The Power of Travailing Prayer — Mark Greening

If I don't care, why should God? That is a question that goes through my mind very often when it comes to prayer and praying for the lost and praying for revival. With respect to prayer, very often we have not because we ask not, and sometimes we ask not because we really don't believe God will give us what we ask of Him.

When I struggle like this, it is nothing short of spiritual apathy and this attitude is an offense to our loving God because what I'm really saying is I don't believe God will act and answer my prayers.

You see, that was the mindset of the Israelites in Zephaniah 1 .12 where we read at that time, I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think the Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.

That's an amazing attitude in light of the fact that God says that the effectual fervent prayers of righteous men and women availeth much. That is a promise, brothers and sisters. It is one of the 7 ,487 promises in the Bible.

Now, I remember hearing that statistic years ago and I wondered what the source was and I discovered that Time Magazine ran an article on that back in 1957, the year I was born. And they ran an article on a man by the name of Everett Storms from Kitchener, Ontario.

He was a school teacher and after reading the Bible for 27 years, he decided to embark on this task, this formidable task of determining how many times God promised something to us and he came up with a total after 18 months of 7 ,487 promises and as the Scripture says, let God be true and every man a liar.

Do you believe that God can answer your prayers? We often think that for God to begin hearing and answering prayers personally or corporately for revival and for salvation, that it takes a group or a congregation or concerts of prayers carefully scheduled and organized and orchestrated across the nation.

But that is not necessarily the case. In Ezekiel 22, 30, God says I look for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it but I found none.

The Lord is telling us here that the prayers of one man, one woman, one young person are so important to him. They are so important to him that the fate of the whole nation could have been averted by the prayers of just one person.

The question I want to answer this morning and ask as well for each one of us is what kind of prayer is a prayer that availeth much according to James 5, 16? What kind of prayers will change people? Other brothers and sisters in Christ who are struggling with a besetting sin.

Those who are struggling with blind spots and rebellion, the lost around us. What kind of prayers avail much? James says the effectual fervent prayers. Those are the kind of prayers that avail much. That takes into account prevailing prayer.

We're all familiar with prevailing prayer but have you ever considered or do you know about the power of travailing prayer? This morning I would like to talk on travailing prayer. To define prevailing prayer, I like to describe it as the definition, it is an expression of the grief of the heart of God.

In Romans 8, 26 we read in the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And just as the Holy Spirit uses our mouths to witness on His behalf, and just as He uses our hands to serve on His behalf, so He uses our hearts and emotions to grieve and weep and plead on His behalf as well.

Years ago I read about people travailing in prayer but over the past 18 years, the Lord has allowed me to witness and experience this phenomenon amongst individuals as well as in larger groups. And the effects of this kind of prayer have been nothing less than remarkable.

In a few minutes, I'd like to recount to you some of the stories of travailing prayer and the power therein. But before I do that, I want to lay a scriptural basis for travailing prayer so that you understand that I'm not promoting some new technique or methodology or fleshly effort to accomplish the things of the Spirit of God.

Then I want to conclude with an encouragement from the Word of God as to how to prepare for this type of ministry in our own lives and in the lives of our churches. In Scripture, the word travail is used to liken the anguish of childbearing to the anguish of prayer over the burdens of God, specifically for the souls of the lost.

This principle comes through in Isaiah 66, 8 where we read that as soon as Zion travails, she brought forth her children. Now, I was present for the birth of my two boys, and I can assure you that children are not born naturally without pain.

And if this is true in the natural realm, should we expect less in the spiritual realm? Is it possible to see happen in the spiritual realm what is impossible in the natural? Can spiritual children be born without soul travail?

If we can weep for a loved one who has died and gone to be with the Lord, should we not much more weep for a lost soul? A precious soul? A priceless soul? Who will be soon crossing into eternal torment where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and the worm dieth not?

Is it not better to weep and travail for a season than for others to weep and wail for eternity? Ecclesiastes 3, verse 4 talks about a time to weep and a time to mourn. And if the harsh reality of a soul entering the despair of darkness of eternal torment, if that is not a time to weep and mourn, I don't know what is.

How little of the Lord's compassion do we possess when we cannot even weep for the lost? But what joy follows those who have learned to weep over the things that break the heart of God? Psalm 126, five, we read, those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him. And according to this passage, tears are often the down payment on the answers we seek from God.

The first time ever I heard about travailing prayer was from a cassette tape a missionary from Operation Mobilization gave me. It was a tape by Leonard Ravenhill. And I remember a verse he quoted from Isaiah 30, verse one, when Rachel was pleading with Jacob, she was barren, and she said these words to him, she pled with him, and she said, give me children or I die.

If any of you have ever heard Leonard Ravenhill preach or you've listened to him on sermonindex .net, you will know that his words have a way of fastening themselves in your heart like barbs. I never forgot the way he pled, give me children or I die.

Not long after hearing that message, I entered the pastorate and I'll never forget my first board meeting, they presented me with this big manual, a strategic planning manual that the board had put together with great effort and pride.

Contained therein were all the things that we were telling God he was gonna do for us and through us. We had the audacity to tell God how many people he was gonna save each year over five years. It was a marvel to men and angels alike.

The problem was the committee had failed to read Lamentations 3 .17 where God says, who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Despite all our good intentions and wise planning, the Lord was not following our plan.

People were not coming to the Lord and our numbers weren't increasing. And as elders, we became burdened. Burdened because we realized all of a sudden that God's thoughts were not our thoughts and neither were his ways our ways.

Then we stumbled across that sobering truth of Jeremiah 8 .20 where we read, the harvest is past, the summer has ended and we are not saved. Since my people are crushed, I am crushed. I mourn and horror grips me.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.

Have you ever wept for the lost? Can you weep in light of the message our brother Edgar preached this morning in light of coming judgment? I remember when that truth finally struck us as elders. First we grieved and wept over our own sin and then over the lost around us.

You know, I've been to many revival prayer meetings over the years and very often revival prayer meetings involve prayers that preach at others instead of preaching to ourselves. Seth Joshua used to preach.

He used to preach, oh Lord, bend us. And a young man by the name of Evan Roberts started praying that and got convicted and he stopped short and he said this, oh Lord, no, bend me. Judgment begins in the house of God.

And first God had to deal with me as the pastor of that church. He had to prepare my heart and break up the fallow ground. I remember hearing one of these tapes. I think it was this OM missionary Mike Hack who gave it to me.

I remember hearing about General Booth. He prayed this wonderful prayer. He says, Lord, I pray that all of my elders would be dangled for one minute over the mouth of hell and they would be so transformed by what they saw that they would never backslide again.

Well, I thought that was kind of an interesting illustration and so I said to myself, well, I'm gonna modify that prayer. I kind of like what Isaiah did. You know, he was there and saw the glory of God and so I said, Lord, I don't wanna see hell.

I'd rather see the glory of God and Lord, if I saw the glory of God, I know I'd never backslide again. I'd be a changed man. So Lord, would you show me your glory? Now, I wasn't looking for a vision or an experience, folks.

You have to understand, I just wanted something. You know, some touch by God so that I could preach more powerfully or something. I don't know what I was looking for. God didn't answer my prayer and didn't answer my prayer and days went by and a couple weeks went by and I was minding my own business in my apartment, kneeling.

I was all alone and as I began to pray and this happened, it doesn't happen that often, but it was so clear in prayer, I just, I saw myself. We used to have a country place in Vermont and I had the onerous task as a teenager without seniority in the home of digging up the cesspool and changing it.

I wanna tell you, that's no fun. That's not a fun task. And I saw myself back there in Vermont in the middle of that cesspool with my nose just above the sludge line. And it was as clear as I'm looking at you today and I said, oh God, what is this that I see?

What is this? God spoke to my heart and He says, Mark, that's the way I see your sin. And I said, surely not I. I remember those words. Surely that's not my sin, God. Surely Lord, that is the sin of the prostitutes and the drug dealers down at King and Jameson and in the Parkdale era of Toronto where I used to lead teams to go and we would witness to them, take them out to coffee and we'd hand out tracks and we'd share Christ with those souls.

I said, that's their sin. That's not my sin. And I'll never forget what the Lord spoke to my heart. It was so clear. He says, Mark, that is your sin. And that's the way I see your sin because when those people sin, they do what comes naturally but when you sin, you sin against knowledge and light.

Your sins are worse in my sight. Some of you have grown up in Christian homes. Many of you, by God's grace, have been spared from many of the big sins but I want to tell you something, brothers and sisters.

When we have grown up with the law, when we have grown up with the knowledge of right and wrong and when we sin against that, our sins are more grievous. We can pray for the politicians. We can pray for the abortionists.

We can pray for all of the people all around but do you know when they sin, they do what comes naturally but brothers and sisters in Christ, when we sin, we sin against knowledge and light and our sins are more grievous in God's sight.

The Lord shall we, Mark, you have no right to preach at others and pray to others and pray for them to be convicted when you are the man. For two weeks, I wept over my sin. I prayed every day that God would take my life.

I had never seen my sin. He reminded me as if it was a panoramic view of my life of every sin I ever committed. I didn't know how sinful I had been. I'll tell you the rest of the story at the end of the message but that's what God had to do to prepare me and then God started working on the elders board.

I'll never forget another man, one of the funniest elders I ever knew. Great sense of humor but he loved the Lord at the same time we had lots of fun. He was a controller of a company, an engineering company in Oakville where I live and I've been sharing these truths.

The Lord began burdening us for revival and for the souls of the lost in our church. You see in our churches, you wanna know why many of our churches don't grow? That's because we're trying to preach to corpses to make them dance and it became very abundantly clear that if the sign of a Christian is the fruit of the spirit then how many in our congregation did not even know the Lord and one day I began praying, oh Lord, you're breaking me, you're showing me but oh Lord, raise up, leaders first to pray.

One day I get a phone call from this fellow elder. Dave said to me, I didn't know who it was on the phone, all I could hear was weeping and crying on the other end and I said, who is this? He says, it's Dave.

I said, Dave, what's wrong, are you okay? He says, no, I'm not. I said, where are you? He says, I'm at work. I said, what are you doing? He says, I'm on my knees crying behind my desk. I said, is the door to your office?

He had a private office. I said, are the doors shut so that no one sees you? He says, yeah, I shut them first but I can't get off my knees, I'm weeping. I said, what are you crying over? He says, I'm crying over my sin.

God has revealed my sin to me. I said, come, come, leave work early, come, we'll come pray. He came to my apartment that night and we began to weep and pray, praying for the lost in our community. I remember that verse that says that God would turn the heavens to brass and the ground to iron beneath our feet.

And we said, Lord, just break through, rend the heavens and come down and begin to save in our area. And we began to pray that God would burden the hearts of the men, specifically the leaders in our church, to pray.

We began not long after that to experience the truth of Isaiah 66, eight, as soon as Zion prevailed, she brought forth her children. I'll never forget, it was December 31st, 1992, when the Lord began to save people in the most remarkable way.

Remarkable because we were not following any evangelistic technique. We were not handing out tracts or doing anything according to a plan, let alone that telephone book-sized strategic plan that was an abomination to the Lord.

We had stopped organizing and we had started agonizing, and God came. The first clue that God was visiting us was the fact that there was this hunger, this unexplainable hunger for God amongst the unsaved.

I'll never forget, at the back of the church one Sunday after I preached, this lady came up to me and she introduced herself to me. I said, oh, I've never seen you before. Have you been to this church?

She says, no, I don't go to church. She says, I've never been here. I said, why did you come this morning? She says, I have no idea. God woke me up and told me to come. I took my Bible, we sat down at a pew, and she came to Christ.

People would have this hunger after the service. Sometime a holy hush would come on the place. No one would move. After a while, people would get up, they would come and say that they were under conviction.

It had nothing to do with our preach. I could have preached on anything. I could have preached on creation and people were getting convicted. It didn't matter what we said. People were coming up and saying, God spoke to me about this.

What was it? Had nothing to do with my message. I remember we would open the scriptures and I would sit in front of people and it usually took 10 minutes for people to get saved. 30 seconds for me to open the scriptures and let them read and nine and a half minutes of them travailing and weeping under conviction of the Holy Spirit until they were saved.

I never let anyone in a sinner's prayer. God did it all. There were no human fingerprints on what was taking place in those days. People would hear about this. I remember there was one man in our congregation who was friends with an NHL hockey player.

He played for the Boston Bruins. Man was unsaved and he had gone to psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors and no one could help him. So this man in our congregation called down to Boston. He said, Sean, come on up.

There's someone who can help you. And so one day I was at home and all of a sudden there's a knock at the door and here this fellow shows up. He filled the door. He was a defenseman. And he says, I need help.

Can you help me? I said, what's your problem? He says, I'm gonna go home and kill my father and mother. I'm gonna kill my parents. I'm glad he said parents and not the pastor. He stood there and I thought, what am I going to do, Lord?

So I took him out to the picnic table in our backyard. We had an open backyard into a open area and I thought he's big, but I'm small and fast and I'm gonna run if he comes for me. My wife quickly assessed the situation and she went up, she's a prayer warrior.

She was praying for protection over me and our kids. And I said, Lord, what am I gonna give this fellow? I don't know what's wrong. No one can help him. And the Holy Spirit reminded me of something I read in my devotions in the book of Romans.

To this day, I still can't remember what it was. I remember in my doors reading, I said, that's a really obscure thought. It was a random thought as far as I was concerned. And the Holy Spirit said, you get him to read beginning at that verse.

I thought to myself, Lord, are you sure I'm listening to you? This is so random. I don't know what was in that passage, but he began to read. Three verses deep into the passage, he began weeping like a baby.

He wept for 10 minutes, got up, saved. He began praising God in terms that I've never heard an elder pray. He began glorifying God. He stood up, he gave me a big bear hug, left the home, I never saw him again for three years.

Three years later, Dick Sibley from Canadian Revival Fellowship came to our church to preach. And after Dick came to the back, this fellow approached me and he said, Mark, do you remember me? I said, no, I'm sorry, I don't remember you.

He says, I got saved at your picnic table three years ago. I said, brother, what happened to you? He says, I left and God began working in me. I went back to it at my church. I was discipled. He says, I'm graduating next month from Bible college.

I'm going into the pastorate. We would open the scriptures to people and scores of people, as they read the scriptures, they would weep their way into the kingdom with us saying nothing at all. Do you know that God even saved people that didn't wanna get saved?

We think it's so hard for people to get saved. Do you know that God can save people who don't even wanna get saved? Isn't that what happened to the Apostle Paul on the roads of Damascus? Was that just a coincidence?

No, the church was travailing on behalf of that man. Someone was praying for the Apostle Paul. They were travailing for him and God met him. I remember this man, he had just become a Christian. They were refugees from Vietnam.

They were Buddhists. He had come to the Lord and his wife was completely antagonistic to the gospel. And so he said to me, pastor, if you talk to my wife, she will get saved. And I said, I don't save anybody.

I don't lead anybody to the Lord. I will let them read scripture. I will pray with them. I will point them to Christ, but I don't lead anyone to the Lord. He says, well, I wanna get to you. I said, okay, why don't you come over this Friday, bring your wife, we'll have dinner at our house, and I'll talk to her.

So this woman came. She didn't wanna be there. You could see it all over her face. Probably I discerned with the gift of discernment that God gave me because she couldn't understand English. And so I sat there and here he is with his Vietnamese wife and her English was very halted and she'd never learned French.

I understand some speak French, so I couldn't speak French to her. And so I tried my best in English to communicate with her. And so I told her the testimony of her husband. And I said, you know, your husband wanted you to come hear something tonight and I'm just gonna tell you why he's so excited and why his life's changed.

And I told her the gospel through the context of her husband's salvation. And at the end, I said to her, would you like to become a Christian tonight? And she sat there and she said, no. I said, do you believe these things that I've shared with you tonight?

She says, no. That was the only English she said to me the whole night. So flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit to spirit, you don't push these things. You can't, don't make people read a sinner's prayer.

So we changed the subject and 10 minutes later, she begins to cry. She's crying at the dinner table. And I thought, oh no, she doesn't like my wife's cooking. And I looked at my wife and I thought, what did you feed her?

But it tasted good. And she was just crying and crying and crying and we didn't say anything. We were used to this by now. You see, people were praying for her even while we were witnessing. And as she wept, her husband eventually started talking to her in Vietnamese.

And he looked at me and with his heavy accent, he said, pastor, I have good news for you. She's under conviction of the Holy Spirit. She's under conviction of the Holy Spirit. We weren't even talking about anything at that point.

She wept for about 10 minutes and she began praying in Vietnamese and tears of joy streaming down her face and she came out a Christian. No one knows how she got saved except by the power of God. She didn't understand anything I said, but she heard the Holy Spirit speaking to her, saying, why are you kicking against the goals?

God did the most remarkable things. The people that were getting saved in this context, they just thought this was normal. They read the book. As a matter of fact, they read the book of Acts and weren't surprised about anything.

This was the normal Christian life. I remember one man who was quite successful as a venture capitalist, living for himself, very oppressed by the enemy. Any of you got BlackBerrys? You know the BlackBerry phones?

He was the one who discovered them and invested in them. Successful businessman. He told me one day, he says, oh, I'm a Christian. I said, oh, is that so? What makes you think so? Well, he told me, well, I prayed a sinner's prayer, blah, blah, blah, but we knew that there was no fruit in his life, and so I said to him, brother, I said, or friend, I said, you don't know the Lord yet.

This is what it means to be a Christian. He says, okay, then I want to get saved. So he came over to our apartment, and for two hours, we travailed over his soul. Three of us there, my wife had some other women travailing in another house, and he was on the ground with his face to the floor, beating his fists on the carpet, saying, Lord, deliver me.

Deliver me, get this thing out of me, deliver me. And after two hours of travailing and seeking the Lord, he was saved. He understood the power of God because he had been rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loved, so he just understood God's power to save.

And one day, he and another man who had just been saved, the male, this guy who was a male model, we never thought he'd ever be saved because he had such a struggle with women, but God saved him and delivered him.

He's celibate to this day, by the way. These two men were friends, and they're saved and all excited in the Lord, and they're at Morley's apartment, and Bill gets a phone call on his cell, and he says, hello.

And the fellow said, why did you call me? Bill says, I didn't call you. Sorry, you must have, there must be a mistake. He hung up the cell, he continued talking with Morley, and all of a sudden, he gets the phone call again.

He says, hello. The man said, why did you call me? You've called me twice now. Your telephone number of your cell is coming up on my call display. So Bill said, I'm sorry. There must be a technological glitch.

I did not call you. Goodbye. And when he said goodbye, he said, God bless you. Hung up. A minute later, he got the third phone call from this man. This man said to him, why do you keep calling me? Bill remembered the story of Samuel, and he said to the man, realizing that this was divine appointment because he did not call.

This was of God. He said, sir, I don't know you, but I am a Christian. And I want to ask you a question. What were you doing when God called you? The man said, if it wasn't for you calling me three times, I was trying to jump off my balcony and commit suicide.

And you interrupted me three times. Bill says, where do you live? What is your name? He went with Morley. The man came to Christ. You see, folks, as soon as Zion prevailed, she brought forth her children.

There is power in prevailing prayer. Now, before I go on with more firsthand stories that have happened literally in the last three or four months, because I've noticed over the years, there's seasons of sowing and reaping.

Actually, sowing and weeping and reaping. I've seen three moves of God in this way. I believe I would have seen more had there been humility and people believing the promises of God. But nevertheless, we're happy for what God has done and is doing.

So I'd like to go to scripture first before we continue on with stories and see that prevailing was normal. We don't have time to fully look into this topic today, but for sake of time, we find that it was normal for the Apostle Paul.

In Acts chapter 20, 17, we read, from Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. And when they arrived, he said to them, you know how I lived the whole time I was with you. From the first day I came into the province of Asia, I served the Lord with great humility and with tears.

Most people think that they are serving God, and they only think about serving God in terms of what they do in exercising their gifts and talents and spending of their money. But have you ever considered this morning that you can actually serve God with your tears?

Ignatius, one of the early church fathers who lived at the turn of the first century, used to talk about the gift of tears. In fact, he tells us that we should pray for this great gift that our hearts be so moved by God that we are moved to tears and that we grieve over the things that grieve the heart of God.

Phineh tells us that when he had no words to utter, he would only groan and weep when pleading with God about the souls of the lost. The Apostle Paul lived like this. He says that he lived with them for years with tears.

But he doesn't tell us what the weeping was about. But I believe a clue is found in Galatians 4 .19 where he said, my little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. They were Christians, but they had fallen into legalism.

I want to say something, that legalism and traditionalism is deadly and dangerous because it makes a person feel spiritual even when they're not. I would rather deal with a drug addict with a prostitute than try to convert a legalistic Christian who thinks they're saved because they already got all the right answers.

They have all the right theology. These people, they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their rules are but what? Traditions taught by men. And so Paul travailed in prayer because somehow these Christians, had they had started with grace, they were taught about grace, but they were going back to the law.

Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't eat this. Don't go here. Don't go there. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. They were acting out of duty instead of devotion. They were acting out of compulsion instead of compassion.

They were acting out of legalism instead of love. And he had to start travailing in prayer for them in order that the meek and the mild and the loving Christ be formed in them. We often think of travailing in prayer for revival and for the lost, but I want to say this.

We need to start travailing in our churches for one another and for those who are bound by legalism and the things that keep them, the besetting sins that so easily beset. It was normal not only for the Apostle Paul, it was normal for the Lord Jesus.

And if it's true that we're to be imitators of Christ, then it is true that one of the things we should imitate in his prayer life is how he prayed. In Hebrews 5, 7, we're given a glimpse into how Jesus prayed.

We read, during the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears. Jesus himself was a wonderful example of travailing in prayer on behalf of others. Until recently, I never noticed that in the story of Lazarus and his rising from the dead, that Jesus actually started to travail before the miracle took place.

Starting in verse 32 of that chapter, we read this. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled, and said, where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come and see.

And then we read, Jesus wept again. Here we learn that Jesus had such a burden over this situation that he not only groaned, he actually wept. He wept tears, real tears. And he wasn't crying, folks, because Lazarus was dead, because he knew he was going to raise him from the dead.

He was crying because his tears were showing the compassion for the human race bound by the curse of death, from which it could not loose itself. He was crying because of the lostness and unbelief of others around him.

And then in verse 38, we pick up the story. Jesus therefore again, groaning in himself, went to the grave, and it was a cave, and a stone lay across it. And Jesus said, take the stone away. And Martha, the sister of him that was dead, said to him, Lord, by this time he smells, for he had been dead four days.

And Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you'd believe, you would see the glory of God? Notice that Jesus was still in travail up until the point he came to that tomb. And in that state of mind, that travailing of spirit, he uttered the command for Lazarus to come forth, and the miracle was accomplished.

Of course, the greatest travail of all time was the travail in the Garden of Gethsemane before being crucified for the sins of the world. Luke 22, 44, we read, and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

And what was the result of his travail? We read about it in Isaiah 53, 11. He shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. Why? By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many. And folks, it's not just the fact that Jesus died that saves people.

Have you ever thought of that? It's not just the fact that Jesus died that saves people. It is the fact that he travailed in his soul, that salvation has been brought to you and me and to those who will come to know him.

And in case we question this, the Lord reinforces this point in the next verse in verse 12 of Isaiah 53. We read, and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Is it any wonder our evangelistic techniques are so anemic?

Is it any wonder that some of the stats in our evangelistic crusades are that only 2 darken the door of a church a year later after praying a sinner's prayer? Can spiritual birth take place without travail when it does not happen physically in the natural realm?

The answer is no. And as Christians, as pastors, as churches, we cannot minimize the importance of travailing for the purposes of bringing about salvation to the lost and revival amongst God's people.

That is why we read in Joel 2 .17, let the priest, you know, we are a royal priesthood, all of us here today. You are a royal priesthood. I am a priest along with you, according to 1 Peter 2 .9. Let the priests who minister before the Lord weep between the temple porch and the altar.

Let them say, spare your people, O Lord. Over the past six months, the Lord has, in a new way, impressed upon our church fellowship the importance of travailing in prayer. I'd like to share with you some recent stories.

There are so many that I would run out of time and I'm going to try to keep to my timeframe here. But the Lord began to burden first the sister and then others in our church about the meaning of travailing prayer.

And in our prayer meetings, by the way, almost everyone who comes on Sunday also comes to prayer meeting. And sometimes more prayer is done on Sunday than on our Wednesday prayer meeting because usually people don't leave until around 10 o 'clock at night.