Crying Out — Denny Kenaston

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold.

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These messages are offered to all without charge by the freewill offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Pretty sobering, isn't it? Does it move your heart? God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever, of all the millions and millions of people, that whosoever, and believe in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.

We're so used to that verse, aren't we? It's just like a common verse to us. What a powerful verse it is. When God lets us sit for 20 minutes and just look at the world, and all the nations and kindred and tongues and peoples scattered all over the world, it gives new meaning to that simple, common verse, doesn't it?

Can we bow for a word of prayer before we get into the message tonight? O Lord, there's nobody in this room who can do what needs to be done in our hearts. There's no man who has words enough who can move our hearts.

Lord, only You can do that. We ask You to send Your Spirit again down upon our hearts and our lives, that we may hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the churches in these last days. God, open our hearts.

We trust You for this. We thank You, in Jesus' name. Amen. The cry of believing prayer in missions. That's the title of the message. The Father said to the Son whom He exalted, the Son whom He anointed, the Son whom He gave a name which is above every name.

The Messianic Promise of the Nations

The Father said to the Son whom He made King, He said these words to His Son, Ask of Me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Psalm chapter 2 and verse 8. The Father said to the Son, Ask of Me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. It's very interesting to me that this phrase, the uttermost parts of the earth, is only found two times in the Bible.

Once in the Old and once in the New. I don't know about you, but whenever I find those kind of things, I count them as being significant. When God says something once in the Old, He says it again in the New.

I think it's important that you take a look at both of them and see how they tie together. And of course, we know where that phrase is used in the New Testament. We find it there in Acts chapter 1. The disciples were there in that chapter, reviving their dreams.

Dashed after the crucifixion, but revived after the resurrection. The disciples were reviving their dreams of an earthly kingdom in Israel. But Jesus saw the kingdom through different eyes than they did at this point.

He saw the kingdom through prophetic eyes and spoke a prophetic promise over them which tied this messianic psalm into the New Testament day. When Jesus said to them, as they were deliberating about the kingdom, as they were imagining, as they were dreaming out loud, as they were asking Him questions, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel where your followers, you're our king, you just rose from the dead?

Will you now restore the kingdom to Israel and put Jerusalem on the map again and make Israel that nation that you promised you would make it? Would you do that now, Lord? No, disciples, you don't understand.

You don't understand the kingdom, disciples. You don't understand what I want to do. You don't understand what I'm after. But I'll tell you one thing. Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.

And when that happens, ye shall be witnesses unto me. Ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and under the uttermost parts of the earth. And He lifted up Himself and descended up, ascended up into the sky and into the clouds and disappeared from their sight.

And He was gone. Brothers and sisters, we still live in that age. That day and that age has not gone away. It's still the same. What Christ was saying to them, though they in their ignorance did not understand what He meant, and it would be many years before they got the grasp of the depth of what He said when He said those words.

But they did not understand what He meant. Oh, I'm going to build me a kingdom. Yes, I am. But it's going to be built in a different way than you think. I'm going to use you. I'm going to work through you.

You're going to be my body. And I'm going to be your head. And together we're going to ask the Father for the heathen out of every nation and kindred and tongue and people. But they didn't understand those things.

And sometimes I wonder if maybe we don't understand them either. Really, what He meant by that? Well, for nearly 2 ,000 years this process of asking and receiving the heathen as an inheritance has been taking place.

For nearly 2 ,000 years. It has been functioning. Study the history books. You will see the secrets are sometimes revealed. How this asking and receiving takes place. Wherever there is an outpouring of the divine Spirit of God upon man, there was first an outpouring of the human spirit before God.

That outpouring of the human spirit before God is called prayer. You study the history books. You know, you'll see that wherever God poured out His Spirit, and by the way, it is for the heathen that God pours out His Spirit.

It is for the lost that God pours out His Spirit upon man, His people. It is that we might be energized. That we might be empowered. That we might be a living witness upon this earth of Jesus Christ to the world around us, whether it be in Ephrata, or whether it be in Leola, or whether it be in Five-Pointville, or whether it be in Pennsylvania, or whether it be in California, or whether it be in Manitoba, or whether it be in Tanzania, on the other side of the world.

God fills His people with His Spirit that they might be witnesses. I don't know if we grasp those things. Seriously, I don't know if we grasp them. But that's the way it is. That work continues. That work of asking and receiving continues as the outpouring of prayer continues around the world.

The history of successful missions can be traced back to the closets of praying men and women who in secret sought God and received open rewards. That is the history of missions. Whatever little history of missions we have can also be traced to the same place where men and women sought God in their closet, in secret, and have received the blessing of open rewards.

Oh, do we believe that this evening? It only seems right for us to look at the subject of believing, prevailing prayer this evening as we see how God is unfolding this missions conference. We've gotten a small glimpse into the heart of God.

As we've listened, as we've considered the many things that were said, as we've attended the workshops, we've gotten a small glimpse into the heart of God. And I say small, I make that on purpose, that emphasis.

It's a small glimpse, dear brothers and sisters, how He longs after the world that does not know and that has not heard. God longs after that world. It only takes us a few minutes ourselves just to sit here in the quiet in the evening and look at those pictures and look down into the soul of all of those different kinds of people.

And there's something inside of our own hearts, there's something happens in our own hearts as we look upon those people. How much more, God? We've heard about the cry of the lost in this world. Again tonight, we've gazed into their faces and their hearts.

We looked at the cry of the animists. We heard the cry of Ishmael last evening. So beautiful, such a good, deep look into the history of a people whom God loves. Amen? Today we learned about our neighbors, didn't we?

Such a beautiful word. And oh, how my heart thrilled to hear Brother J. Irvin Fox get up here and talk to us about the city. What a testimony he is of Christ in a city where no one else seems to want to go.

God's Desire to Save the Most Lost

But those cries, those burdens, they can be overwhelming, can't they? They can be even despairing. I thought as I sat and watched this evening at, you know, the sin of neglect and some of the pictures that we looked at as we considered the sin of neglect, because we know what happens when people don't hear.

And the months turn into years and the years into decades and whole lives are just lost down a tube of a Christless eternity and whole lives just go into debauchery and filled with evil and demons and all kinds of things.

And you look into the faces of some of those evil men and it's overwhelming. You think, whoa, what do we do with that? How do you reach that? Yes, it can be a bit overwhelming and even despairing when you look at those things through human eyes.

But God says, these are the very people that I want to save. Do you believe that? My, some of the beautiful missionary stories that I've read. Just recently read another one of one of the fiercest chiefs in Zulu land in South Africa.

Everyone was afraid of him. He looked just like one of those fellows we looked at tonight. He struck terror in the hearts of everyone who saw him. He killed people everywhere he went. But I believe it was John Mott who was not afraid to go and talk to that chief.

And all the people warned him, if you go near that man, he will kill you and cut you up and eat you for dinner. But somehow John Mott, he saw something deeper than that. And he went and he sat down with that man and he looked into the eyes of one of those terrible looking men that we looked at tonight and preached the gospel to him.

And the spirit of God gripped that man's heart and he got bored. He became one of those many where the scripture says, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new and all things became new in that wild man's heart and life.

And he became the friend of the missionary. And when the missionary was sick and dying and he didn't know if he was going to live any longer, that wild, fiery, terror stricken man humbly waited at the feet of the missionary and bathed his sweating brow with towels and water and cared for him and got him back up on his feet again.

How can it be that a wild man like that who killed multitudes of people could be turned into a lamb who would kneel down at the missionary's bedside and stay up all night bathing his brow, his sweating brow as he sweat with malaria?

How can this be? The most evil of beasts. He can do it. These are the very people that God wants to save. The ones who were not a people shall be called the people of the living God. Well, how do you get from that despairing place to a place where you could believe that God could change a soul like that?

God has given us promises, brothers and sisters. Precious promises. Beautiful, motivating, inspiring, prophetic certainties. Promises about these very people. Promises that we might pray believing prayers.

Promises that call those things that be not as though they already are. Promises. Promises about the Gentiles, the heathen, the tribes, all the other peoples of the earth. God, in his word, has given us promises.

Promises that apply to the people that we looked at this evening. Promises that apply to the worst of them. God has given us promises by which we can rest on, that we can stock our lives in. God's promises.

I'd like us to read a couple of those in the Old Testament as we prepare to look a bit at this matter of prayer. I'd like us to look at some of these promises that God says about the heathen. There are so many of them, I wasn't sure where to start.

It was very interesting to me as I was studying this afternoon, again, to note words. Words are important, aren't they? Words are powerful. Especially when they're words in this book. Because the words in this book are not just words.

Amen? They're God-breathed words. And if God breathes words out over and over again, we should take note to that. And I took note as I was studying today that the word Gentile doesn't appear very many times in the Old Testament.

But when I came to the book of Isaiah, remember Isaiah? That gospel prophet, Isaiah, the Messianic prophet. When I came to the book of Isaiah, there it was.

Gentile, Gentile, Gentile. All down through there, Gentile.

And again, my heart thrilled as I realized that that is exactly where the Apostle Paul went. After his experience on the road to Damascus. As he left Damascus and went into Arabia. It says he went there, he conferred not with flesh and blood.

But he went into Arabia and searched the scriptures. And he was looking for that word, Gentile. And he found it repeatedly in the book of Isaiah. Interesting to me. I don't know if you find that interesting, but I do.

Isaiah's Vision of Gentile Conversion

But here in the book of Isaiah in chapter 60, we have one of those passages that I'm sure the Apostle Paul came on. And found new light and new strength and new inspiration and new vision. As he read these words in Isaiah chapter 60 in verse 1.

Arise, shine, for thy light is come. And we know what thy light is now. We're way down here past the New Testament day. We know what thy light is come is. We know that Jesus is the light of the world.

He's the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. That's who Jesus is. Arise and shine, for thy light is come. And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. And I don't know what your Bible says at the top of it.

But my Bible says, the conversion of the Gentiles. What does yours say at the top? Does it say something like that? Say it again. The glory of the church in the abundant access of the Gentiles. There it is.

For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth. And gross darkness shall cover the people. But that doesn't matter. That doesn't matter if gross darkness covers the people because Jesus is the light of the world.

And when you put darkness and light together, things begin to happen, don't they? When darkness and light come together, darkness always flees and light always wins. Do we believe that this evening, brothers and sisters?

Gross darkness covers the people. But the Lord shall arise upon thee and his glory shall be seen upon thee. Isaiah is speaking prophetically of the glory of God upon the church. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

What God is saying there is simply this. This darkness that has covered the people. These Gentile people that are in darkness. These multitudes of people that we've been looking at on the screen the last two evenings.

We can look at them and clearly we can say, surely darkness is covering those people. They are in darkness. They live in darkness. They walk in darkness. But the glory of the Lord shall arise and light upon thee and they will be able to see the light.

Lift up thine eyes round about and see. All they gather themselves together. They come to thee. Thy son shall come from far and thy daughter shall be nursed at thy side. Then shalt thou see and flow together.

And thine heart shall fear and be enlarged. Because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee. The forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. Can you imagine the apostle Paul reading those words as he's searching out the heart of God and what he's supposed to do with what happened to him on the road to Damascus?

Because Ananias told him, God is sending you to the Gentiles. And you're going to suffer many, many things. But God is going to use you to bring this light to the Gentiles. I'm sure for one thing, his heart was affirmed as he read those things.

But I'll tell you what else happened as he began to read those things. The thing that happened inside of his heart is faith began to rise up in his heart. Because you see, these are the words of God. And faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

And I believe that faith began to rise up in Paul's heart as he began to realize, these things are going to happen. God said they're going to happen. And if God said they're going to happen, then they're going to happen.

Amen? Because he's the God who calls the things that be not as though they already are. The conversion of the Gentiles. Beautiful words, but brothers and sisters, these are promises as we look at them here this evening.

As we consider the whole subject, the whole idea of prayer and believing prayer in light of missions. God wants us to believe verses like this. Because God wants to do this. He's not finished yet. Turn with me also to one other reading.

Malachi's Promise of Worship Among the Nations

There are many we could go to, but I found it in my heart to go to Malachi chapter 1 and verse 11. You know that verse? This one must have thrilled Paul's heart as he came upon this verse in Malachi. In verse 11.

And in Malachi chapter 1, you know, God is kind of sharing the grief of his heart with Israel. He's saying in the flow of the context here, you're not doing right, you're not following me, you're not representing me right.

And this is kind of the burden of the flow of these verses. But right in the middle of that, the prophet Malachi just bursts forth this beautiful prophetic promise about what God's going to do in the future.

And he says in verse 11, For from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name, my name shall be great among the Gentiles. And in every place incense shall be offered unto my name.

And a pure offering for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. Now what God is saying in that beautiful prophetic verse there, he's saying, my son is going to come. The lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world is going to come.

And because of that offering, because of that sacrifice, because of that atonement, I'm going to call out a people unto my name from all the heathen lands, from all the Gentiles. And you can look at it from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.

That's a long ways. In other words, from one side of the world to the other, from the east to the west and all the way back around again. There's going to be a people who are offering up a pure sacrifice unto me.

A pure sacrifice? Yes, a sacrifice made pure by the blood of Jesus Christ. Paul read those verses. You can imagine how despairing it must have been for him at first as he began to ponder the thought that God wants to send me to the Gentiles.

And you know, there were lots of people just like that in Paul's day also. We look at it and it kind of scares us and it overwhelms us and we wonder, oh, what could we do? How would we ever help somebody like that?

But the truth of the matter is, God is the one who will help them. He is the one. Malachi 1 and verse 11 so clearly states what God is wanting to do. Brothers and sisters, these become promises that we can rest upon as we look at this whole matter of prayer.

Because if you know that God is going to do this, and He is, that changes your prayers. Very much so. In Revelation chapter 5, I believe it is, we see the end of this whole thing. In Revelation chapter 5, we see the whole process completed.

Revelation's Multitude From Every Nation

That process of asking and receiving the heathen for thine inheritance. When we look at the book of Revelation, we are at the end of that whole process. All the years have gone by. The centuries have come.

The centuries have gone. God's people have come. They have passed on. Others have come. And the centuries have passed away. And now we are in eternity. As we look into the book of Revelation here, what does John see in Revelation chapter 5 and verse 9?

Here is what he hears and here is what he sees. A group, a multitude of people. And they sung a new song saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof. For thou was slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.

Out of every kindred and every tongue and every people and every nation. And hast made us unto our God. Kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth. Now brothers and sisters, it might be a little easier for us to read those verses.

Being who we are, being in the context that we live in, it might be easier for us to read those verses and think, Yeah, yeah, someday I'm going to be a king or a priest unto God. But when you let your mind go back a little and look at some of the faces of some of those people that we looked at this evening, it may be a little bit harder to stretch yourself and get your mind around that and say, Yes, God wants to make a king or a priest out of that one.

And I know they have to make their choice just like we made our choice. I know they've got some deep repenting to do in order for that to happen. But bless God, if I understand my Bible right, there's going to be some out of every nation and kindred and tongue and people.

They're going to be there. And if they're going to be there, that means it's a done deal. Amen? It's already been done. It's not a matter of whether it's going to be done or not. It's just a matter of who's going to do it.

Because it's going to be done. Oh, the joyful opportunity that we have to open our hearts and begin to grasp and to put our minds around the truth and the reality of what God would still want to do in this our day among some of those kind of people that we looked at.

Those are not old pictures that you're looking at. Those are like today pictures. Six months ago pictures. A year ago pictures. Maybe three years ago pictures. These are the peoples of the world where we live, brothers and sisters.

These verses and many others like them inflame the heart with vision and infuse the heart with faith. Oh, God can do that. God wants to do that. These verses and many others like them instruct our human hearts to pray believing prayers.

These promises make prayers bold and confident and inspire a holy audacity. Because God's word is sure. And what God says. He cannot lie. He cannot lie. Promises like these take care of all the lame and the timid asking.

You know? You know how some of our prayers can be? You know, we just kind of say the things that we know we're supposed to say. But when we begin to look at promises like this, they move our prayers out of the realm of just saying what we're supposed to say and into the realm of believing that God will actually hear the prayer that I'm praying and do something in those people because I'm praying.

I don't know about you, but I do believe that. I believe that we can pray prayers that will touch the hearts of people on the other side of the world. Because we pray in accordance with the heart of God, the will of God, and the word of God.

So promises like this, there's no mere lame and timid asking, but rather a confidence which flows from a faith-filled heart. God will do it. It was very interesting to me as I studied and prepared for this message, studying a bit of the history of missions 150 years ago, which would go back to 1860, 1870, 1880, back in there, and to see the powerful prayer support that was underneath that movement of God in missions that planted churches in so many places where there was none at all and there were churches planted in the South Sea Islands and there were churches planted in New Zealand and there were churches planted in Australia and there were churches planted in Africa and there were churches planted in India and there were churches planted in China and there were churches planted in Korea and there were churches planted in Tibet and there were churches planted in many, many places around the world.

It was a powerful time. But, oh, brothers and sisters, that didn't just happen because somebody was willing to go. It happened because there were people at home that were praying. And some of the accounts that I read were staggering.

The accounts of weekly prayer meetings that lasted for two and three hours where a hundred people would gather together on a weekly basis and storm heaven for that country over there where the missionaries are laboring.

It's so clear, it's so beautiful and exciting to me as you study history and then you look at a subject like what I've been given to give here this evening and you realize that this is really the way that God does it.

God works in answer to believing prayers. And I know if we go by our own natural response, if we look at some of the pictures that we saw and go by our natural response, we back away from it all and say, whoa, that's way too much for me.

But come, let us reason together, brothers and sisters, let us reason together. If it's too much for me, who's going to do it? Who's going to do it in this soft and easy American society? Who's going to do it?

Persistent Prayer for the Unreached

In Luke chapter 11, you've turned there with me now, we're just kind of moving our way up into the aspect of prayer. But in Luke chapter 11, we have some beautiful encouragement to us on prayer. And, you know, there's a lot of ways that we can look at prayer.

And I preached on prayer a lot of times in my many years as a minister. But, you know, usually when you preach on prayer, you know, it's more local and, you know, it's more, you know, meet your needs and it's you don't feel well and it's, you know, take care of the need of this one in the congregation.

But but this evening, I'd like us to look a bit deeper than that and maybe cast the eyes of our heart a bit further away than just right here where we are. And I'm not saying we shouldn't pray right here where we are.

I think a good prayer meeting should cover Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. I, I do believe that that a good, solid, mature congregation ought to have a prayer meeting that covers all four of those.

But what about the ends of the earth in Luke chapter 11? We have the story there of the. Importunate friend who needed bread to to give to his friend and and we're not going to read the whole thing there, I'd like to just drop in in verse eight and go from there.

Jesus is teaching them a lesson, remember, they asked him, would you teach us how to pray? We've watched you, we've listened to you, we've seen the answers that come when you pray, would you teach us how to pray?

And Jesus tells them the story about the man who needed bread to give to his friend at midnight. And Jesus says these words in verse eight, I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needed.

Now, that word importunity means two things. For one, it means boldness, but for two, he kept on asking. He asked and he said, no, well, he asked again because of his boldness and his. Frequent asking, Jesus said, because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needed.

Now he's going to teach us something about prayer. And this evening, let's just think about prayer in light of this world that needs to hear yet. Just think about prayer that way. And I say unto you, ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be open unto you.

For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be open unto you. Now, just let's just think of that in light of missions this evening and in light of a closed country or a closed people or a hard people or a difficult field over here or there, let's just consider these verses here, because what Jesus is saying is this is something that you need to do.

You need to ask and keep on asking and keep on asking, because that's what that's what this is, this what it means. Jesus is not saying ask one time, he's saying ask like that man did get up, get out of bed, give me the bread that I need for my friend.

And Jesus said, that's how you pray. You got some place where the door shut, no problem, knock and keep on knocking and keep on knocking and the door shall be opened. I think of all the prayers that were prayed, and by the way, there were multitudes of prayers that were prayed, many people prayed, many intercessors prayed that the iron curtain would fall down.

That didn't happen by accident. It wasn't just the time. It wasn't just the communism failed. There were intercessors around the world that was storming God's throne. God, bring down that wall. Bring down that wall, Lord.

Lord, bring down that wall. I mean, you look at that wall and it's still there and it's still there and a year goes by and it's still there and a year goes by and it's still there. But there were people, there were intercessors who prayed.

Some of the beautiful examples of intercessory prayer that you'll find in in the biography of Reese Howells, who was an intercessor, there's staggering answers to prayers, people gather themselves together and united their hearts together and storm God's throne.

Just like this. But when you consider all this in light of missions, what God is simply saying to us is here are the promises. I will do this. Here's the reality. Revelation chapter five, it is finished now.

Who will pray this one through? Could I find a few that would pray this one through in Luke chapter 18? He speaks a parable and he speaks the parable unto them to this end that men are always to pray and not to faint again, focusing on the world tonight.

There is a tendency to faint, isn't there? There's a tendency to go by what you see, there's a tendency to go by the sight of the eye and look at the circumstances and say nothing's happening. But things are happening, you just can't see it all, but it's happening.

But Jesus gives this story, this this this this parable to encourage us that we always keep on praying and not faint because we do faint, don't we? Amen, we faint again, I'm not going to read it all because I have a few more that I want to cover here, but in verse six through eight, you know, this is the story of the unjust judge and the woman who wanted to be avenged of her adversary.

And I I think of the people grouped around the world who need somebody who will stand up for them and let them be avenged of their adversaries. Would there be somebody would keep on knocking on the door of the unjust judge that the peoples of the world might be avenged of their adversaries?

In verse six, Jesus, after finishing to tell the story, then he makes the application and brings it right home to our hearts and says in verse six, and the Lord said, hear what the unjust judge saith and shall not God, who is a just judge, by the way, not an unjust one, a just one, shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them, I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth or shall he find this kind of faith on the earth? This kind of faith who will storm heaven for some group of people on the other side of the world, who will storm heaven for some needy tribe of people who never heard, will he find this kind of faith on the earth when he comes?

These are examples of importunity that Jesus encourages us with these two examples. First of all, start, but after you start, don't give up, don't give up. Keep on praying because the promises have already been given.

And we read the last chapter of the book. Amen. You know, there are intercessors all over the world that we don't even know about. They're the ones that open up many of these doors. You know, we'll never know until we get to eternity, but look at the concumbers and the degombers.

Look at the gongers as the doors open up there and you realize, wow, this is a fruitful field. We just walked right into a fruitful field. That wasn't happenstance, somebody prayed, somebody's prayed.

Prayer According to God's Will

In first John, chapter five, we have another illustration of prayer, and this one emphasizes the praying according to the will of God. In first John, chapter five, in verse 14 and 15, we have the emphasis made on praying in the will of God.

Well, we just read the will of God, didn't we? Concerning the peoples of the world. But listen to what John says to us here. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us.