The Anatomy of Prayer — Leonard Ravenhill

Hannah’s Prayer and the Anatomy of Intercession

We read tonight from the first book of Samuel. First book of Samuel, the first chapter. Now there's a certain man of Ramothane's orphans, of Mount Ephraim. His name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zeph, and Ephrathai.

He had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, the name of the other was Penina. Penina had children but Hannah had no children. And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Siloam.

And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineth, the priests of the Lord were there. And when the time was that Elkanah offered he gave to his wife, Penina, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions.

But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion for he loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up her womb. And her adversary also provoked her sore for to make a fret, because that the Lord had shut up her womb.

And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her and therefore she wept and did not eat. Then said Elkanah her husband to her, Hannah, why weepest thou? Why eatest thou not?

Why is thy heart grieved? Am I not better to eat than ten sons? So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Siloam and after they had drank. Now Eli the priest sat upon a seat by a post of the temple of the Lord.

And she was in bitterness of soul and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore. And she vowed to vow and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me and not forget thine handmaid, but will give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life and there shall no razor come upon his head.

And it came to pass as she continued praying before the Lord, Eli marked her mouth. Now Hannah she spake in her heart, her lips moved but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli, and he was the priest, thought she was drunken.

And Eli said unto her, how long will thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee. And Hannah answered and said, no my Lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord.

Let me again just thank you for the offering, which is useful. I, I guess you notice I drive a nice new Cadillac. And you sure say, well it must be profitable to be a preacher. It's not a new one, it's last year's model.

And it has 12 ,000 miles on it. And I met a man and he said, you know, I think the Lord wants me to give you a Cadillac. And I said, you know, I think the Lord wants me to receive it. And so I got a Cadillac, but you know he didn't give it to me, he charged me ten dollars for it.

But it's a bargain, you can't get a good car under that these days. And the offering will support my son, who's my chauffeur and my prayer partner, and my other son who's back home from the mission field.

So I want to thank you for that. Tomorrow I want to speak, and Thursday and Friday in the noon hour. Wednesday David's going to speak. I just asked the pastor, he said it's okay. I wanted to share a message on binding the strong man.

So Wednesday at noon David will be speaking. Then instead of having the prayer meeting on Friday night, this week we're going to have the prayer meeting on Thursday night. Now that may involve a little more sacrifice, but prayer, sacrifice is basic to prayer anyhow.

And David and I are going to get out of town as quickly as we can, Saturday morning, try and get home for Saturday night. So we couldn't pray till two o 'clock as we did last week, and then drive, it wouldn't be very safe.

So will you remember that the prayer meeting on Thursday night, I think we should go straight into the prayer meeting. Now not have a gap for half past ten, fast from your coffee for once. And let's go straight into the prayer meeting.

And I'm sure God will bless us in it. And if I could urge you to do one thing, it would be to stand by the pastor more than ever in that period of prayer. Listen I'll tell you this, and you'll shoot me down and I don't care.

And in any case lots of churches won't have me, so that doesn't worry me too much. But you know there are not many churches, Baptist churches included, in America where they have a half night of prayer anymore.

They have a half night for a single, but not many churches want a half night of prayer. And if you don't stand behind this pastor I'll get him a new job. I know two churches now want a real good pastor and he really qualifies.

I haven't told him that. Were you listening? All right well, but I'm not, I could get him a real lovely job, a wealthy church. He could have his own yacht and boy he could have a great time. I won't tell you where it is.

But I'll tell you what, he's a rare species of a man these days. Amen. Why don't we all say praise the Lord. All right thank you, thank you. Save a little for me afterwards. This is a very beautiful chapter on prayer.

Prayer as Spiritual Warfare

If I were to put a title on this I would call it the anatomy of prayer. I think all the essential ingredients for the highest form of prayer are found here in this chapter. You know well enough that in the end of Ephesians chapter 6 Paul talks about the church putting on the whole armor of God.

True prayer is warfare. And when he has described the armaments that we have, he uses this phrase which is not mentioned very often. He says praying with all prayer and supplication. I think there is, he's suggesting, at least as I understand it, he's saying that every type of prayer should be involved.

Now there are very, very many different levels of prayer. There is the average prayer, the prayers we say by our bedside. There's the prayer of the intercessor. There's the prayer of supplication. And then you have the highest, in my judgment, of all prayer.

It is the prayer of the intercessor. Norman Grubb wrote a book. I think the best book he's written, though he's written a lot of good books. He has a book called Reef Howell's Intercessor. How many of you read Reef Howell's Intercessor?

Good, everybody should read it. It's a very wonderful life of a Welshman who was practically uneducated. But he rose to the place of being an intercessor. Now look, if two people are talking and I go in and say something, then obviously I interrupt them.

I put myself between two people who are talking, I'm an interrupter. If two people are doing something and I barge into that, I'm an interferer. In other words, I project myself between two situations.

Now it's very good to pray. It's very good to join a team that we sometimes say, well that church has a, uh, they have a bunch of prayer warriors. Well I think that's very wonderful too. But I believe the highest form of prayer is when I dare to pray and say that that situation, I'll put myself between two situations and the answer will come through me.

Again, as in the case of Abraham. You see, even in the Word of God, there are not many real examples of intercession. You have the example of course of Moses standing between a God of wrath and the sin of the people.

And you remember that he stirs up God. It's not a case of God getting hold of Moses, it's Moses getting hold of God and God says, let me go. And Moses says, I will not let thee go. You have the case of a man standing between judgment and Sodom and Gomorrah with all its iniquity.

You know, the world right now has not much respect for the Church of the Living God. But you know, I better, we better tell it something. The only reason the world isn't burning like Sodom and Gomorrah right now is because the Church is here, that's all.

We may be pretty weak, we're still the salt of the earth. And yet if there is going to be an end-time revival, and I believe there is, some people hang their hearts on the willow, no sir. I believe we're going to have a Pentecost that without Pentecost, Pentecost.

I believe there's going to be a final outpouring of the Spirit before the wrath of God. People said, you think the Church will go through the tribulation? Well brother, if you've been living in China the last 20 years, you'd think you'd been through it.

A man came to my office one day, I said, you don't look too happy. He said, I've just come from Taiwan. No pardon me, he came, he had just met an old college friend who had come from Taiwan. Well why did that depress you?

Because he said, my friend was told in Taiwan, you were a missionary 20 years ago, this is 10 years back now, 20 years ago in China, yes. What province? Say, Hunan province. Oh, if you go down the main street here, and turn left, and go three blocks, and turn right, and so and so, you'll see a factory, it's painted blue, and all the people in that factory are from the particular province who used to be in.

So he went in, and he saw these different China men, you know, Sing Hai, and Sing Lo, and all the others. And they were all busy working, and so he greeted one of them, and the man looked at him, and frowned, and went on with his work.

And he greeted him again in eloquent Chinese. The man ignored him. Oh, he said, I know, you don't recognize it, I'm your pastor. I got, you know, inflation's gone everywhere, and he was inflated too. And he said, and I've lost my hair.

But I'm your pastor. He said, the man's eyes filled with tears, and he said to him, you're a false prophet. That's about as comfortable, said the man, of hearing that I'm a an adulterer. I'm not a false prophet.

Do you remember that big book I had on the platform every Tuesday night, and we turned the leaf over, and I told you what the Mormons believed, I turned it over next week, I told you what Jehovah's Witnesses believed, I turned it over, and I taught you every week about, about false prophets.

Ah yes, said the China man, do you remember that behind the platform you had a great big map of the world? Russia, spanning more acreage than any other country in the world. Do you remember that from that country you had a big arrow coming down, and then another arrow, and then another arrow, and on war you had, on one you had war, and rape, and murder, and, and all the great iniquities that you said would come down upon us from communism?

The preacher began to feel a bit uncomfortable. You told us that our cities would be devastated, our churches would be burned, our Bibles would be destroyed, our women would be raped in the streets, the streets would run with blood, but you said don't you worry because you're going to be raptured.

You won't take part in this. You'll only see it from the, from the gallery. You know I saw that in a home in Canada. The young man there said my daddy's coming to dinner tomorrow night. His daddy is a multi-millionaire, you know rags to riches.

When his father came he said, my son told me about the men in Taiwan, he said you know the biggest problem in the Russian revolution that I went through was not communism, it was fundamental preachers who told us it was coming but we would be raptured.

But he said I was herded into a cattle truck. The streets ran with blood. Whether Rasputin started the revolution I don't know, but the Tsar and the others were murdered. The church has never come from being an underground institution there.

Why this Chinaman going back to the Chinaman said, I remember when the communists came in, my wife was dragged from my arms, my son was pushed in a truck, my daughter was kicked into another truck, my church was burned, our bibles were destroyed, the streets ran with blood.

What more can you have? You know there's a lot of bible interpretation just, it fits just into the economy of America tonight. If you've got yellow glasses on you'll see everything yellow. And a lot of us want to interpret the bible so it won't hurt us.

We don't want to disturb our congregations. We think that if we get enslaved then who knows that we won't. Maybe our choice again is to concentrate in prayer or pray in concentration camps, take your choice.

There is only one answer for the day in which we live again. That is a great marvelous divine intervention of mercy and power and revival. And there is no way to birth except travailing. Dear Lord if we do as many travailing preachers as we have traveling preachers, many of our preachers get more people to the Holy Land than they get to the cross.

And some of them are running out of trips. Folk are tired of going to Israel so now they have trips to Japan or somewhere else. Maybe I'll get a trip up to Siberia so we can all pray. Okay then here is the anatomy of prayer.

Hannah’s Desperate, Travail-Centered Prayer

The classic prayer. This man had two wives. That was enough to make him pray, but he had two wives. He gave to Hannah a worthy portion. She has one problem and only one problem. What's the one problem?

The Lord has shut up her womb. Apparently for years she was quite contented about this. He didn't worry her too much. But her adversary provoked her. Now notice the ingredients here. Verse 7 says that she went year by year up to this sanctuary, to the house of the Lord.

And her adversary provoked her therefore she ate, pardon me, therefore she wept. Go to the end of verse 10 it says that she wept until she was sore. Go a little further down into the 15th verse. Hannah answered and said, no my Lord I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit.

I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink that have poured out my soul unto the Lord. What did she do? She wept. She continued with a weeping until she wept, until she was sore. And then finally she says, I poured out my soul unto the Lord.

It reminds me of the Lord Jesus. He must have walked into the garden of Gethsemane. Then it says he knelt in the garden of Gethsemane. And then it says he prostrated himself in the garden of Gethsemane.

Now notice she wept and she did not eat. So she was not only weeping she was fasting. The husband says in verse 8, why weepest thou? Why eatest thou not? Why is thy heart grieved? So on top of her fasting and her weeping she's grieved in her spirit.

In verse 10 it says she's in bitterness of soul. In the middle of verse 11 it says she's having affliction. It says in verse 10 she prayed unto the Lord. Again in verse 12 she continued praying. For what?

Here is a weeping, fasting, praying, travailing moment. Now very often you you've seen the slogan I have, you've seen it so often. And and the slogan says something like this, you know prayer changes things.

Hannah wasn't praying for prayer to change things. She was praying for prayer to change her. And it's so easy to say Lord change things. It's more difficult to say Lord change me so that those things can be changed for me.

She prays for one thing. Year by year by year she goes up there into the sanctuary. She's quite happy to go there. She meets her friends. She's beautifully dressed. She knows that she has more of the affection of a husband than the other wife has.

But there comes a place where there's a full stop and she says listen I won't put up with this anymore. I'm not happy to have his affection. I'm not happy to have his attention. I'm not happy to have more of it, more of the best clothes and so forth.

This other woman that shares the home with me is a woman. She's bringing children to birth. Now the church is described as I said last night. There's a man has a hundred sheep and then you have the parable of the of the woman looking for the silver.

Because the church is always described as a woman. Because a woman brings to birth. The Lord is coming for what? A warrior on a horse? No he's coming for a bride. The woman brings to birth. This woman has one concern on it.

She goes on so far and then suddenly there's a roadblock there. Now I've said this and sometimes we misunderstood. God does not answer prayer. How many prayers have you prayed that God Almighty's never heard?

God doesn't answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer. There's a classification of these people right through the word of God. There's another case like this in the 30th chapter of Genesis. A man again has two wives.

And in the first verse of the 30th chapter it says this. When Rachel saw that she Jacob no children. Rachel envied her sister. Oh look at my sister. Now Rachel was the beauty queen of the tribe. Her sister wasn't attractive at all.

Her eyes were rather sore and she didn't have much personality. But she had everything a woman wants. She had a bunch of healthy children around her skirt. And it says when Rachel saw her sister she came to Jacob.

Oh I don't think she set her hair just right that morning. I don't think she looked to see if her dress was perfect and admired her figure and went to all the trimming. I think she came in that day with grief.

Her eyes were more red than her sister's. And she says to her husband, Jacob give me children or I die. There is one reason we don't have revival. And that is we're content to live without it. That's why.

I remember a woman saying to me once, Brother Rachel in our church we've done very well on minimum prayer. She said what would we have done if we if we prayed maximum prayer? We never have nights of prayer.

Nobody weeps in our prayer meeting. Nobody gets disturbed in our prayer meeting. Oh she said if only somehow God would give us a spirit of prayer and of supplication. There comes a point I believe in the life of every believer when you get to a plateau and either you fade out there and you become a normal weary weak Christian or on the other hand you shake it off and say God Almighty I'm not content to stay in this condition.

Give me children or I die. One of the greatest characters in the in the church in the history of the church in Scotland surely was John Knox. He was a great preacher. I think of two great events in his life.

He was preaching in St. Giles Cathedral one Sunday morning. People were hanging on the on the lights nearly, sitting on the rafters as usual. Here is this great Scottish theologian and he's going to preach one of those thundering sermons.

He went to all the preliminaries of the sermon, let the congregation sit down and then he said bow your heads. I'm going to send you home. I have no word from the Lord. Do you know many preachers that have the courage to send a congregation of about three thousand people home?

Most preachers would have warmed an old sermon up. Dear Lord I can't let these folk go home. They've come out. Think of those days there were no buses. People walked to church and they walked miles in Scotland to church.

Some of them still do. But the other thing when he prayed. Wasn't it bloody Mary that said, they tell me John Knox is praying. I'd rather hear an army is advancing on the city than hear that that man is praying.

The only thing I ask is what would have happened if two of them have been prayed. He's carrying the Lord himself. The word of God says if two of you shall agree, supporting there have been another man the other half of the battle with him.

Hannah comes to the place where she says listen I'm not I'm not content. No longer satisfied for the status quo. No longer nice to go to the best church around in our language. No longer nice just to say husband has a good job and the kids are comfortable and we've got a new car and a lovely home.

Well the gates of hell won't shake just on that attitude for sure. We're going to have to put on the whole armor of God. We're going to have to get to the place where we say Lord there is nothing in this world that allures me, satisfies me.

I'm embarrassed. And I say this before God, that tonight I'm embarrassed to be part of the church which is an embarrassment to God. I believe tonight the church of Jesus Christ is an embarrassment to God.

The Acts of the Apostles and the Church’s Spiritual Power

Right through the acts of the apostles. Somebody said that's the only unfinished book in the Bible. Old J .B. Phillips argues even with the title of the book. He says it's not the acts of the apostles, it's some of the acts of some of the apostles.

We don't have the whole record there. And again as he says this, in the church of Jesus Christ, in the acts of the apostles, it's full of vibration, it's full of life, it's full of power. They subdue kingdoms, they knock the devil out of his kingdom.

They enter into strange countries. What does it say about them? Well he says this about the church. That's all right, that brother blesses me. May give you some nerves. He doesn't give me any nerves. He always reminds me of David.

That man's been to hell and back. And David says he lifted me out of a horrible pit. If you'd been as near hell as he'd been, you'd have the smell of the place on you nearly, and you'd understand why he's so grateful.

See some of us never even felt lost. That's why we don't know we're found. We never knew without God, that we're without God, so we don't know we're really saved. J .B. Phillips says about that wonderful pen picture in the early church, this is the church of Jesus Christ.

I love to say this. I could say this every day and still be happy about it. He says in the acts of the apostles, this is the church of Jesus Christ, before it became fat and short of breath by prosperity.

This is the church before it became muscle-bound by over-organization. This is the church where they did not gather a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, they just healed the sick.

This is the church of Jesus Christ, he says, where you didn't sign articles of faith. You know you join a church now, they say, well will you think over this, and there are 10 points of doctrine, and if you can tick them all off and sign your name, you'll be one of us.

Well that should discourage you anyhow, to be one of them. But anyhow, if you sign on the bottom line, just sign articles, that doesn't take any moral courage, any gut, does it? Just say I believe what you believe in the virgin birth and the inerrant word of God, wonderful, it won't terrify the devil.

But he said they didn't sign articles of faith, they acted in faith. And he said they didn't say prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. Isn't that what Jude says in his epistle? He talks about praying in the Holy Ghost.

And in the middle of that wonderful chapter, that victory chapter in Romans chapter 8, what does it talk about there? It talks about praying with groanings that cannot be uttered. And people say that's praying in tongues.

Now all due respect to praying in tongues, but that is not praying in tongues, because God's got more sense than I have. And if he was praying in tongues, he'd say so. It's praying beyond tongues, it's praying beyond any language.

There's a piece of doggerel in the world that says, what am I? An infant's crying in the night, an infant's crying for a light with no language but a cry. You get a lovely little baby in your home, all right, everything's joyful, thrilled to death.

Till two o 'clock in the morning it works better than any alarm clock. And the thing squawks, and the lady gets out of bed, the old man, he goes on grunting. And then when the wife gets back into bed with cold feet, he says, well what's wrong with the kid?

Well it needed feeding. A couple of hours after the baby squawks again, and he says, does it need feeding again? No, it needed changing. And a bit later it squawks again, and you say, what does it need now?

Changing? Feeding? No, it was frightened. How do you know? Because I put the light on, and it stopped crying. A baby has no language but a cry. The men are too dumb to understand that, and so mother has an intuition, and she says, uh-oh, feeding time, uh-oh, needs a change, uh-oh, no.

I mean when they did it the real old way, not pampers. I mean, you know, you girls will never know the joy of washing out 50 nappies and hanging them out on the line. I wonder what you modern women do.

What are you tied out today with what? Pushing buttons all day. Button for the washer, button for the dryer, button for toasting, button for everything. What do you do with all the time you say? Well let's get back to right here.

The child has no language but a cry. The highest forms of prayer. You see, the thing is this, if you get serious about praying, you know, you know, it's not too difficult to stand up to the criticism of, uh, the contradiction of sinners.

It's the criticism of saints that gets you down. I mean, why does a man like that shout? I mean, surely if he knows he's going to shout, why doesn't he shout before he comes in church and leave it all quiet?

But why don't you shout before you go to a football match? Man kicks a piece of pig skin off. Everybody goes. The pastor told me the other day he nearly hit the ceiling when Anabama scored. That's all right.

So did a lot of you, but there you are. You know, we've got the biggest task in the world. And number one, we ought to be the most joyful people in the world. And number two, the other side of the coin, we ought to be the most sorrowful people in the world.

But you see, prayer is not constituted by how well you can pray. This race is not to the swift. This battle is not to the strong. Prayer is not constituted by how clever your vocabulary is, and you paint stained glass windows with words.

The Spirit-Filled Life and the Priority of Prayer

Hannah goes to pray. The man of God says, she must be drunk. Oh, I would to God this church was drunk tonight. I'm trying to get the church drunk. The church never does anything when it's sober anyhow.

What did it say about the men that came out of the upper roof? Do you know, they've been having a beer party up there. These men are drunk. Nobody ever thinks we're drunk, do they? They think we're dead, but they never think we're drunk.

Doesn't Paul say, be not filled with wine wherein is excess, but be filled, be not drunk, but be filled with the spirit. Why? Because there's a similarity between a drunken man and a man filled with the spirit.

The day that war broke out, second world war, I was preaching a sermon, a series of meetings in the head church of the Nazarene in Scotland. When we came out of the meeting at night, there had been a warning, pick up your gas mask as you go home.

And the preacher with me, he being a Scotsman, he wanted one, they were free. And we went down the street and he said to me, are you getting a gas mask? I said, no. He said, well stand by that street lamp.

And I stood there and he said, when I come out of that room, you know, I won't be able to see. So if you stand there, I walk across just about seven or eight feet, I'll know you're there. And I waited a long while and as I waited a streetcar came up.

They had no lights on, everything was blacked out, we were expecting a bombing that night. And the streetcar came lumbering up and it stopped right in front of me and a little Scotsman got off. And he, he was pretty well oiled, you know, well drunk and he came across and he staggered and he put his arms around the lamp post and me as well.

I was thinner than I am now. And suddenly he backed up and he says, who are you? What's your name? So I told him. Are you a Scotsman? No. He said. He rolled his sleeves up and said, can you paint? I said, no, I can't paint.

He said, can you sing? I said, no. Oh, I can sing. He's saying, Maxwell can't braise a bonnie where early falls the dew. He meant the dew, but it was near enough for a drunk man anyhow. And you know, he went on like that, asking questions, saying things.

Then suddenly he put his hand in his pocket and he pulled out a whole pocketful of silver and offered it to me. Now when a Scotsman offers you a handful of silver, you know he's drunk. He offered me a handful of silver.

He wanted to fight me. He wanted to know my history. He wanted to challenge me to sing. Well, isn't that exactly what a man does, still with a spirit? Doesn't he want to sing? Doesn't he want to fight the good fight of faith?

Shouldn't he be buoyant with testimony? He's lifted me out of the horrible pit. What he's done for me he can do for you. But here is Hannah. She's blind. She's deaf. You could have hammered that woman.

She wouldn't have cared. You could have hollered and he could have threatened anything. She's going to pursue this one thing. And you know, I believe the secret of the life of the Apostle Paul was this.

He said, this one thing I do, and I get after the preachers these days. If you really love that man of God, he's only got two things to do, according to Acts chapter 6. Give himself continually to prayer and the word of God.

He doesn't have to visit the sick in hospital. He doesn't have to bury the dead. Well, who buries the dead? The deacons. The scripture says let the dead bury the dead. But apart from that facetious remark, oh, one or two ladies looking very angry at me right now.

Could you get me a steel umbrella to go out? Because that is not the job of the deacons. They're not to stand at the door with a flower in their coat just taking the offering. Well, first of all, did you choose deacons because they're full of faith and of the Holy Ghost or because they're good businessmen?

The early church never put emphasis where we put it. And they put all the emphasis where we don't put it. Now I know there's some God, I know some deacons who can preach better than the pastor, yes. But if we're, you see, God is not obligated to bless anything outside of what is laid down in his word.

And he's laid down in his word, the preacher has only two things to do, give himself continually to prayer and the word of God. One of the greatest preachers we ever had in England. We had a lot of great Baptist preachers.

Spurgeon was one. The other was McCarran of Manchester. We had a great meeting in his church once. Went to that church, the deacons offered him the church, offered to buy him a carriage with a couple of horses and offered to build him a house and give him one of the finest salaries in the country.

He listened to all that they offered and they said, will you accept this? And he said, yes, if you accept my conditions, your conditions. You know some people think when they're hiring a pastor, you're hiring a Hertz rent a car.

He's to do what he's told, when he's told, how he's told. McCarran said, listen, I'll tell you what, I'll accept your conditions if you accept mine. Here are my conditions. Number one, you can have one of two things, my head or my feet.

If you want me to run around looking after people, visiting old ladies, drinking tea and all the rest, I'll do it. But don't expect me to get down and bring you two good sermons on the Lord's day. That is not possible.

You can have my head or my feet, one or the other, not both. They got a visiting staff. They made the deacons do what they should do according to the word of God. Visit the poor and take money from the church to help the poor.

Go to the sick in hospital, minister things, and that man preached that series of sermons, which is still a classic, you can still buy them, from Genesis right through to Revelation. All those massive sermons were preached in that century and when he preached it was pecked to the rafters.

Why? Because he gave himself continually to prayer. Now don't, don't have a preacher that says, well deacons you all do the work so I can go golfing. No sirree. He gives himself to the task of prayer.

He gives himself the task of studying the word of God. I hear preachers say, you know, I work seven days a week. I say, well you're more, now you've got more power than God. What do you mean? Well he couldn't work seven days a week, he worked six and quit.

A lady said to Spurgeon one day, well Mr. Spurgeon but, but you break the Sabbath, you work all day long. He said, lady I don't even lick a stamp on Mondays. God ordained that everybody had a day of rest.

We need it physically, we need it mentally. This woman is praying for one thing. Maybe when she went to the temple she didn't like a lot of things that were going on. Maybe there were some things in the home she didn't like.

Maybe, but there was one thing that blinded her to everything else. That was the fact that the other women round about who are functioning as a woman should function. And she isn't functioning that way, and so she comes to her husband and he says, I want to tell you here's my problem.