The Importance of Prayer with Dr. Andrew Sandlin

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00:01

Non -rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

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Are you going to bark all day, little doggie? Or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

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Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

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So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me!

00:33

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

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Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

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That's a joke, pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this.

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Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

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That's Matthew 6, 8 -10. Welcome everyone to Apologia Radio.

01:45

I am very excited. Oh, I missed the transition, sorry. It's a lot when you're trying to do everything.

01:55

It's officially Christmas season over here at Apologia. It's been Christmas season over here since September. That's true.

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For my household it is officially Christmas season. November 1st. We're all in.

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How about you? You in the Christmas spirit? I'll get fired if I say

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I'm not. Today's going to be a fun show.

02:20

A little bit different lineup. Pastor Jeff is on his way to Georgia right now.

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To do some abolition bill work there, which we're very excited about. To be praying for Georgia.

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Then we can end abortion there. So I have my good friend here and fellow pastor,

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Zach Morgan. How's it going, buddy? It's like a half provoked, half

02:45

Apologia Radio mashup show. We just did one, only we were in reverse seats.

02:54

How are you feeling? Are you back to normal? Are you tired? Are you recovered? Yeah, I'm good.

03:01

I'm good. I'm square. I'm feeling pretty good. We just got done with ReformCon 22, y 'all. It was a blasty blast.

03:08

It went really well. It's taken me a couple days to recover, but I think

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I'm good. This week, thankfully, has been surprisingly kind of chill. We literally had all of our appointments canceled one day.

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Which was kind of out of nowhere and nice. Yeah, exactly. I got caught up on some stuff.

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That don't happen a lot. Let me go ahead and bring in my guest here.

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I have my dear brother, Andrew Sandlin, on here. We love him a ton.

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He's been such a blessing to us. He's probably, literally, the kindest, most gracious Christian man that's ever lived on the face of this earth.

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I agree. Kind. Besides Jesus. A better description would be sparklingly handsome.

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Yeah, I think we will. Hey brother, welcome to Apologia Radio. Thank you guys.

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Boy, I have a lot to live up to with that kind of introduction. I love

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Apologia. I love you guys. I love Jeff and everybody there. I appreciate the fact that you guys put feet to your faith.

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James says, faith without works is dead. Well, you have true faith. I appreciate your works. One thing,

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I didn't have time to say it to ReformCon. By the way, it's a great conference. A lot of people know you guys, obviously, for your biblical fidelity.

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Stand for the Bible. Stand for biblical Calvinism. Covenant theology. Stand for the pre -born and so on.

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But what a lot of people don't know, most of your enemies, even maybe some of your friends, is the great self -sacrifice.

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Your love for the church and for believers. That sure means a lot to me. It's a privilege to be with you guys.

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Thank you, man. I appreciate that. You know, you mean the world to us. Only God knows how much you've influenced my thinking.

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Don't blame me for that. You've been influenced by some good people, too. Yes, of course.

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We were starting to have a conversation, and I said, let's save it for the radio show. So, Zach was like, hey, that's cool, you're playing

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Christmas music, but what about Thanksgiving? And I announced on Tuesday, November 1st, hey, it's

05:25

Christmas season here, and it's on. And some people were like, oh, poor

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Thanksgiving. And I was like, Thanksgiving has a day. We've given Thanksgiving a day. You know, it has its day for turkey and stuff, and fatness, and getting in a meat coma, and stuff like that.

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It's got a day, but that's it. It gets its day. I would just say Thanksgiving is much more

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Christian than Christmas, probably, right? Well, I mean, we are celebrating the birth of Christ. We are, but it's kind of been skewed a little bit.

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Those are fighting words. I better just shut my mouth about that. I love everything

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Christmas. I'm ready. That's great. I appreciate that. I saw somebody yesterday that we know very well.

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I'm not going to mention your name, but there was a compromise. Did you see the compromise within this family? Husband and wife, and there's a

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Christmas tree up, but it's decorated for Thanksgiving until Thanksgiving, and then they can do

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Christmas decorations on the Christmas tree. And I said, you know,

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I'm glad your marriage is going to do okay. Yeah, that's good. It's a little blasphemous, but maybe he needs to exert his headship a little bit more there.

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What do you think, Andrew? Well, I think you're both partly right.

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Years ago, I wrote an article titled, boy, I don't want to butcher this, but Thanksgiving is not

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Christmas' entrance ramp, so I think in the commercialization of modern Christmas, people want to leap over Thanksgiving, and of course

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Thanksgiving is an explicitly Christian holiday. And actually, though Christmas is too, there's a lot of misunderstanding about that.

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I've written about that also. I won't go into those details, but actually they are in their own way, each holy days, that's really what holidays mean, holy days.

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And so I think we need to celebrate both, and Advent season, all of those.

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But I really don't want to just sort of zoom past Thanksgiving as though, well, that's sort of secondary, let's get that done with so we can start buying

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Christmas gifts. They're both important, so we could do a whole show on that, but I can see

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Zach's very uncomfortable with that, so we'd better move on. I'm good. We should plan on that show,

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I'd like to hear that actually. So yeah, as I mentioned, we just got done with ReformCon, Andrew was there, spoke, did a phenomenal job.

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So a couple things I just want to mention, we have some leftover ReformCon exclusive merch that will be going up on the store probably tomorrow, so I didn't want to announce it quite yet, but it should be going up tomorrow.

08:14

So the next time we do Apology Radio, which will actually be in two weeks, because next week we're on our leadership retreat, so we're off.

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But we'll be showing you some of that stuff that's available, some really cool stuff that we did just for the conference, and our plan is to make this an annual thing, so be listening, we'll be announcing plans for the next one, hopefully soon.

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Some stuff in the works right now, but it went really well, and a lot of people were blessed, and I was blessed.

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So, I want to also give a shout out to and thank two of our big sponsors,

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Armored Republic, and David Reese. You saw David's talk, right? Oh yeah, it was phenomenal. It was amazing.

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Such a great brother. He's such a great guy. So, we're so thrilled to be partnering with Armored Republic, we'll be hopefully doing some more stuff here this next year with them, and the same with New St.

09:06

Andrews. Unfortunately, Dr. Ben Merkel was supposed to have taught, and his wife

09:13

Rebecca was coming to do a mashup with Sheologians, and he had like the world's nastiest eye infection

09:18

I've ever seen in my life. He actually got stuck in Orlando, almost had to be hospitalized. It was bad, so he had to last minute kind of call off, but then that gave us an opportunity to do a cool little panel discussion on ending abortion, and Desi got to do the

09:34

Sheologians show, but all that to say, we love New St. Andrews, we're glad to be partnering with them as well, and we actually debuted their new ad at ReformCon, if you haven't seen it, it was really good.

09:45

Looks like Ben's doing a lot better too. Yeah, he's actually in the UK right now. So yeah, he is doing a lot better, praise

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God for that. All that to say, a couple reasons why we wanted to have

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Andrew on today, he's got a new book coming out very soon. It's not out yet, right?

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The one on marriage, you mean? Is that the one? Well, I'll answer that in a second.

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I know you had a book coming out soon, so maybe I had the wrong, okay, that's right, it is on marriage, forgive me,

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I was thinking it was on prayer, but you've already released a book on prayer. And he actually just recorded,

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Monday before he left here to go back home, he recorded a bunch of academy classes for us on prayer, we did it, we got a new set, it looks phenomenal, and I can't wait to see those.

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So we got some new stuff we're going to be rolling out this next year in the academy, trying to put a lot more time and effort into that for our

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All Access members, which, as always, thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting us, you make all of this happen.

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ReformCon couldn't have happened without our supporters. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay, so Andrew, why don't you tell us about your new book that's coming out then, and then let's, then we'll focus on prayer, because I know that's something that's very important to you, and I'd love to hear you talk about it.

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You bet. So briefly, the book is Creational Marriage. One problem evangelicals have had,

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I mean, for even a couple of hundred years, is they have rightly stressed redemption, Christ's great work on the cross, and his resurrection, and so on, and that of course is absolutely correct, but they've tended to diminish or under -emphasize creation.

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But the fact is you can't have redemption without creation. And when they have stressed creation, they have argued against Darwinism and evolution, as they should have, argued for six -day creation, historicity of Adam and Eve, universal flood, all of that is correct.

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But there's more to creation than that. I mean, creation is the OS, the operating system of the universe, and one reason that the sexual revolution and so -called same - sex marriage and transgenderism has made such headway, not just in culture, but in the evangelical church, is because they've just had a weak view of creation, and their view is just as long as people trust

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Christ, they come to church, and are sort of sanctified, go to heaven when they die, basically everything's okay, not understanding that God has an

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OS. He does have an OS for the universe, and if you try to break that OS, it will break you.

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So this book is not dealing with that specifically, though I have another book on that, which is a creational worldview.

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This is, uh, creation is related to marriage, and what the biblical teaching regarding creation has to do with marriage.

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I mean, it deals with everything from so -called same -sex marriage, to egalitarianism, complementarianism, to the great evangelical singleness celibacy paradigm, as though if you're single, you're sort of truly more spiritual than others.

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So -called, this is popular in the PCA, safe spaces for the same -sex attracted, and just a number of other,

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I think there are 16 chapters. It's not really long. The book's only about 160, 170 pages, so you could, uh, with short chapters, but it's really important stuff.

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I've dedicated it to my wife, Sharon. We've now been married 40 years. She's put up with me that long, and thank

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God for that. But anyway, that's kind of a quick summary of creational marriage. It'll be available on Amazon.

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I'll post it. Maybe you guys can promote it. Thank you for letting me promote it. Now, it'll be on Facebook, Twitter, and all those other wonderful Christian platforms.

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I'm speaking facetiously, of course, but it'll be promoted there and elsewhere, so hope you can maybe get a copy.

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Nice Christmas present for married folks, and single folks about to get married.

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So when are you planning on releasing that? Hopefully within the next two or three weeks. Okay. So quick question, because Pastor Zach and I do a lot of premarital counseling.

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Actually, at one point, I had I think three different couples this last year, this and 22 that I was doing premarital with, which

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I love. It's one of my favorite things. Would this be a good book to hand out to my couples that are going through premarital counseling?

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The risks of sounding boastful, and sincerely, that's not what I mean at all. I believe the truth, not because I wrote it, but the biblical, theological truth of this book would be ideal.

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It would have been helpful 50 years ago, but particularly today, with all of the confusion about the roles of a husband and a wife, and transgenderism, and all that,

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I think it would be ideal. I mean, what we have today, guys, here, is the complete scrambling, the complete chaos of sexuality.

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50 years ago, obviously, there was sin. Obviously, there was adultery. Obviously, there was homosexuality.

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Obviously, there was pornography. But, there wasn't this utter chaos that surrounds us today.

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Well, this book is designed to look at God's creational pattern, His OS, to show again what

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He teaches, and to oppose, and to get rid of the chaos. Well, sounds like I'll have to order a lot of those, a lot of copies of that, then, to hand out.

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I'm excited for that. I see our buddy James O 'Brien is in the chat.

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As I mentioned on the live show last week, he's almost always in the live chat, and he had quite the trip home.

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His flight, he got left here, went straight to Heathrow. It was like a 14 -hour flight, and then it was delayed.

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missed his connecting flight, had to get another flight. That flight was delayed. Oh, no. And then he had to get to Dublin, and then he had to take a bus, and a taxi.

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I don't even know what time he got home. What a nightmare. But, it was great to see James. Yeah, he was such a blessing. Yeah, I love that guy.

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He stayed with me. Be praying for him in Ireland, and the work they're doing over there to try to end the slaughter of their pre -born neighbors over there.

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By the way, James, it is raining like crazy today. He just told me it's raining over there.

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This weather's awesome, isn't it? Oh, man. It is nice. It's nice. We are finally in awesome

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Weatherville, USA for a while now, and I'm excited. Andrew gets to live in paradise 24 -7.

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Well, not socio -political paradise. Maybe climatological paradise, but nothing else.

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Yeah, it's amazing that they haven't kicked you out yet over there. Man, I'm telling you,

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I don't know. I must be doing something wrong. I'm not vocal enough, but I just keep speaking the truth, and thus far, they've left me alone, so we'll see if that continues.

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Yeah. If you don't know, he lives in California, and a lot of faithful Christians are fleeing

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California. We've absorbed a number of those families over the last couple years.

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Excellent. Let's go ahead and switch topics. You just recorded, I think it was, what, three or four different academies?

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Yes, three. On prayer. I'm just going to open it up for you here.

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Promote. Tell us what those were about. I know this is a topic that gets you very excited.

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Unfortunately, I think it's also a topic that doesn't excite most Christians. I'm just going to open it up.

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Let us have it. Luke, I agree with you, and I must tell you that I have come to believe that that omission and that de -emphasis is diabolical.

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I mean, think about it for a minute. If you were Satan and you could influence good

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Christian people we're not talking now about liberals, modernists, pro -abortionists, pro -homosexuals, but people that just generally believe the

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Bible and want to follow Christ, want to be a part of the Church to be not very effective in the faith.

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One great way to do this would be to dampen their prayer life or have them push it to the margins.

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Because in the Bible, prayer is a chief means of God's doing things and changing things on the earth.

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Now God is sovereign, and we as Calvinists believe that. God doesn't need prayer, he doesn't need anything.

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In fact, he doesn't need us to preach. He gets the angels down to preach and evangelize, but he's chosen most of the time not to do that.

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He's chosen to make prayer, his work in the world rather, the advance of his kingdom to a large degree contingent on very believing, powerful prayer.

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You ever notice how often prayer is mentioned in the Bible? You know, I think it's one of those things, guys, that's mentioned so much, we just kind of read over it.

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You know, it's kind of like faith and belief. Well, yeah, prayer's in the Bible. Let's get to this next cool thing. Let's get to election or let's get to limited atonement or something.

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Nothing wrong with those. But if you'll get a topical Bible, the advantage of one of those things, they're not perfect.

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Just look at all the times prayer is mentioned in the Bible. Look about, look at the fact that the saints in the

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Bible, all of the saints, were praying people. Look at our Lord. His life was bathed in prayer.

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It's remarkable how much the Bible emphasizes prayer and how little praying we do. Now, I would suggest that in the 19th century in England and America, in particular, this is much less true.

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They have their own problems, the Victorians, some of them too pietistic and various other things. But in general, they tended to stress prayer a lot more than we do.

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And I don't think it's a coincidence that the 19th century was the great century of postmillennialism and particularly the sending of missionaries.

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England and the U .S. sent missionaries all over the world. And there was this great vision that we would bring the world to Jesus Christ.

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Not every single person, of course, but bring the world. It's in great revival and great reformation under the power of the

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Holy Spirit. And as this prayer kind of cooled, this vision for worldwide dominion, godly reformation, global reformation, global dominion kind of cooled also.

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I think those two are linked. I think the fact that we don't emphasize prayer is one great reason that the church is so weak.

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Now, of course there are theological reasons that the church is weak, the church is cowardly. That's all true.

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But I think one reason that's not mentioned enough is the church is basically prayerless. Very few prayer meetings in church.

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Christians don't spend much time in prayer. I'll have them say, some of them to me, guys, well, I don't have time, even 10 minutes a day to spend in prayer, but they'll spend an hour and 15 minutes on Facebook.

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Well, of course, if you've lived as long as I have, and even as long as you guys have, you know that you have time to do in a day what you really want to do.

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If you consider prayer to be important, you can get up 10 or 15 minutes earlier, or even more, but at least 10 or 15 minutes to pray.

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This is a major theme of the Bible. Another thing, so do you want me to keep going,

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Luke, or do you want to ask a question? Go for it. The theme of these talks was prayer changes things.

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I thought of that. I don't know how many of you remember Christian bookstores. Are there really Christian bookstores left?

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A few. Most of them have gone out of business because Amazon and all that. There used to be these little Christian bookstores, and I would facetiously call them

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Christian car stores. There were very few books in them, all sorts of nice little trinkets and bumper stickers with all sorts of trite, honk if you love

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Jesus, Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven, and all these things that are just sort of... Jesus is my co -pilot.

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Jesus is my co -pilot, and so on. One of them I remember that I would scoff at is prayer changes things, but actually the more

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I thought about that, the more I thought, you know, that one absolutely is true, because in the

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Bible, when the saints prayed, things changed for the better. When Jesus prayed, what happened?

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Well, things changed. And when Peter prayed, when the early church prayed, things changed. There were bad things going on, or things not going on, that should have gone on, the advance of the gospel, maybe the climate, there needed to be some change in the weather, somebody's heart needs to be drawn to Jesus Christ, food needs to be produced, just everything, physical and non -physical.

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So there was a great need. What would people do? They wouldn't say, let me get my credit card out, nothing wrong with that, but if it was a great and super bold need, they'd get on their face before God and say,

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God, we need you to do something. Now, there's something very interesting here. There was a

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Canadian, a Canadian Christian about, I think it was back in the 40s or 50s, read through the Bible looking for nothing, looking, reading, looking for nothing, but answered prayers.

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He made an interesting count. I can't verify that he's absolutely correct, but he's probably correct. He notes that almost 70 % of all prayers prayed in the

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Bible by Christians, by saints, or in the Old Testament by God -fearing Jews, almost 70 % of those prayers were answered.

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That is, God did what was prayed. Now, there could have been a lot more than 70%, it's just the Bible didn't tell us all of them that might have been answered.

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Now, that's a remarkable total, my friends. Does the Bible promise that God will answer every single prayer of every single saint, every single time?

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It does not. But the Bible does take it that as a rule, as a default, if you love

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God and you pray from your heart to the Lord and you wish to please Him and His kingdom, you can expect

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Him to answer prayer. Now, there's also the notion that we should pray about, you know, big things.

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Well, somebody's unconverted and we should pray. It's a really big issue. We don't want them to go to hell.

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But, like, you know, it's kind of beneath God that if I'm running late and need to be at an appointment to find me a parking space close to the door,

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God's not interested in that. Well, actually, that's false. To say that is really to say that God's not interested in every detail of our lives.

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Now, the Bible says we should be praying always. Jesus says that again and again. And by always,

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He means always, continually. He doesn't mean continuously, as though you're doing nothing else, but continually.

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That is like the ticking of a clock. Tick, tick, tick. It's going on again and again and again. We should be praying hundreds of prayers every day.

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And, obviously, I don't mean that you're bowing your head and closing your eyes. Certainly not while you're driving your automobile. But, as J .C.

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Rya once said, and I love this language, guys, he says, every day we should be sending... Don't you love the way some of these old -timers would put things?

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They said, every day we should be sending to heaven hundreds of winged messengers. Just shooting them up to heaven.

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Lord, I need your help. Lord, I'm giving premarital counseling, and I don't have, like, 20 minutes to pray.

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God, please give me wisdom. I lack wisdom. I'm crying out to you. You promised in the book of James you would give wisdom.

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Lord, please help my children. One is weak. One is faltering. Please bring their hearts back to you. The church, there's a great need in the church.

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Financial. Or a need for a new location, or a need for some particular financial need.

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Whatever it is, people in the word of God pray, and generally God answered prayer.

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This is true of physical healings, too. And I want to make this very clear. I'm not talking about Bethel's healing ministries.

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There are no healing ministries in the Bible. A place where lots of people come and everybody just claps and jumps around like Comanche Indians.

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Excuse me, Native Americans. Excuse me, First Nations. I don't mean that at all. I mean that we get on our face before God and trust

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God to fulfill the promises of his word. For too long Christians have not taken prayer seriously.

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I'll say one more thing. I've said a lot, but I'll say one more thing about this. It's remarkable that generally

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Armenians tend to pray more than Calvinists when we have the theology of prayer, and in my view they tend to lack a robust theology of prayer.

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Their view of prayer can often lead into sort of manipulating God. I'll do this and you must do this.

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But the Calvinists believe in the sovereignty of God. We believe he's the truly sovereign

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God and if he's truly sovereign that means no man can thwart his will. Well then why don't we pray for God to do things in the earth?

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Now a little cop -out that some Calvinists have, and it's just a total cop -out as well, I don't know if that's in God's eternal decrees or his predestined will.

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But we're never in the Bible called to pray according to God's secret eternal decrees. They're secret for a reason.

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We're called to pray according to God's written covenantal will. That's how we should pray. So if someone is sick in the church we don't say, well somebody gets cancer.

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Let's say Luke comes to you, well I don't know brother whether we should pray for them. What if it's in God's will for them to get cancer and die?

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Did anybody in the Bible ever act that way? No, they didn't act that way. If it is, God's going to take them to heaven.

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We ought to just pray in faith that God's going to fulfill his promises. God can do what he wants to do.

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Here's what we need to understand. God ordains predestination in his eternal decrees.

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But God equally, equally determines his own secondary causes.

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He authorizes what we call secondary causes or contingencies under his sovereign will. Those too are a part of God's plan just as much as predestination is.

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So God ordains means and therefore we ought to use them. Okay, so that was like six sermons in the last ten minutes so I'll stop there.

27:25

Yeah, go for it. Okay, so a couple things. I was making some mental notes. One, I always, especially when you've

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I'm sure you've encountered this Andrew, but like when you're going through the doctrines of grace and talking about God's sovereignty, inevitably that question comes up, right?

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Like, well, why are we praying of God's sovereign? And, you know,

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I always explain it like, well, you know, people say like prayer changes things like you just mentioned.

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Our prayer is actually changing things. And I've always taken that opportunity to kind of tell people like, well, when we're praying, when we're talking to God, we want to align our hearts with His.

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Right? And so I think of it as like prayer changing us. When we're praying to God, we're aligning our thoughts with God, and that's the goal.

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you know, it's funny. I think as Christians, to kind of go back to those stats you were given, about 70 % of God answering prayers.

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I think most Christians think that God answering prayers, they define

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God answering prayers as Him doing what they're asking for. But in reality,

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I would argue that God is always answering the prayers. It just might not be the answer that we want.

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Right? And we have that all the time with people who are counseling, like, well, I've been praying for this, and it's not happening or whatever.

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And it's like, well, God's answering you, it's just not the answer that you're looking for. You know, and there could be a number of various reasons why that's happening.

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Sin's a very big reason why I think that happens a lot of times. So all that to say, I was going to ask you, like, how do you reconcile that then from and you touched on it a little bit, but if you could dive deeper, like, how do you reconcile that as a

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Reformed Christian who has a very high view of God's sovereignty?

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How do you reconcile us praying that changing things with God's sovereignty?

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Well, so I think it's really important to understand that we pray according to God's covenantal promises and not according to what we assume we know about His eternal purposes.

29:48

So a couple of things there, Luke. There are differing views here, but in the

29:53

Bible when we use the term answer, when God answers prayer, it actually does mean that God does what we say.

29:59

And when God doesn't do it, it's called not answering prayer. He says, they will call on me and I will not answer. So if Paul would pray for God to do something and he didn't do it, that's not

30:09

God answering by saying no, that's not God not answering. Now, God may have a good reason for not answering.

30:15

I'm not saying that. So does prayer really change God? So let's talk about that for a minute.

30:21

The answer is yes and no. We know that God and His nature doesn't change. The Bible says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

30:29

And God Himself says, I am the Lord, the true God, Yahweh, and I change not. And yet of course we all know a lot of texts where God says,

30:36

I'm going to do this, and people pray, and He says, okay, I'm not going to do that. We see all of these texts that are an embarrassment to some

30:43

Calvinists. It shouldn't be that God relents or repents. Does that mean that God changes His eternal decrees?

30:48

Well, of course not. But as John Frame says, He does often, He is often willing to change

30:54

His stated purposes with man, because implied in His stated purposes is the truth that if people repent, then

31:01

He's willing to change those purposes. Oh, there are so many examples of that in the Bible. Think, God comes to Jonah and says, go to Nineveh, that depraved culture, and say, in 40 days,

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I'm going to destroy you. He didn't say, tell them, in 40 days, I'm going to destroy you if you repent.

31:18

He said, I'm going to destroy you in 40 days. God didn't destroy them. God's not lying, because implied in these covenantal,

31:26

God's covenantal dealings is, I might very well avert my judgment if you repent, and pour out your heart to me.

31:33

There are a number of examples of that. Elijah, one thing I pointed out was Elijah with the widow's son. Remember this,

31:39

I won't have time to go into details, but during the Great Famine, God's judgment on Israel, he was staying with the widow and God had miraculously provided for them, and this widow's precious little son died.

31:50

Now think about what Elijah did not say. And by the way, when that happened, the woman was distraught.

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You've come here, you've eaten our food, you claim to be a man of God, and now I'm left in this family with nothing.

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My son is gone, she was distraught. And God doesn't say it's wrong for her to be distraught.

32:07

Notice what Elijah did not say. He didn't say, you need to accept this as the will of God. He didn't say that.

32:14

He prayed, and he prayed, and the language there, it says when he cried, was he cried very loudly.

32:20

He stretched himself on the boy, and the boy was raised from the dead. Am I saying that that's a normal thing? Of course not.

32:25

That was very extraordinary. But the answer to prayer is not extraordinary. And crying out to God is not extraordinary.

32:33

But that's the language that's used. He got on his face and he cried out to God. And I want your listeners to understand this wasn't one of the little quiet time prayers.

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Jesus, if you'll please be nice to me. It would be nice if everything goes well today. And please be nice to me.

32:48

He stretched and cried out to God. It was a great firm and powerful prayer. Prayers we rarely hear today.

32:55

Well, that got God's attention. Not that God wasn't paying attention, is that God was moved.

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And by the way, that's another thing we need to understand. There is this interpretation of divine possibility that's just dead wrong.

33:09

It is true that God doesn't have emotions such that he can be knocked off his plan, if I may say that. Or that God's nature changes.

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That, of course, is not true. That's a denial. That's a denial of the biblical view of God. But it is true that God has holy emotions.

33:26

God gets angry. God gets very sad. He's grieved. I'm just reading right now the book of Ezekiel.

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God gets furious at his people. Now, there are people that say, well, that's just an anthropomorphism.

33:40

That's just an anthropomorphism. That's not really God's just speaking to us as if we're a little baby or something like that.

33:48

But they wouldn't say love is an anthropomorphism. They would say, no, God really is loving. Well, then if God's really loving,

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God can get angry. And God can get sad. That doesn't mean that changes his eternal purposes.

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The fact is, he has purpose to become angry. He has purpose to become sad. He has purpose to delight in his people.

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And therefore, he's determined to do that. So, we need to restore a biblical understanding of God's emotions.

34:14

That's one aspect of this issue of prayer. That was excellent. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying some of those terms.

34:21

Well, I think, hopefully, that blesses people. I have a question that's going to change topic a little bit. So, do you want to jump in on anything?

34:27

Yeah, I think one of the first things that you think about to yourself, especially after you had talked about your book on prayer was just conviction.

34:35

We all get conviction when we talk about prayer. We immediately say, I'm just not spending enough time on it. And I noticed a couple people in the chat, they're like, oh, you know,

34:43

I'm not good at prayer. So, I guess a question would be, why do we fall off the wagon when it comes to our prayer life?

34:50

What keeps us from doing that? And how can we get back into a healthy prayer life?

34:56

That's great, Zach. I don't want to portray myself as some great paragon of prayer. It certainly can happen to me.

35:01

It's a great temptation to all of us. I think a couple of things there. One of them is that because we live in an age in which spontaneity is king, in which feelings are king, we have the idea, well,

35:14

I don't really feel like praying. I don't feel close to God. And I think it would be hypocritical.

35:21

My heart is so cold. So, I'm going to wait until my heart gets inflamed in love for God, and then

35:27

I will start praying. But I believe that has things just backwards. Obedience precedes feeling.

35:33

So, we need to get up every day, and in the Bible, people had set times for prayer, nothing wrong with that, and pray.

35:40

I get up in the morning, and I have a prayer list. Some people think that it's silly to have a prayer list, but I would like to remind you, if you can remember everything every day you need to pray for, you probably aren't praying as much as you should, because your memory is not that good.

35:55

I have a prayer list, and I have one on my phone. I have a couple of them written down. When I travel,

36:00

I have a small book. I don't pray through the whole prayer list every day, but I often pray through it, and this helps rivet my mind and heart toward God.

36:11

And the people who say, well, that just easily becomes rote, and you're only just saying words.

36:17

Well, you could say the same thing about preaching. You could say the same thing about evangelism. Of course it can become rote.

36:23

We don't stop doing things God commanded us to do just because we can't always or don't always do them from the heart.

36:29

We'll start obeying. So, that's one thing, Zach, I think that's vital. I would say this, the more you pray intentionally, the easier prayer will be.

36:41

The more you get into a habit, you create an environment of faith. And that's a key element.

36:46

Think about that. Every genuine prayer has at its root faith. I mean, we can't see

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God, right? I mean, we're looking around here, we can't see Him. God's a spirit. Therefore, it requires faith to pray to this great, sovereign, loving being.

37:00

But the more we pray, the more that's fueling faith, fueling belief in our heart. So the more we do it, the more we'll want to do it, because He becomes more and more real to us.

37:11

So I think that's one thing. The other thing is setting times to do it, because if not, if you don't set times religiously, not that you'll never fail, but times to pray,

37:25

Satan will always make sure to set times so that you don't. If you don't set times for prayer,

37:31

Satan will always work it out to schedule it so that you don't have time to pray. So I think that's really vital.

37:38

The other thing, and I'll stop with this one, is A .W. Tozer said, prayer without expectation is dead.

37:44

The Bible again and again says, pray in faith. Pray in faith. Trust God.

37:50

And we can't allow the faith healers and people who say, well, I prayed for something to happen and it didn't happen, so obviously my faith is weak.

37:59

Well, that might be a reason, but there are other reasons. And Luke, you mentioned one earlier. Maybe our life is filled with sin. Maybe we're not praying with belief.

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Maybe it really isn't in God to answer that. Or maybe, and here's a key one, God wants us to persevere.

38:13

Man, we need to get over this idea that we pray about something for a week, and then God doesn't answer. And then we say, well, it's obviously

38:20

God and God's sovereign will to save that person. That person must not be elect, because I prayed for a week and that person didn't get saved.

38:28

Well, that's just silly. The Bible again and again says, keep knocking, keep knocking. So if you're there praying, a dear friend of ours, a very godly woman,

38:37

I was her pastor years ago, she had a husband that was just an adulterer and divorced her, and she texted me last night.

38:44

She says, oh, Andrew, she says, I just want a husband so badly, I'm so alone, and I said, I have been praying, but I said, you know what,

38:51

I've slacked off a little. I need to redouble my prayer. Keep praying in faith. Keep knocking.

38:56

Keep praying. Again and again Christ says that. And the Bible says that in due time,

39:03

God will tend to answer. So, I think that remembering those things will help us to get into the habit of good godly prayer.

39:11

That's excellent. And I'm glad you asked that, Zach, because that'll tie in nicely with the question I was going to ask.

39:16

I'm going to tell you what I'm going to ask you now, so you can think about it, Andrew, and then I'm going to give what

39:22

I think the reason is. The question I was going to ask you is, why do you think, I would say, as a whole, within the church, what are the reasons you think that prayer has kind of taken a back seat within the church and our culture?

39:39

And so, to tie in with what Zach was saying, I know with my family, when we do family worship and stuff, one thing that's been really, really helpful for us is there's some amazing prayer apps, right, like you were saying,

39:53

Andrew, where you can literally just put in all these things that you need to pray for, and then the one we use, just random, you click on each day and there's a random list of things that you've inputted, and it helps you remember the things you need to pray for.

40:10

It also kind of helps keep it fresh, and I know in my own life, and I think just for Christians in general, prayer can become very robotic, and very, like, you just find yourselves kind of repeating without even thinking.

40:24

You're not even really using your brain, it's just second nature, you're just kind of spitting out things that you pray for time and time again, and I've been guilty of that, just finding myself like, man,

40:34

I wasn't even... How's God going to hear my prayer? I'm not even thinking about what

40:40

I'm praying, I'm just regurgitating things. And so, that's been super helpful for us, is just having an app like that, or the ability to go back and kind of every day, you're thinking of things new, refreshed, and so it doesn't become robotic and stale.

40:58

So, to kind of get to the question I was asking you, I think of my grandparents, who are now both with the

41:07

Lord, but they were faithful, faithful Christians and missionaries in the jungle in Africa, and they were some of the most faithful prayers, praying people

41:17

I've ever known that greatly impacted my life, and I know for a fact that every morning, they would get to get, they'd do the daily bread together and they would have their list of things that they'd pray for, and it was,

41:30

I mean, every single one of their grandkids and great -grandkids and children, they'd pray for them every single day, and they had their list that they went through, and I witnessed that.

41:38

I can remember seeing them do that as a child. But, from that generation to where we are now, it's like, what happened?

41:48

And, I think especially in, I would say within the reformed world, the reformed community,

41:57

I think we've become so averse to anything remotely charismatic, right?

42:04

It's like, so, growing up in a Baptist church, even before I was reformed, it's just, prayer on Sundays is just very stiff and not a lot of emotion, not that emotion should be the driving force, but the point is that it's that robotic kind of, are we really talking to God, or are we just making sure we mention these things without really having our entire being behind those prayers?

42:38

So, I mean, I think, like I said, within the reformed community especially, I think we've become so allergic to anything like that that I think that's affected us in a negative way.

42:51

And, you know, I know some Christians that are reformed that have been a great inspiration to me because they're more on the charismatic side, but they're very reformed in their theology and soteriology and eschatology and the view of God's law, but yet they're, you know, somewhat charismatic in their worship and their prayer life, and that's challenged me a bit to not be so afraid to have some emotion, especially when it comes to prayer.

43:20

So I think that's a big factor, especially in our community, but that doesn't address the church as a whole in our culture.

43:28

That addresses a small portion of the church in our culture. So I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

43:35

Why do you think that it's become such an issue for us and our nation and our culture? Well, I mean, probably a number of things, but I'll tell you one thing that comes immediately to mind, and that is, and this is a very severe verdict,

43:51

Luke, but throughout the 20th century, decreasing faith. Our forefathers, particularly in the 19th century, and even going back to some of the great

44:01

Puritans, these were people that bathed themselves in the presence of God. They felt

44:07

His presence. They knew it. I'm not afraid to use that word, felt. Jonathan Edwards referred to religious affections, which is not the same things as just sort of good

44:16

Jesus feelings, the Jesus jollies. There's a sense of the majesty of God, but also the presence of God.

44:24

And I would say that with Calvinists, here's the problem. We all know the problem with evangelicals. We rightly mock it, the

44:31

Jesus is my boyfriend idea, dragging God down from His high and heavenly throne and making

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Him our buddy. We all know that is irreverent, and it borders on blasphemy.

44:43

But I would say the Calvinistic problem is also, God is the absentee landlord, the deistic

44:48

God that's way out there, looking at things as it were through His telescope. He has decreed what will happen,

44:53

He's given us His law word, and says, go at it, boys, I'll just wait up here until everything's done.

45:00

Friends, that's not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is the sovereign King who doesn't only do things from a distance, but comes down and works among His people.

45:10

He comes down and He affects the weather, and He judges His enemies, and He answers the prayer of His people, and we talk to Him.

45:17

John M. Frame made the point about the Word of God one time. He says, when you read the Bible, imagine this. Imagine that you're sitting on your bed, and that God Himself, or in particular, physically,

45:29

Jesus Christ is there standing over you, talking to you. As you read the Bible, Jesus is talking to you.

45:35

These are the words. He's right about that. I'd like to reverse that. One thing that helps is that, remember that when you pray, when

45:43

I pray, I know God's just right there. We all understand. He's not part of His creation, but He is present everywhere.

45:51

I just, when I'm driving, I'll just, my wife, Sharon, and I will just say, I'll just pray aloud,

45:56

Lord, please, He's right there. He's just right here. It's not as though you have to pray really hard, pray deep from your diaphragm, because you've got to really push high.

46:07

You've got to break through the ceiling or something. There's the reality of the living God. So, I would say that once we lose a sense of the palpable presence of God in our midst, in our churches, what a wonderful service, by the way, it was when

46:22

I was with you guys Sunday night, when Dr. Boot preached. The presence of God must be evident.

46:28

So, and here's the third thing. I'm glad that I brought up Dr. Joe Boot. Most of your listeners know him. Read his book, perhaps, The Mission of God and so on.

46:35

Friend of Apologia and CCL, the organization I lead. You may not know that his father is a very, a father and mother, very godly people.

46:43

Missionaries for many years to Pakistan. His name's Michael Boot. I think sometimes I joke with Joe that I like him even more than I like Joe, and that's a lot.

46:53

Godly man. I asked him one time when Joe was pastoring there in Toronto, he's now leading

46:59

Ezra full -time. I said, Michael, what is your, I could tell, just the presence of God is evident in this.

47:05

By the way, Pentecostal background, who believes in the doctrines of grace. I said, what do you do?

47:12

I mean, what is your task of the church? He says, oh, I'm the prayer pastor. And I thought, isn't that odd?

47:19

How often do we hear people today say, well, I'm on staff. I'm the executive pastor. I'm the CEO of this or that.

47:25

I'm the senior citizen pastor, or whatever. Do we have a prayer pastor?

47:33

I was talking with him one time outside the Ezra Institute. We were about ready to start, and I'd pray. Joe and I had gotten together to pray.

47:40

And I said, hi, Michael. We'll see you later. He says, yes. He started walking away. He says, I need to go have a word with the master.

47:47

And he went upstairs and spent time praying. It was men like that. We have so few men like that today.

47:54

When an issue comes up in the church, oftentimes the first response is, well, what can we do?

48:00

Who can we get on that? What will be our strategy? And by the way, God uses means. So that's not wrong to do at all.

48:08

But I would urge all of our listeners, when that happens from now on, and none of us do it consistently, but we need to do it more consistently, let's say, let's pray about this.

48:16

Let's pray about this immediately. Get on our face before God. And I would urge you, all of you listeners,

48:21

I'm taking over your show, Luke, you see. I would urge all of you to do that. And trust

48:27

God. Hold God to His promises. God loves to be held to His promises. God doesn't get angry when we hold

48:34

Him to His promises. A number of times in the Word of God, Gideon's a prime example. God comes to him and says, oh, you mighty man, the angel,

48:42

I believe perhaps Jesus Christ, comes to him and says, oh, you mighty man of valor, and he looks around and says, who, me? You talking to me?

48:49

I'm hiding here. Hiding from the media because I'm such a coward. And God tells him

48:54

He's going to use him to do a great work, and He says, if this be the case, where are all the promises?

49:02

If this is the case, what are about all these covenant promises? And you notice God didn't get mad.

49:08

You know why God didn't get mad? Because God knew that Gideon had enough belief in His heart to hold

49:14

God to His covenant Word. And God doesn't get angry when we get on our faces and say, God, where are your promises?

49:20

And we cry out to Him. We need to do that more often, and we would see God work more powerfully in our age if we did that.

49:27

Amen. Did I just see your lovely wife make an appearance on Apologia Radio? She might have.

49:33

She's the smart one. You know, it's funny. We always, and I want to have you jump in,

49:40

Zach. We always kind of joke about this, but I've noticed that when you're praying for meals and stuff, we always joke a good

49:49

Presbyterian prayer for a meal is very just like, alright, Lord, thank you for this food. Bless our bodies.

49:54

Amen. And then let's eat. You get a Baptist that prays for food, and it's long and drawn out, but it's very like, woe is me.

50:03

I don't deserve this cheeseburger. Lord, have mercy on me. And it's like, you're going, alright, bro, it's been five minutes.

50:11

I'm ready to eat this cheeseburger. Right. Food's getting cold. But then I know, because Zach was kind of charismatic there for a minute, right?

50:21

When you first came to Christ, you were kind of in that kind of a background, right? Yeah. I know even

50:26

Zach's challenged me when he prays, and I struggle with that, because growing up in a Baptist church my whole life, so it's hard for me to break out of that just,

50:37

Lord, bless us. It's very hard to break out of that, but I know Zach is, right away

50:42

I noticed, and I never told you this, but right away I noticed he gets very into prayers in a good way, and that's challenged me.

50:53

Especially working with Rusty Thomas and a lot of those guys, and in abortion, those guys are, I mean, they bring shofars, which is a little extreme for us, just for the record.

51:04

But yeah, they go all in, and it's like, hey, I'm ready to eat this burger. I didn't eat the shofar in my ear.

51:13

anyways, I was just thinking that as you were talking, but Zach, do you want to add anything we're wanting down here? Yeah. I would say

51:20

I'm thankful for that, being in that environment in many ways, but also

51:25

I had to unlearn a lot of stuff when it comes to the relevancy of prophets today, and all the wacky, tabacky type of stuff, and Pentecostalisms.

51:36

Pentecostalism. But, when it comes to heartfelt prayer, heartfelt worship, prayer meetings where we're pouring out our hearts to God, minus the speaking in tongues, which we know is just not biblical, all of that is an essential component in the life of the

51:51

Christian, to pour out your heart and mind and thanksgiving and confession and prayer.

51:58

I would just say what really turned on the lightbulb for me was, you know, prayer is not just some repetition of words or just asking, just predominantly supplication, which people treat it like.

52:09

It's just, God, I want this, I want this. When I was 21, really, things shifted when I it became predominantly or primarily relational.

52:19

I am in communion. Prayer is intimate communion with God, and that's what we need.

52:25

That's the lifeline for the Christian. Everything flows out of that. I mean, when we're talking to so many folks in biblical counseling, intimacy with God is what we stress on, because it's through intimacy with God that we are empowered by the

52:39

Spirit of God to be the Christians that He's called us to be, to live a life of obedience. So, I would just say, in connection with kind of my charismatic influence there, yeah,

52:49

I don't want to be the frozen chosen, as Calvinists, to where we're not heartfelt. There's not anything sinful with being heartfelt.

52:56

It's when we are, you know, I guess what charismatics can do is redefine the

53:02

Holy Spirit, or kind of drum up the work of the Holy Spirit in their zeal. You know, that's all getting outside of the line.

53:10

But I think the Scripture talks about, you know, Jesus lifted up His voice in loud prayers, right?

53:15

We have to return to that, because in correlation to what you're saying, Andrew, you know, when you were talking about Jonathan Edwards and the

53:24

Great Awakening, I mean, they saw the power of God so significantly because of their prayers, right?

53:32

I mean, look at the success of Charles Spurgeon, what, he had 400 people praying up underneath the church. So, I don't want to take all the time.

53:39

I know it's winding down, but it's so essential. No, it's great. I would say this, I'd say something real quick, but that's so true,

53:44

Zach. There's controversy around, and I'm on the Calvinistic side here, of course, like you guys, but we talk about the sign, gifts, speaking in tongues, and prophecy, and so on.

53:54

Prayer's not a sign gift. People need to understand that. Prayer is something, it's not a special gift.

54:01

Somebody says, well, I don't really have the gift of prayer. That's like a single person saying, well, I don't really have the gift of chastity.

54:07

Or, I don't have the gift of a clean mind. That's not a gift. That's just something you're supposed to do. So, all

54:12

Christians are called to be mighty people of prayer and to cry out to God. That has nothing to do with sign gifts.

54:19

Amen. Well, hey, I know you've got to get on the call here pretty quick, so any closing thoughts besides the one you just gave us?

54:26

Yeah, yeah, I do. I mentioned this, I think, on Apology Academy.

54:33

I want to say finally, to avoid what I term derisively Tiny Tim prayers. Some of you have read or seen the

54:40

Christmas carol, and at the very end, there's this line of Tiny Tim that says, God bless us, God bless us, everyone.

54:46

A lot of people's prayers are so generic. They get up and say, well, my prayer for the day, God just bless us.

54:52

Well, be very specific. How do you want him to bless us? Right. When do you want him to show up? How much money do you want him to provide?

55:00

How do we need this particular kingdom work? Do you need an automobile? Is yours falling apart? You can't reliably get to church?

55:06

Then pray for one. What about this person, this particular person, this child that is wayward, this person that desperately needs converted?

55:13

So, don't just say, God bless us. Specifically ask God to provide his blessing in very specific ways.

55:21

I would urge all of you listeners to do that. Do that every day. Start praying, trusting

55:26

God to do things. And when he answers, do not say, oh, that was a coincidence. It was not a coincidence.

55:33

As one of the great archbishops of Canterbury, back before they were apostates, said, when I pray, coincidences happen.

55:39

When I do not pray, coincidences do not happen. So, let us remember that. Amen. Well, I'll tell you one thing.

55:45

I know you were there at our service on Sunday. I usually start off our services reading a prayer from the

55:51

Valley of Vision. Yes. And, man, I tell you, that's been a healthy kick in the teeth for me, personally, and I know for our congregation, just starting our worship off with one of those prayers, it's challenging.

56:06

And I can't tell you, talking about coincidences, I can't tell you how many times I've had counseling with someone during the week, or even

56:15

Sundays before church sometimes, I'll get up, I'll literally just open it up to the next one, and it's like, directly answering that.

56:23

Isn't that amazing? See, that's the sovereignty of God. That's why Calvinists would understand that.

56:29

Arminians might not. God rearranges and creates circumstances so that those things happen.

56:35

It's truly remarkable. Amen. Alright, brother, I know you've got to go. So where can people find you?

56:42

I'm not telling where they can find me. I live in California. No, no, no. Online, of course. Just two or three things.

56:49

CCL, Center for Cultural Leadership, that's christianculture .com. You can go to docsanlon .com for the blog, but probably the weekly newsletter is on Substack.

56:58

Just search for my name or culture change and you can find it. All my books, or not all of them, but most of them are on Amazon, YouTube channel, probably six or seven other platforms.

57:10

Twitter, of course, and Facebook. So just do searches and you can find me there. Awesome. Well, thank you, brother.

57:16

We love you. You're such a blessing to us and I'm grateful. We've been trying to schedule this for a while, so I'm grateful we were able to make it happen.

57:23

Well, thank you guys being the world to me. Love you all. Love you, brother. God bless you. We'll catch up.

57:28

Love you, man. Bye. Man, I love that guy. Phenomenal. Can't wait to read that book. Yeah, I know.

57:34

I'll be handing that out. Trust me. As we're winding down here, I think you have an appointment waiting for you.

57:41

I do. Again, please be in prayer for Pastor Jeff and Dennis Sarfate at Countover.

57:48

They're all on their way to Georgia right now. We have a bill going in there this year to criminalize abortion.

57:57

We're excited for that and it's a really good opportunity, so please be praying for that. Just as we're closing out the end of this year here in 2022, we've got a lot of planning to do for 2023 for everything we're doing, not just in abortion now.

58:13

We're going to have a lot of bills, Lord willing, put into place this next year in different states.

58:20

Please be praying for that. We thank you again for your support for an abortion now in Apologia Studios.

58:27

If you guys haven't heard Provoked, you should check it out because it's super dope.

58:35

I've got some debates coming up with some pro -choicers and dog lovers and Mormons.

58:44

Pastor Wade and I are going to preach or not preach, Debate a Mormon in January. A lot of good stuff.

58:50

Nice. Dog lovers too? Yeah, dog lovers and all sorts of stuff. Wow. Are you getting some furries on there?

58:56

Maybe. You should. You should put out a call to have some furries come on the show.

59:04

In full costume? Yeah, why not? We'll see.

59:10

I heard, somebody told me that just the other day, I don't remember who it was, that some public schools and high schools and stuff are actually putting in litter boxes for the furries.

59:25

Yeah, I guess we would have to bring a litter box in here. We can get them some dog food for like a little snack during the debate.

59:32

I'm not even making this up. This is the truth. We're laughing about it because it's so ridiculous, but it's for real happening.

59:41

That's how nuts. Mormons chapter 1 talks about that. I was thinking the same thing.

59:49

Alright. Look at this. We're right on time. You're 15 seconds left. We are going to end this.

59:55

I'm just going to pull this out with some Christmas music. As I mentioned, we will be back in two weeks.

01:00:06

That's all. And if it'll play, which I don't know if it's going to play, so we're just going to pretend like it's playing.

01:00:11

There it goes. Okay. Maybe? There it is. Okay. God bless you all. Peace out.