Prayer, Prayerlessness & The Souls of Men, Part 2

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Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the

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Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro and Pastor Justin Pierce.

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Good evening. And as you can see, this is not Andrew Rappaport. This is

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Dr. Anthony Silvestro running the show tonight. And who do

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I have with me here? This has been great. We've had a number of guests just come through the house in Ohio here.

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And as you can see, we have Pastor Josiah Nichols, who I know you've seen on the show before.

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You've had him as a special guest once before. He's been on a number of times, just being one of the guys in the background and helping to run the show.

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And as you can see, something about Josiah is really, really odd. And it is not his shirt that is proclaiming

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Liberty University. It is the fact that something happened here.

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Well, what was that Josiah? Well, I used to have a beard, but then I got a job that I wasn't able to keep that forced me to shave my facial hair.

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Yeah, that happened to me too when I got married. So it's a good thing.

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There's nothing wrong with having a clean shaven face. So we can have the theology of Spurgeon without his beard, right?

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Or cigars. It's coming back. You can see the mustache and other stuff coming.

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Yeah. So we're really excited for tonight. I do want to say, we're going to miss our other hosts.

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Pastor Andrew is spending time with his family this week. He's actually at his daughter's house.

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It's her birthday this week. It was actually yesterday. And so who is that kid?

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Thanks, Jason. That is great. And bond serving for Jesus.

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Thank you. That's true. I'm tired of guys growing beards. Everyone thinks it's cool in the reform movement. I'm like, really?

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So anyways, Andrew is enjoying his daughter's birthday, enjoying time with them.

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His daughter is Lord willing going to be delivering his first grandchild here in the next two and a half or so months.

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So we're looking forward to that. And Justin Pierce is sick tonight, unfortunately. So he's not going to join us tonight.

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But I did want to say before we bring on our special guest, we're really excited about this show. What was really cool is the first time we had our guest on,

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Dan Llewellyn, on prayer and prayerlessness in the church, prayerlessness in Christianity in general.

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It's been one of our most viewed shows on YouTube and other platforms in the last several months.

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So it's remarkable. People have really enjoyed that show. And I know you're really going to enjoy tonight's show when we get to it.

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Before that, I do want to advertise a couple of things. Number one is, because Halloween is right around the corner,

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Pastor Justin Pierce wrote this last year, I want to say late summer in preparation for Halloween.

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This is a wonderful, wonderful booklet on understanding Halloween in the context of scripture.

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How do we view scripture in terms of Halloween?

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How do we go about what happens on Halloween? Do we allow our kids to go out trick -or -treating?

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Do we give out candy and allow people to come to our door dressed in their costumes?

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Justin does a really good job laying out a lot of things within his book. So if you don't have this, go get it off Amazon.

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It'll be well worth your time. I'm really excited for whenever Justin is done with his classes for his theology degree, because I know he's going to turn this into a bigger book.

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So I'm really excited about that. And then as always, Striving for Eternity, if you could use us at your church, please fill out the form online and get us to come to your church.

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We've got a number of great topics we can speak on. Social justice, I know it was done a lot last week.

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We have some special seminars that are really not done by anybody else that we know of in how we walk through the historical context of social justice and what that means for everybody today.

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And then Andrew wanted us to let you know that books are on sale.

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So he has been kind. Normally his Christmas sale doesn't start until around Thanksgiving. The Christmas sale has started already.

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So if you go on to strivingforeternity .com, you can find all the books on sale right now.

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And then Josiah, because he's here in person and we just don't advertise this booklet enough,

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I wanted him to be able to talk about it. So show us what you got, Josiah. Yeah, I got this little booklet here.

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What does it mean to me? It is a booklet basically promoting the arguments to interpret the

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Bible literally. It is written for Sinnos, Christians in name only. And it presents the arguments for how to interpret, for interpreting the

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Bible literally. And then it demonstrates that by exegeting John 3 .16. And it also presents a pretty solid gospel message at the end.

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So when you hand it to a Christian in name only, they can read it and hear the gospel.

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And all you got to do is just say, Hey, here you go. It's a great book and you keep them really inexpensive to be able to give away mass amounts.

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So that's what's really cool about this booklet. So we all know that most

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Christians we talk to, professing Christians, butcher Bible verses, right? Butcher the correct meanings, get the context wrong.

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And I honestly don't know of any other better booklets out there than what Josiah's put out between when my ox scores my neighbor, his book on hermeneutics, what does it mean to me?

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And then you've got the Romans roadblocks and they're all phenomenal resource.

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I know when Julie read Romans roadblocks for the first time, she had more notes written in there than you had words.

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It was, she absolutely loved it. So, so having said all that, let us bring on a couple of our guests tonight.

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We're welcoming back Pastor Casey Butner, or better yet, Dr. Casey Butner.

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See, every time I call you doctor though, then nobody knows you're a pastor. So I think I have to say like Dr. Pastor Casey Butner.

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Not into the titles, just into the service, my friend. Amen to that. So thank you for being on again.

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I know people enjoyed you and last week and, and yeah, I, I still hear from people today, the video that you have done, the videos you did with Justin Peters.

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And I know those have been so far reaching and so many, so many different Christian outlets have referenced that video, the main one, especially multiple times.

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I mean, I've seen this a lot. So we thank you for being on tonight because this is going to be a great show.

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And then let's bring on our special guest, Dan. How are you

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Dan Llewellyn? Greetings gents. So good to see you tonight.

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And I kind of want to get everyone caught up because the show, if you've not seen it, it was, I believe

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August 18th, if I'm not mistaken, either 16th or 18th August when we had you on for the first time, went through prayer and, and what a, what a wonderful show that that was.

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So, so having, having said all that I want to kind of catch everyone up to speed from, from last time.

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One of the things that has convicted me over the last really several years is the lack of prayer.

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And, and let's be fully transparent, right? Lack of prayer in my own life, where I think that I've done what a lot of what we would call good churches have done and, and good theologians, theologians have done, which is in essence, we worship theology.

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We worship our knowledge. And I'm using that terminology. It's very strong terminology, right?

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But I feel like we've, we've placed such an importance on, on theology that we have forgotten to talk to the one who wrote it.

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And, and, and I think a lot of us, I'm speaking for myself, first and foremost are guilty of that.

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Right. And that's why, you know, I've been intrigued, you know, we get together for coffee every what, six to eight weeks maybe, and always have great conversations.

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And, and I'm always, I'm always amazed at your, your dedication to prayer.

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You know, it's, it's, so it's something I've, I've, I've looked up to for a long time and, and, and especially since the show we did in August, I am learning how to implement that much more in my life personally, in our family, you know, as a family praying together more.

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And you know, so I, I'm very thankful for that. And so I'm really looking forward to tonight I'm going forward, but there's a couple of quotes

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I wanted to bring back up from last time. And so, you know, one of the things you wrote in, in your note section is, it is nothing, and this comes from Andrew Murray.

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It is nothing but the sin of prayerlessness, which is the cause of the lack of a powerful spiritual life.

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The indispensable thing is not preaching, not pastoral visitation, not church work, but fellowship with God in prayer until we are clothed with power from on high.

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To be prayerless is to be powerless. A phenomenal, phenomenal quote there.

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And then, you know, one of the things that you, you bring up in, in response to that is, is how's your prayer life, right?

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How's your prayer life Christian? It's, it's, it's one of those things that kind of like when you ask the average

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Christian, Hey, how's your evangelism going? Right. And that's a really usually embarrassing topic for most

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Christians because. Or when was the last time you read your Bible? Well, unfortunately that's another good one too.

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These are, these are questions that people are horrified to be asked, right. If they're going to answer honestly. And, and yet if you ask the question about how's your prayer life, it's probably an even smaller percentage than those who are evangelizing.

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So yeah, that's a, that's a, it's a scary thing. Martin Luther said, if I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day.

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I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer. Amazing.

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Charles Spurgeon said when he was asked, what is more important prayer or reading the Bible? I asked, what is more important breathing in or breathing out?

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What a phenomenal quote. Um, just goes to show that that prayer needs to accompany everything we do in our, in our

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Christian life. So, so that's just kind of the intro and I could read for the next hour, all these wonderful quotes that you, that you have, but, but Dan, I know that you kind of wanted to summarize what we did last time and then, and then move on to the, to essentially part two.

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Title that, that we came up with was prevailing prayer. And we hit on that last time, just looking, looking over recent past, recent past being the last couple of hundred years of the role that, that prayer has played in church, in the lives of men that we know of by name, everybody from Whitfield, Anthony had mentioned

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Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, uh, Martin Lloyd Jones. And we took a drive through and also looked at the role that prayer had played in the

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Welsh revival in the revival in 1857, which actually started in New York city and, uh, started in businessmen and literally within a period of a year, about a million people came to Christ and came into the church.

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And that was what spread over to, uh, to Wales in the beginning of the, uh, the Welsh revival.

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There is a guy that, that within the last couple of years, I started to listen to him a little bit.

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There's really two, two men that in recent past that really had a passion to see, see revival come and link it back to the salvation of souls, prevailing prayer.

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And then as Anthony said, we're going to talk a little bit about prayerlessness tonight and then link it to the souls of the souls of men and what's at stake.

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Richard Owen Roberts said that there is a crisis in evangelical churches across America today.

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And that crisis is two things, powerless sermons and prayerless churches. I want to ask us a question as we start.

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It's sort of a marker. What's the reason many millions of Christians today, average everyday

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Joes in our churches in America have not greater influence for the cause of Christ in the gospel.

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We need to ask ourselves the question. I mean, by the title of the show,

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I think, uh, I think we know what what's missing, right? Yeah.

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You had mentioned, you had mentioned Spurgeon and Spurgeon said that a prayerless church is a dead church.

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And what he didn't mean, what he meant by that is not that there's not prayer in the church, but literally that the heart and soul of the church is prayer.

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And when it is not there, Spurgeon said, it's, it's a, it's a dead church. And he said that there's just a peacetime casualness back in his day in the church and a casualness about spiritual things.

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And we've lost sight of the fact that family members, peers in the workplace and friends are lost in and headed to a

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Christless eternity in hell. And really that's, that's, what's at stake. And Spurgeon had said that spiritually impotent and dead churches and Christians cannot be used to rescue the souls of men from the dominion of darkness.

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And it's, we're thinking about where, where, where we have been in the history of prayer and its influence in the, the revivals that, that God really used to be able to, to shape the country that we're living in now.

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Just want to grab something that Martin Lloyd Jones, which great guy, great writings.

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He said, prayer is beyond any question, the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when he is on his knees, he comes face to face with God.

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And in movements of the spirit, the first thing that happens, which eventually leads to a great revival is that one man or group of men suddenly began to feel this burden, the burden of prayer, and they feel the burden so much that they're led to do something about it.

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My heart tonight is we go in and we just have a discussion back and forth is exactly that, that we walk away challenged and burdened that God uses prayer and our relationship with him.

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And we're going to talk about intercession tonight, going and getting from God, what we have no ability to be able to take and give the people that, that are around us.

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Casey, have you ever heard of a guy named Leonard Ravenhill? Yes, sir. He has had a great influence in my life.

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He passed away, but I've read a number of his, his books. And he, he was a man that was passionate about prayer.

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He, he met with a group of pastors for a number of years, and they really, really shook, shook things up through their prayer.

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And Ravenhill had said, no man is greater than his prayer life. He had a real burden for pastors and their prayer life.

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And he said, the pastor who is not praying is playing. The people who are not praying are straying.

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We have many organizers, but few agonizers. And he said, failing in prayer, we fail everywhere.

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Do we really believe that? That when we fail in prayer, we fail everywhere.

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Preaching affects men. Prayer affects God. Preaching affects time.

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Prayer affects eternity. Do we really believe that? Do we drink that Kool -Aid? I want to take in,

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I want to challenge us that as we look at, as we look now at the presence, the present status in the state of our evangelical -ism and the church today,

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I'd just like to ask the other guys on our, on our show tonight, where do you guys see the role of prayer right now in evangelical -ism?

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And I know Anthony said that in some, some circles, theology is perhaps more important, but from, from the three of you guys, where do you see, in just a short bullet summary, where do you see prayer playing and what's the role of prayer in evangelical -ism in the church today?

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In my, in my church, it was pretty non -existent except for me and my family.

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We tried to get prayer groups started. We tried to do that, but nobody wanted to come.

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Nobody wanted to have anything to do with it. And the prayers that they had during service, other than what some, some men would pray, is pretty frivolous.

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They're like, oh, God just blessed this meeting. It was, it was, it was pretty, pretty sad that they did not value prayer like, like Jesus said to value prayer because, you know, he said that, that you need, that you need to ask and seek and knock and you'll find,

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I mean, if we really believe those words, wouldn't we be doing that more often? Yeah.

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Pastor Casey, so tell us about how, you know, what's prayer done in your church?

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How have you focused on prayer in your church? Yeah, certainly. Thanks for asking. I'm very impressed with our church, even in the

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BC days before Casey. When I came, the first thing that was said was that we have men's prayer every

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Sunday at 830. And I said, oh my. And that,

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I think that I was balling told to come to that right away. And I was very impressed. And so nevertheless,

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I came to our men's prayer and our deacons are there, men of prayer are there.

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It's glorious. I attribute God's blessings upon this dear church to our men's prayer.

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Our men would say it's the best part of their week. They wouldn't miss it for anything. We have men that travel a long distance to get to the prayer meeting, and I'm just very impressed with them.

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And so I've joined in, and obviously as a man of prayer, I've noticed a lot of things over the years in various churches.

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So looking beyond Beulah Baptist Church to abroad, what I've noticed is I think that most have prayer backwards.

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They're trying to bend God to do their will rather than submitting to God to find out what

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His will is. And so prayer, in my humble opinion, is aligning yourself with God's will.

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God's working on you. And one of the things about Ravenhill that I've always been impressed with, not that his theology was completely solid, but he was a man of agony.

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And when you listen to his preaching, he was desperate. And he had somewhere that he wanted to get to, which was to the lost souls.

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And he preached with desperation, and he pleaded. And I believe that his prayer life would have had to have been even stronger than his preaching.

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The effective ministry that the Lord did through him was tremendous. And so that being the point that I'd like to bring up first is that prayer aligns us with God's will.

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It's not us trying to get God to do our own will. It's not like as if we're God. We need to remember who we are.

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We are the created ones, and we need to approach a holy God reverently and humbly in repentance and asking

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Him to fix us, to mold us, to make us into the vessel that He wants us to be.

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And when we plead with God and ask Him, He will help us in our unrighteousness.

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He will help us to repent of the sin that we have long forgotten about.

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He will help us to be sanctified. If we would simply humble ourselves before an almighty

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God, it's amazing how He continues to bless our lives. Oftentimes, we say too much in prayer, and we're just simply dominating rather than submitting.

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And obviously, prayer is something that is an act of humility. It demonstrates how ineffective we are and how effective

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God is. I mean, when you think about it, if you pick up a tool and chop some wood like with an ax, then you're accomplishing something.

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But prayer, I've often said, is the sharpest tool in the shed, and it's the most effective tool that you can pick up.

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And it's humbling to realize that God works through prayer. So I'm very impressed with those who have a dedicated prayer life, and I see that even the oldest, most feeble elderly ladies in our church, whom are women of prayer, are the most effective when it comes to impacting lives for Christ.

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And you get around our men in our church, and whenever there's something going on in their life, they run to the ladies and say, will you pray for us?

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And I have a many of ladies in mind that I could name all. I dare not leave one of them out, but I'm just saying, prayer is where it's at.

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Yeah, and I think you hit on a really good point that does a really good job backing up with what

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Dan's saying, right? Is that we're crying out to God, right? We're telling Him everything that's on our heart and desire.

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We're pleading with Him. We're doing all these things. And the same point, that prayer is drawing us to Him, to what

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His will is in our lives, to more clarity in Scripture. I mean, all of those things happen simultaneously.

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And you're right. When we don't have prayer in our life, those things, they're not happening.

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So having said all that, I'm sorry. Well, go on, Casey. I don't want to leave it in the abstract.

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I'd like to kind of dig down and say what that actually looks like. So how are you molded by God in prayer?

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For me, let me just speak in the first person and say that when I'm praying to God, I'm most effective when

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I am praying out loud and most effective when I'm praying every single day when

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I go jogging. And so I have a routine where I exercise, and while I'm doing my jogging routine,

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I'm praying. And oftentimes, I equate that to what the Jews used to do in the

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Old Testament when they would memorize Scripture. They kind of rock back and forth and memorize the

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Torah or the Psalms. And through that rhythm, they get in a groove, and you can get a lot farther in your mental exercise, so to speak, or your spiritual exercise or your spiritual discipline there.

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You can stretch yourself farther for longer periods of time. When I pray while I'm exercising,

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I can cover a multitude of folks in our church and everybody that I can think of, my entire family, several times up and down.

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I just cover them from head to toe in prayer, and I'm pleading. And now when it comes to myself being molded, say

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I've got a decision to make. I'll be praying out loud and asking God for clarity on the subject, and I will pray it through as if,

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Lord, this is the next step that I believe is the right step to make. And after that, I'll continue as long as there is a peace, and then

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I will proceed to talk to this person or do this thing. And so I'm just praying it out. And after 5, 10, or 15 minutes, there's either a clear sense of I'm on the right page or I'm not.

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And I've either got a peace about this or something ain't working. And if it ain't working, then the last thing

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I'm going to do is try and force it. And so I will continue to pray until I've got a complete peace about something about moving forward.

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So I wish it was 100 % in that formula, but nevertheless, I don't want to leave it abstract.

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I'm just saying that when you pray and you've got peace, then you proceed. But when you pray and you pray it through as many details as you possibly can with God, there's a factor here.

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We've got the Spirit of the living God living inside of us, and He can rob your peace when you're going in the wrong direction, the same as He can rob your peace when you are in sin.

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So I depend upon the peace of God, for sure. Yeah, amen. So Diotaro says,

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I recently heard Austin Duncan, Grace Community Church, say, pray until you pray. Wow.

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That's true. Okay, so Dan, before we go on to the next step, I'm going to have you answer this question, okay? When do you go evangelize, right?

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I mean, this is a big thing for me, is that I believe a church is failing in their duty.

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I don't care how good they are in theology. I don't care how good they are in lots of areas of ministry.

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If we aren't, as a church, fulfilling the great commission to evangelize and to intentionally disciple within the church, it's a major issue, right?

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It doesn't matter how much the other things look good. What do we need to do in our prayer lives, individually and corporately, in prayer, right?

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So let's take this concept for everybody in aligning ourselves with the will of God in prayer, because God's word clearly says what we're supposed to do to evangelize, but then also in pleading with God for the souls of men, right?

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So how does that work? Let me bring two things in out of the book of Acts.

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So anytime that the gospel is proclaimed, and we're talking to people in evangelism, whether it's peers, friends, family members, we need the power of God on us.

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We need the boldness of the Holy Spirit. And how do you get the boldness of the

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Holy Spirit, and how does the power of God come in your life? Scripture is really, really clear about that.

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We're going to talk a little bit about it more a little bit later in the show, and it's really simple.

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We have not because we ask not, and a lot of times we don't get because we ask amiss, because our prayer is just consuming it on our own focus and our own passions and desires.

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James tells us that. One of the missing things that I see and that I have struggled with is a lack of power and a lack of boldness where we truly see

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God at work. Remember in the book of Acts in Acts 17, they were coming to look for Paul, and they went to the house that he was staying in, and they went in the name of the

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Gent, I can't remember what it is, in Acts 17, they took him before the leaders, and the accusation was in the book of Acts, these are the men that turned the world upside down, that are turning the world upside down.

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We want to be men, and we want to be churches that are marked in our communities, in the marketplace where we work by our families is turning the world upside down, literally.

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The message of the gospel, when the power of the Holy Spirit is in it and on us, and there's great boldness that comes from him, it just doesn't happen.

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It is us down on our knees and taking Luke 11 and crying out, just like Casey said, making strong argument,

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God you said that we can ask for more of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit's boldness, and the

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Holy Spirit's power, and make strong argument in prayer, it's God's will. John 5 tells us if we ask anything in his name according to his will, he hears us, now here's the kicker, and we have what we have asked for when it's in his will, and that's where we exercise the faith muscle, and asking for God to take and fill us with the

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Holy Spirit, the unction of the Holy Spirit, and not in a weird way, but specific to ministry, and specific to our testimony and evangelism, and that's one of the things that I see as a real struggle in churches, is we're not asking

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God to be able to take and use us, and peers, friends, and family members, and like Paul in Romans chapter 9, 1 and 2,

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Paul says this, I'm going to paraphrase it, I have unceasing anguish and great sorrow for my fellow kinsmen, and he said,

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I'm going to paraphrase it, enough that he was willing to give up his place in eternity if he could take and do that.

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Where does that passion come from in the life of Paul? Where every single day, when it came to evangelistic fervor for the souls of men and his kinsmen, he had great anguish, or great sorrow and unceasing anguish.

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It burned inside him. It burned. How did that come? Was it natural because he was a narcissist?

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No. He was just a passionate guy that all got worked up? No. It was because Paul was a man in his ministry, and we're going to talk about this a little bit later.

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The tears that he had for the souls of men and the passion that he had for the souls of men is because Paul was down on his knees, and he was an intercessor, and his life was characterized by prayer.

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I want us to ask a question. When all of us struggle, and I'm a poster boy for the struggle when it comes to prayer, and I have been on a journey, and the

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Lord has really been pushing me into a corner about my prayer life, for sure. I think that one of the reasons that we really struggle with prayerlessness and a victory over prayerlessness is because we merely look at it as a weakness.

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You know what? I really struggle in discipline. I struggle with my time that I put into it.

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Scripture clearly teaches us that prayerlessness is not a weakness, and it's not merely a weakness.

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It's a sin. When is the last time that you've heard of prayerlessness called a sin?

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Josiah? I haven't.

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Not since you. I say the same thing about the lack of evangelism. When's the last time it was called a sin?

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No, that's right. In regards to prayer and evangelism, I like to say that prayer precedes effective evangelism.

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I base that off of the book of Colossians chapter 4 and verse 3, praying at the same time for all of us as well that God will open up a door for us for the

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Word. Man, I'm telling you, you probably heard it said like this, and it's not a cheap cliche, to go to God about the person before you go to the person about God.

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If we would be prayer warriors, to spend time in prayer before we go out and evangelize,

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Matthew chapter 4 verses, I think, 16 and 14 says that you are the light of the world.

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If we are going to brighten our lights, it's going to be because we've been spending time with God like the face of Moses shining.

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And when our character is godly, it's because we have been with the Lord. When we are seasoning our words, when we're working on the way that we say what we do, when we are as godly and Christ -like as we possibly can, then it's because we have been repenting in prayer and are conscious of the fact that we are sinners saved by the grace of God, and it's a humble privilege to be able to go and even share the glorious gospel.

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And somehow, someway, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, and it's our privilege to be able to share the gospel.

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And you get some of these nuances while you're praying, and oftentimes while you're in a mode of prayer, while you're reading the

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Word of God. It is a tremendous privilege to be able to spend private time with the

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Lord Almighty and effective evangelism is preceded by a minute of prayer.

36:12

Yep. Amen to that. A lot of my street preacher friends that do this essentially full -time, right?

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They live off of donations. They tell you how much time they spend in prayer every single day.

36:24

And especially before any events or college campuses or anything they're going to go to, they're in a lot of prayer.

36:33

Okay. So we had a question come in that Diana, I'm going to let you answer and if others can pipe in.

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How do we address brothers and sisters respectfully and with Christ's love who bind Satan and place hedges of protection during corporate prayer?

36:49

My guess is that the reason why this is brought up is because this is often used in churches with very sloppy language or Pentecostal type churches.

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So, let's start with what I think is the more biblical one, place hedges of protection.

37:08

Now, granted that has been cliched, but I am going to pull up the reference of where this comes from in the

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Old Testament. So in Job 1 verse 6, it says, now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the

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Lord and Satan also came among them. The Lord of the Lord said to Satan, from where have you come?

37:32

Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and from the earth and from walking up and down on it. And the

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Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears

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God and turns away from evil. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, does Job fear

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God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side?

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You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land. So, this is

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Satan telling God that God has placed this hedge of protection around Job.

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So, there's a biblical language to it. What say you guys about Christians who want to place hedges of protection?

38:22

I'll take that one. So, first of all, scripture backs this up in numerous places that Satan does not like prayer.

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Do you believe that? We should. William Cowper said,

38:48

Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint on his knees. Samuel Chadwick, the one concern of the devil is to keep

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Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion.

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He laughs at our toll. He mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray. Do you believe that?

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The storm center on the battlefield that we live in with unsaved people all around us is centered on the souls of men.

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And make no mistake, Satan wants to take our unsafe family members, our workplace peers, and our friends to hell.

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And Satan knows if believers overcome the flesh through the working of the cross and the power of the

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Holy Spirit, and God's passion to rescue men from the dominion of darkness through Jesus Christ, it will happen.

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And there's great strife between the kingdom of heaven and the power of darkness, and it's over the souls of men that are around us.

39:56

Do we really believe that? Do we really, really believe that? When a general chooses a place from which he intends to strike his enemy, he pays most attention to the points which he thinks are most important in the fight and the battle.

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And it's the same in the conflict between the believer and the powers of darkness.

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And the inner chamber is the place where the decisive victory is obtained, and the enemy uses all of his power to lead the

40:28

Christian and, above all, the pastor and the minister to neglect prayer. He knows that however admirable the sermon may be, however attractive the service, however faithful the pastoral vision, none of these things can damage him or his kingdom if prayer is neglected.

40:49

Jason, I'm not as caught up about the language that is there. What I see is

40:55

I see the church asleep at the steering wheel when it comes, you know, almost like a stupor when it comes to prayer.

41:03

And I believe that when the church shuts herself up to the power of the inner chamber, and the soldiers of the

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Lord have received on their knees power from on high, then the powers of darkness will be shaken and the souls of men are going to be delivered.

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I believe that that praying boldly and recognizing that we are in a battle and that on the mission field, everything depends on the faithful exercise of the power of prayer.

41:39

Andrew Murray said the following. He said, two persons quarrel over a certain point.

41:46

We call one of them Christian, the other one Apollyon. Apollyon is the destroyer, the angel of the bottomless pit.

41:53

Apollyon notices that Christian has a certain weapon which would give him sure victory. They meet in deadly strife.

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Apollyon resolves to take away the weapon from his opponent and destroy it. And for the moment, the main cause of the strife has become subordinate.

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The great point now is who shall get possession of the weapon on which everything depends.

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And it is of vital importance that we get a hold of that. And so it's in this conflict between Satan and the believer,

42:24

God's child can conquer everything by prayer. You believe that prayer is omnipotent.

42:34

Anthony, do you think that prayer is omnipotent? Well, okay, so I guess

42:40

I'd be uncomfortable with how that was worded, only because God himself is omnipotent, not prayers, right?

42:50

So I think Kayla Brown said it well here.

42:56

Prayer is powerful because God is almighty, right? So God is omnipotent. God is all powerful, but not us, right?

43:03

We're not the ones that are all powerful. However, we must be obedient to pray without stopping. So the prayer itself isn't omnipotent, but the one we're praying to absolutely is.

43:18

And so if we are praying according to God's will, then we're praying according to the one who is omnipotent, who can do anything within his nature.

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And one of those things would be he's all powerful. So I think that's how I would answer that.

43:39

Caleb just came on with a comment. He said that prayer is powerful because of the Lord God almighty.

43:45

Absolutely. The power of God and God's ability to get things done on earth.

43:55

Do we believe that prayer has any part of that? Casey already talked about it, right? That God's will on earth, he has given us as the church and individual believers, the ability to be able to take and do and accomplish his will on earth.

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And much of that is gained and much of that is seen through prayer.

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Do we really believe that? Yeah. Do we really believe it? Yeah. So the question was, how do we address, you know, believers who are praying these ways?

44:32

And I kind of thought, go ahead. Yeah, I put it back up for everybody. So good. So, you know,

44:38

I side with you, Dan, I'm not going to correct language. It's kind of like we're children of God and God knows what our intentions are when we're praying and whether it's a literal hedge, a metaphorical hedge or protection.

44:51

However, God wants to protect his children and somehow some way our prayers participate in that effectiveness.

44:59

And so I welcome anybody who wants to pray a hedge of protection around me. Amen. Keep it up.

45:06

I'm praying a hedge of protection around you and your family as you drive up to visit us for a week starting next

45:12

Thursday. Praise God. And to be fair, right?

45:18

I mean, the reason why I put this up here is because we do hear some of this language, right? And in general, when we hear place hedge of protection, right, it almost always comes out of a whacked out

45:29

Pentecostal, right? Almost always. And so the language is often associated with that stuff.

45:39

And yet, is there, does the Bible teach that we can pray for the protection of people?

45:48

Of course. Of course we can. So, you know, the language is maybe not, the language has been stolen, kind of like the rainbow flag has been stolen by the homosexual crowd.

46:02

Maybe this phrase has been stolen by the Pentecostal crowd, you know? What about the bind

46:10

Satan? Is that a biblical thing? Now, Votie Bauckham, you know, talks about this and he says, you know, if y 'all keep binding

46:17

Satan, then why do you keep letting them loose? Yeah, right. You know, so I get the heart behind it.

46:27

Maybe that type of language is a sloppier language. And maybe that's something that we should take somebody aside and help massage that into better language.

46:39

Yeah. You know, I would go to Acts 19, 15, and many of those who practice magic brought their books.

46:47

Let's see, Acts 19, 15. Let me go back. And the evil spirit answered and said to them, I recognize

46:53

Jesus and I know about Paul, but who are you? So what in the world are you going to do?

47:02

You're not going to be able to strong arm Satan or any of his angels.

47:08

He is mightier than any lion in comparison to a human being. You'd be a fool to approach

47:15

Satan in the flesh. And so you can't do anything. But by the power of God, you can plead and ask

47:22

God to do his will. And so don't take on Satan in the flesh.

47:28

That's not what prayer is for. And there's nothing that you can do in the flesh. It's not your words.

47:34

It's not the word faith movement to say, I bind you, Satan, in the name of Jesus. It's not a magical formula.

47:41

However, just like as if one of our little bitty children ask us a question, if we could do something and they word it wrong.

47:52

We know what our children are asking. And so perhaps God and his goodness will overlook our lack of theological accuracy.

48:03

So this is what happens when your wife decides that she wants to ask a question.

48:10

She sends it on a little heart love note and delivers it in person. So she doesn't go on the chat while she's listening in the other room with our son.

48:19

Hey, Julie. Yeah. I'm sure she can hear you over there. So I don't know why she doesn't want to come on camera.

48:26

I think she's being shy. Okay. So she's asking the question in a similar vein, right?

48:34

What about to pray, keep us from the evil one? Jesus prayed that in John chapter 17.

48:43

Yep. That's right. So that's a great one. So thank you, Julie, for that question. Absolutely.

48:50

Keep us from the evil. And I would venture to say this should be a prayer that comes out of our mouths continuously, right?

48:57

I mean, essentially this is in the prayer in, oh,

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I can't remember where in Matthew now. When Jesus is asked, how do we pray? Matthew 6. How do we pray?

49:10

And he says, pray like this, right? Our father who art in heaven. And then it says, keep us from evil or keep us from the evil one, depending on the version.

49:17

So, I mean, that's right there. And that's in what Jesus modeled for us. If that's what they mean by binding

49:23

Satan, I would probably try to gently lead them to that instead of Pentecostal saying,

49:31

I can control Satan. I'd say, no, God can stop

49:36

Satan. He did that with Job. He set boundaries on Satan to where he couldn't take his life.

49:45

But it's God that does it, not you. And there is going to be a time in the future, if you have the correct eschatological view of the

49:53

Bible, dispensationalism, that there's going to be a binding of Satan for a thousand years.

50:01

Which is a literal thousand years, by the way, for those who have questions about that.

50:07

And maybe in the future, we'll do a show on that. But so, okay.

50:13

So, thank you for that. Okay, Dan, let's transition now. And if we could add one piece before the transition.

50:21

Prayer is an act of humility. It's very, very humbling to place yourself at the feet of Jesus Christ.

50:31

But when you pray and bind something, it's almost as if you're in control. And now it is self -gratifying to think that I did something.

50:40

When in fact, you can do nothing. It's God who does everything. And so,

50:46

I'm going to bind Satan. I resist you, God. Or I resist you, Satan. All of this language about me and myself seems to lift the person up rather than dying to yourself and being humble before God.

50:58

So, I think it's the wrong posture in prayer. So, I just wanted to throw that in before we move on.

51:05

I'm going to just follow up real quick what Casey just said. I think it's in James 4. It says,

51:11

Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. I can tell you that is a set of verses

51:17

I lean on frequently. Submit to God, resist the devil.

51:25

How do you resist the devil? Using the word of God, right? That's right. Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil.

51:33

No. No. Think about that from a sanctification perspective, right?

51:38

We want to, as we're trying to grow in sanctification, as we're trying to root out sin, I'm sure there are listeners here who are in bondage to sin right now, right?

51:49

And some type of unrepentant sin, pornography, something. And I know, Dan, that's a big one on your heart that you've counseled a lot of men over the years that have had pornography issues.

51:59

And it's another thing that maybe we should have you on in the future to talk about because it's one of the things that just does not get touched in most churches today.

52:08

And yet, we have a verse like that that we can go to. You want to get out of pornography? Start there.

52:16

Start there in prayer with God's word and in getting away from evil in that way.

52:24

That's, yeah, absolutely there. Dan, do your part. I want to take what you just said, and I want to bring it back with the issue of prayerlessness.

52:38

I put down a bold statement, and I'm not going to walk away with it, that prayerlessness is a sin.

52:43

Scripture backs it up. Spurgeon, get on the list of guys. Prayerlessness is a sin.

52:50

We need to ask... Before you get into that, define prayerlessness, right?

52:57

And I say this because I've had to have this question asked to me, right? Define somebody who's in the sin of not evangelizing.

53:08

And without giving numbers, right? I mean, we can't tell people if you don't pray five times a day for 10 minutes each time, you're in sin, right?

53:17

So how would you define prayerlessness? Yeah. Prayerlessness is linked to the big sins of pride, unbelief, and idolatry of the flesh life.

53:36

Hebrews 3 .12 tells us, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living

53:46

God. Pride. I don't need to pray. I can do it. I don't need God to intervene.

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You just live. You live in an attitude that I need to do it myself.

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I can do it myself. Unbelief. I'm not sure a prayer will make any difference anyway. Idolatry, lust and greed.

54:05

And I want to come back to what you said about porn and prayerlessness and tie those two together. I will put my hope in what

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I can see, not in what I do not see. I am absolutely convinced that prayerlessness, one of the symptoms of it, how do you know when it's there?

54:23

It has ill effect in our spiritual lives. Three things. Powerlessness, ineffectiveness, and barrenness.

54:32

James 5 .16 backs me up. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

54:40

When prayer is in your life, intercessory prayer, holistic prayer, and it's ongoing as a habit in your life.

54:50

Scripture tells us whatever you do in word or deed, do in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to the

54:55

Father through him. It's meant to be in our DNA. Powerlessness is one of the things that is assigned.

55:03

Much prayer, much power. Little prayer, little power. No prayer, no power. That is just backed up all through Scripture.

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One of the greatest tragedies, I think, of prayerlessness is the inability to hear from God through his word.

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To appropriate the promises of God, which makes the prayerless person utterly ineffective.

55:30

Casey said it. What an honor and what a privilege we have to be able to take to hear from God through his word and to appropriate the thousands of promises that are in Scripture that are meant for us to be able to take and appropriate strictly through prayer.

55:50

We have not because we ask not. One of the things that is a marker that I just see more and more in guys' lives, people's lives, and churches is barrenness.

56:03

Jesus linked fruitfulness to prayer. John 15 .7 and 8, he says, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.

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This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

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One of the clear marks is barrenness, where we're not bearing fruit.

56:29

We can talk about what that fruit looks like. Is it the souls of men? Is it a fruit of the

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Spirit? He wraps it in a bow right there. He just says in John 15 .7

56:41

through 8, and he links fruit, bearing fruit, barrenness, and directly connected to prayer.

56:51

Casey, any thoughts? Yeah, I totally agree with the fruitless life being a prayerless life.

57:00

To kind of shed some light on that, anyone who is lacking joy and peace in their life, they're probably guilty of prayerlessness.

57:11

In 1 Thessalonians 5 .16 and following, it says, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks for this is

57:18

God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Part of quenching the

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Spirit is prayerlessness. Part of prayerlessness is not having joy in your life.

57:29

Then in Philippians 4 .4, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say, rejoice. Let your gentle spirit be known to all men.

57:36

The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer. You're full of anxiety if you are not praying, but the antidote to anxiety and stress and being stressed out is taking it to the

57:51

Lord in prayer and leaving it there. Then when you truly take everything that is weighing us down and you lift it up to the

57:59

Lord in prayer, the results according to Philippians 4 .6 is that your request will be made known unto

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God and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

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You'll have a clear mind and a peaceful heart, and then the joy will simply return.

58:17

I learned it like this. A sheep farmer told me this. If you put a weight or a saddle on sheep, they're just going to fall down and stay.

58:29

They're no longer will they eat or drink or do anything. They'll actually die, but if you put a saddle on a donkey or a horse or a camel, they'll be just fine.

58:39

They're made to carry that weight, but we like sheep are not made to carry the weight.

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We're made to take the weight that we feel and take it to the Lord in prayer.

58:50

If you're carrying weight, just know that God did not design us to carry that kind of weight.

58:57

He can take our circumstances. That's a good illustration.

59:03

Great illustration. On that, I have to say that my favorite time to pray during the day is when

59:12

I am pulling out my MyPillow and I'm laying down on it and my wife's laying next to me.

59:19

Our son comes into our room and we get to pray together at night before bed.

59:25

It's one of the things that we've been very serious about instituting and spending some time doing. We've done it for a long time, but we've been much more focused about it ever since our last show back in August.

59:41

I say that as a shameless plug for MyPillow. While I have lots of great

59:46

MyPillow products, a great one is this little travel pillow, which you can take with you for the airplane.

59:53

I like using it when I'm on the show here. Please go support

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MyPillow. The best discounts you can possibly get is through promo code SFE for Strong Fraternity.

01:00:05

You have a great relationship with MyPillow. Go get your MyPillow. Shameless plug.

01:00:12

It is great. I love their slippers. Their slippers are good.

01:00:19

A couple of things here. Number one, Melissa, Dispies rock. You're absolutely right about that. That is worthy of coming on.

01:00:29

Brian, thank you, Brian, for always watching. He says everyone tap that like button to help more people see this video because a video like this is really important for people to go see.

01:00:40

Melissa also wrote this earlier. Prayer and praise are the oars by which a man may row his boat into the deep waters of the knowledge of Christ.

01:00:49

Charles Spurgeon quote. Great quote there. While we're on the topic of prayer, before we transition with another question, which is perfect for us,

01:01:00

Dan, as a transition, before we get to that, though, we actually have a prayer request that's come in.

01:01:08

I've known about this for the last, I want to say, three days now. One of our good friends and friends of the show as well and a guy who just started podcasting and he watches our shows religiously is

01:01:24

Don Jacks, who's in Southern Ohio. His wife slipped a disc.

01:01:32

She's a nurse, slipped a disc somewhere a couple months ago. She's been working through it, but she's been increasingly having difficulty carrying things.

01:01:42

She went home on bed rest, took time off from nursing, and just thought it was a slipped disc.

01:01:50

It was those symptoms that other nurses told her that they've had in the past with a slipped disc, so you just rest it out.

01:01:57

Well, it wasn't getting better. They went to the doctor, again, I think it was three or four days ago now, and it turns out that not only does she have a disc, she had a huge mass on her spine in the area of the slipped disc.

01:02:12

She just went in a couple of days ago to have the mass surgically removed. They think they got it all.

01:02:19

We don't know if it's cancerous or not at this point, so they're doing the biopsying and testing of that right now, the lab work, to figure it out, and then they're going to figure out what to do at that point.

01:02:33

If it is cancerous, they'll have to do a future surgery on that slipped disc at some point, so Donnie is actually asking us for prayer for his wife,

01:02:45

Glenda, and so I would like us to do that, and maybe as we pray for Glenda, let us also pray for Pastor Justin, who is sick right now, and if we want to have some fun, let's pray for a hedge of protection around Andrew on his drive back to Pennsylvania.

01:03:06

So, Dan, would you like to pray for Glenda and her back issue, as well as for Pastor Justin?

01:03:17

Father, I thank you. We can come before the throne of grace in a time of need.

01:03:23

Father, I just lift up Psalm 68, 28. It says, summon your power,

01:03:30

O God. Show us your strength as you have done before. Father, would you summon your power, and would you show us your strength as you have done before?

01:03:44

There's nothing too hard for you, Father. Father, we humble ourselves before you.

01:03:52

O God, show us your strength in Glenda. Show us your strength in Justin as you have done before.

01:04:03

Father, you said that when it's heavy and the burden is heavy, that we come to you and we roll it over unto you, and we just do that in the name of Jesus.

01:04:16

Father, bring glory to yourself, honor your name, and show us your strength in Jesus' name.

01:04:22

Amen. Amen. Yeah. So, yeah, Lord, please bring your healing hands to the doctors for Glenda and whatever is going on, and we just pray mostly that you're glorified in all of this, and I know that's been

01:04:40

Donnie's prayer as well, is that you're glorified in whatever the results are through this.

01:04:46

Amen. So, yeah. So, Donnie, there's your prayer for us and for you and Glenda, and keep us posted as to what's going on.

01:04:58

I know I've been texting almost every day with all this, and he just says,

01:05:05

Glenda, thank you. And so, let's get now to our really—we still haven't really gotten into what we wanted to.

01:05:16

We just kind of touched base on it so far, Dan. So, here's the question that I think will transition us today.

01:05:25

Do you think how to pray properly needs to be taught in churches? And I think we already know the answer on that, right?

01:05:32

And so, Carol here says, I'm reading a small book from Chapel Library by John Bunyan called

01:05:39

Prayer that I found very informative. So, Carol's also a friend of ours.

01:05:49

So, should it be taught in churches? Well, obviously, the answer is yes.

01:05:54

The question now, how? I'll answer that one.

01:06:01

I can tell you through personal experience and through much, much reading on prayer over the years, the best way, yes, you need to teach from a theology, from a doctrine perspective of how to pray.

01:06:19

The best way to do it is to be able to listen to other people pray. One of my heart's passions is that our prayer meetings have just generally died within the church.

01:06:29

It's a rare church nowadays that literally will gather a group of believers together and literally go to God and cry out to God as the body of believers, not only for the souls of men, but for the things that are going on around us and crying out to God for his help, for his power in our families, in the workplace, and in our lives, and in our communities.

01:06:59

And I grew up, and I didn't come to Christ until I was in my early 20s, but I'll tell you what,

01:07:06

I grew up in a family where prayer was bedrock. And I remember hearing men crying out in prayer together and crying out, oh,

01:07:17

God, give me souls. Oh, God, fill us with the Holy Spirit. We're dry.

01:07:23

We need springs of living water to be able to take and pour out of us in the workplace. And hearing other saints and praying together, and also guiding that too in a group setting to be able to take in either with subjects of focus, using promises, like I did out of Psalms, that, oh,

01:07:48

God, summon your power, et cetera, like that, and making strong argument in prayer, one of the most powerful ways,

01:07:55

Carol, is to be able to take with other believers and do it. And I am so frustrated that you have to look far and wide to be able to take into what to do that.

01:08:08

I'll tell you, one of the key pivots in my life within, I would say, the last five to seven years is some people have issues with Jim Cymbala.

01:08:21

I don't. But I'll tell you what, his church has been built on prayer. And I would take and arrange my business trips to be able to go into New York City area.

01:08:34

And on a Tuesday night, I would go to the prayer session at his church and the

01:08:40

Brooklyn Tabernacle. And I am telling you, I would just get goosebumps and of just seeing 1 ,000, 1 ,500 people on a

01:08:51

Tuesday night in the middle of winter coming and praying together. And it's an organized matter.

01:08:57

It was an organized fashion. And I have learned more how to pray with praying with other people than any other way.

01:09:09

You know, I'll tell you, I'll share a story with everyone here. And this was fascinating to me. I'll probably embarrass him because I know he's listening with my wife right now.

01:09:16

But you know, Dan, he used to host prayer meetings at our church.

01:09:25

I think it was every other Thursday night. And in my schedule, for whatever reason, most of them

01:09:32

I could never make. And you had seven, eight guys, sometimes more that would show up.

01:09:38

And I finally was able to go to one. I took Anthony with me. But I had to leave midway through because I had to be one of the hosts on Apologetics Live that night.

01:09:49

So we were up at the church and a couple of guys prayed first. I prayed.

01:09:57

Somebody else prayed. And then I'm like, okay, Anthony, we got to get going here. I got to get on the show because I want to pray first, daddy.

01:10:11

What? I was shocked. And I know you remember that Dan. And he then prayed for the next several minutes, just kind of off the cuff.

01:10:22

And I can't, there's something about a prayer meeting, and especially if you're a guy, prayer meeting with just men.

01:10:32

There's something about praying when you're with other men like that, that just is different.

01:10:39

It's special. And I'm not saying that replaces an individual's prayer life. I'm just saying that, wow, that was really, really cool.

01:10:51

And so yeah, just kind of backing up what you were just saying there. So I hope you do that again.

01:10:59

Let me say that. The early movements with Revival, 1857, others,

01:11:08

I'll tell you what, there is a prayer movement inside the church. No ifs, ands, or buts. There is not one

01:11:15

Revival in history that is not attached to a praying church and people coming together and praying together.

01:11:23

It's a one -to -one. It's never happened. And all that I've read about Revivals and really

01:11:29

God's working where you're seeing very large numbers of people coming to Christ and being born again.

01:11:36

It is tied to the closet with individuals. It started with one guy in New York, and Lamphere was his name.

01:11:47

And in 1857, within a six to a 10 -month period, 10 ,000 businessmen every day got together in New York City and would come and pray.

01:12:02

10 ,000 business guys. And this is back in 1857. And literally within less than a year, over a million people were born again, documented.

01:12:16

It was literally, it was the largest Revival that we have had or the most recent

01:12:22

Revival that we've had that has been a very, very significant one that it took and spread into Europe and spread to the other places in the world.

01:12:32

What's interesting, the Wesleys, Spurgeon, you can get out D .L. Moody, they were all impacted by that prayer meeting that just started with a couple of guys in New York City.

01:12:43

Literally one -to -one connection back to those guys. We don't know in the church, the church hasn't seen or begin to see when the church comes together and there's two or three people, just two or three people coming together and praying in agreement together and crying out to God and making strong argument and literally crying out to God, God, you said, if we ask anything in your name, according to your will, that you hear us and that we have what we have asked for, that it is your will and making that strong argument.

01:13:18

I want to be with brothers and sisters in Christ where we take and we cry out over unsaved kids, over issues, whether it's physical issues, whether it is workplace issues and we're doing it together.

01:13:32

What a way to be able to take, just like you said, Anthony, in our families and show our wives, our children, those that are around us that, you know what,

01:13:42

God not only listens, but he answers prayer and he intervenes in impossible situations and he turns things around that are humanly impossible.

01:13:55

Yeah, a heart and passion for that. I'd like us, Anthony, to take, we got to watch our time and the time that we have left, as we wind down,

01:14:08

I really want to be able to take and focus in on evangelism and prayer.

01:14:15

I know that one of the friends of the show, I've never met him, is a guy named Matt Slick and he wrote an excellent article about the importance of prayer and evangelism.

01:14:25

He stated, prayer is essential in the soul winners in Christian's life.

01:14:31

Without it, your witness will be far less effective and you'll be far more vulnerable to the enemy.

01:14:37

He said, when you witness, you need the blessing and support of God. It's a powerful tool. Without it, you will be a foolish worker in the fields of the dead.

01:14:47

The evangelism of the world depends, first of all, upon a revival prayer.

01:14:53

Deeper than the need of men, deep down at the bottom of our spiritless life is the need for the forgotten secret of prevailing worldwide prayer for God to be glorified in rescuing the souls of men and for the power and unction of the

01:15:11

Holy Spirit in the message and ministry of reconciliation. I have a real heart when it comes to prayer connected to evangelism and its impact on the souls of men.

01:15:27

I'd really like us to talk a little bit about that because my heart and my passion is to be able to take in and see and be a part of a movement of prayer in the church connected to evangelism and tie that to a desire to sustain prayer in our hearts and in our churches.

01:15:51

And to do that, I really want us to take in, I'm going to insert something here.

01:15:58

We need to talk about war. We're talking about spiritual warfare with Satan and prayer that he wants to snuff it.

01:16:06

He does not want us down our knees. And I honestly believe that we have forgot that we are called to battle in war for the souls of our unsafe loved ones, peers, and friends.

01:16:23

We forget that the life of a born again believer is a life of war.

01:16:29

And it is utterly impossible for people to know what prayer really is until they know that they are in a war, that we are in a war for the souls of men, until they know that the stakes of the war are infinitely higher than the stakes that right now are in Ukraine or Taiwan.

01:16:48

And we're just not contending against flesh and blood when we're down on our knees, but against principalities and against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness and against spiritual host of wickedness in heavenly places.

01:17:02

And we take on the whole armor of God. And one of the key pieces that God wants us to battle with his prayer.

01:17:10

And we forget that we are in a battle and Ephesians 6, 17 through 18 makes the connection for us.

01:17:19

No, no ifs, ands, or buts. And I believe that until we within the body of Christ and in our churches truly believe that we can take through prayer and cry out to God for the souls of men, for ourselves, that we would be filled with the

01:17:38

Holy Spirit and the springs of living water would literally fall and flow out of us.

01:17:45

That the power of the Holy Spirit, that the God of hope would make us overflow with hope in a supernatural way, not a weird way, a supernatural way, so that people ask a reason for the hope that lies inside of us, that they walk past us and they smell the fragrance of Christ.

01:18:06

What I want to do is just talk about between the four of us a little bit more.

01:18:14

And what role does prayer play in bearing fruit? We looked at that in John.

01:18:21

That you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.

01:18:28

So whatever you ask in my father's name, he may give it to you. And I send you to bear fruit.

01:18:37

So whatever you ask the father, he may give to you. There was, some people have all kinds, they look at John Piper in different ways, but I'll tell you he preached the message that really jammed me hard.

01:18:54

And the message was titled prayer, the work of missions. And in that sermon,

01:19:00

Piper says that the number one reason why prayer malfunctions in the hands of believers is they turn a wartime walkie talkie into a domestic intercom.

01:19:12

And he said that until you believe that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for.

01:19:18

Prayer is for the accomplishment of a wartime mission. That mission is accomplishing

01:19:23

God's will in our society, our world, our neighborhood, our community, that it's just crumbling all around us.

01:19:33

And Piper said is through the field commander, Jesus called in the troops and gave them a crucial mission, go and bear fruit and handed each one of them a personal transmitter coded to the frequency of the general's headquarters.

01:19:47

And he said, comrades, the general has a mission for you. He aims to see it accomplished.

01:19:55

But you know what I just, and this is something that I struggle with.

01:20:01

And I think that millions of Christians within evangelical churches struggle with too.

01:20:07

We have stopped believing that we're in a war and specifically a war, just not for the gospel, the souls of men, but to be able to, to take and be salt in a light in a world that is just dark and desperately needs to see

01:20:23

Jesus Christ. I struggle. I know guys around me do with urgency, vigilance.

01:20:32

We don't have strategic planning and I live my life at times like easy peace, time and in prosperity.

01:20:42

And the question is, what do we do with the walkie talkie that God's given us with prayer? And I find myself in my cushy house and I just want to use it as an intercom.

01:20:55

Hey God, I need this. Can you help with this? And are we using prayer to call in firepower for conflict with a mortal enemy and just not ask, this is

01:21:09

Piper's word, just not ask the maid to bring another pillow into the den. I'm going to stop right there because I planted the seed, but I am absolutely convinced guys that we need to mobilize a powerful prayer movement for missions, for evangelism, for the souls of men, and that we cannot back down from doing this, not just as individuals, but together and together within the church.

01:21:40

What do you guys think about that? Well, the first thing I will say is that when you said a few minutes ago that we got to mind our time, a couple of people quickly reminded us that we have something called

01:21:54

Anthony time. Andrew's not here, so we can go past an o 'clock if you guys wish to go past an o 'clock.

01:22:07

So not saying you have to, Dan, just saying that you have the opportunity to, that's all. You might be busy, we understand.

01:22:14

Yeah, if you're busy, we understand, but you certainly can go beyond that. So look, obviously my heart, as I've said already, is among other things is evangelism.

01:22:31

I recognize the war that's out there, right? And there's no doubt this is a spiritual battle.

01:22:38

Paul used war type language in his epistles. Voti has done several good sermons on speaking to that topic.

01:22:49

So maybe some of the issue is we don't recognize the war that's out there.

01:22:54

We don't recognize exactly how dark the world is, how much power

01:23:00

Satan and his minions have in this world. And we've got a president of the

01:23:06

United States that's controlled by one, as well as a lot of people in Congress. And obviously we've seen in the last two and a half years what the

01:23:16

CDC and FDA and WHO, I mean, it's all in there.

01:23:21

We see what false religions have done. It's all in there, right? We see the Jehovah's Witnesses back to their old antics again.

01:23:29

They finally got over their scare. And they're back out on the streets as the last several months with their little pop -up things and standing there in their nice clothes again, acting like they serve

01:23:43

God and when instead they serve Satan. It's everywhere, right? And what is our starting point supposed to be?

01:23:52

Prayer. And all of that, right? So we need to pray, talk about God's armor in Ephesians 6, talking about just being in the will of God, praying for him to mold us to his will to go out and accomplish his will.

01:24:12

We've all been given the great commission, right? I mean, this is what we've all been told we have.

01:24:19

2 Corinthians 5 is really clear that we are ambassadors for Christ. We've been given a ministry of reconciliation.

01:24:27

It drives me insane every time I hear a Christian say, you know, I just don't know what

01:24:32

God's will is for me in my life. I don't know what God has planned for me in my life. I'll tell you what he has planned for you, evangelism.

01:24:40

Like if nothing else, he's already made that really, really clear that that is your ministry.

01:24:47

You may have other ministries, but every single Christian has the ministry of reconciliation. And if you feel like you're not good at it, guess where you start then?

01:24:59

Prayer, right? Pray that God gives you the want to go out and see people saved.

01:25:08

Pray that God opens your eyes more to the people walking past you, that their vast majority are going to hell if they died today.

01:25:17

Right? That's what convicted me when I heard Ray Comfort say that years ago through his Hell's Best Kept Secret and True and False Conversions CDs.

01:25:24

Like if you really love people and you walk past them every day and you're not telling them about Jesus, do you really love them, right?

01:25:33

And so that should draw us in which it drew both my wife and I together to our knees in that we were in the sin of not evangelizing.

01:25:44

And so yeah, I mean, prayer, I know it's kind of long -winded. I'm sounding more like a pastor now, but yeah, prayer is at the center of all that.

01:25:53

And so I'll stop because I see Casey chomping at the bit. Thank you, sir.

01:26:01

And I won't take that last comment about a pastor offensively at all. Good.

01:26:07

So I firmly believe that we need to educate before we motivate. If we're going to ask our people to pray and we just shallowly say, come on, or guilt them with that or motivate them and say, let's go, then how deep are the prayers going to be?

01:26:28

How effective are the prayers going to be? Are they going to be like what Jesus prayed in John chapter 17?

01:26:34

Or take, for example, how Paul prayed for the

01:26:40

Ephesian church and the Colossian church. And I text you a couple texts if you want to put that up on the screen, you certainly can, because I'd like to walk through them real quickly and challenge our listeners to educate themselves on how to pray like Paul prayed for others and invite everyone to pray for their family members, for their own churches like Paul prayed.

01:27:02

And all you do is go through this great prayer for people and take out the point for point for point for points that Paul brings up and pray for your loved ones in the same way that Paul prayed for those whom he loved in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 16 and following.

01:27:23

If you give me just a moment, I'll get it up there right now. So what

01:27:28

I'll do is I'll just read the text and I want to extract and exegete every little nuance here, but just look at the subjects and ask yourself this question.

01:27:39

Do you pray for others like Paul prayed for others? And we'll go through Ephesians 1 16 and following and I'll just get started.

01:27:49

So it says, do not cease to give thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers.

01:27:55

Okay, so here's Paul praying that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom.

01:28:02

And so praying for our loved ones to have wisdom.

01:28:08

James 1 5 says, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, right? And so praying, I mean, especially if you've got teenagers, right?

01:28:15

Lord, help them to make wise choices. And so pray for our loved ones to have wisdom and of revelation of the knowledge of him to know

01:28:24

God, right? So praying that folks would actually know the Lord. And I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

01:28:33

And we talk about all of these things that are keeping people from truly knowing the

01:28:39

Lord. So help them to be enlightened so that they will know what is the hope of his calling and what are the riches of his glory to know

01:28:48

God's glory. When's the last time we've actually prayed for someone to know the weighty glory of God.

01:28:55

And when we get into the presence of the Lord, we're like Isaiah, we're undone and we become humble and usable.

01:29:03

And then as you kind of look forward in verse 19, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power?

01:29:08

So Paul is praying that they would know his power toward us who believe. And then as you move forward down to verse 22, and he put all things in subjection under his feet, that kind of goes back to how

01:29:21

Satan has already been conquered. All things have been in subjection to his feet.

01:29:27

And so you pray, then you move forward knowing that God is in control in verse 23, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and end all.

01:29:36

So I pray that our church members, that myself and my family would be filled with the

01:29:42

Lord. Now the next prayer that's worth taking a look at besides the prayers that Jesus gave by example.

01:29:49

And by the way, the reason why I want to go through the text like this is because the disciples did not ask

01:29:57

Jesus to teach them how to preach. The disciples did not ask Jesus how to do a plethora of things except for how to pray.

01:30:06

And so it's worth taking a look at these prayers as a model and extract point for point for point how to pray for our loved ones.

01:30:14

In Colossians 1 .9, for this reason also, since the day that we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be, here's a point, filled with the knowledge of his will.

01:30:26

And I pray that filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom. And there's wisdom again and understanding so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the

01:30:35

Lord. So we pray for our loved ones to be able to walk in a manner that's worthy of the Lord.

01:30:40

And in all respects, bearing fruit. Lord, help us to bear fruit. And then again, increasing in the knowledge of God.

01:30:47

Lord, help us to know you. Verse 11, strengthened with all power. Lord, give us strength according to his glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness.

01:30:58

Lord, help us to be steadfast in our spirit and in patience. Lord, help us to be patient, joyously giving thanks.

01:31:07

Lord, help us to give thanks in all things. And then he goes into who Christ is there in Colossians.

01:31:15

And so when you take and you just say, okay, have I prayed for my loved ones the way Paul prayed for the church?

01:31:21

It's a glorious way to expand your prayer life, to diversify what you're actually saying, and get away from trying to remove all of your ailments.

01:31:33

Who in the world likes to hear about every little thing that's going wrong in your life?

01:31:41

You know, we've got to deepen our prayers. And oftentimes the things that are going wrong in our life are for our betterment.

01:31:49

God is trying to refine us. He's trying to help us. And we're trying to remove those very things that God is working for us.

01:31:57

And so embrace the pain, pray like crazy, and move forward. You know, prayer circles on Wednesday nights or whatnot, prayer meetings.

01:32:07

Often when you take prayer requests, you hear half an hour of the, oh, poor me stuff.

01:32:13

Get beyond thyself, right? And pray forward for the church and embrace whatever the

01:32:21

Lord has brought. Is he not sovereign to these things? And so nevertheless, we, like you mentioned, we're in our cushy homes.

01:32:29

We got it made. We live in the best century ever. We've got the most theological knowledge.

01:32:35

We've got the most comforts at our fingertips. And there are Christians around the world even today that live in shanties, and they would never even dream of living like we live.

01:32:46

And yet we pray, oh, poor me, all the time. And we get in our little prayer circles, and we see who's got the biggest ailments.

01:32:53

So how about we take these Ephesian and Colossian prayers, and we pray for the church.

01:33:00

Move forward. So we should stop praying for hangnails. Oh, man.

01:33:05

Stump my toe. Yeah. And granted, I mean, there's nothing wrong per se, right, with with praying for ailments.

01:33:15

But the focus really should be about what God's will is for the church, for our individual lives, right?

01:33:21

Yeah. And you know what? If you embrace the pain, you will pray.

01:33:28

It will press you forward. It's kind of like hunger. It'll press you forward to work.

01:33:35

So nevertheless, yes, if you're harmed, if you're hurt, if you've got cancer, man, let's circle around.

01:33:42

Let's lay hands. Let's anoint with oil. Let's pray in spirit. Let's lift the person up, and let's encourage them, and let's strengthen them, and let's show them that we're for them.

01:33:54

But at the same time, the whole prayer meeting is not focused on us. It is for a purpose.

01:34:02

Jesus prayed that thy will be done. He prayed that God would save souls.

01:34:07

And here Paul is praying for the sanctification of the saints. There's a purpose behind our praying.

01:34:14

And when there's gossip going on in the church, when there's prayerlessness going on in the church, when there's disunity in the church, all this stuff grieves

01:34:20

God. And we can pray, and it will be effectively removed if we are after it.

01:34:26

But if you aim for nothing, you'll get it every time. Amen. KT and Jesus says, when

01:34:32

Andrew is away, Anthony can talk away. That is absolutely right. Before Josiah, before you go,

01:34:39

I do want to say we've got a couple guys in the background. Cole, who's a regular guest on here, if you have any questions or want to be on, just let me know in the private chat.

01:34:47

And then there's a Pedro in the background. I don't know who Pedro is, but if you have a question,

01:34:53

I sent you a private chat earlier. I don't know if you've seen it, but if you've got a question, let me know in the private chat, and then we'll bring you on live at that point.

01:35:04

So go ahead, Josiah. I was going to say that going through the Psalms is what really helped me strengthen my prayer life, seeing how the saints of old in the

01:35:15

Bible prayed to God, how they would worship God. And they would also just pour out their hearts before Him, wanting to have

01:35:24

His will in their life, wanting to see His will in the nation, seeing people repent, seeing the enemies of God being overthrown.

01:35:34

And going to the Psalms and the other prayers in the Bible really helped me to understand that prayer is more about God and His glory than my ailments.

01:35:49

And another good resource is not just the Bible. There's the

01:35:55

Valley of Vision, is a collection of Puritan prayers that really helped me realize, hey, there's other people following the pattern of the

01:36:05

Psalms here and glorifying God in their prayers and praying for repentance and sin and praying for God's glory to be seen in their towns and their communities and also praying for salvation of souls.

01:36:21

0 Amen. Salvation of souls is so much more important than even our sufferings.

01:36:28

And I don't want to belittle the suffering, but I just want to have a godly perspective on suffering and not try and pray away what

01:36:36

God is doing in their life. I agree, man. We need to pray for the souls of men. 0

01:36:42

Yep. Amen. I'm going to just jump in and stir the pot a little bit. I honestly believe that evangelicalism today has come to have an emotional detachment from the pain and the peril of the lost.

01:36:57

When is the last time that with a group of believers you shed tears for those that are without Christ?

01:37:04

Ben, how long have you had dry eyes? 0

01:37:09

How do we get Paul's heart for the lost? I'm going to repeat the verse again in Romans 9.

01:37:15

I speak the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit.

01:37:22

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart for I wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people and those of my race.

01:37:36

How many people around you, brothers and sisters in Christ, you, me, are we marked men?

01:37:46

That literally we have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in our heart.

01:37:52

I'm going to go back to that little piece that Mack Slick wrote on the importance of prayer and evangelism.

01:37:59

He really talked about that we need to pray and ask God for a compassion for the lost.

01:38:06

I see a lot of evangelism. I've seen street evangelism that there's little compassion for lost people.

01:38:17

Slick says that compassion is necessary and a central element in witnessing.

01:38:23

It motivates you to speak, to teach, to pray for others, to come into the kingdom of God.

01:38:29

Compassion helps you to cry over the lost and to come to God in humble request for their salvation.

01:38:35

Paul said, brother, my heart's desire in prayer to God for them is their salvation.

01:38:43

F .B. Meyer, that great Bible teacher, he said the apostle got so near the very heart of the

01:38:49

Lord that he could hear its throb, detect its heat. It seemed as though the tender mercies of Jesus were throbbing in his own heart.

01:39:00

I am really, I am really desirous that with brothers and sisters in Christ that we go to God and ask him what

01:39:13

I struggle with and that's a true passion for the lost. Not to just go and put tracks in my pocket, not to go and do other things, but a passion that we are down on our knees and because of our communion with Christ in prayer and asking him to cry out and we're asking him,

01:39:33

God, give me, give me a compassion. Give me your love.

01:39:40

As Casey was saying, let me see the height, the length, the breadth, and the depth of the love of Christ and to know this love that passes understanding.

01:39:49

And God, fill me with the Holy Spirit and take my conscience and transform it.

01:39:56

Guys, and those that are listening, our passion and tears and heart and love for lost souls that are headed to hell, it's a spiritual thermometer if you ever wanted one.

01:40:11

What's our passion like for lost souls? Are we praying together with brothers and sisters in Christ over lost family members?

01:40:23

How much do we love the lost? It's just not the time that we spend talking to them, it's spending time down on our knees and taking scripture and making strong argument for them in prayer and scripture is just filled with things like Ephesians 6 19.

01:40:42

Pray for me that utterance may be given me and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel.

01:40:49

Colossians 4 3, pray for us also that God may open a door for the word and declare the mystery.

01:40:56

2 Thessalonians 3 1, finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of God may be run and may be glorified.

01:41:04

In my heart and my passion, one of the things that I wanted to be able to take and share is we need to be getting together together and doing it.

01:41:17

And if we love the souls of men like this, let me tell you our prayer times with a buddy, a couple of buddies and with our church, our prayer meetings are going to be filled.

01:41:27

Our outreach teams would be overloaded. And our Sunday services, especially when we're preaching the gospel would have at least some sinners in it.

01:41:37

And we would rise up early and we would stay up late pleading for souls. We would fast for the souls of men.

01:41:44

We would bleed for the souls of men. Paul groaned for souls. Do we?

01:41:51

I'll tell you what, in the last couple of years, I've heard more whining and diaper babies, about COVID vaccines, about politics, about other things inside the church.

01:42:05

And Christians have done a lot of groaning in the last 24, 36 months.

01:42:12

And I believe that we need to take and we need to cry out for God, for a passion for the lost and for God to give us tears.

01:42:23

And Herbert Locklear said, tears win victories. A cold, unfeeling, dry -eyed religion has no influence over the souls of men.

01:42:34

And it doesn't. And either you really don't believe in hell or you're culpably calloused, there's no in -between.

01:42:43

You either don't believe in this place, hell, or your heart ought to be broken for those that are going there.

01:42:49

David Brainerd, one of the celebrated Christian missionaries, was laboring among the Indians on the banks of the

01:42:56

Delaware River. And he once said these words, I care not where I live or what hardships I go through, so that I can but gain souls to Christ.

01:43:06

When I'm asleep, I dream of it. As soon as I wake up, first thing in the morning, it's on my mind, is my work.

01:43:14

All of my desire is the conversion of sinners, and all of my hope is in God. Whitefield said, oh

01:43:21

God, give me souls or take my soul. And that was the way that Whitefield sought to win souls.

01:43:28

One that knew him well said he hardly would go through a sermon without weeping. When is the last time that you've wept in prayer, that I have wept in prayer?

01:43:42

Whitefield's voice was often interrupted by tears, sometimes so excessive he had to stop.

01:43:49

And he said, you blame me for weeping, but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves through your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction.

01:44:01

What a great soul winner Whitefield was. What do we need to do to be able to take and edge each other?

01:44:10

I'll tell you what, it's just grabbing a friend, and we can start it tomorrow morning, we can start it tonight in crying out to God, oh

01:44:19

God, would you give me your heart and your passion and your desire for the souls of men?

01:44:27

When is the last time we talked about brokenness over lost souls and crying out to God and communing with our brokenhearted

01:44:36

Savior? Do we really think that God is brokenhearted over the souls of men? I think we've lost that.

01:44:44

We can never heal needs that we don't feel. Tearless hearts can never be heralds of the passion.

01:44:51

This is John Henry Jowett. We must pity, we must pity if we would redeem.

01:44:58

We must plead if we would be ministers of the saving blood. The disciples' prayer must be stricken with much crying and many tears.

01:45:06

The ministers of Calvary must supplicate in bloody sweat, and their intercession must often touch the point of agony.

01:45:15

True intercession is a sacrifice, and it's a bleeding sacrifice. I believe that tiny tears have been a mark of the church for too long.

01:45:26

Do you? I do. And I believe that in our churches, that there's an aversion to the doctrine of eternal punishment and its evangelistic consequences.

01:45:39

And what it's done is it's borne in us an emotional detachment from the pain and peril of the lost world.

01:45:47

George Bernard Shaw was no Christian, but I'll tell you what, you know what he said, the worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, to be indifferent.

01:45:54

And I believe that within many of our churches today, and many of us is butts in the pews, that we have an indifference to the soul of men, the souls of men.

01:46:07

And Anthony, I believe that of true soul winning in the churches to be revived, we got to discover down on our knees, rediscover the true spiritual brokenness that they that sow in tears will reap in joy.

01:46:25

And what are your guys' thoughts on just crying out to God for that heart?

01:46:31

Because I struggle with it, and I'm crying out to God, oh God, give it to me, stir it up inside of me.

01:46:39

Well, obviously, if this wasn't a problem, we would have people on the streets all over the place evangelizing, right?

01:46:47

And not just on the streets, right? I enjoy street ministry, but we would have people witnessing constantly, like we should be able to walk through the grocery stores and hear people witnessing to others.

01:46:56

I mean, Julie and I were just witnessing a Costco, it was yesterday, with somebody who just ended up getting in a conversation with somebody, and next thing you know, we're witnessing.

01:47:07

And at least a dozen people walked past us as we were talking, right? So others get to hear that.

01:47:14

And I think Dan's video just dropped out, so we'll see when you come back in. But if the church was doing its job and people and Christians were doing their job, it would be apparent because it would be out there, right?

01:47:28

You would see it in action. And we're just not seeing it in action the way that we would expect to.

01:47:38

A couple of good comments came in, Tim and Rebecca Robbins.

01:47:44

I think it's a Spurgeon quote, if sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies.

01:47:50

And if they perish, let them perish with their arms wrapped around their knees, imploring them to stay.

01:47:56

If hell must be filled, let it be filled with the teeth of our exertions and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.

01:48:05

Wow. Prayer and evangelism, right? Both marks of Spurgeon's life.

01:48:14

And then Tim also said this, I often ask people, would you be offended if I were to walk up to you and say,

01:48:20

I hate you and I hope you go to hell, then explain that as a Christian, that would literally be what I'm saying without sharing the gospel.

01:48:27

And that's really Ray's point, that's your point here. I think that's a lot of our points, is if you believe in evangelism, it's because you know when you walk past that person who doesn't know

01:48:41

Christ, you are effectively saying, I hate you and I hope you go to hell.

01:48:47

And look, I know it sounds harsh, right? I know that I'll get pushback and there's some pastors that will say, come on,

01:48:54

Anthony, aren't you being a little tough on people? I mean, there's people that are fearful. There's people who just don't know what to say.

01:49:02

They're not trained in evangelism. I've heard those things before and I say, okay, great.

01:49:07

Then get trained, pray, pray that God gives you. Yeah, there's one, right?

01:49:14

Pray that God gives you that ability to go out and evangelize the way that you are called to do according to second

01:49:20

Corinthians five, Matthew 28 and other areas throughout scripture.

01:49:29

So yeah, yeah. We got to get out there and we got to go do what we're called to do.

01:49:35

Yeah. So I don't know if you guys have anything else to say. There's a question that came in as well. Yeah.

01:49:43

I think a lot of Christians, they forget that we're in that battle like we mentioned earlier.

01:49:53

We forget that we're in a battle and we're just trying to live our lives.

01:49:58

We don't think about the reality of hell. You don't think about the fact that in one second, somebody could have an aneurysm, a blood clot.

01:50:11

Anything could snatch you away to eternity and that person would go spend hell for all eternity the rest of their lives because you were indifferent to their eternal destiny.

01:50:29

One of the big things about prayer before evangelism is to ask

01:50:36

God to remind you and convince you and burden you over the reality of the lost eternal damnation.

01:50:47

They really need to know the gospel. They need to know that they're sinners, that have broken

01:50:55

God's law. They need to know that God is real, that he's holy, that he's not going to just grade them on a curve, that he's perfect, and that they fall woefully short of perfect by being lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterers at heart.

01:51:12

They need to realize that reality and the reality of hell and then we can go and say, hey,

01:51:22

God did something awesome so that you don't have to go to hell. God sent his son, the

01:51:28

Lord Jesus Christ, holy God, holy man, to live a sinless life, dying a cross, paying the sin so that anyone who repents and trusts in Christ will have eternal life.

01:51:45

He paid the sin of everyone who would repent and believe. Our job isn't to go and look and see if there's an

01:51:52

E on everybody's back, see if they're elect. Our job is to go and to be good witnesses and God will bring in his elect.

01:52:02

We have to have that heart. We absolutely have to.

01:52:09

Jason says, amen Josiah, we should never let an opportunity to share the gospel go to waste. So thank you.

01:52:15

Thank you for doing that. Kevin Schaffer says, it's ironic when we witness many people think we're being hateful when true hatred would actually be to keep silence.

01:52:25

Great, great comments. Great comment there. BondservantforJesus says,

01:52:32

I think it was Tim Challies who had a son, yes, that's correct, about 20 years old, literally dropped dead.

01:52:37

We don't know how long we have or others we know about Christ. Without getting political, all the spike proteins and the problems with the

01:52:45

COVID vaccine that so many people have, there is a lot more deaths that's occurring today that people are dropping dead of aneurysms, myocarditis, and other issues because of that spike protein issue.

01:52:59

We're seeing it, right? We're seeing it happen in front of us, not to mention, I mean, there's always what we call tragedies, right?

01:53:07

You watch the news any given night and some car accident happened that took an entire family.

01:53:14

We have a pastor friend from Memphis who it's been about a year now where he was driving with his wife and son to bring them back to college after Christmas break and they got into an auto accident.

01:53:35

Within moments, his wife and his son were taken into eternity. These are unbelievable tragedies.

01:53:47

None of us are promised another breath. None of us are promised another heartbeat. Neither are our family members, neither are our friends, neither are the strangers that we walk past on a daily basis.

01:54:00

Where is the urgency to share the gospel the way that we are called to?

01:54:06

I mean, it's really - It's not there because we're not down on our knees.

01:54:13

You know when you walk into a church, you know when you crossed a brother, a sister, it has what

01:54:22

Paul had, unceasing anguish and great sorrow for the souls of men. You know it, you're a marked man, a marked man.

01:54:29

My heart is that we press knee as individuals and we press knee together and go before God and not let him go, not let him go until he gives us the love and the heart of Christ and the brokenness that Christ had that led him to the cross.

01:54:52

As we're coming up to the top of the hour, I just want one more thing when it comes to evangelism.

01:55:02

I have been at different points in my life when I was much younger. I would see just literally dozens of people coming to Christ and it is such a dry period and now in this adult phase in my life where I have seen -

01:55:20

I have not seen large numbers coming to Christ in a long time and people coming to Christ in a relatively short period of time.

01:55:31

We need to ask ourselves the question, has the power of God changed?

01:55:38

I don't want to get into the cessationist debate, etc. in the book of Acts, no need to.

01:55:44

We need to ask ourselves the question, when it comes to the gospel and the power of God specific to preaching the gospel, the ministry and the message of reconciliation and our testimony of the gospel, is

01:56:01

God's power any less now than it was within the book of Acts? I say no,

01:56:08

I say no. In fact, when you read the book of Acts, the kingdom of God was meant to be known for its power and for the actuality of the presence of God manifest in the midst and which is manifested in power.

01:56:24

God's vision for evangelism is power. In 1 Thessalonians 1 .5,

01:56:29

Paul reminds us again, our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the

01:56:37

Holy Spirit and in much assurance as you know what kind of men that we were among you for your sake.

01:56:44

The kingdom of God is not to be in only the word, but in power. And where are we together, that just not in our commitment to preach the gospel, but also the demonstration of God's power, because that's what the new birth is.

01:57:03

And conversion is not to be just a mental ascent, ticking a box and just not saying a prayer.

01:57:08

It's the actual in -wrought change that the Holy Spirit brings when God's power comes into the soul of a sinner.

01:57:16

And I believe that many of us have really not cried out to God for God's power to take and be upon us through the

01:57:30

Holy Spirit, that Jesus Christ is glorified in our midst.

01:57:40

Let me just be blunt. I believe that there is a shocking absence of power in our church in general and in our

01:57:52

Christian lives. Does anybody agree with that? Absolutely.

01:57:59

I could speak to it for just a minute. You know, one of the areas that the scriptures talk about a lack of power and prayer would be when the husbands are unkind to their wives and they are not living with them in an understanding way.

01:58:14

So it's very specific in 1 Peter 3, 7.

01:58:19

You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way as with someone weaker, since she is a woman, and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered.

01:58:34

And so perhaps there are men who are not honoring their wives behind the scenes and are living with them in an unkind and an understanding way, and they have gotten complacent in this area, and their prayers are not powerful, they're not effective, and so they've gotten used to living without prayer.

01:58:56

And that is the American way. It's a Greek worldview. It's not a Hebraic worldview.

01:59:02

A Greek worldview would compartmentalize things. You'd live one way at work but live another way at home and act another way at church and even have a secret life.

01:59:12

This compartmentalized type way of living is normal for Americans, but it's not a biblical worldview.

01:59:19

A biblical worldview is having God as the center of all things, and from the center point of having

01:59:25

God as the center point of all things, it affects how you live in marriage, how you parent, and how you work, and how you live and breathe and act and speak and everything.

01:59:36

God is the center of all things, so it's circular in how you are. It's not compartmentalized or linear.

01:59:42

And so perhaps there are men out there who are ignoring their wives or not lifting them up and honoring them, and they've lived and found that prayer is ineffective, and so God places the wife as the bride and values her like he died for the church.

02:00:04

There's value there that is indescribable. So perhaps there are families that are broken because of this lack of understanding of priorities in God's mind, and so there again, bow down in a humble way and pray and ask

02:00:20

God for forgiveness and see restoration of power restored, and then you'll have a heart for the lost, and then you'll have the ability to care outside of yourself, and then the effectiveness and the power would return.

02:00:35

It first starts with our own hearts being right with the Lord, and if we do not have a concern for the lost, there's a heart issue there.

02:00:43

If we're not already praying for the lost, there's a heart issue there. You can't tell somebody to, you know, you need to have a heart for the lost.

02:00:52

That's going to come from the Lord when we're right with God, and it's going to prompt you, and it's going to be like living waters that comes out from the inside.

02:01:01

It's going to overflow. It's going to be real. Wow. That's a pretty strong statement, because what you're saying is somebody who doesn't have the love for others to evangelize, they have some type of breakdown in their own life with God.

02:01:19

There's some barrier there. 2 Timothy 4 -5, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

02:01:29

It's a command to evangelize. Yeah, and of course that is first to pastors, right, and then by proxy to everybody else, you know, which

02:01:40

I guess gets into the next part, right? That's a good transition, that verse, and before we get to it,

02:01:47

I do want to answer this question from Caleb. I'm sorry from, well, Caleb says, we got to teach the Lord's prayer and break that down.

02:01:53

It's how Jesus taught it. That was from much earlier. I didn't get to it yet. I know pastors who've done that, and it's a huge blessing for their church when they've broken down the

02:02:02

Lord's prayer, spent a few weeks preaching through that section of scripture. Deotero asked, how about those who say tongues are their private prayer language?

02:02:12

They're liars. Next question. No, you know, that's the first thing.

02:02:20

Yeah, first, I know I'm very insensitive. I'm very blunt is the problem. That's it, and maybe in another show, we'll talk about that angelic prayer language that's in 1

02:02:30

Corinthians 13. I think it's the beginning of 1 Corinthians 13, tongue of angels.

02:02:38

Yeah, that's not what he's talking about. We do not speak in the tongue of angels. That's hyperbolic language.

02:02:43

Hyperbolic language. It's about love, right? If you don't have love, you have nothing else, so. By the way, on that point,

02:02:49

I've got a continuous who would love to discuss that with us one day if you're interested,

02:02:57

Anthony. You know what? That would be great, so I would have no problems doing that, and I do want to bring up something from earlier too that Dan said about continuationist versus cessationist, and I don't believe this issue is—like in the book of Acts, I don't believe there's a distinguishing mark of a continuationist versus cessationist when it comes to prayer and evangelism, right?

02:03:23

That is what we're all supposed to be doing, so I know there's people who make that distinction.

02:03:29

The reality is that the only difference that we would see as cessationists is that there's apostolic gifts that were for that time for the apostles, and they don't continue today.

02:03:43

What's not included in that list is evangelism. What's not included in that list is the office of the evangelist.

02:03:49

What's not included in that list is the prayer, right? I mean, and the power of the spirit, to pray in the power of the spirit.

02:03:55

Those things always exist, so just for the listeners to be really clear on all that.

02:04:03

So, okay. Hard question, and I'm going to have Dan and let you answer this first.

02:04:10

And then Pastor Josiah, Pastor Casey next. Look, I mean, people—when tragedy struck this country in 9 -11, whether you're a

02:04:26

Democrat or Republican, you look towards the leader of the country, right? You look towards George W. Bush, whether you liked him or not. I would say during COVID, we look towards Biden.

02:04:35

I don't think any—at first, it was Trump, right? And I didn't want to look there either, but by and large, we look towards our leaders, right, for guidance.

02:04:48

And in a perfect world, your government would follow what

02:04:55

Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 says, which is that this is the servant or slave of God who is to carry out the good and punish the wicked.

02:05:05

So in a perfect world, we should be able to follow our government leaders for those things. But when it comes to the church, right,

02:05:13

God has given the church as his extension. God has placed pastors slash elders slash overseers, right, all the same word, as the heads of the church, to be his representative for the bride of Christ in the local assemblies.

02:05:35

So there's obviously a connection between the lack of evangelism in a church to the pastor.

02:05:43

There's a connection of lack of prayer in a church to the pastor or the elders.

02:05:49

Now, I know that there's cases—I mean, I know yours is one of them, right? I know that personally, where you did your absolute best to convince your church through scripture to evangelize.

02:06:02

I know I was part of that because I came and preached a sermon on that at your church almost a year ago from now in doing this.

02:06:11

So I mean, the blame isn't always on pastors, but how much of it is on the elders, the leadership of the church, that aren't accentuating this from the pulpit?

02:06:26

I can point to numerous churches. One of them's in the area here in Cleveland that I helped train in evangelism several years ago and went back this year to do some more, who that church has blossomed unbelievably well because of the evangelistic nature.

02:06:46

How did the evangelism get started? Because the pastor said, we're doing it. And that's it, right?

02:06:52

He put everything in a place to make sure it happens, you know, assigned a pastor to be the evangelism pastor going forward.

02:07:00

He started to encourage the congregation on a continual basis to go out and evangelize at the farmer's market on Saturday mornings right around the corner from the church.

02:07:10

I got a really good friend, Pastor Austin, who I will be preaching at his church this Sunday on a great topic.

02:07:16

And Job, he's a church that that church is evangelistic in nature.

02:07:22

When you walk into that church, you know the power of the evangelism and prayer in the church within a minute or two of being there because that was established within that church from the get -go as a church plant.

02:07:36

I can point to numerous other pastors around the country. Pastor Chuck O 'Neill, one of my favorite guys. If you're listening,

02:07:42

Pastor Chuck, another shout out to you. I love Pastor Chuck watching, going out to his church for the first time and preaching at his church and going out with him on the streets multiple times and watching his church, who is so loving, who is so there for the pastor, right?

02:08:00

They are, he's the leader and they are following the leader and they are out there evangelizing as a church strong every

02:08:07

Saturday. It is amazing to watch these things. And so I say all this because a lot of it really rests on leadership.

02:08:20

So Dan, I'm going to let you kind of speak to this first in terms of how do you think that this fires need to be stoked for prayer and evangelism in the church, both on a congregational level, as well as from a pastoral perspective, as well as from the congregation perspective?

02:08:41

How is that supposed to occur? What needs to happen? And then same question will be to Pastor Josiah first and then

02:08:48

Pastor Casey after that. Yeah, it's a deep question or hard one.

02:08:58

I'll answer it like this. I'm glad I'm the host, by the way. A church can never rise higher than its pastor in passions and desires.

02:09:14

And the leadership and the culture that a pastor and elders set for prayer, set for an external focus with the souls of men, when it is bathed in prayer, in the power of the

02:09:31

Holy Spirit, it spreads out to the congregation. Prayerless pastor and prayerless elders beget a prayerless church.

02:09:44

No passion, no desire, no unceasing anguish and great sorrow for the souls of men.

02:09:51

The fire is not going to be passed. Thessalonians tells us, don't quench, don't put out the

02:09:59

Holy Spirit's fire. I'll tell you, I have been the confidant of my sister, who's been a pastor's wife for a whole lot of years, a confidant to other pastors about the pain of ministry.

02:10:17

And there's a lot of pressure in being a pastor. And we need men and women that step up.

02:10:26

And where these things are wavering, when the light is going out, when the flame is flickering, when the power of the

02:10:36

Holy Spirit isn't in the pulpit, unmistakably, we need to cry out to God for our pastors and for our elders, individually and together, and cover them.

02:10:51

Paul had a great phrase. He said, I want my message, my conversations, and my preaching, not to be with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the

02:11:03

Spirit's power, so that men's faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.

02:11:10

When is the last time you prayed for your pastor and leveraged that verse?

02:11:16

Did you even know it was in the Bible? Yep. Yeah, you're hitting on a wonderful, wonderful point.

02:11:25

So from a congregational perspective, that's right. It's easy for a lot of people to complain about the direction of the church and things.

02:11:34

And are we actually, though, sitting back and praying fervently for our pastors?

02:11:40

Are we sitting with our spouse and other congregants praying for our leadership within the church?

02:11:46

Because you're right, that is a major, major thing that we need to be doing, that I'm sure is not happening in many churches, right, is we're being lulled to sleep, as you said earlier.

02:11:58

A love for our pastor and a love for our elders. You know what the measurement is?

02:12:05

Time spent on your knees. How much do you love them? How much do you love your pastor?

02:12:12

How much do you love your elders in time spent on your knees? Not casual.

02:12:18

When's the last time you shed tears over them? Have you? If you're concerned about power in the pulpit, have you asked

02:12:28

God and cried? Oh boy, that is not the right time for Dan's video to go out.

02:12:38

Well, Dan, I'll let you try to unconnect and reconnect and hold that thought. Okay, Pastor Josiah, now you're on one end of the spectrum.

02:12:50

Pastor Casey, you're on the other end of the spectrum in this. So Pastor Casey, you have a church that,

02:12:56

I mean, we've known each other for, I think it's four years this month, if I'm not mistaken.

02:13:01

It was either last month or this month. It's been four years since I've known you. Four years since you shared the gospel with me.

02:13:08

Yeah, and that you were waiting for me to share the gospel. Yeah, it's a great story. We'll have to share one of these days.

02:13:17

But so watching you and your church grow because of your direction, you and the other leadership in your church, the direction, of course, prayer first and foremost.

02:13:30

But the direction, I mean, I still remember the first time that we visited your church, which would have been four years ago this coming

02:13:38

December. And you were so excited to show me all this stuff, the stuff you had on the wall, about what your vision was for years later, which is just coming to fruition fully now.

02:13:50

But you had that vision four years ago. And I know that was in your head much longer than that.

02:13:56

You showed me other documents that you had, stuff that you had written out on paper because this was your vision for the church.

02:14:02

Watch God bless your church the way that he has over the last four years is absolutely astounding as a result of prayer and your leadership.

02:14:14

And I'm sure prayer within your congregation, we've gotten to know and absolutely love.

02:14:20

Well, I can't call it your church because it's now my church too, right? I mean, we're all still members of your church when we're down there in Florida.

02:14:27

And I can't say enough good things about the people and the type.

02:14:33

I just have never seen a church, I'd say never, but it's hard. I haven't seen many churches that are so tight -knit like yours that it's obvious, right?

02:14:44

I mean, this is leadership, this is congregation. It's amazing to see all that come together.

02:14:50

But before we get to that, I want to talk about the other side of it, which is

02:14:55

Josiah's side, because Josiah has had the same visions as you did, had the same evangelistic zeal as you do.

02:15:06

And he ran into all kinds of other issues. So speak about this from your side,

02:15:12

Josiah, about how to get prayer and evangelism instituted in a church from a leadership's perspective and what the expectations are from a congregation.

02:15:23

Well, from my perspective, as the pastor, it starts with you and your family.

02:15:32

You have to realize you can't expect your congregation to do something that you're not doing.

02:15:44

When I started at my church, I wanted to start a prayer ministry because I believe that revivals happen when the church is in prayer and the gospel is preached and people are outsharing their faith.

02:16:06

So I started prayer meetings. Nobody but my family showed up, so we decided that me and my father and my wife and my mother, we would pray together.

02:16:22

And we would ask God to awaken dead hearts and save souls. And we'd ask him to help improve our lives, help me to stay faithful in ministry.

02:16:33

And that's what we did for two years until God said, I have something else planned for you.

02:16:45

I know we talked many times about the heartache you had over the years because you really cared about the souls of your own congregation because you believe most of them were by the time all's said and done.

02:16:59

Can you make this public knowledge or not yet?

02:17:06

We'll hold off. But in any case, you have a church that has been very unresponsive, right?

02:17:16

And you really wonder. Well, I eventually did talk to each family in the church and they didn't have a testimony.

02:17:27

So I realized I wasn't really as much of a pastor at that church as I was an evangelist.

02:17:34

So I started preaching gospel sermons to try to explain the gospel more thoroughly from the gospel of John.

02:17:43

And they were really turned off to it because they just did not want to hear the gospel.

02:17:49

It was heartbreaking. And I will tell you, there's a sermon I would love to post that is one of the most fiery, powerful sermons that I have ever heard.

02:17:59

The one that you gave on the gospel was about two months ago now.

02:18:05

It was just phenomenal. So having said that, my normal thing, this is not a beer.

02:18:15

I have not gone post mill. This is a Waterloo naturally flavored sparkling water.

02:18:22

So I'm going to crack that open. I don't think they're a sponsor for the show. They're not a sponsor. I just want to make sure nobody thinks

02:18:28

I'm abusing my liberty here. So having said that,

02:18:34

Pastor Casey, what are your thoughts in terms of,

02:18:40

I mean, you've lived this and God has blessed your church through this.

02:18:47

What was your mindset coming to Beulah Baptist of Winter Garden and in your vision and how it's been bathed in prayer, what you expected from your congregation?

02:18:59

I mean, all that kind of stuff. How was this accomplished? Yeah, certainly. I would say lots of praying and trying.

02:19:08

None of me, I'm just a piece of the puzzle. We do have a phenomenal church and all of your kind remarks about Beulah Baptist Church are much appreciated and they're accurate.

02:19:21

It's amazing. And that is the attractional element.

02:19:28

There are no gimmicks and tricks at our church. We capitalize upon the word of God and John 8 31 is our key verse and we continue in the word.

02:19:38

It's approved that we're disciples. So the element that is here that families come and observe the same thing that you have observed is what is keeping them.

02:19:52

And I'm impressed by it. And so evangelism is just a piece of the puzzle.

02:19:59

Discipleship is a piece of the puzzle. Prayer is a piece of the puzzle. Handling God's word is a piece of the puzzle.

02:20:08

Having God honoring worship is a piece of the whole thing. Handling the ordinances accurately is a major piece of the puzzle.

02:20:18

How we do what we do, how we spend the money, how we pray together, everything comes together.

02:20:25

So there's a lot of moving parts and you have people and heritage and traditions and understandings and hermeneutical frameworks and philosophies.

02:20:36

And you have a plethora of things before you when you're a pastor.

02:20:42

So you cannot do anything quickly. We shepherd sheep and we move slowly together in unity best we possibly can.

02:20:52

And so when you come into a church, you just simply start praying and trying and working.

02:21:00

And some things will work and some things will not. And it's humbling as to what does work and it's humbling as to how it comes about.

02:21:10

But here's one thing that's for sure. Patience is a necessity in ministry. Humility is a necessity in ministry.

02:21:18

And the saying is very true. You won't get nowhere near as much accomplished in one year as you thought you could have.

02:21:28

But at the end of five or six years, you will be amazed as to what can be accomplished when everybody is submitting to the will of God.

02:21:38

So nevertheless, when I mention all of those aspects, that takes a lot of education.

02:21:44

So learning precedes living. So you have a lot of educating to do with the congregation, a lot of preaching, a lot of love, a lot of listening, a lot of leading gently, a lot of soft corrections.

02:21:59

And when you knee jerk or expect people just to jump on your ship and go and do it your way, there's levels of leadership, right?

02:22:07

Some will obey you because of the position that you have. Some will obey you because they love

02:22:16

God and they should obey their leaders according to the scriptures. Some will do it superficially for a short amount of time.

02:22:24

Some will do it on the surface but not inwardly, truly be on board.

02:22:30

What you want as a pastor is for people to be in love with the Word of God and them to exercise the gifts that God has given them.

02:22:41

And as a pastor, you educate and equip them to serve Christ. Ephesians chapter four is very clear about that.

02:22:48

Pastors and evangelists and teachers are for the equipping of saints for the work of service. And so as we pour our lives into who they are in Christ, they begin to exercise their gifts.

02:23:01

And there's no magic formula as to what you do first. Do you do discipleship first or do you do evangelism first?

02:23:07

Do you do prayer first or do you do, you know, there's no magic formula. For me, and I just speak for myself here, pouring into a local congregation,

02:23:18

I saw certain giftedness start to pop up over here and certain things over here. And when

02:23:24

I saw those things start to become evident, then I celebrated those things publicly.

02:23:31

And those things that are celebrated publicly will continue. And so it's kind of like throwing more fuel on the fire.

02:23:39

So you see something moving forward in the right direction, strengthen that area. And I guess that's the direction

02:23:45

God wants that church to go at that moment. And then all of a sudden another area will start to pop up because you're preaching the word of God.

02:23:53

You're going through books of the Bible. The full counsel of God's word is edifying, it's educating, it's correcting, it's aligning.

02:24:01

And those who are not on board will leave and those who are on board will come. And so forget about all of the, you know,

02:24:09

I appreciate what you mentioned, Dr. Anthony, about, you know, having a vision or goals or, you know, a direction, but it's not like getting a vision from God and the pastor has some type of supernatural insight on what the church should do.

02:24:24

It's basically that passage in Proverbs is talking about the counsel of God's word.

02:24:30

And so we just simply preach the word of God and let the word do the work. And the word will do the work in the souls of men.

02:24:38

And no pastor who has a lack of results in a local congregation is a failure.

02:24:45

Otherwise you would have to deem Noah as a failure who only led his family to Christ. Otherwise you would have to deem

02:24:51

Jeremiah and Ezekiel failures. And so we see evidence by God's word that there are men who are called just to simply be faithful and let the results be in God's court.

02:25:04

And so nevertheless, don't think of any pastor who has maybe a lack of results as in like an

02:25:10

American worldview, as if we have taken the definition of success from an

02:25:16

American definition of success and placed it upon the church. What a fallacy to take a humanistic idea and force it on top of the church.

02:25:27

No, the church is God's and he will grow it however he wants to grow it.

02:25:32

And we're responsible for growing the souls of men, for sanctifying them. John 17, 17 says, sanctify them by the word.

02:25:40

Thy word is truth. And so we focus on preaching the word of God. The word of God has a sanctifying element to it, not only in sanctification, but also in salvation.

02:25:52

And so when salvation is produced by the preaching, by the hearing of the word of God, they're given faith.

02:25:59

Sanctification sets in. And when sanctification sets in and service sets in, sometimes this takes years and years and years.

02:26:07

And so we should not be in a rush. Time's on our side where you just need to be faithful to the

02:26:13

Lord, which by the way, all of this flies in the face of Southern Baptist culture, which we are no longer.

02:26:19

And I'm grateful for that. I had to throw that out there that, that I've had to come out from underneath these weighty goals and watch, but nevertheless, back to the point.

02:26:28

The point is when evangelism started happening in our church, I celebrated it.

02:26:33

I called them by name and I invited others to join and I celebrated that. And then -

02:26:39

From the pulpit. From the pulpit. Yes. And I go out there with them as often as I can. And I encourage and I participate, hold them accountable.

02:26:47

I listen to the gospel that's being shared. I want, and we are in the next upcoming year going to be doing pastoral training and there will be pastors over evangelism, discipleship, educations, and all this different areas, especially missions, since we've brought missions in house.

02:27:06

We are going to be doing all of these things. So praise God for that. And the only reason why

02:27:11

I belabor all of these different points in detail is that this is a long process.

02:27:17

We have the end game in mind and we're not going to be in a hurry. So we need to work hard, slowly towards these things and just let the

02:27:28

Lord do the work. It's amazing. And so I honestly am thrilled to death. This is my best year in ministry yet.

02:27:37

And I've been preaching since 17 years old, been in full -time ministry since I'm 24, been 24 years old.

02:27:43

I'm 42 now. This is my favorite year in ministry.

02:27:49

And I'll tell you why, because I'm finally to the point to where I personally can do not only preaching, but also personal evangelism with our folks who are doing evangelism.

02:28:03

And I can also do discipleship, personal discipleship with fathers and sons.

02:28:08

It takes a long time to get to where you can do these things. So I preach on Wednesday night and Sunday morning.

02:28:16

I pastor during the day. I study in the morning, but I also do evangelism and discipleship. And I pray like crazy all in between.

02:28:23

But listen, this year is the first year that I have been able to get my schedule to the point to where I can effectively study and preach the

02:28:34

Word of God with confidence and also evangelize and disciple and pray and all the things that are required with the funerals and deaths and births and birthdays in between.

02:28:46

Listen, five, six years ago, my schedule did not look like my schedule today.

02:28:52

And my routine did not look like my routine. And one of the hard things about graduating from seminary is you think that you can jump in and do ministry like John MacArthur, study all week long and go and preach and thousands come.

02:29:05

That's not how it works. God allows us to put our time in and work hard.

02:29:13

And so in the very beginning, the average job description for a local pastor is a burnout job description that will burn the marriage and burn the kids.

02:29:24

And so you're responsible for too much, even according to the constitution and bylaws and why you were hired.

02:29:33

You will be faced with a burnout job description. But hey, you got to do it for a while until you softly educate in an area.

02:29:44

Now, for example, say you're too involved with finances.

02:29:50

Well, first of all, you have to raise the people up before you can drop the ball. And then you can slowly move back.

02:29:58

I had people help me realize this. It's not like I intentionally did. I had people help me understand, okay, you don't have to be at every finance committee meeting.

02:30:08

You have to moderate it. You can appoint someone to do this. And as a congregationally approved church,

02:30:15

I just simply say, hey, is everybody okay if our chairman of deacons or our associate pastor or someone else moderates this so I don't have to leave the house in the evening?

02:30:25

And it comes around. So you got one little area that you're freed up. Now, what do you put in the place of that time?

02:30:35

So you see how over time, little by little, my schedule changed, which it was completely upside down when

02:30:43

I first came. So you've got pastors who have to mow the grass. You've got pastors who have to be at every meeting.

02:30:49

You've got pastors, if there's roof damage, they're the ones calling the insurance companies. You've got pastors who print the bulletins, write the bulletins, prepare all for every single committee meeting.

02:30:59

And you got pastors who lead worship and preach. So when you have too much on your plate, then you have to slowly educate and inspire.

02:31:12

And then little by little over time, it'll start to turn the tide. And so that's the faithfulness of our people who have taken their gifts and their responsibilities seriously.

02:31:22

We all carry our own load around here, and we all chip in. We all have ownership of this place, and we all work hard.

02:31:29

We take it seriously. We're so proud of how things have come along, and we all attribute it to being faithful to the

02:31:36

Word of God. So nevertheless, that may have been a long answer to the question, but that's been our story.

02:31:43

No, it's a great answer. I mean, it's really to summarize, right? It was faithfulness to the

02:31:49

Word, and yeah, you didn't get special from what Scripture told you you were to do as a pastor.

02:31:58

You raised up men according to what Scripture teaches for you to do.

02:32:04

So I find the guys in the church to raise up and put them into those positions, and yeah, and the church grows.

02:32:11

But it does come from you at the pulpit who's laying that out, who is speaking it out, and constantly reminding the congregation the direction that you're to be headed according to God's Word, right?

02:32:25

It is clear directive. So yeah, that's a wonderful answer, Pastor Casey, on all that.

02:32:32

So Dan, you're back. At first, I didn't know if your thing froze. You were so still. Like, you could be a mime in another life,

02:32:38

I think. I just saw the eyes blink every so often. So you got cut off when your camera went out earlier, so I wanted you to be able to talk further.

02:32:50

You know what? I can't remember where to pick up, but you know what?

02:32:58

I think that the Lord has used our conversation tonight, and once again, my heart is pricked.

02:33:08

And we left off about praying for pastors and our elders. We need to love them better, love them more deeply, and do it down on our knees, for sure.

02:33:22

Verbal affirmation and encouragement, unsolicited. Encourage them, for sure.

02:33:30

It's— I must add that I hear that all the time from our people. We're praying for you,

02:33:36

Pastor Casey. We're praying for you. When they're leaving, we're praying for you. I pray for you daily. It is so comforting to hear that, and I attribute a lot here, not only the faithfulness to the

02:33:46

Word of God, but that we have saints that are praying. So thanks for bringing that up, Dan. Yeah.

02:33:53

Well, I'll tell you, I was really impressed when I got that phone call from Dave, one of the deacons who's assigned to our family, and that he's like,

02:34:04

I'm here for you guys, whatever you need, and I'm here for any prayer that you guys need. I'm like, that is absolutely wonderful.

02:34:12

That is a blessing. It's a huge blessing. I don't know if Dave knows what he got himself into, because his phone's going to be burning off the hook.

02:34:20

That's right. But I'm very thankful for that.

02:34:27

David Coulson is a very faithful man of God. Yeah. And so if you're listening, David, thank you.

02:34:33

I know you were thinking about listening tonight. So after your long answer,

02:34:40

Casey, I almost feel like that's a great ending to the show. We are in Anthony time.

02:34:48

We are in Anthony time. We're 34 minutes in Anthony time, so I'm grateful for that. So how about this?

02:34:55

I mean, I could go for hours. I'm sure listeners can go for hours more on this, but you guys have any last thoughts you want to share?

02:35:03

Yes, I must share that this is impossible without a faithful wife who loves

02:35:10

God and loves her husband and loves her children. I cannot say enough about my wonderful wife, whom every pastor knows this, that the wife has to digest everything that he has to digest.

02:35:26

And so a pastor's wife's calling is tremendous.

02:35:32

And so they are tremendous in their prayer and their support and their loving and kindness. And I cannot say enough about my wife.

02:35:40

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right about that. You cannot be successful in ministry, both from a pastoral perspective, para -church perspective, if you don't have a great wife that is there alongside you.

02:35:57

It's impossible to do. So yeah, I absolutely agree with you on that, Pastor Casey.

02:36:04

Yeah. And I'll tell you too, I'm going to throw this one other thing out there, because the last couple of sermons I've given at Joe Conkle's Church of Providence, the last one this past Sunday, have been...

02:36:15

It just so happened that the topics I got assigned in Corinthians were on marriage. And there is no doubt that God knew what he was doing when he saw that Adam needed a helpmate, that he didn't have one, he needed one.

02:36:32

He prayed at all the animals in front of Adam to show him that none of the animals could be your helpmates. And then he created

02:36:39

Eve out of Adam's rib to be his helper.

02:36:46

And so this is what the grand calling for wives is.

02:36:52

And it's wonderful to have wives that are willing to fulfill, not the feminist role that the world has for them, not their own primary role in life that they want to fulfill, but a role that was designed by God to be the helpmate of the husband to do whatever the family is called to do at the vision of the husband in this.

02:37:21

So it's amazing to have that. Yeah. And by the way, I'm so looking forward to and thank you for consenting to moderate our church conference coming up December 10, 11, and 12 with Justin Peters and Phil Johnson and Susan Heck.

02:37:35

My wife is doing a breakout session, and she is going to pound the scriptures against feminism by exegeting the word helpmate or helper.

02:37:47

I'm telling you, the ladies are going to love this right out of Genesis chapter one.

02:37:54

The definition of how Eve is to be is going to be explained.

02:38:00

And she's already taught this same lesson down at First Baptist Dover. We went down there and taught on the roles of men and women.

02:38:08

And that was a great time. And I appreciate the invitation to that family conference. And so she's refined this information.

02:38:15

And I'm telling you, feminism has crept into the church today and changed a lot of ecclesiology, a lot of how we do ministry, a lot of how we act.

02:38:28

And so nevertheless, my wife is passionate about that. And she sees how important being a helper and women and their roles are in the church and how essential they really, really are.

02:38:41

So nevertheless, I just had to kind of piggyback on what you said there. I'm sure my wife's going to really enjoy sitting in on that one when we're down there.

02:38:50

And so I guess we should give that plug again. I don't know if you guys gave it last week. I couldn't be on most of the show last week.

02:38:56

But coming up in December, it's the second weekend of December. There's a great flyer on that.

02:39:06

This is going to be an outstanding conference at Beulah Baptist Winter Garden.

02:39:12

So it's going to be December 10th, 11th, and 12th.

02:39:18

This is a Saturday, Sunday, Monday conference at Beulah Baptist Winter Garden.

02:39:24

And it'll be all day Saturday. It'll be Sunday morning. And it'll be Monday starting at around, I think we have three o 'clock.

02:39:31

Doors open at 2 .30. I'll be emceeing the event. I'll also have a couple of breakout sessions.

02:39:38

Main speakers is Phil Johnson, Justin Peters, Susan for the ladies.

02:39:44

There'll be some women -only sessions with Susan. Pastor Casey will be doing a main session as well as a breakout,

02:39:50

I believe. And then Pastor Casey's wife and Dave Colson's wife, who is our deacon assigned to.

02:39:59

For reasons being, brush CRT. Yeah. So this is going to be an amazing conference.

02:40:07

And the best part is this is a free conference. With what you have planned, with what we've got planned in terms of the, there's going to be a couple of free meals that are given there.

02:40:25

There's going to be unbelievable time of fellowship. This is probably, this conference will be the closest thing to Shepherd's Conference that you will find out there.

02:40:35

And I know there's some other big conferences that are family conferences in terms of G3 and others. I think this one is going to be a better conference than what even

02:40:46

G3 provides from a family perspective. And by God's grace, this conference will grow because I think we're planning on doing this annually.

02:40:58

So yes, I'm really excited for this conference. Folks can download this flyer on our front of our website there, bbcwg .org.

02:41:08

And if they email and request these printed cards, our church will send them a package and they can make it available for their church as well.

02:41:18

So we're really excited. One of the bigger transitions that our church has made is from a traditional model to a family discipleship model, family integrated.

02:41:28

So this conference is family integrated. And what's really cool, you mentioned it's kind of like the

02:41:34

Shepherd's Conference in that it's live inside and outside. And so there's going to be a ton of people and families outside who are watching it live on the screens and everything.

02:41:45

So the benefits of being family integrated and it being outside as well is that families can let their kids run on the playground.

02:41:52

It's fenced in and they can also see the live outside screen. So it's just a pretty cool family atmosphere or you can sit inside with your families.

02:42:05

Yep, I'm really, really excited about that. So please get down to Winter Garden and go to that conference.

02:42:11

You will not be disappointed with that at all. And best part is if you live in the north like me, you'll have a reprieve with nice weather for a few days, if nothing else.

02:42:22

Yeah, so thank you for that. Pastor Josiah, any closing comments? Oh yeah,

02:42:29

I was going to agree with Dr. Casey about the wife being kind of the, you know, they say that behind every man's a good woman, well behind every good pastor is a faithful wife.

02:42:45

And I mean, that's definitely what I have. Cassandra, if you're listening, thank you very much for being hardworking, faithful, and dedicated to our

02:42:58

God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for helping raise three girls that are very strong -willed.

02:43:09

And thank you for bearing our son coming in February. You are a woman among women.

02:43:16

Amen to that. And Julia, I'm sure you're still listening. Thank you. I tell you that a lot.

02:43:22

So thank you as well. Casey, before we get to Dan here, will this be live streamed, the conference?

02:43:32

No, the videos will be recorded and uploaded some weeks later after the conference.

02:43:39

But no, we're not going to do live streaming. Okay. That's what

02:43:45

I thought was the case, but I wanted for you to be able to answer that. But they will be up on the website for people to see a few weeks afterwards.

02:43:52

Yeah, a few weeks. But you can only have the ribs and chicken if you're here. You're not going to have chicken sandwiches and all the snacks from classical conversations and all that.

02:44:01

You don't have fun if you're here. So, you know, get a flight and come on down.

02:44:06

Get down or drive in, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Dan, thank you for being a great guest again for the second time now.

02:44:24

I feel like we've got all these notes and I thought we would get a whole lot more done.

02:44:31

And I think we scratched the surface again. But, you know, go ahead and give us a couple of closing thoughts here.

02:44:41

You know what? Let me just close this in a word of prayer and just lift up a verse over us in Romans.

02:44:52

Yeah. So, as you're looking that up, Melissa says, I think Anthony should smuggle his phone in and live stream for us.

02:45:00

You know, that would be actually really cool if I did that from the MC's perspective. We're a

02:45:06

GoPro? Well, yeah. We're just like a GoPro as I walk around and do my thing. That would be funny.

02:45:13

See if I can work that out. They would see what the inside of a conference is like. All the panic that I'm going to have for running the whole thing.

02:45:27

I won't have panic. It'll be good. So, okay, Dan, I'll let you run with that now.

02:45:33

And before you close with Romans, there was a question that came earlier.

02:45:40

What is the green and blue thing? We were talking about that before we went live. But somebody wants to know what the green and blue thing is behind you.

02:45:51

Salome Hazai, an Israeli artist, you can look him up. He does art and acrylic and metal.

02:46:01

And he's the guy who did it. Pretty special piece. And I got it over 20 some years ago.

02:46:11

Yeah, the wife didn't want it in the house and it ended up in my office. And definitely been a topic of conversation during COVID on my meetings for work.

02:46:23

Yeah, I know what that's like. Some of those pieces of art that I have are either in my office or my basement.

02:46:29

Yeah, exactly what you're talking about. Father, I just lift up and I ask that you, the

02:46:43

God of hope, would fill us with joy and peace as we trust in you.

02:46:49

Father, would you cause us to overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit?

02:46:56

Everyone that is on tonight, listening, participating, oh

02:47:02

God, overflow us with hope. I just ask that what you said in Galatians chapter 5, that those that belong to Christ and crucify this sinful nature and its passions and desires.

02:47:19

Lord Jesus, we belong to you. Would you fill us with your passions and your desires for prayer, for the souls of men, and for the glory of the

02:47:31

Father. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So, well, on that,

02:47:41

Pastor Casey, thank you for being on as always. Pastor Isaiah, thank you for being on.

02:47:46

You didn't really have a choice tonight. You're here. Dan, thank you. I know that you put a ton of, even though you know this stuff off the top of your head, because I've seen it live with you.

02:47:59

I know you've put a ton of time in prepping for this. So thank you for doing that and blessing everybody who's listening and will be listening in the future on the video or on the podcasting.

02:48:13

So on that, thank you all for listening. And I know Andrew has a great show planned for next

02:48:18

Thursday. For the life of me, I cannot remember what it is. On that, have a good night.