meets with the ones that the Father chose before the foundation of the world to be his own children.

He meets with them individually, and guess what he does? He becomes the hyssop weed found in Exodus that is dipped into the blood of Jesus and sprinkled on the doorpost, and in this case, it's sprinkled to the individual.

The Lord has already applied his blood in the heavenlies at the throne of God, at the real mercy seat.

Jesus has placed his blood there, and then at the moment of your salvation, the

Holy Spirit applies that blood to you individually, and you are regenerated, and that happens before you do anything.

That's why I say salvation is by the blood of Jesus plus nothing, and really, I shouldn't say plus nothing, but what

I mean by that, same thing reformers meant, means plus us doing nothing. There are many things the

Father and the Holy Spirit and Jesus had to do to make us be saved, many, many things. So it's not just the blood, it's also the water.

The water is the word of God. It's also the spirit. Jesus said no man is saved without the water and the spirit, and in this first John, it adds the blood to that.

So you have three things that are required for salvation, but man doesn't do any of it. He is a receiver of a free gift, but he doesn't do any of it, and that is you must have the water, which is the word of God.

That's the gospel. You must know that Jesus died for you and rose again, and secondly, you must have the spirit.

That is the effectual calling. The Holy Spirit has to light upon you and open your blind eyes and open your deaf ears and bring you to a point where you see

Jesus as the shepherd and you as the sheep and him with the food and you being hungry, and the

Holy Spirit does all of that, and then, of course, you have the blood, and without the blood, there is no propitiation.

God's wrath cannot be satisfied with anything that we do by way of, quote, good works.

That won't cut the mustard at all. It just doesn't do anything because our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, the scripture says, so in order to have propitiation where God the

Father is satisfied that the sin debt has been paid, you must have the blood. So you've got to have the water.

That's the word of God. You've got to have the spirit of God. You have to have the blood to be saved.

Now, not only that, you've got to have it to grow. You've got to have it to live. You've got to have it to pray, all right?

So this intercession that the Holy Spirit begun of the moment he regenerated you and or me continues in our prayer life.

So he is the third party in a legal proceeding without the Holy Spirit as our lawyer, without him as our intercessor and our advocate before the

Father, we would never be saved, nor would we remain saved without his continued work on our behalf all the time.

So he is our mediator. He is our intercessor. Now, this word where it says he helps us with our infirmities, but he also makes intercession for us, that means before the

Father, ladies and gentlemen, he goes to that place that is not a place where the

Father is and where he is present tense and where if he came into space and time, the

Bible says the elements would flee from him. That's the Father I'm referring to. The Holy Spirit can go into that place.

Now, Jesus is the only man that's ever been in that place. And those are the only two persons that can ever go in that place as far as I know, at least certainly now that's the case.

And so as he goes there and intercedes on our behalf as a legal party, as our attorney, that he goes there and says, look,

I have applied the blood of your son to that person. That person has the legal right to request something of you,

Father. And he is doing that now. And in his own feeble, limited, finite language, he is saying this, whoa, and he blows it up into this enormous, infinite language with an infinite number of adjectives to describe how marvelous

God is as we praise him with two or three little adjectives in English. And the

Holy Spirit does that for us. Now, I don't know if you can picture that. I don't know if your mind can wrap around it, but that's what this means.

This little word intercession is a little word, but it's a huge event when you pray.

And without this event, your prayers go nowhere. Your prayers never be answered nor heard. Isn't that something?

So also when the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, it means to mediate. And that means to occupy a middle position, very similar to this legal proceeding going on.

So the Holy Spirit takes our hand, takes hold of the Father's hand and pulls us together.

He also connects Jesus Christ with the Father, and he connects all of us with each other.

That's why even though we're in different places all over this country, we're one. We are connected here as if we're in the same room, almost that good, maybe better than being in one room because even there we have physical limitations, but spiritually we have no limitations of being one together.

And he does all of this. We could preach the rest of the day on just this intercession and what it means.

Now it says that he makes intercession with groanings. This word in the

Greek literally means sighs. It does not mean ecstatic utterances.

You cannot use the word to mean that. It never meant that. It only means that in the mind of someone predisposed to want it to mean that, and I say that kindly.

But then again, the Bible says we must worship God in spirit, yes, but also in truth.

So the truth is this is not what the word means. The word means it is a sigh because it's not words that we can utter.

It literally means unspeakable, a different language on a higher level, even in a higher dimension than we live in.

And the Holy Spirit translates our three or four little adjectives we can think of to tell God you're good, you're wonderful, you're majestic, you're resplendent.

You can think of a few. If you sat here and thought of praise God, you could think of maybe a hundred if you stayed here long enough, and even that is not enough for an infinite

God. So the Holy Spirit takes these little meager words, and what we're gonna see in a moment is there's this amazing thing going on where he is this mediator, this one who stands in between, where he can shine his light, if you will, on your entire brain and heart and know everything about you, what you mean by what you're trying to say, what you're feeling by what you're trying to say, and take it and put that into a language we don't know that the

Father speaks and put it out there and magnify it and put it in a mode that's worthy of God.

And we cannot do that on our own, and that's why the Holy Spirit helps us or works together with us and prays together with us or else it's meaningless,

I think. So it's a language we cannot speak due to our infirmities and the fact that we're finite.

It is an infinite language. It is the Father's language, all right?

Now, verse 27 goes on and says, and he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the

Spirit. Now, we go into this place where the Holy Spirit is doing two things.

He's searching you, the prayer's heart, knowing you fully, nothing you can hide.

You wouldn't want to hide anything when you're praying, right? Nothing can be hidden. He knows your desires.

He knows the future. He knows the past. He knows the present. He knows everything you need, everything you will need till the day you're with him physically.

He knows all of that. He knows you. And then he knows the

Father like that. He is one with the Father. He knows everything.

The Father, God, the creator of the universe, desires and feels.

And yes, he has feelings. We're created in his image. And what he wants and his legal concepts, you know, what is the law?

What has God said? The soul that sinneth, it must die. He knows, the Holy Spirit knows that too. And he has applied the blood to your life.

And yes, he reminds the Father of that as if the Father needs to be reminded, but the scripture points out clearly

I mean, why do we have an intercessor? Why do we have this one who goes between if the

Father didn't deem that necessary and desirable? So we do have it. And this is what's going on.

And so he searches the hearts and he knows what's in your mind. And he knows what's in the

Father's mind and heart because he makes intercession for us according.

Now, here's a big key. And this is new information now. According to the will of God, not according to our will, right?

I mean, we pray what we want. And sometimes we ask a miss, but the Holy Spirit never prays.

And by asking a miss, he prays according to what he knows the Father wants to see done in the

Father's universe. Think about that. And then when we get all of that together, we're not done discussing it, by the way, not nearly done.

But when we get all of that together, that's when verse 28 is true. And see, we love to pull it out of context and say it's true all the time.

But it's true in the context of this all the time. And we know then, you can add the word then if you wanted to, we know because this is happening that all things work together for good to them that love

God and to them that are called according to his purpose, which implies very clearly if you're not called, if you don't have the effectual calling, then this isn't for you.

Now, if you're listening today and you say, well, I'm not sure I've been saved, let me just say this, goats don't care about it.

Goats don't think about it. They don't care about their soul, the condition of it. They don't think about heaven and whether they've offended

God or not. Only lost sheep do that and saved sheep, all right? So if you're concerned about it today and you're listening to me, just all you have to do, just be like a bride before the groom and respond.

The broom is calling you. He's saying, I love you. I want you as my own. I want to live life with you.

Just say yes. All right, that's it. Just receive that love as a free gift and you are saved.

And then all of this applies to you as well. Now let's look at verse 27.

The Holy Spirit who searches the hearts, plural, our heart and God the Father's heart, knows the mind of the pure spirit being, knows the mind of the

Father. Grab hold of that thought for a moment. Now let's think about God's will for a minute theologically, okay?

Basically I've read what theologians write about it. I don't always agree with what they say because I don't find everything you want either.

I mean, no man gets everything correct, do we? But they talk about all kinds of things that are somewhat,

I think, ridiculous, such as this idea of the permissive will of God. There's no such thing as that.

God does not permit God causes, okay? But there are two aspects to God's will actually taught in the

Bible. One is known as God's revealed will. Now use your chat button. I need to get you involved a little bit because right about now you're gonna lose attention span and you're gonna be searching the internet for other stuff and not listening and all that.

So let's participate a little bit. What does that mean? What is God's revealed will?

Send me some thoughts on that right quick. Dave, if you know how to pop some of those up in front of me.

I mean, I can see the chat window. It is his word, written word of God.

He unveils at his timing. What he shows us is his word. Okay, very good. What's in God's word.

Very good. I saw a note up there by another student and unfortunately I missed your name.

Don't wanna be calling your names out anyway. But one person said, I thought Jesus was our mediator.

Jesus is a mediator. He is the mediator. But the Holy Spirit is also does mediation work on our behalf because he is our intercessor and our advocate before the father.

And the word advocate means a mediator. So the Holy Spirit is a mediator as well.

Jesus is the person who brought us to God the father. No doubt in my mind about that.

And in that sense, he is the mediator. But without the Holy Spirit mediating, we couldn't pray.

So it's the same word, but it's used of both persons of the

Godhead, the father and the Holy Spirit, just to answer that question. It's used of both. And of course the

Holy Spirit and Jesus are in complete unity. Jesus said, I never do anything or say anything that I haven't seen the father do.

He couldn't see that without the Holy Spirit. Jesus is a man, the God man could not see that without having all of the fullness of the spirit.

And what's interesting, the Bible teaches we have the Holy Spirit by measure, but it teaches that Jesus had the

Holy Spirit without measure. So the Holy Spirit connects the father and the son and us to each other and us to the son and us to the father.

And without the Holy Spirit's mediated work, none of it would work either. So it's both the

Holy Spirit and Jesus. That's a great question though. But you guys got it right. Everyone has spoken out and said that the revealed will of God is where we can read the scripture with the teaching of the

Holy Spirit as our teacher and understand God's will. All right, but now let me ask you this.

Does the father through the word of God tell you which house or which block he wants you to buy when you're getting ready to move?

And we could ask Ben Russell that perhaps. Or anybody out there who's ever looked for a house, does the

Bible tell you which house to choose? It absolutely does not. So we have what's called the secret will of God.

And it's been called other things, but my favorite thing is what brother Otis Fisher used to call it.

He called it and he gets it from his old, he's a 300 year old book. You should have seen his library, which is now my library.

Hundreds and hundreds of books that are no longer in print, theological books. But he called it the secret will of God.

And that's my favorite name for it. But this means God's sovereign will that you can't see that because you don't see the future.

In and of yourself, you could not know it. You couldn't see it. When it says to pray in God's will, part of that means pray according to his revealed will.

And that we can easily do if we know the scriptures. But as far as praying according to his secret will of what he's doing in the universe and on earth, that requires

Romans chapter eight, verses 26 through 28 to understand how to do that. And that's what we're studying.

I've said this in group meetings. Some of you guys have been in those meetings when I was teaching. And I said, how do you know

God's secret will? And nobody answered anything. And I just simply take a step forward and pat the next person on the shoulder and say, well, it was

God's will for me to be here with this person because here I am. So you have to take a step into the future and make that the present.

Now you know what his secret will was, right? That's one way. But now how can you pray according to his will if that's all you can do?

And that's not all you can do, fortunately. Because this passage is talking to us about not only the revealed will of God, but the secret will of God and being in God's will and praying in God's will.

Now this idea that you can get out of God's will is kind of a man -made concept too.

And that's all around this false teaching of God's permissive will. You cannot get out of God's will.

You're not sovereign, okay? God is sovereign. In order for you to get out of his will, you'd have to be the sovereign.

And you can't do that. Can you disobey him? Can you displease him? Absolutely, and that's called sin.

And God, you know, Jesus died for us for that. And the Holy Spirit works in our lives to apply, help us to want to apply 1

John 1, 9. And that, by the way, doesn't mean to ask him to forgive us. He doesn't have to forgive us. He's already done that if we're saved.

It means to agree with him that the sin we just did is wrong. That's what it literally means. And then he restores our fellowship and also our conscience and washes our conscience.

That's so needful for us humans, right? But as far as getting out of his will, don't worry about that.

You're not gonna get out of God's will. That is a false teaching, in my opinion. You know, you just have to understand the concept of sovereignty of God, which it's harder to understand that now than it was 150 years ago when most preachers still preached a lot about it.

But this is where we need to be. As Jesus said, if you pray according to my will, you can ask anything and it will be done.

So we need to know, how do we do this? All right, now, the spirit knows the mind of the pure spirit being the

Father, God the Father. And this word because, now look back up at the scripture where it says that, let me find my word here.

He makes intercession, oh, let me find our place again. Likewise, the spirit also helps our infirmities because we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

And he that searches the hearts, both our heart and God's heart, knows what is the mind of the spirit because this word can mean whereas in the

Greek. And I think if we understand that many places, if not most places it's used, it can mean that.

And this makes a little bit more sense because it's not causative really in the Greek here. So let's read it this way.

Verse 27, and he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit whereas he maketh intercession for the saints, whereas he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

So because the Holy Spirit knows your heart and mind and the complete depth of it, even words you can't bring into your mind.

Have you ever had times you were praying and you were just in your mind, you were speechless, you couldn't even think of the right words?

I bet if I got us to raise hands there, we'd have, you know, everyone on today would probably raise their hand for that.

And you think that, you know, you think it's because you're sinful and just bad and you just, man, I can't even concentrate.

And really what it is is we know there's something within us that just knows we don't have the words to magnify

God as we want to, but guess what the Holy Spirit does? And that's what this word because means in the

Greek, hoti, which means whereas. So because the Holy Spirit is searching your heart and mind and knowing completely what you're asking and desiring and needing.

And then he knows the Father's will, he knows his secret will, he knows what the Father's gonna do in your tomorrow.

He knows that because he knows God's revealed will, obviously, since he wrote the book, the

Holy Spirit did, and he knows the secret will of the Father because he is God, the Holy Spirit is, and he knows your heart and desire and everything you need and desire and need at this moment.

Then because of that, he intercedes for us according to the will of God. Think about the power of that, ladies and gentlemen, when we sit there with our meager abilities and inabilities to pray, but we definitely know what we want and need and desire.

And it may be the life of a loved one hanging in the balance. And we need and desire

God to hear and answer prayer and heal, and that's what we want. The Holy Spirit literally knows all of that, but he also knows what the

Father is going to do in your tomorrow and the next day and the next day. And I have learned this, the hardest person for me to pray for is my nearest of kin when they're in trouble as far as health or even imminent death or whatever.

But I have learned this and I will, let me give an example. This is a great example,

I think, in my own family. My father, Fred Mitchell, is in heaven now, but there was a time when he had a major heart attack and my mom literally drove him halfway across the country while he was having the heart attack going who knows how fast.

I know how fast I like to drive. I got that from my mother. But she drove him to Tennessee to the hospital where his brother had been.

Knowing that he was having major heart trouble and needed a great hospital, and she made it there, but he was almost gone when she got there.

So they had to put him on a ventilator. And it was touch and go for many days. And I literally tried to pray for my dad for God to heal him, and I just couldn't believe

God was gonna heal him. And we even had friends, the Riddles from Hayhead drove all the way to Tennessee. And I'll never forget

George Riddle who just went to heaven this past year. George Riddle said, he put his hand on my shoulder and he said,

David, you shouldn't give up on God that easily. Man, that rebuked me.

He didn't mean to be rebuking me, but in my heart it did. And I'll never forget that I went into my mom's motel room and I took

Jenny, my oldest firstborn child, not oldest Jenny, I didn't mean that, my firstborn child, and I took her and Nana and myself into my mom's motel room and we prayed once again.

And do you know that while the three of us, and Jenny was a child at the time, while the three of us prayed, the

Holy Spirit gave all three of us the faith that he was going to heal my dad.

I can't explain that. I'm not a faith healer. I'm not charismatic. I've studied this my whole life.

I don't believe in the modern misunderstandings of those things.

I believe that when the word of God was fully canonized and the church had that, which is perfect, that thing, the neuter voice, that is perfect.

The word of God that these things ceased, like Paul said they would, and like church history tells us that it did. I believe that, but I don't believe

God stopped healing. I just think that he doesn't do it through David Mitchell touching somebody anymore or me being the faith healer.

God just answers prayer when it's his will to do so. And it is his will for us to pray. And this is better.

Ladies and gentlemen, listen, I'm gonna tell you something. Faith is always better than sight because by faith we are connected to the invisible creator of the universe who's not even in our place.

He's outside of time and space. We're connected to him by the Holy Spirit. And Jesus made all of this possible.

And that is more powerful than things of sight and feel and touch and seeing things.

I will promise you it is if you learn to live this life. So we got dressed, we went to the hospital, and as we walked down the hall towards my dad's room where one day earlier

I thought he will never come off that ventilator, we saw a team of doctors and nurses running and ran past us into my dad's room.

And as we arrived they were pulling that tube out of his throat, he coughed two or three times, and he soon went home and was far better than he had been for years health -wise.

Now that's just one example. And what I've learned from that and other things in my life is this.

Yes, I began my prayer life with my desire. My desire was for my dad not to die yet at that time.

That was my desire. Jenny's desire, my mother's desire was for him not to die that day or that week.

And we were praying that and for several days God gave me no peace that he'd even heard that prayer.

I had no faith or ability to believe my dad was gonna be okay. In fact, I believe the opposite. Right up to the moment

George Riddle rebuked me and said, don't give up on God yet, which the Lord sent him, did he not, to speak to me.

George Riddle was sent by God to speak to me. And the Lord then when we prayed the next time, he said,

I don't know how to explain it. No, he didn't hear a voice. I just sensed it with all my being.

Your dad is gonna be okay. I'm gonna heal him. And we went in there and we saw it before our eyes and then he goes home.

So, I mean, that is how I in the application part of what we're studying here is

I begin by praying what my heart desires. And I keep looking and sensing and asking the

Holy Spirit to reveal to me what the Father's will is. What does the Lord want? That's what I really want.

Because what God the Father wants is best, even if it doesn't seem best to me. And that's really what

I want. I'm fighting back. My carnal nature doesn't want that. But the real me, the new man that's connected to Jesus, being spirit -filled, that is really what

I want. So show me, Lord, what the Father wants. And if you can't get faith that the person's gonna be healed, then ask the

Holy Spirit to change your prayer and line it up with God's will. Change, subtly change what

I'm asking for and the desires of my heart to match God's will. And He will do that.

And as you do that through this process, your prayer will be answered. And that's the only way it will be because when we're still praying in the flesh and where it's only our desire, but not caring what

God the Father's desire is, we cannot be in tune with what's happening in God's universe in space and time.

We can't be, and it's just gonna not be answered in the way we wanted it. But once the

Holy Spirit does His work and He takes your hand and your heart and your mind and all the things,

He knows fully what you need and what your desires are. And I'm not saying you shouldn't try to verbalize them to the

Lord as you pray, but the Holy Spirit knows whether you do or don't. He knows, and He takes that to the Father and He amplifies it.

And He comes back to you with the Father's will, the secret will of the Father and begins to subtly with a little whisper of some kind, make that known to you over a period of time so that you can pray in His will.

And I've experienced this. And so this is not just, listen, this is not just academic.

This is practice. This is how I try to practice prayer in my lifetime.

And this is what I think the scripture's teaching. All right, now, verse 28, then all things work together for good to those that love

God and are called according to purpose. Look at the context of this verse. Why do all things work together for good?

Because of answered prayer, because we're praying with the Holy Spirit according to the will of God, right?

Because we prayed within the secret will of God and according to His revealed will also, because the

Holy Spirit brought to the heart, my heart, He brought the heart of God.

So think about that. He brings the heart and mind of the Father to my heart and mine as He prays together with me.

So we must have our intercessor as we pray. Never think for a minute we stand alone when we pray, that just won't work, right?

So here are the powerful components. Number one, impartation of spiritual knowledge.

That was in verse 26. Likewise, the spirit also helps our infirmities for we know not what we ought to pray for.

We don't even know what is necessary for us to pray for. So we need impartation of spiritual knowledge into our heart and mind by the

Holy Spirit. Well, it has two components. First component is we need strength to pray.

So He helps us with our infirmities, our inabilities, our feebleness. And we sense that when we begin to pray.

He helps us with that and helps us to continue in prayer. And secondly, He gives us the knowledge to pray, how we ought to pray and what we ought to pray for.

He begins to do that, the impartation of spiritual knowledge. Number two is intercession by the

Holy Spirit on our behalf. And that's found in the second part of verse 26. But the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us.

That is necessary. And then number three, translation from our feeble language to God's infinite language.

That's found in the third part of verse 26 with groanings, which cannot be uttered by humans.

That's what that means. It's just a language we can't speak. And He translates it for us into the

Father's language. And number four, revelation. We need to know what we ought to pray for.

In other words, how do we pray in God's secret will? Because we can't tell the future unless God reveals it to us and the

Holy Spirit does reveal to us what the Father is going to do. And we call that faith. We call that all of a sudden, having faith that God is going to heal this person.

You can't make yourself do that, by the way. I've tried. When my mentor, Dr. Erwin Freeman, was laying in the intensive care unit in Fort Worth, Texas, dying,

I had a charismatic friend that I loved dearly. And I had him go with me. I said, well, okay, so maybe there is something to what they can do.

I brought him with me. And I had him lay. He was unconscious in a coma, dying. Had him lay hands on Rocky and pray that God would raise him up.

And boy, the fervor of it and everything was there. And I'm sitting here and I'm praying and I'm saying,

Lord, I don't believe you're going to do it. I don't believe you're going to do it. And some of you out there may say, well, that's why he didn't do it.

But I'm going to tell you something. David Mitchell is not the sovereign of the universe.

It does not determine the day and the hour of the death of anyone. But the book of Job says God does.

So that's not what happened. Okay. I mean, you can beat up on yourself and think that's it.

That is not it. The truth is, it was not God's secret will for Rocky Freeman to remain on the planet.

He wanted him with himself in heaven. Jesus prayed and said, I want all my children to be where I am,

Father. So the Father answered that prayer. I heard Charles Ferdinand say that once. All right.

I'm not that old, but I read it. All right. So my friend couldn't pray Rocky back to vibrancy in life.

And no one could because it wasn't God's will. God never gave the faith that he was going to do it.

And once God does give you faith, and he can do that when he is going to raise a person and it's his secret will to raise that person, he will give you the faith.

You will sense it and feel it as real as a chair you might be sitting on. At that moment, you can know your prayer is going to be answered yes.

I'm telling you, this is how it works. This is what the scripture says. You must have the impartation of spiritual knowledge by the

Holy Spirit in order to pray correctly. You must have him interceding on our behalf before the

Father in God's language. You must have him translating the feebleness of our prayers to God in a magnificent glorious statement.

And you must have revelation from the Father to our mind and heart to even know what to pray for as we ought or else we're asking a miss and those never get answered.

Does that not start to make sense? That last part comes from verse 27.

And he, the Holy Spirit searches the hearts, my heart and the Father's heart. And he knows what is in the mind of the

Spirit of God. That's the Father. He knows what's in the mind of the Father because he makes intercession or in knowing this, he makes intercession for the saints.

How? Wines us up with God's will. What does that mean? The Holy Spirit has to subtly in his little quiet voice, however that is for you and me at different times, it's different ways that he will move your heart to having peace about a matter, to having a sense and a faith that God is or isn't gonna do a matter.

And the Holy Spirit knows how to do that. Verse 27 says that he intercedes according to the will of God, which means he brings us that knowledge back.

And that's what I meant at the beginning of the day that true prayers are not instigated on the earth. They're instigated in heaven.

And the Holy Spirit brings the prayer to us and teaches us how to pray for what we ought, to pray for God's will and to be in line and okay with that because we should be okay with it.

God, the Father's the only one that knows everything. He's the only one that's all pure love. He's the only one that's truly good.

And we should just want his will and be honest enough to say, look, I want my loved one to be raised up,

Lord, but that's just purely my carnal desire. And it'd make me feel better if they're raised up and I love them so much.

Please bring to me what the Father wants and let me pray with you along this line.

And verse 27 says that's exactly what the Holy Spirit will do. And then the last part is receiving the answer, verse 28.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.

My prayer is that this teaching on prayer will be a huge blessing to each of you.