The Christian and Prayer Luke 9:37-43

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The Christian and Prayer

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I want to read another text from Hebrews as a reminder, as it is, that every time when the church is gathered, we have a picture of this laid out for us in the book of Hebrews.
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Hebrews chapter 12, verse 22, the word of God says this, that you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living
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God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable angels and festal gatherings and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than that of Abel.
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We are able to approach unto the throne of the living God because of the price that Jesus has paid for our sins, and we are able to do so in humility, yet at the same time in boldness because we know we are not approaching on our own merit, but we are approaching upon the merit of Jesus Christ himself.
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In the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's day one, the question is asked, what is your only comfort in life and in death?
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And the answer is, my comfort is that I am not my own, but I belong to Jesus.
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But I belong both body and soul in life and in death to my faithful savior,
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Jesus. He is faithful. Let's read our text in Luke chapter 9 this morning.
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Luke chapter 9, as I mentioned, same text that we read last week, verses 37 through verse 43.
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This is the word of the living God. On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.
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And behold, the man from the crowd cried out, teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child.
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And behold, a spirit seizes him and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth and it shatters him and will hardly leave him.
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And I beg your disciples to cast it out, but they could not. Jesus answered, oh, faithless and perverse generation, how long am
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I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here. While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him.
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But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy and gave him back to his father.
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And all were astonished at the majesty of God. Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word this morning.
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As we consider this text, last week we looked in detail, basically, really and truly at the etymology of the words from verse 39.
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Last week really is what our focus was there. And our focus was that only
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Christ is able to cast out the demon. It's not a practice that we take upon ourselves as Christians to do or to make a regularity.
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But today, this morning, particularly in verse 38, and not only verse 38, but also verse 42 there, at the end, 42 and 43, we want to make our focus those particular verses in this passage, not leaving them out, not glancing over them, not giving them just a glancing glow or a second thought, but we want to really focus in on the words of God here.
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For the Bible says when they came down from the mountain, remember, he's speaking about Jesus, Peter, James and John coming down from the
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Mount of Transfiguration. They come into a dispute that's being had.
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This man had brought his son to Jesus, other nine disciples, and they were not able to cast the demon out of this man.
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And so this man comes, he comes in confidence to Jesus, even though his disciples weren't able to do what only he can do.
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He comes with confidence in Jesus Christ and he comes making his plea known.
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The scriptures teach us as Christians in the epistles, the apostle Paul taught the churches there around about their time.
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He taught them that we ought to come before God with prayer and thanksgiving, letting our requests be made known unto
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God. And how fitting folks are fit to come and to pray today because that is truly the heart and the theme of the message this morning.
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It's have confidence in Jesus, draw near unto God and God will draw near unto you.
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So our goal today is to communicate to you something just a bit concerning the importance of prayer, having confidence in our prayers, not confidence in ourselves, but confidence in our great
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God. Who our confidence is in will determine whether our prayer life, our lives as Christians is, quote unquote, successful for an aim or a goal at anything other than the person in the work of Jesus Christ, you will inevitably miss the mark.
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Last of all, we're going to talk about how we should pray and what we should pray for.
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But let's first consider the confidence of this man as he comes to Jesus.
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Confidence, by its very definition, the word confidence means the feeling or the belief that one can rely on someone.
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It means to have a firm trust in someone. Humanity will let us down.
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Our friends and our loved ones will let us down. Our enemies will let us down.
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But the Lord never fails. He is perfect.
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He is faithful. He is true when there are none who are true.
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As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul put it this way. We have a faithful and a true high priest in Jesus Christ.
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And that is how we approach unto the throne. We must have confidence when we pray that God is able.
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The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus and he made this statement.
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Now unto him who is able to do exceeding and abundantly above all that we ask or even think, to him be glory in the church.
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The old songwriter Edward Mote wrote the song. Some of us don't even know it was this old, probably, but probably about the mid 1800s.
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He wrote this good old song. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and his righteousness.
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I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.
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On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.
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He went on in that second verse and he said this. When darkness veils his lovely face,
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I rest on his unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.
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On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.
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And in that last verse, he wrote this. His covenant, his oath, his covenant, his blood, these support me in the whelming flood when all around my soul gives way.
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Jesus is all my hope and my stay. Thanks be unto the living
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God today. This man came with confidence in Jesus Christ because he recognized who
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Jesus was. The scripture says he came out of the crowd and suddenly he begged
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Jesus, teacher, rabbi, master, look on my son for he is my child.
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Oh, our prayers ought not to be generic. Our prayers as Christian men and women, as Christian boys and girls ought to be very specific for it's very easy to ask a general question.
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But my friends, what a difference it makes when we are specific in our prayers.
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When you read through the book of Psalms, you'll find you'll find Psalms of repentance.
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You'll find prayers of repentance. In Psalm 51, that is a psalm of repentance.
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You'll see psalms or prayers of praise unto God. Very, very specific, whether prayers of repentance or whether prayers of praise.
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There are prayers called imprecatory psalms, imprecatory prayers, where we pray specifically for God to have justice, for God to do his work, for God to judge the sinner, for God very well to carry out the sentence against the sinner that the sinner deserves.
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And truly, we are all sinners. Amen. We all stand in need of God's amazing grace.
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And the beauty of it is this, that we can come boldly to the throne of grace, that we can come boldly to find mercy and to find grace to help us in our times of need.
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Thanks be unto God for that. But prayer in our day and in our time has been more about getting
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God to align with our will than it has been with us coming to align with God's will.
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If you want to be miserable, Christian, live contrary to the will of God.
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Pray contrary to the will of God. Ask God for what he says you cannot have and you will find yourself miserably without.
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But my friends, when we get into the word of God and we see and we learn about who
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God is, that God is holy, that God is high and that God is set apart and that our seeking and our asking ought not to be us focused, but it ought to be him focused, that it ought to be that all we do and say in our lives bring glory and bring honor to his blessed and to his holy name.
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The scriptures teach us that the Christian is always taught to seek the will of God.
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For the scriptures tell us if we ask anything according to his will, he will hear us.
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If we shall ask anything, Jesus said, if you shall ask anything in my name,
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I will do it. Spurgeon said this though, but you cannot ask everything in his name.
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And that is true, Spurgeon went on to say this, you are obligated to draw back from some prayers and say, no,
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Christ would never authorize me to put his name to that. When we pray, we must consider carefully the person and the holiness and the righteousness of our great
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God. The confidence that we have in prayer, this stems, this stems, a true confidence in prayer stems from our knowledge or our awareness of God's revealed will.
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Now, where do we find God's revealed will? Right here. This is where you find
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God's revealed will for your life from the word of God. It does not come from the preacher.
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It does not come from your husband or your wife, your family, or your friends. You find God's will in God's word alone.
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So knowing what the Bible says will make your prayer life stronger and more effective.
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And I wrote this down. It's kind of like having the answers given to you before you take a test.
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If you had a history, a U .S. history teacher, like I had, coach Bill Padgett, he was a hippie.
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He was a pothead. He was laid back, man, oh man, he was laid back, but U .S.
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history, if you failed it, then you needed to have your hide tore up because every single class, even on pop quiz days, he would take that chalk and he would write up on the chalkboard, number one, period, page 68, number two, page 68, bottom, so on and so forth, right?
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Who would fear a test when you're taking a test like that, right? So knowing
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God provides us the necessary information to approach him rightly.
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So one commentator wrote this concerning prayer, the revealed will of God is here intended, by which it appears that all grace is laid up in Christ and all spiritual blessings are with him and that the covenant of grace is ordered in all things and of exceeding great and precious promises, all of which are treasured up for the benefit and use of the people of God.
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And if therefore they ask for any grace or a supply of grace for any spiritual blessing or mercy laid up in Christ, in the covenant or in any of the promises, they ask for that matter, which is according to the will of God.
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And again, let's be reminded what the scriptures in another place tell us. If you ask anything in my name, he will hear it according to his will.
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The commentator goes on to say this and which they may be assured that they shall have sooner or later and ask in a manner agreeably to his will is to come in the name of Christ and to make mention of his righteousness and ask for his sake to put up all petitions in faith with fervency, in sincerity and in uprightness, with reverence, humility and submission to the divine will and with importunity.
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Importunity is not a word that we hear often. Some of you might even be saying, I think I've heard that once or twice over the years.
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It means consistently, consistently going back, consistently going back to Christ.
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So with importunity and such askers, the commentator said, and such askers
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God hears, even so to answer and grant their request in his own time, though not always in theirs.
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In some cases sooner, in other cases later, but all according to his infinite wisdom.
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We can have confidence in God for God is not, he is not a man as you and I are a man.
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He is not forgetful. He is not careless. He is perfect. He is omniscient.
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He is omnipresent. God is the divine, the distinct one apart from all of humanity.
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If you want to know what the difference between man and God is, everything is the difference between who man and God is.
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God is unlike man in any way, shape, form or fashion, with the exception of the fact that he condescended in the incarnation to become man so that he could be the propitiation for our sins so that he could make that penal substitutionary atonement, as April sung in that song, his life for mine.
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So to pray, when we pray, as this man approached
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Christ, he came with confidence, he came with certainty, not in himself, but he came with confidence in Jesus Christ.
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He did not pray for an uncertain thing, for an uncertain prayer is not prayer at all.
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Have you ever found yourself praying for something that you know you're never going to get?
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Like when you go to Weigel's, right? Lord, let me win the lottery today. Right?
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Or some of you ugly dudes. Lord, give me a pretty woman. He answered my prayer.
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I can see that I can answer that. Maybe none of the rest of you can. I can. I know he heard my prayer. She's sitting right there.
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But to pray for an uncertain thing is not prayer at all. That's more like wishful thinking.
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Christians, we're not called to be wishful thinkers. We are to have confidence in the true and the living
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God. Romans chapter 8, verse 26 and 27 speaks concerning knowing what we ought to pray for or what we ought to pray for.
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For the spirit himself searches us, but we know not what we ought to pray for.
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But the spirit searches us and brings those things forth. I wonder how much time as a
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Christian have we wasted praying self -willed prayers? How long have we wasted instead of praying
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God -willed prayers? Now, popular theology says that praying
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God's will is a cop -out and it shows a lack of faith. But I'm going to go on record today and tell you that is a bold -faced lie from the pit of hell.
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For Jesus himself teaches us when you pray, pray after this manner.
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Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Our prayers must always align with the will of God. If we move just a little bit further, what
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Matthew Henry said about prayer, for what reason their prayers should speed so well that the
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Father may be glorified in the Son? This they ought to aim at and have their eye upon in asking all that is asked.
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In this, all our desires and prayers should meet in the center, should be focused upon the living
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God. And to this, they must all be directed that God in Christ may be honored by our services and by our salvation.
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This man cried out to the Lord and his prayer was not a general prayer.
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It was very specific. For listen, you've got sin in your life.
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You've got problems, concerns and issues in your life that only you can cry out to God about.
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No one else may not know the details, but you know the details. And so when we cry to God, we ought to cry specifically.
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We ought to lay it out before the Lord for the scriptures teach us, cast your cares.
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Jesus said, cast your cares on him for he cares for you.
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Spurgeon went on to say concerning prayer, we do not believe enough in the power of prayer. I sometimes feel staggered when
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I meet with, this is what Spurgeon said. This is in the 1850s, Spurgeon said this,
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I sometimes feel staggered when I meet with good people, undoubtedly good people who still look upon it as a new thing that we should believe that God hears our prayers.
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May it never be said of Reformed Baptist Church that we do not believe that God hears our prayers.
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Amen. For God hears prayers. God answers prayers.
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God still works all things according to the counsel of his good will.
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Spurgeon went on to say this, but this is the fundamental of Christian experience.
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How can we live without the mercy seat? And if that mercy seat be nothing but a vain show and a prayer be only a pious but useless exercise, what is there in the
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Christian religion at all? We have heard some very wise people say that prayer is no doubt beneficial to those who offer it, but to suppose that it has any effect upon the mind, to suppose that it has any effect upon the mind of God is absurd.
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Do you not see, brethren, that they think us all idiots? This is the 1800s. Charles Spurgeon, this is like we're reading, it can be spoken today.
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He said they must do so for you suppose that any but an idiot would go on praying at all if he did not believe that it had some effect upon the mind of God and that it did prevail with God.
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This man in the text would have been a blooming idiot if he did not expect Christ to heal his son.
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But he was no idiot. He was, I believe, one that would be considered wise for the scripture says the fear of the
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Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So if we seek unto God first and foremost, we're taught this repeatedly throughout the scripture, seek unto the
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Lord. But Spurgeon goes on. He said, I was just as soon stand and whistle out of my bedroom window for half an hour as I would kneel down and pray for half an hour if there were to be no result coming from it.
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And so would every sensible man. But we know, Spurgeon said, but we know of a surety that God hears prayer.
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We cannot imagine our Lord deceiving us. And he must have done so if it is not so.
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For he said, whatever you ask in my name that I will do that the father may be glorified in the son.
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That is the center focus of all. So let's let's look very quickly again at the text.
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The man sought Jesus. He had a specific request. He was confident in his approach unto
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God. He laid he laid the problem out before the Lord himself, though the
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Lord himself knew this. He he told him about his failed attempts that the disciples were not able to accomplish what needed to be done.
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And then the scripture says in verse 42, while he was coming, while the young man was being brought to Jesus, the scripture says the demon threw him to the ground, convulsed him.
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But Jesus rebuked the spirit. Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and he healed the boy and he gave him back to his father.
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This father came not hoping to have possession of this of his son.
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He came just to give him to Jesus. When we come to prayer, we need to be willing to lay it down, to cast your burden upon the
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Lord. For it's obvious that none of us are able to carry our burdens alone.
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Amen. Kenny Christopher in twenty eighteen. We we quoted Kenny Christopher.
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I sent this to Kenny last night. Kenny Christopher himself is quoted as saying this.
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God will inevitably put on us more than we can bear.
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And that is the truth. For if we could bear it of our own, we would not need the Lord. But there are none of us able to bear the burden.
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Number one of our sin, nor the weights and the cares and the troubles of this life.
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But Jesus, Jesus comes along beside of us. He sends the comforter, the
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Holy Spirit to live, abide and dwell in the saints of the living God so that we might not be overtaken with the cares of this life, but that we may persevere in the faith, continuing on for the
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Lord Jesus Christ who gave all for us. So what are we to pray for?
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Biblically, I'll give you a few examples and we'll close this morning. What are we to pray for?
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How are we to pray? Number one, we should pray for cleansing and forgiveness. Psalm 51, 1 through 10, just take these references down if you would.
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Psalm 51, 1 through 10, prayers for cleansing and forgiveness. We need to pray for those who currently do not have a saving knowledge of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. We need to be praying for the lost. We need to be praying for our children, our friends, our family members who are outside of the grace of God.
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And what we need to pray specifically is that God would turn their hearts and their minds unto him for outside of divine intervention, outside of regeneration, they will never be saved.
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They will never see Christ for who he is. So we must pray for those who do not have a saving knowledge of Christ.
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That's Romans chapter 10, verses 1 through 4. The apostle Paul said, Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved for they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
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They don't know it. Listen, the lost don't know that they're lost until God opens their eyes, until God makes their mind be able to understand that their sin has separated them from a holy
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God. So we have to pray for those who currently do not have a saving knowledge. Thirdly, we need to pray for brothers and sisters in Christ.
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We need to every single day of every single week that passes from Sunday to Sunday. Mitchell, I need to be thinking about you.
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How can I pray for you this week? Right, Joe? How can I pray for you this week? Rosie and Macy, how can
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I pray for you this week? We need to be thinking about how that we can support and undergird each other in prayer, hold one another up unto the living
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God. Fourth of all, we need to pray for confidence to proclaim the gospel.
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In Ephesians chapter 6, verse 13 through 20, you'll find a reference for that. We need to pray for confidence to proclaim the gospel.
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We need to be bold about our proclamation of the gospel. For outside of the gospel, there is no other way that a man, woman, boy or girl can be saved.
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It's not it's not do good. It's not do this. It's not jump through this circle and hop through this hoop.
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It's believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Next of all, we need to pray for deliverance and for knowledge of God, that the knowledge of God amongst his people would increase so that God's people, so that God's people are not ignorant of the
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God whom we serve. We must know him so that we can love him better.
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And last of all, the scripture says in First Timothy 2, 1 through 2, we need to be praying for all men, pray for those in authority and for ourselves that we might live peaceable and godly lives in the
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Lord. To what end? That God gets the glory, that God gets the glory.
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The old songwriter in closing said this, sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer.
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The joys I feel, the bliss I share of those anxious of those whose anxious spirits burn with strong desires for that return.
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With such I hasten to the place where God, my savior, shows his face and gladly
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I'll take my station there and wait for the sweet hour of prayer.
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Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer. May I thy consolation share.
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Praise God, praise God to him whose truth and faithfulness engage the waiting soul to bless.
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And since he bids me seek his face, to believe his word and to trust his grace because he bids me this,
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I will seek him. I will cast on him my every care.
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And praise God, sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer. And then the last verse in that song says this, may
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I thy consolation share till from Mount Pisgah's lofty height,
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I view my home and take my flight. For then this robe of flesh
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I'll drop and rise and seize the everlasting prize and reformed.
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Amen. People will do this as well and shout while passing through the air.
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Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer. I'd ask you to stand this morning.
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I'd ask you and I would exhort you. I would encourage you seek unto the
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Lord today, seek unto the Lord, trust in the Lord, cast your care upon the
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Lord, for he is able to secure you. He is able to hold you. He is able to bear you up.
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He is able to carry you through. And in doing so, he will get glory and he will get the.