06-07-2020 (Online Church Service)

Park Meadows Church

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Praise the Lord for our meeting already today and all the wonderful prayer requests and the prayers that have gone up.

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I always get to hear Glenda play right before I preach, and she is anointed.

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She walks with the Lord, and that makes such a difference, and she plays beautifully.

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Thank you, Glenda, for that. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. We'll get started here.

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Lord, we just thank you for this time of our service. We ask you to speak to our hearts through your

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Word, and may your Holy Spirit amplify and enlarge the meaning of it in our hearts to the extent that we can hold it all.

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You know exactly what that extent is, and so help us to grow so that we can hold even more truth about our

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Lord and love for you and for each other. And Lord, we ask you to bless this time, and may you be our teacher in Jesus' name.

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Amen. All right, so let's review a little bit as we go through the book of Romans verse by verse.

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We hit this passage in Romans chapter 8 verses 26 through 28, and it's on prayer.

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In fact, I've listed about 10 topics on prayer that I have taught many times through the years.

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It's hard for me to believe it's pushing 40 years. I've been in the ministry now. I feel 18.

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If I could figure out how to do this without me showing, you might believe I was, right? But I guess that's because if you think about it, our soul and spirit don't age.

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We just get better with time, right? But our body goes the other direction because of the fall and the curse and all of that, but it's all part of God's will.

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And so the good thing is we can grow to know the Lord better and better every day, and that is our goal.

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My job is to cause you to study more, so I hope I can accomplish that today.

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But here are 10 really good topics on prayer that we've taught many times, but we're really on the 10th one because that's the one that's right here in our passage in Romans 8, 24 through 28.

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And so that's kind of where we are. I want to remind you that the context of this passage on prayer was what we studied right before it, and it's an interesting verse or a couple of verses there in the middle of Romans chapter 8 where it says,

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Waiting for the adoption to with the redemption of our body. That is a reference to the end times, to the rapture of the church, the second coming, and then the rapture, and everything that the

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Bible has to teach about that. Now, I think that's interesting context that we find our passage on prayer in, and I think, by the way, that this is the greatest passage on prayer in the whole

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Bible. I think it is the unifying factor for everything taught on prayer in the whole

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Bible, so I'm excited about it. And we got started really well on this last couple of Sundays.

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Today, we'll just continue, and today be very practical application. I think you'll see that in a minute.

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So out of those 10 things we've already brought into play here, number 3 and number 9, number 3, praying as an envoy, has to do with concepts like this, where Jesus said,

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If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. Well, there's a prayer promise, right? But what does it mean to ask in his name?

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And then 1 John 5, 19 says, This is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

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So those two things are, I mean, they're great promises, right? If you do, though, if you ask in his name and you ask his will, your prayer will be answered, yes.

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Okay, how many of our prayers have been answered? And how many times we heard people say, Well, God always answers our prayer, but a lot of times he just answers it.

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No, that's true, but it's because we're not in that arena. We're not praying as an envoy.

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So how do we do that? Well, we know that if we do it, the prayer will be answered, yes. And so that's kind of what number 10 is going to reveal to us, the power of prayer while in the presence of God.

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This lesson on prayer reveals to us how to get number three, praying as an envoy, to work for us and to actually come into play.

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Now, last time and this time, we're actually moving into number nine there, the prayers of David and using his great prayers as examples of some of these teachings on prayer.

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So last Sunday, we began on the prayers of David, and today we're going to talk about that a little bit more.

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Now, just to continue to review, we had a parallel passage we studied a couple of Sundays ago in 1

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Corinthians 2 .13, which things also we speak not in the words which man's wisdom teach, but which the

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Holy Ghost teaches comparing spiritual things with spiritual. And remember, that was a parallel passage from the part we were studying there in Romans 8 .26,

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and we're still studying this where it says, Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities, our inability to pray right, right?

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For we don't even know what we're supposed to pray for as we ought to. We don't know how to pray in God's will, but that's what we need to do to get the yes answer.

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And the Bible says we don't know how to do it. So the Holy Spirit has to help us, and there's the great key.

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

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And as we look at the Greek, that means sighs. It does not mean gibberish. So this is not a passage on modern tongue speaking.

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That's a whole different topic. I've only spent about 40 years studying that topic, but we're not going to go there today.

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But that's not what this is talking about. This is actually talking about the fact that we can't speak the

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Father's infinitely huge language. We don't have enough adjectives in our vocabulary to praise

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God. We really don't, but the Holy Spirit does. And so when we pray, he amplifies and translates into God's infinite language, a language that we don't speak, but that's what the

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Holy Spirit does. And he takes God's mind and brings that into a language we do speak and speaks to our hearts and lets us be part of God's work.

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It's a family business. It's all God's work. Everything we're doing is God's work. We're just his kids, and he loves us working with him.

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Without the Holy Spirit, we could never do that. We could never serve the Lord, nor could we pray or understand anything the

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Lord's telling us. We just wouldn't understand the language. But we do, as the Holy Spirit brings

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God's language, puts it into our language, and we hear his words through the Word of God, but also as the

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Holy Spirit speaks in our hearts through intelligent language that we understand and moves us, not only through language, but also often through closed doors and open doors and feelings of peace or lack thereof and all the different ways that the

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Holy Spirit can speak to us in his still quiet voice. So we've talked about these things, and in this

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Corinthians passage, we see here that it says, Now we have received not the

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Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things that are freely given to us.

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And we saw these different points that we've already talked about. The Spirit searches the deep things of God.

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See, remember how this passage teaches us that, look at verse 11 there,

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For what man knows the things of a man except the Spirit of that man? You don't. And nobody knows the mind of God except God's Spirit, and that is the

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Holy Spirit. No one knows except him. And so he goes and takes the mind of God and brings that to us, or we would not know the mind of God.

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Now remember, by way of review, we've talked about two types of will of God, the will of God taught in the

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Bible. One is the revealed will, which is God's Word. That's this book right here that God sent us from a place that's not a place, where there is no time, not within time, and he put it into time and into space and gave it to us, and not only did he breathe it, he said he'd preserve it to the last generation.

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So we have God's Word, and that's his revealed will, but then there is God's secret will, which is something you don't know yet, but you step into it every step you take.

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And so we talked about that a little bit. So what happens here is the

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Holy Spirit searches the deep things of God. That's what verse 10 says here. This is review still.

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And he reveals that to us when it's time for us to pray for these events.

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Now, you know, you say, well, we can't know the future. Well, in a sense, you can. You've got the book of Revelation. You've got the book of Daniel.

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There's a lot of future things that God has revealed to us, but even things that aren't specifically mentioned in the written

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Word, he can reveal to us by his Spirit when it's time for us to be a part of it. And so he will tell us how to pray.

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The Holy Spirit will bring what God is about to do into our heart and mind, and he will adjust our prayer life to match that.

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Because what do we do? We start out praying what we need and what we want, and there's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes we're asking amiss when we pray selfishly.

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But God knows we will, so that's where we start. But this mechanism that's talked about in Romans 8, and then here this parallel passage in 1

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Corinthians 2, 9 -14, is saying that what we need to be open to and ask the

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Holy Spirit to do is to adjust our prayer into the will of God as we pray. And he will.

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He will do that. And as he does that, and he brings the mind of God to us, and we pray with what

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God is going to do and is doing, then our prayers are answered, yes. And that is a great thing to know and a great key to prayer.

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Why does God do this? Well, verse 12 tells us why. That we may know the things that are freely given to us by God so that we can know these things.

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And God wants us to have answered prayers, and he wants us to be right in the middle of his work because we're his children and it's a family business.

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So these are all things we've talked about. I think it's fascinating. All right. Now, then we came in and we compared this parallel passage to a passage in the

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Old Testament. Psalm 40, verse 5. David says, Many, O Lord my

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God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are toward us.

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They cannot be reckoned up in order unto you. If I would declare and speak of them, there are more than can be numbered.

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Now, you think about this. The Father has so many wonderful thoughts and works that are coming our direction into our life as we are part of his will, his secret will, as we move forward.

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Then as we look back, we see what his will was. As we move forward, we're stepping into his secret will of how history will play out.

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It's all been predetermined. It is all foreordained. God has already been to the end and seen it, and he's been to your future, and he's been there with you and gone through it with you already.

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God is not bound by time. As we understand these things, it's wonderful to understand that there are wonderful works which

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God has already done. From the Father's viewpoint, he's the eternal now. It's like done, but to us, it's our future.

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He has thoughts, our direction of what his will for our life is. The whole passage that we've studied in Romans 8, here in 1

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Corinthians 2, 9 -10, is showing us that the Holy Spirit, one of his ministries, is to take that wonderful mind of God and bring the part that's applicable for now to us so that we know how to pray in God's will.

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Then we talked about last time, how do we even know the Old Testament applies to us, because we're about to go into some

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Old Testament passages. Here's two verses in the New Testament. Basically, they both talk about the fact that the things that were written of old, of foretime, as the

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King James says, the Old Testament, was written for our learning, those of us who live in this age, at the end of the age.

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Those things happened to those folks in the Old Testament so that they could be object lessons through which

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God could teach us spiritual truths. All of it is for us. When we understand how the

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Old Testament can give us more colors and more depths of meaning to the great

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New Testament doctrines, we go back to the Old Testament, we see those doctrines played out in people's lives through object lessons.

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All of it's there. You begin to look for those things, the Old Testament just comes alive. I mean, it's amazing.

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Then we went into this passage in Psalm 86. This is what we did last time.

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We talked about truths that we can see in this object lesson. Now, this is David's real life.

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This is King David really living his life, but it pictures so many spiritual things for us.

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For example, when we see David's enemies, they're real people trying to kill him, right? It pictures our enemies, which are the world, the flesh, and the devil, which are very real, but on a spiritual side, right?

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We have physical enemies too, but the spiritual side is what drives them. And it's a picture of those spiritual truths.

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But here in this passage, we saw these things last Sunday. If you want to have prayers answered, pray like David.

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First thing David did was he would remind God who God is, and you'll see that in this passage. I don't have time to go through it and teach it again, but we taught it last

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Sunday. Everything's archived. You can go back, click on it, watch it if you didn't get to see it. But secondly,

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David would tell the Lord what he would do. Lord, if you'll answer my prayers, here's what

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I'll do, all right? He said, I'll walk in your word. I'll unite my heart with you, and I'll praise and glorify

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God if you'll answer my prayers. So David reminds God who he is and what God has promised him, but also, in other words, what

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God's word has promised, but also he reminds him what he will do. And then thirdly, he reminded

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God that God is merciful. That's always important, especially when we've sinned, right? Reminds God of his enemies too.

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David says, Lord, those who hate you, hate me, and they're after me, and they want to kill me.

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Please protect me. And then he reminds God again who God is at the end.

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Now, you think about that, how David sandwiched his prayer in between reminding God who

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God is and reminding God who God is and reminding God what his promises have said, and you say, well, you shouldn't do that.

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Well, why don't you look at David's life and see if you got his prayers answered? And the truth is, that's a great model for how to pray, and prayer is asking.

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So David ends up asking, and then I love that last part down near the bottom in verse 17 where David said, show me a token.

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Just give me a little sign, a little something that I know is you in my life.

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I know it's you doing something in my life showing that you're with me. And boy, that is so cool, and God does that all the time.

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It can be very little things that only we see, but we go, okay, I know you're with me. There's nothing wrong with asking the

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Lord to do that. That's not the same as coming to Jesus and saying, show us a miracle and we'll believe in you.

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That crowd, those are evil people that say that. Jesus said, the only sign I'm going to give you is

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I'm coming out of the grave in three days, and that's the only sign they needed. But this is different. This is a token in answer to prayers.

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Lord, show me something, maybe not the grand thing I'm praying for, but just a little token that you're hearing me.

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Man, that's awesome. That's powerful. David did it. We should do it. So we talked about that last time. All right? So now let's think back about the actual passage that we're studying here in Romans 8, 26.

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Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities, for we know not what we ought to ask for like we ought to, but the

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Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings, sighs, which cannot be uttered by us because it's in the

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Father's language. It's an infinite language. We're finite. And he that searches the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the

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Spirit because he makes intercession for the saints according to God's will. Now that's how we get our prayers answered, and we know that all things work together for good to them that love

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God. That's our prayers getting answered and things working out for good when we love Him and we're called according to His purpose.

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And notice the context that famous verse is in. It's in the context of answered prayer.

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And it's because the Holy Spirit made intercession for us according to God's will. In other words, he guided our prayer away from our selfish prayer towards an in God's will prayer.

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We submit ourselves and say, here's what I want, Lord, but I am willing to take what you want. I'm willing for your will to happen in my family, with my loved one here, in my life.

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I yield everything to you now. Holy Spirit, show me and adjust my prayers. And when He adjusts those prayers, you will be given faith as a gift from heaven that your prayer is about to be answered, and it will 100 % of the time.

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Now that, I've experienced it. I gave an example of it in earlier lessons on this. I won't give another one right now for sake of time, but you can go back and catch the archives, listen to earlier sermons.

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But we all have examples in our lives of answered prayers that occurred like that. So we don't know how to ask.

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The Holy Spirit intercedes for us according in God's language, and the

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Holy Spirit knows God's heart, and He knows my heart, and He makes intercession according to God's secret will, and then prayers are answered, and things work for good.

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That's really, in a nutshell, what we've been teaching and learning in this little section.

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So then we go into the Old Testament, and we continue to look at David as an example. And so, if you have a

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Bible, turn to 2 Samuel 7 25, or your phone, or look at the screen, whatever you want to do, but I love it when you see

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God's Word, because you know it's not David's Word, right? It's the Word of God. Now look what it says here, 2

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Samuel 7 25, And now, O Lord God, the word that thou hast spoken concerning your servant, which means

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David, and concerning his house, establish it forever, and do as thou hast said.

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Now let's talk about, what do we see here in this passage, all right? What is David doing here?

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And let thy name be magnified forever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God over Israel, and let the house of thy servant,

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David's house, be established before thee. For thou, O Lord of hosts,

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God of Israel, has revealed to your servant. Now look what's happening here. We've been talking about doctrinally, what does doctrine mean?

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A teaching, right? What is the Bible teaching about how prayer works when it's really working? Is the

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Holy Spirit goes to the mind of God, and no man knows the mind of God, but the spirit of the man. Well, if it's

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God, then the spirit of God, that's the Holy Spirit, and he takes that mind of God back to the man, because the

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Holy Spirit knows the man's heart too. That's David in this case, or you and me in our case, right? And what does he do?

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He brings God's will to David, so that David might pray properly. Do we see that in verse 27?

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Now this is practical. This is real. This is happening here in David's life. For thou, O Lord of hosts,

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God of Israel, you have revealed to me, saying, I will build you a house.

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Therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer to you. Now what just happened?

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The Holy Spirit brought to David and said, here's what God's going to do. He's going to let you build a house for yourself.

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He's going to let you start building a house for him, the temple. And so pray for that.

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Now think about that. See, we've grown up being taught that prayers originate with man on the earth and go up to God and God has to answer him because he's obligated.

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That's nowhere in the Bible. Prayers actually, true prayers actually originate in heaven and the

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Holy Spirit brings them to us on the earth and shows us what to pray and we pray it and then we're working with God and what

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God is going to do. We're working with God and God's plan. We're working with God and God's family business.

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And our prayers are the same as good works in this sense. When we do good works, we're simply working

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God's work on this earth with him. It's not us. We can't do anything without him. This little Greek prefix, sum, comes before so many words of things we're supposed to do and it'll say sum, sum,

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Christ. It means with, together with Christ. There's very, I don't know if there's anything we can do except together with Christ because he said, without me you can do nothing.

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Well, prayer is the same way but we just never looked at it that way. Alright, so, excuse me a minute.

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So, now we see it played out in David's prayer life. Therefore, has me, your servant, found in my heart to pray this because you brought it to me and told me to pray it.

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You told me you're going to do it. So now I'm going to pray for it. Now, isn't that the same thing that we've been studying already only we see

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David doing it. So, first David consults the word of God.

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See that in verse 25? And now, O Lord God, the word that you have spoken concerning me and concerning this house, establish it.

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So, you've promised me you're going to build a temple. You promised me also that you're going to give me a house and a throne and that someone from, of my progeny is going to be on that throne forever.

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So now, establish that, Lord. So remember, he's doing the same thing we already studied.

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He's reminding God who he is and reminding God of what God's already promised, isn't he? Now, he reminds

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God of what he's promised. You see it clearly in the second part of verse 25. Concerning thy servant and concerning his house, establish it forever.

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This is what you promised, so I'm asking you to do it. So, he is praying according to God's revealed will, isn't he?

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And now, David prays according to God's word, that's the revealed will, and we see it in verse 26.

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And let thy name be magnified forever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God of Israel, and let the house of your servant,

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David, be established before thee. So, you've told me, you've revealed to me in your word that that's what you're going to do, so I'm praying for it to happen.

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So now, David is praying according to God's revealed will. Finally, David prays according to God's secret will, that the

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Holy Spirit revealed to him in verse 27, the first part of it. It says, For thou, O Lord of hosts,

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God of Israel, hast revealed to thy servant, saying, I will build thee a house. Now, that was the

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Holy Spirit telling David, the Father's heart is to build you a house so that David knows to pray,

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Lord, build me a house, and let me build your house, and build me a house, and a throne, and let my children reign on that throne.

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And David prayed according to God's will in the second part of verse 27. Now, isn't that something? So, that's exactly what we're taught to do.

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David did it, and David's prayer is answered, is it not? Look at Isaiah 9, 6.

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This looks like a Christmas season verse, doesn't it? We use that every Christmas. Isaiah 9, 6,

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For unto us a child is born. Who's that? Well, that's David's lineage, isn't it?

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Moving out into David's future. That's Jesus, the Messiah, born of the lineage of David. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder.

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This was David's prayer. Lord, let someone from my family reign, as you said you would, and his name shall be called

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Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God. How can anyone say Jesus is not God? We know that the child who was born, the son who was given is

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Jesus, and now it says his name will be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.

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I think our Jehovah's Witness friends are wrong, and our Mormon friends are wrong. Jesus is not a created being.

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He is the Everlasting Father. He's also the Prince of Peace. Go figure that out. Well, spend the rest of your life studying the

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Trinity. You won't fully understand it, but you can understand more of it all the time. Don't ever stop studying it and just say, well, it's a mystery.

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I can't understand it. Once you say it's a mystery, you'll stop studying it. It's something you can learn more and more about.

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And then it says, of the increase of who? This person, this son of David, this person out in the future who's of David's lineage,

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Jesus Christ is his name. Of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end.

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Upon the throne of David, here's David's prayer being answered, and upon his kingdom, to order it, to establish it with judgment and justice from henceforth and forever.

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It's an eternal kingdom. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

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Now we move, we see here in the New Testament another record of David's prayer being answered.

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Here's the angel speaking to Mary who still doesn't understand these things yet, and the angel is reassuring her.

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And he comes to Mary and says to her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in your womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name

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Jesus. He shall be great. He shall be called the Son of the Highest, the Lord God shall give unto him, look at this, the throne of his father

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David. There's David's prayer being answered. Why? Because the Holy Spirit went to the mind of God who no man can know unless the

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Holy Spirit does this. And then he, but he does do this and he brings the mind of God to the mind of David and says pray for this.

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This is God's will. This is what's going to happen. But God wants you to be part of it. So he wants you to pray for it. Pray for it in time and space and it will come to pass.

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And it did. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom.

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There shall be no end. Then said Marian to the angel, how shall this be?

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Seeing I have not known a man. That's called the virgin birth and liberal theologians hate that. Liberals and unbelievers hate that.

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But it's a fact just as sure as any of the rest of scripture. A virgin gave birth to the

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Son of God, Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. And then we go all the way out to the last book of the

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Bible. Revelation 11 and verse 15. And the seventh angel sounded. How many last trumps can there be?

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Well, let me give you a clue. The rapture doesn't happen until the last trump. The seventh trump and the seventh angel sounded and there were great voices in heaven saying, look at this.

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The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever.

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There's David's prayer being answered. Why? Because he prayed in God's will and Jesus said, whatever you ask in God's will shall be answered.

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He prayed in Jesus' name because it was the God who sent the prayer to him to pray it. So that's what praying in Jesus' name means.

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Listen. If you don't have the Holy Spirit bringing God's mind to your heart and adjusting your selfish prayer to be a prayer in the will of God, then you cannot pray in Jesus' name.

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You just can't do it. You can't pray according to his will. But if you do pray according to his will and in Jesus' name, it will be answered yes.

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Isn't that awesome? Well, this is how it works. These are the mechanics. But here's a practical application. We're watching

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David do it. And David does it and David gets his prayer answered. So 2

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Samuel 8. Now, we're going to go into a passage here. So you're going to have to switch a little bit.

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But notice where we were. We were in 2 Samuel 7. Context is everything when we're trying to understand

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God's Word. When we're trying to understand what God is actually saying. It's not so much what the

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Bible says. It's what the Bible means that we need to understand. The only way we know what it means is by context.

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So here we see all this in chapter 7 of Samuel where David gets his prayer answered. Then we go into chapter 8.

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And we're going to see that now that David knows how to get his prayers answered, we see a more very practical application of how to pray and why it's so important.

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And here's what we need to understand as we set this up. Okay, in Psalm 25 18, we see

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David teaching us about spiritual warfare praying. Now, one of my mentors, my first great mentor was

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Dr. Irwin Freeman. You've heard me talk about him a lot. A Jewish believer who had four earned doctorates, two in theology, one in psychology, one in Christian counseling.

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He and his wife, Pat, had the largest Christian counseling service in Fort Worth, Texas for about 25 years.

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And he was my mentor. And he was actually my seminary. And now I own all of his books because his wife gave them to me when

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Brother Rocky, what we called him, because his dad was Al Capone's driver, believe that or not. Rocky was in the mafia before he was saved.

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But when he got saved, like he told me, he said, Brother David, when I got saved, I didn't just get saved. I also became an evangelist.

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But he, she gave me all of his books when Brother Rocky went to heaven. And they're all marked up.

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I love reading through them where Brother Rocky had studied so much. But he was a great student of spiritual warfare.

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In fact, as far as I know, he's the only Southern Baptist exorcist I've ever known.

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And I sort of say that tongue in cheek. But the fact is, through his counseling ministry, he had many

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Christians who came to him that had demons. And a lot of preachers teach that's impossible.

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No, it's not impossible. It shouldn't happen to us. And unless we allow it, it won't happen.

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But there are Christian people who allow it. And then it happens. And he dealt with them. And he knew how to deal with them.

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He had studied under a man named Ernest Rockstat from Oklahoma, an older man who had learned from missionaries, coming in from the missionary fields in India, Africa, and other places in the world.

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And who wrote a book or a booklet, many booklets on spiritual warfare.

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And Brother Rocky studied under this man and knew how to deal with it. Pastors all over Texas and all over the country called

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Brother Rocky to come and help them deal with spiritual warfare in their churches because they didn't know how to deal with it.

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And man, I've got some amazing stories on that. But anyway, here we see

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David talking about it. And this is where people like Dr. Freeman and Dr. Rockstat learned these things from scripture, but also from missionaries who practically used it on the field.

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But look at this. Psalm 25, 18. Look upon mine affliction and my pain and forgive all my sins.

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So David, as he's being attacked by physical enemies trying to kill him, that is a picture of us being attacked by our spiritual enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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All right? We have physical enemies that they inspire too, to come after us sometimes, like David did.

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But first thing David did when he recognized he was under spiritual warfare attack was he confessed his sins to the

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Lord. He said, Lord, apply the blood of the future Messiah to me.

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Cleanse my mind and my conscience. Look at my affliction, how I'm being attacked.

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Look at how the people that hate you hate me also, and they're trying to kill me. Please look at that.

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And while you're doing it, please forgive my sins. Well, we don't have to ask the Lord to forgive us our sins like David did because he was still looking forward at the cross, and they had a sacrificial system that merely atoned for their sins, covered it over, and rolled it forward every year until we got to the death of Jesus when it was all placed on him.

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And once he came out of that grave, ladies and gentlemen, we don't have to have our sins atoned for. It's removed now.

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So we don't need to ask Jesus to forgive us of our sins. We stand in a position of forgiveness.

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We stand as the Father looking at us as if we've never sinned, and that's the best definition for justification

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I've ever seen, just as if I'd never sinned. That's how the Father sees us because of what

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Jesus did for us, the finished work of Christ took our sins away. But 1

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John 1 .9 says we are supposed to agree with God that something that we just did is sinful, and then he cleanses us.

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Why do we need that? Because our conscience finds it hard to believe that we are forgiven.

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We are forgiven. We stand forgiven, and we need to agree with God. That's what the

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Greek word confess means. It doesn't mean ask him to forgive you. It means agree with him what you just did was not right for a

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Christian to do, and then he cleanses our conscience and we can move forward. Don't dare get involved with spiritual warfare until we do this.

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That's lesson number one. Okay? Now what else do we see? Now that he's confessed his sins and agreed with God that they're wrong.

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Now I understand David said, forgive me, but he lived before the cross. That would be improper for us, but it's okay.

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Let me put it this way. I don't want to say it's improper. We need to understand that our sins are forgiven.

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We don't need to ask the Lord to forgive us of our sins. They are forgiven. It's okay to say, forgive me,

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Lord. I just messed up. You know, I agree with you. What I did was inappropriate for a

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Christian. I'm sorry I did that. That's okay. You see the difference. I know you're with me here.

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All right. Good preaching, Brother David. Don't you think? Yeah, I mean, you got to get that. So many Christians miss this, and they're always going around thinking that if I don't ask

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Jesus to forgive me, I'm in trouble again. That's not what it's about. What it's about is the cleansing of our conscience so we can get up and go again because remember, the

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Lord said on purpose that he put this treasure, the born -again man, in connection and unity with the

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Holy Spirit who indwells, that treasure is in earthen vessels. We're going to mess up.

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We're going to stumble and fall, but we shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholds us with his hand.

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Right? So what is the whole job of a Christian? Confess it. Agree it was wrong. Understand we stand forgiven and get up and go again.

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Attack the enemy. Don't run from him. Right? So here's what David does. He's already taken care of that in verse 18.

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Now, verse 19, look what he does. Now, Lord, consider my enemies, for they are many, and they hate me with cruel hatred.

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Now, I'm going to tell you something. That is something to consider because we're in the same position as David.

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Anyone that loves the Lord is in that position. Satan and every demon that is alive, both chained in hell and not chained in hell, hates us because we love the

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Lord and the Lord loves us as his dear sheep, and they want to slaughter us and our families and bring blood to the streets, and he will do that in the tribulation period to Christians who aren't ready because they've been taught a lie that, don't worry about it, you won't be here.

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The greatest lie Satan ever told is that the rapture happens before the tribulation. That is a lie. I challenge you to study on your own and stop believing what your mentors taught you in the books you've read.

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Just go to Matthew 24. Look at Jesus' chronology. Go to Daniel. Look at Daniel's chronology.

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Go to Paul's writings and 1 Thessalonians and look at his chronology, and it's always after the tribulation when the rapture happens and after the first resurrection, which happens at the end of the age.

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We've already studied all that. We've got it archived. Go back and listen to the messages if you want to hear it, but I'm telling you, you better be ready and you better obey.

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He says, get out of the cities when you see that time coming. Now, let me comfort you with this. He said there's going to be wars and rumors of wars.

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There are going to be pestilences like we've never seen before, like the coronavirus, and worse than that, and they're going to be, he says that race, it says nation against nation, but in the

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Greek it's ethnos, which means race will rise against race, which we're seeing in the streets now.

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Now, among Christians, that's not happening because we're of the same race, but among the lost world, there is racial hatred and nothing that the government does is going to stop it.

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It's going to get worse, Jesus said, and then nation will rise against nation, and he said, but listen, don't worry.

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These things must come to pass. The end is not yet, so what we're watching for are further things down the road like, okay, do we see one of those two or both of those two

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Islamic mosques destroyed on the temple mount and a new temple being built? At that point, we need to get out of the cities, all right?

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So just think, the Lord has given us so much warning and told us so much to do, and to think we're just not going to be here and ignore it is going to be to your detriment, and Satan will spill blood of Christians who don't study, and it's going to be horrible.

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Jews and Christians will be slaughtered during this time period if they can find you. So I can't say it doesn't happen when

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I know that it does. I'm sorry. I know I would feel better if the old theory was correct, the one

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I grew up believing, and Brother Rocky taught it to me, Brother Otis believed it too, but when Brother Otis died, he admitted it was a lie, and he never taught it again.

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The pre -Tribulation Rapture, he said, no, that is not right. I can't believe I didn't see it until I was 80 -something, but it's not right.

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So we need to be ready, and listen, consider your enemy. They hate you with cruel hatred, and they are many.

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We can't count the number of demons that are out there, and they can instigate their people.

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All around us, we know from what Jesus said, there are far more unbelievers than believers, and they can infiltrate their minds and cause them to come at you with whatever that they try to get them to do, but he that's in us is greater than he that's in the world.

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We don't need to fear that. We just need to be aware of it. All right, so now they hate us with cruel hatred, and look,

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David continues his prayer. Keep my soul and deliver me. Let me not be ashamed.

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Of who? Of you, Lord. Let them see that you protect me. Let them see that.

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That's what he means when he says, let me not be ashamed. That phrase is one of my favorite phrases in the whole

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Bible, and you can ask any of my family. They hear me say it all the time. I'll say, Lord won't let us be ashamed.

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You watch. We may be going through some hardships and fear right now, but he's going to come through.

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He won't let us be ashamed. He will show the whole world that we're his children, and he is with us, and all of us can say that.

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Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in you. Now, that's David's setting up for spiritual warfare prayer.

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He says, let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait on you. Lord, keep me from sin.

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Help me to be a good man. Guard me, because I know I live in fallen flesh. Guard me.

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Help me to walk before you, and preserve me. Even in this state where the treasure is hidden in earthen vessels,

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I still want to be a good man. I want my spirit to be one with your spirit and control my soul, which is the interface to my physical body, and control my body, so that my body is a living sacrifice, working for you, serving you, rather than doing what it wants to do.

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I want to keep it under submission, as the great apostle Paul said he would do with his body.

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So, there's spiritual warfare prayer in the Old Testament. Now, look here in the New Testament. Ephesians 6, 12.

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For we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Now, this is the many enemies that hate David with cruel hatred.

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Here it is for us. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, and against rulers of darkness of this world, so some of those are demons, some of them are humans that they control, and against spiritual wickedness in high places.

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That's both humans and demons. All right? Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God that you be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.

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Now, go back and study Ephesians 6 if you want to know all of those spiritual warfare armor. It's important to know it, but that's beyond the scope of this lesson today.

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But I want you to know that it ends. From 13 to 18, God lists all the armor that we need to have on ourselves every day.

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But it ends with this, because we're studying prayer, aren't we? Praying always. This is the last part of the spiritual warfare lesson that we're given in Ephesians 6.

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Praying always, with all prayer and supplication and spirit, and watching thereunto, with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

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We need to be praying for one another more now than we ever have. We need to be lifting one another up, because we're going to go more and more towards tribulation.

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We are already in the apostasy, the great falling away from truth, and we're moving into the tribulation.

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And I'm not saying the tribulation. I don't know that the seven years has started, because I don't know the day and the hour.

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All I know is I see the trees budding, and Jesus said, I can know summer is near when I see that, and I see the buds.

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But we need to be lifting one another up more in prayer than ever before.

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Now, second Samuel 8, one, back into this beautiful passage that I want to study, and I don't know how far we'll get into it.

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We've got a little bit of time left. I wish we were together. I'd have you stand up, raise your hands, and clap, and take a stand -up break for just a second, stretch break.

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But I can't do that. So I got people doing it. There we go. People are raising hands, and lots of cool stuff.

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Dave, you might take a look out there at any questions or things people are coming up with.

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But anyway, wake up, because we got a little bit more to go. Are you with me? Okay.

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Thanks for sending those chats my way, Dave. That's awesome. You know, it's interesting with Zoom, Dave and Ben, and the other, both

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Bens, my son Ben, and Ben Russell, my adopted son, they know how to send these things out where I sense that I'm talking to you, that we're together, and I know we're one spiritually.

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We are connected spiritually. That's pretty cool, isn't it? And so, well, that's interesting.

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I don't usually take questions when I'm preaching, but that's a good one. So demons can oppress Christians but not possess them, correct?

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Actually, depends on your definition of possess. If what you mean by that, own them and take them to hell, the answer is no, they cannot do that.

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But if what you mean by possess is they indwell you, yes, they can do that. And I know you've never been taught that, but it's a fact of life.

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I've dealt with it in my own ministry. Brother Rocky taught me spiritual warfare and how to deal with it.

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Fortunately, it's not my ministry like it was his, but when you're a pastor of a church, you do deal with it.

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And listen, look at it this way. You didn't have lost people coming in off the street walking into Brother Rocky's counseling office.

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It was Christians, and they were demonized, and by that I mean they were indwelt by demons, and Rocky had to deal with that, and he was able to because he knew how.

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So I know that's new to some of you, but it's a fact, and that's why we need to guard our...

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If you're the man of your house, you need to pray over your wife and children every night before you go to bed, especially.

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Spiritual warfare prayers and just make sure that the Lord blocks all of that activity.

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So that's another topic. It'll be interesting to get into that sometime. We're kind of in it now, but let's take a look at this practical application in David's life.

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This is so powerful. I don't know how far we'll get. I wish we could get to the end because that's where the power is, but let's start anyway.

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And after this, it came... Now, after what? All of verse 7 was David learning how to pray and praying, right?

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So after this, it came to pass that David smote the Philistines. Why? Because he had power.

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Because he had been before the Lord in prayer and the Lord had directed him on what to do and what not to do. And he subdued them.

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That is a picture of us in spiritual warfare in our mission in our time right now.

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Will we subdue the enemy or will we run and be fearful? David was always running toward the enemy.

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I'll give you that clue. Even when he was a boy, he ran toward that giant. I think that's one reason he was able to kill him.

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The giant had never seen anyone run towards him. All he'd ever seen was people's backs and it's easy to kill them when they're running away.

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David was running toward him and he stopped and went, what? And boom, the stone hit him. And then David cut his head off, carried it around with him as he attacked all the other enemies.

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Wow, what a picture. That's the approach we should take. That's not what we're taught, but that is what the

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Bible teaches. Resist the enemy and he will flee from you. You can't show him your back.

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All right? So David smote the enemy. He subdued them and David took Methagama out of the hand of the

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Philistines. So David conquered and took their land away. Now let me tell you something.

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What demons and the forces of darkness will do is they will try to take ground in your life even as a

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Christian. And if you give it to them through doing things that aren't right, that you know you're not supposed to do, and you open that door and you let them in, they will take ground.

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What you have to do with the Lord Jesus Christ holding your hand is you've got to take that ground back and get them out and get them away from that ground and you need to conquer it and take it out of the hand of the

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Philistine, out of the hand of the enemy. That's the picture here. And remember, this is an object lesson teaching us spiritual truths for our lives.

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And he smote Moab and he measured them with a line. Casting them down to the ground. A line of measurement means he judged them.

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And he made two lines and he put to death. Do you realize what David did with these godless people who hated

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God? Now, I hate what preachers teach nowadays. God loves everybody. That's never been true. David demonstrates it right here.

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God loves his people whom he has known from the foundation of the world. That's who he loves.

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Jesus said, I did not put the tares on the earth. Satan put them here. Now, go figure out how Satan did it.

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That will give you something to study for a while. But study the parable of the sower. And you'll see Jesus said that, especially when he explained it to his followers who couldn't understand the parable.

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He said, look, I plant only good wheat, good seed. The enemy planted the tares.

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All right, so now, David is lining these conquered people who picture Satan and the demons and the enemies of God.

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And he makes two lines. And he has his men go down and slay every man, woman, boy, and girl in one line.

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And he gives mercy to those on the other line. Wow, he lets them live. And they become servants of the

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Israelites. So they became David's servants. And they brought gifts to David.

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And David begins to take their gold and their silver and put it in the house of God. And God gets glory.

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So David's smote also had a beezer, the son of Rehob, the king of Zobah, as he went to recover his border at the river of Euphrates.

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Now, what is David doing? He is recovering ground that the enemy has taken. That is such a picture in our lives.

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I mean, have you been, do you do things you know you shouldn't do? Do you let that creep in? Years ago, when you were young, you got all that out of your life, right?

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And you walk before the Lord. And then you got kind of used to it. And life went on. Things got hard.

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And all of a sudden, they come in and they take your border and they sneak in and they close in on you.

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And now you got this little bit of possessions here. David says, here's what

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I'm going to do. I'm going to defeat them. I'm going to destroy them. I'm going to slay half of them.

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The other half going to bring me gifts and serve me. And I'm going to take my borders back. And I'm going to expand my land to where God wanted it to be.

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What a picture. What a picture. This is your life. God's talking about this morning.

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So as he went to recover his border all the way to the river Euphrates, if you remember, God had given the children of Israel out to the river

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Euphrates. And the enemy had come in and taken it. So David, as always, ran toward the enemy and put a hurt on the enemy.

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When I'm praying spiritual warfare prayer, Brother Rocky taught me certain ways to pray. He wrote a little book about it.

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I wish it was still published. But you pray and say, Lord, bind and rebuke the demons and Satan and remove them from me.

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Move them away. Send them away. Bind them, rebuke them, and send them away. Well, I added something to that through my own life and my own practice.

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I said, put a hurt on them and send them away. Bind them, rebuke them, put a hurt on them and send them away so they know when they come into my house, it's going to hurt because you're going to nail them.

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You're going to hurt them. And I believe that's a great way to pray.

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But he ran toward the enemy and he put a hurt on the enemy. And David recovered his borders. What does that represent?

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And then look at verse 4. And David took from him a thousand chariots, 700 horsemen, 20 ,000 footmen.

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And David hoed all of the, hoofed, I should say, all of the chariot horses.

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He cut them where they're lame and they can't serve the enemy anymore. He damaged the enemy's weapons.

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But he preserved of them about a hundred, enough horses for a hundred chariots for his own army.

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My goodness, what is this picture in spiritual warfare? Not only does he not cower back, he runs towards the army, puts a hurt on them.

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He slays half of them. The other half give him everything they have, including their chariots and horses.

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And he doesn't use them all, doesn't need them all because he has God's power, but he'll keep some of them and use them for the glory of God.

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So David took the power of the enemy and turned it into the power of the kingdom of God. That's what we should be doing instead of cowering down in fear, looking at everything happening around us and being so frightened that everything's falling apart.

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Listen, we are the children of the king and Jesus rules this world. De facto, he will rule it someday soon.

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And that day is getting sooner when the kingdom comes and he rules for a thousand years. Right now, he rules in our hearts and he put us here to be the salt and the light.

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And we're very powerful when we understand how to battle this spiritual warfare battle. All right, so it continues here.

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Verse 5, And when the Syrians of Damascus came to Succur, had Adazar king of Zobah, David slew them.

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He slew 22 ,000 of them. So when the enemy brought reinforcement,

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David killed them too. Listen, if it starts getting worse pressure on us, spiritual warfare attacks us more and more, we should attack back through spiritual warfare praying.

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That's what this lesson's all about is prayer. We first confess our sins. We agree with God we've been sinful.

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We get back up and we run towards the enemy and we say, Lord, use me in your hand to destroy the ones you want to destroy.

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Use me in your hand to cause what needs to happen to bring glory to your kingdom. And when the enemy brings reinforcements,

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I'm going to attack them too. Me and you together because Lord, it's your family business.

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And part of what you do in your family business is you defend your territory and you will attack the enemy and you'll use me with you through my prayers to help you with that and to do it with you.

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And that's what this is all about. There will be other battles. You may get victory and peace for a while.

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We always do. The Lord will provide that victory and peace, but there's going to be another battle right around the corner until we meet the

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Lord because we live in a cursed world and the enemy is after us because we love the Lord.

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Do not fail to understand that the future battles will be won also. So then

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David put garrisons in Syria of Damascus and the

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Syrians became servants of David and they brought gifts and the Lord preserved David everywhere he went.

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That's a picture of you and me. The Lord will not let us be ashamed no matter what comes at us.

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No matter what comes at us. Don't let fear reign. Remember this teaching. Go back and read this if you need to.

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This is real. This is practical. David got to this place through prayer. He defeated these people by first praying and having the

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Holy Spirit bring the mind of God to him so he knew exactly how to pray and he prayed for these things to happen and then he went out and did it.

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That's a picture for us. Now rather than the enemy having strongholds in the life of the believer, the believer had strongholds which protected the kingdom of God.

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Think about that. This is the preservation of the Lord and we have it.

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And David took the shields of gold that were on the servants of Hadadaz... Had...

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Let me say that. I'll have to say it in Texan. Hadadazer. Got it.

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And brought them to Jerusalem and he took that gold and used some of it probably to decorate

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God's house. Imagine that. And he took exceeding much brass along with the gold.

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So that which the enemy has taken should be recaptured for the Lord's kingdom to decorate his house of prayer.

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Is that cool or what? So when Toi, king of Hamath, heard that David had smitten all the host of Hadadazer...

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I can't say that. It's too many. Hadadazer. I always try to put an extra syllable in there.

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Hadadazer. Then Toi sent Joram, his son, to King David to salute him.

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Lord, don't kill us too, right? And to bless him because he had fought against Hadadazer and smitten him for Hadadazer had wars with Toi.

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And Jerom brought with him vessels of silver, vessels of gold, and vessels of brass.

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Now look how David, through prayer, and God's answering his prayers, he turned a situation where he was being overwhelmed by the enemy.

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They're all trying to kill him into victorious battle after battle. And now the booty of the enemy is coming into being, enriching

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God's kingdom on the earth. That's quite amazing to see. Others who have been oppressed by the enemy joined

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David and brought more glory to God. Now think about that. As we see victory in our life, it encourages other

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Christians who are going through spiritual warfare to stop turning and running and turn and go with us toward the enemy.

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And we get stronger together. There's no telling what the church could do toward being used in God's hand in America right now.

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No telling what we could do if we just pray together about this. Which also

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King David did dedicate unto the Lord. So he took all of this stuff that they captured in battle, righteous battle against the enemy with the silver and the gold that he had dedicated of all nations which he had subdued of Syria and Moab, the children of Amman and most of the

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Middle East and all the way out to the Philistines, Amalek, and to the spoil of Hadadezer.

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I'm going to be able to pronounce this by the end of the sermon. Son of Rehob, King of Zobah.

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He took all of this spoil and David gave him a name when he returned from smiting the

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Syrians in the Valley of Salt being 18 ,000 men in another battle and he became famous.

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He was already famous. He got more famous. Listen, let's talk about something here before I go to the next one.

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What about influence? If you look back at our lives, if you're my age, you can go back into the 70s and the 60s and you look at the paltry little influence of the

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American church and all the things that Satan's been able to accomplish. He took over all of the great colleges on the

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East Coast that were started by pastors. You name them. Yale, Harvard, William &

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Mary, all of them. Princeton started by pastors. The church allowed

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Satan to take those over. Satan took over Hollywood. Satan took over the music industry.

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Satan takes over the seminaries and they fall like dead flies. He takes over the

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Bibles and takes two lost people and Westcott and Hort and rewrites the entire

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New Testament, puts it in all the modern versions, New American Standard, NIV and all that, and it's got 2 ,000 errors in it and everyone in the seminaries are saying that's the

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Bible to use. How does this happen? We've seen the church give up ground on almost everything.

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Look at the politics. Look who runs our country because we, through our paltry prayer lives, let these kinds of people be voted in.

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Can we change that? Only through prayer. Only through spiritual warfare, praying and living and being available even in the flesh to let our bodies be used of God when necessary as well.

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But David got himself a name. He had influence in the world.

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So his son Solomon had people bringing ships full of gold and giving it to him just to learn how to run their country.

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Why is it Christians don't have any influence now? For one thing, we've been talked into believing we're all supposed to be poor and money, the

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Bible says, brings influence and the Bible says that the world will not listen to a poor man.

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So we don't understand all of entrepreneurism, all of how money works is in the Bible for us and we've not been taught that.

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Tradeway tries to do that, by the way. But we've not been taught these things because pastors are professional preachers nowadays.

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They never had to work with their hands like the Jews did before they studied theology. We just let them go to college, go to seminary and then lead people, but they've never owned a company.

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They've never worked with their hands. They don't know how to make a living. They don't know much about how money works.

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They don't want to know because they think they know everything. Listen, I can talk about them because I am one, right? I'm a pastor. I know,

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I've talked to so many pastors. I know how we think and yet, where's our influence?

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Well, it doesn't only come through money. That is a tool God uses. It comes through this kind of praying and we don't have a lot of this going on anymore either.

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And he put garrisons in Edom and throughout all Edom put he garrisons and all they of Edom became

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David's servants. Here's another ground he took back and the Lord preserved David everywhere he went.

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And David reigned over all of Israel and David executed judgment and justice unto all of his people.

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What if we had a leader like that, right? Where the Lord's servants gain control and where they gain influence, judgment and justice prevails.

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Satan knows it and that's why he wants to take away our influence. So 2 Samuel 7, 27

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For thou, O Lord, God of Israel has revealed to thy servants, saying, I will build thee a house.

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Look at this. Therefore has thy servant found it as hard to pray for that house. You see the principle?

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The Holy Spirit brought it from the mind of God. The prayer originated in heaven. It came into the mind of David.

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David was instructed by the Holy Spirit to pray for it and God worked with David through that prayer and made it come to pass and the enemy was pushed back.

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All right. Dave, I'm going to turn it over to you. I don't think we can get a better ending than that today.