and verse twenty-six of Romans eight. Likewise the Spirit also hath our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for, as we are, but the Spirit itself or himself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered. And he that searches the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints, according to the will of God. I'm going to turn over to First John chapter five to show you a very interesting text parallel to the one we have just read. First John chapter five. John five and verse fourteen. And this is the confidence, we have that word in those two verses very long, and this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, we also have those words, he heareth us. And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." I recall texts that we pondered over constantly, repeatedly by Christians, because they're wonderful texts. So we want to continue our studies on the subject of prayer, and it will be our tenth message in the eighth chapter. I was hoping I might have finished last week. The subject of prayer is so interesting and so important that I think we will say a little more about it tonight. Now last week we were speaking on the matter of prayer and the manner. You'll notice in that verse twenty-six the word but we know not what we should pray for as we ought. What and as or the material and the manner. And we pointed out the fact that over in the Gospels in Matthew chapter six, and I think also in Luke chapter eleven, the Lord said in the one case, when ye pray, stay. Now he's talking about the disciples' prayer. When ye pray, stay, our Father, we are in heaven. In this case he's talking about the matter. in their prayer what they are to say now he didn't mean for uh them to say that prayer all the time like you have today it's repeated thousands of times yay i suppose millions of times on sunday all over the world they go through that same prayer no i don't think the lord intended us to be stereotypes I don't think he meant us just to commit that little passage to memory, and that only was to be the prayer that we prayed, although it's comprehensive. It was more or less a sample prayer. I believe the Spirit of God is the one who leads the Christian to pray concerning things that or upon the Christian heart and things pertaining to his life, because there's nothing really personal in the disciples' prayer. I can think of a lot of things. You don't read in the disciples' prayer about praying for the powers that be. You don't read there about praying for souls. You don't read there about praying for the sick. He's more or less giving them a sample of prayer, or prayers that would be embraced by the disciples' prayer. And so he put the emphasis on the word, say, Then ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven. And then in Luke chapter eleven he says, After this manner, pray. Now he's coming to the subject of our manner of praying, our attitude, our condition of thought. And there's a big difference. Last week we concluded with the subject of math. what we ought to say, who we're to pray for, and so on. So I'll emphasize the manner in which we should pray. And I want to say this. It doesn't make much difference what you say, but it makes a lot of difference how you say it. The important thing about prayer is the manner in which one prays. A man could be away from God, he could be an unconverted person, and recite that disciples pray, and likely every Sunday there are millions of people who do not know Christ at all. And yet they'll go through that prayer, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, just like you would teach your parents. And they say, Thy will be done on earth. They don't want God's will done on earth. They want to do their own will on earth. Many people say that. Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven, and they have the slightest idea. are really wanting God's will to be done on earth, especially their lives. My kingdom comes. They don't want the Lord's kingdom to come. They're having too big a line down here. They don't want the Lord's kingdom to come. They don't want his kingdom to come. They're just going through the routine. And if their hearts are not like this lot, the manner in which they're praying is really hypocritical. The important thing is the man. Our frame of mind, our state of soul, our condition of heart. That's the important thing. The sexual fervent prayer of a righteous man, a dayless monk. He asked me, and something to say about that later on. And the word fervent there means white thought. A fervent thought. The sexual fervent prayer. a man who puts his heart and soul into his head. And so it's the manner in which we pray that we want to emphasize the next. But it should be a dependent manner. Dependency in prayer. Dependency upon who the Holy Spirit. Now that's exactly what's taught here. in these verses in Romans, likewise the Spirit also held us our infirmities. We were referring to that last week, for we know not that we should pray, for as we are possibly Spirit, then shall make it intercession for us with gloaning which cannot be uttered, depending entirely upon the Holy Spirit for prayer." Now that's a far cry from having prayers written out. Christians would sit down and write out prayers. And that would be something he could just leave without any dependence upon the Holy Spirit. It reminds me of what I heard about a preacher, an elderly man, and he was going to give a message that night, and it was a young man sitting beside him on the platform, and he said to this young man, he said, Young brother, he said, I'd like you to give a little message tonight, a little testimony. I said, I can't. I can't. Well, I love it. He said, well, he said, just give whatever the Lord made on your heart. Give a little testimony. So young brother got up and the old people's Bible was on the pulpit and he just opened it. And when he said, no, unbehold, there was the preacher's outline. So he was well off. And so he went down and he reached the outline that was in front of him. And the preacher, he was quite agitated, and then the young fellow sat down and sat down and said, Oh, he didn't. You want to listen? What do you think I want to say? I don't know what I want to say. In other words, there's a sense in which we don't depend upon the Lord. We don't depend upon the Lord. And so the need for depending upon the Holy Spirit in our prayer life. He's the one and only the one who knows what you need and what the will of God is concerning us. And it's a wonderful thing to do this. On your knees and be able to pray for the health of the Holy Spirit. Prayer becomes easy when you do depend upon the Spirit. For it says in verse twenty-six that we know not what to pray for. forth, even how to pray, as was brought to the Spirit. He made it in the second. He has sent forth the Spirit of his Son. We mentioned that earlier, and it's also over in Galatians, verse six. He has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, whereby we cry at the Father. And again you'll find these words, I will pour upon them the spirit of grace and of supplication. In Zechariah fell and said, I will pour upon them the spirit of grace and supplication. And so here we're supplicating, praying in the power of the Holy Spirit. And again it tells us, praying always with all prayer, and supplication in the Spirit. That's in Ephesians six and eight. Praying in the Spirit. And again, but beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. That's in Jude chapter twenty. But how can you pray unless you've got the Spirit of God in you? It's absolutely impossible to pray. then you're not a Christian when the Spirit of God is not within you. A man who's intelligent can frame up a few words and say something that sounds like prayer, but it's really not prayer that God listens. The only prayer an unsaved person can pray if God be merciful to me, the sinner. But a lot of people who are not Christian say a prayer, they just say it. It's the result of intelligence, and they can come with them, they can speak well, and use choice language sometimes, and pay about certain things. I've heard them, and yet it's not in the energy of the Spirit of God, because they're not Christians. It's only fairs faith in the power of the Holy Spirit that God hears. And I want to say this, not only are there fairs faith by unsaved people, and not in the power of the Spirit of God, but if a Christian is of a fallacy of the Lord, and the Spirit of God is greed because of uncontest sin, that person is not going to know the thrill and joy of praise. in the liberty of the Holy Spirit. So where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And so it's a wonderful privilege to pray in the Holy Spirit, and by the help of the Holy Spirit. I let you go first over in First John five, and you'll notice them, I'll read them again. And this is the confidence that we have in him. that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petition that we desired of him. Now it's a prayer according to the will of God. And it tells us in this verse twenty-seven, And he that searches the heart knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit himself makes its intercession from the things according to the will of God. See, simply this, the Spirit of God is only going to lead you to say those things that are according to the will of God. The Spirit will never lead you to say something that's not according to the will of God. or contrary to the bank, the Spirit of God is not going to leave you to pray about something that is contradictory to the Spirit. God is going to do something in your life, and His Spirit leads you to pray about it, and it happens. May I make this day? It would have happened anyway if you hadn't prayed. You think that sounds strange? I believe that this is true in the majority of people. God said, before they ask, I will answer. In other words, the fact I asked, God showed I was in his will. When something happened, God was going to do something, and my heart became exercise, and the spirit of God led me to... asked for something that God was going to do. And I was brought into the knowledge of the will of God by the Holy Spirit. And therefore, of course, when I paid it, it happened, and what a joy I got. I'm going to use an experience that happened in the moonlight. I think I told this about eight or ten years ago when I gave the history of my life on Wednesday night. When the Lord was crowning me from down south, It was quite a step. It was in nineteen thirty-one, and of course the depression was off. It meant leaving my parents, and they needed my support financially. My younger sister, she was quitting her job as a poor lady in a knitting factory, and she'd get married, and I was quitting my job the same, at least in planning to do so, the same weekend. that she could hurt, that the mother had to do without the board of both of us. Back in those days, children paid more than the rest of work. Back up until I was seventeen years of age, I turned my check over to my parents when I got what my parents felt I needed. And that's the way they paid more than back in those days. And so my parents, of course, were depending on what I paid in the way of board and my sister, and it was quite a blow. But nevertheless, Grav was calling me about coming down south of you. And I remember this day I was inside an engine boiler because I worked in the railroad shop, and I wasn't playing hockey or working in the railroad shop, and I was down in the fire box, I suppose you know where that is. That's the end of the boiler where they pour the coal in and the grapes were in there. And the fire is raging and it goes through those big long tubes to the front end of the engine. And of course the chimney at the front end of the engine, the front end, it draws the fire through and the water that circulates around those big tubes gets heated and creates the steam by which the engine operates. Well, I was working around what we call the mud ring of the boiler in the fire department. A lot of stables along there. Sometimes they had to be heated because they were leaking under pressure. I had a little platform sitting in there, pitched in there, and I was sitting on this box with this little limiter or a little hammer, air hammer, and I was feeding those stables. And I was thinking over, putting in my time. All I could think about was the scouts, the scouts. And the voice kept saying, go down scouts and preach the law. And I'd think, well, how can I leave mother and dad? I just hate to give up my job if I do. I'll never get another one. But at that time, they weren't hiring any one. If a man died, they weren't persuasionally. things were going through, the depression was on, and I knew if I gave up that job I wouldn't hardly find another one. And it was a big step to take when the depression was on. And so I bowed my head, and I said, Lord, if you want me to go down south, if you want me to put in my time, Mr. Barrett, the horse, the hell am I, I'm going to pray, send someone right now. to talk to me about the southern state." Now, you'd have thought that was a strange threat. And as far as I knew, there wasn't another man in the boiler, all within a sneaky distance. They caught a lot of air hammers were going on, and oftentimes you had to shout into a man's ear who was standing right beside you in order for him to hear what you were saying because of the noise in the boiler shop. I had no more said that. Once I heard it, I looked up, and I saw a man getting up at the other end of the engine, the stuff at the chimney end, the smoke-loss man. And he had been working up there, and he came right down through that boiler, about a distance of about thirty or forty feet, because they were a big engine. He came right down that boiler, and he got down beside me, and he used to call me instead of my name, Lester, he used to call me. George, because that was my father's name. And he said, George, he said, is it right what I hear about Mrs. Summers, that she's going down to the southern states to attend the southern Baptist Convention? First of all, he asked me if I knew Sadie Summers. I said, yes, she goes to the little chapel where I go. And he asked me if I knew surely, I said, yes, I know, so do you two? And then it was, he said, do you know about Mrs. Summers going down to the Southern States as a candidate, or rather as a delegate with a Southern Baptist convention? And I had just asked Rob if he wanted me to put in my path, quit my job, to go down south, send someone to talk to me about the Southern States. Well, what could I do? I could hardly believe my ears. Now, that fellow likely would have done that very thing if I hadn't prayed that little prayer. But God knew what that man was going to do, and burdened as I was. He led me by the Spirit to make that decision. And that man came down. You can imagine how it may be, Peter. Well, I'm ready to give up my life. God is weak. And that's exactly how this happens on many of you will see. God is going to do so. And if you're in fellowship with him, the Spirit of God will bring you into the current of God's thought and you'll pray about something that is going to happen. And of course, when it happens, what a thrill it is to you. You know that you're in the mind of God and praying in the Spirit. For instance, Here's a missionary on the foreign field. And he needs money. And he's got to have it right then. I think I read a letter to you only two weeks ago or something like this. And he gets on his knees that morning. He says, Lord, we are in need. No one else knows our needs with you. We need money. We've got to have it today. On that day, lo and behold... posting in the letter and there's the exact amount of money. Now that letter was six weeks on time. See that? God didn't start things moving. The moment that missionary prayed that prayer, God had been moving all the time. And all the time that letter was on its way. And that morning the man was in fellowship with God and the Spirit of God led him to make that petition. Lord, I need that money. I need some money today. I've just got to have it today. And then, okay, before they call this God, I will answer. This is praying in the Holy Spirit. Being sure you're in the mind of God, saying, he prays. And I believe that's exactly what the Word of God teaches us in these habits. If you really ask in the Spirit, we will have what God wants us to have in nature, what we ask for, or in the time, and in the measure. We've got to leave that with you. Lord, I'm making this request. I feel burdened to do so. I feel led to do so. I believe that at the time when God will answer the nature and measure of the spiritual. then the next thing, according to his will. According to his will, as we've already mentioned, as revealed in the Scripture, there's no need of you or me asking God of the sun tomorrow and morning to rise in the west instead of in the east. That was a foolish thing. Because that's not what happened. According to the law of the nature, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And it would be foolish for you to ask God that tomorrow morning cause the sun to rise in the west instead of in the east. You know, some young people get so desperate praying for a life companion that they'll almost ask God to do something that he would say. But God doesn't do that. It's possible. It's possible for God, he calls the sun to stand still in the day of the cross. If possible, God has the power to cause the sun to rise in the west instead of the east, but he's not going to do it. Things are evolving according to the laws of things, the mind of God. And you can pray in the mind of God. No need me asking God to make me young again. Lord, I'd like to be about twenty-five again. I'm good Almighty. I can pray all through the night. Well, I've been a patient a lot of time. because I'm not going to be wrong. That will be contrary to the operation of the laws of nature. God wants his laws to operate. And that's true. Oftentimes when people are sick, it's nature taking its course. And God not will reverse those laws. For the laws of nature are the laws of God. A loved one passed away as soon as that loved one breathed his last or her last. You might pray, Lord, bring him back to life again, bring her back to life again. No, it's possible. Well, could do it if he wanted to. He raised less. But it's not the rule. Here is nature taking its course, and God wants us to pray according to his word. And all you can say is... God's will be done. It was God's will. There's no use me trying to revert it. And so it's a case of pray by the help of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of God will lead us to pray only according to the Word of God. There's no use trying to pray for something that the Word of God will not encourage you in praying for. The next thing is confidence in God. That word confidence. We have the confidence we read in that verse fourteen of verse John. And this is the confidence that we have in him. That if we ask anything, now Lord, according to his will, if we're asking it according to his will, he hears us. Because the Spirit of God is leading us to ask something which is according to God's will. The Spirit of God, not for the reason to pray for something that's not what God will. You only need to pray for something that works more than you've got. And in keeping with the Scripture. And so there needs to be confidence in God in this matter. Nothing wrong with asking for things. What thing is, if you have confidence, you can ask a lot of things. Some people ask for it. It's just a meek. I face some things in my own life. I look back upon them now. It's kind of amusing. I didn't have much confidence that I was going to get because I had no confidence in it backing up. But then you know you're asking for something that's according to the will of God. And you're supported by Scripture. You've got confidence. I'm asking this because the word of God tells me to pray for this. And I'm asking for it that God might be glory for it. and you have confidence in prayer, when you're praying for something that's according to God's will. And that's exactly what that verse tells us. For instance, you take an unsaved man. When an unsaved person, you say, Lord, I want you to save me. I want you to save me. I want you to save me. Well, that person is good. that sinner can have the utmost compliment that God will do exactly what he says. God says, Call upon me, and I will answer. Or if you say use the language of the public, and God be merciful to me, the sinner, he that parlors upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's what the Bible says. And if you're lost, you're not a Christian. Now you've got the Bible to give you all the confidence that you need that your prayer will be answered when you pray. God save, Lord save. You can have all the confidence in your prayer because you're saying according to the will of God and according to Scripture. I think I mentioned before, maybe I didn't. The same thing after a person is saved, he doesn't have Pray, Lord, should I get baptized? Well, I hear that. Well, by the time you get this. Just say about that. It's right in the Bible. Go ahead and obey. That's God's will for you. And the Spirit of God certainly will lead you to pray about the opportunity to be baptized. Because it's in the Spirit. And the same thing. about the breaking of bread from Lord's Supper. Only praying, Lord, is your will for me to break bread on Sunday morning. Remember you? Right in the Bible. Go ahead and do it. That's God's will. Open in my word. That's all you've got to do. Or you say, Lord, is it your will that I try to win souls for Christ, or that I speak to my neighbor? You don't have to ask for that. It's God's will. It's already relieved. But that's the thing for you to do. Now you might pay for the opening, the opportunity. That's perfectly spiritual. Say, Lord, give me the opening to speak to my neighbor, or the opportunity. And if I get the opportunity, Lord, give me the wisdom to know what to say and how to say it. That's the purpose of Scripture. You're praying in the will of God, and you'll see results. Then you need to pray confidently. I've already mentioned First John five. and foreseen with utmost comfort. We're not coming to a king in one sense we are. We're not coming to a creator in a sense we are. We're not coming to a judge in a sense we are. We're not coming to God. in the sense we are, but remember devils believe that there's a God in their temple. What do we call it, we call it power. A power. Lots of people believe in God being a judge, a king, a creator. They're not even saved. And naturally they don't have the confidence in their faith. But what gives me the most confidence in my prayer life is that I'm talking to my father. Your neighbor's got stuff. You don't know much about your neighbor. In fact, they're strangers that move to lift your knees. And if he's got something, you'd like to have for a while. You'd like to borrow. You'd say, well, I don't have much power in the sun, you get it. I'll try. I'll go and ask. Would you say use that language to have those thoughts with your father? You wouldn't even ask. You don't get it. He's your father. For some are considered enough to go and say, Father, I'd like to have this or I'd like to have that. Use it for a while. You have more confidence when you ask for a thing than when you're asking yourself. And if you are asking us, we pray, we don't want to ask. And so the very fact that we are praying to ourselves gives us confidence in our prayer life. And then another manner in which we should pray is a humble manner, such as the public in Luke eighteenth. We would not so much lift up his eyes at death. And the Lord Jesus said, two men went up to the temple of prayer, the one of Pharisee and the other of Paul. Who was it left with his prayer answered? Heard and answered. It was the public who said, God be merciful to me, which is a union from what the devil devised in heaven, felt so unworthy. The Pharisee paved up for them. I, frankly, am sure. I don't do this. I don't do this. I do this. Why, his prayer didn't win it higher than the shield. God didn't hear that prayer at all. You were as proud as it should be, and the Spirit of God will never hear a proud man or a leaner, proud person will say. It shows you are humble that God is. the humble and the contrite heart. God says, to this man will I love, who is of a humble and contrite heart. That's it. And when a person is humble, before the Lord, the Spirit of God will lead him in his prayer. Time and time again, Jesus says, Lord, I'm full and mean, and he's a king. I'm pure in thee. Have mercy upon thee, O God, I'm pure in thee. And if it's anything the Lord loved its humility. And that's the lesson taught in Luke eighteen when the public went down with a prayer answer. God had mercy on him. And the parish he'd gotten up. Well, he didn't ask for him. All he did was brag about what he did. And therefore he got me. And take the woman in Matthew fifteen. There was something more to say about her in a few minutes. One thing that brought the blessing to her was this. When the Lord said it's not me to take the children's bread and cast it at the dog, she says, use the Lord. And here he was calling her a dog. Yes, she was a Gentile, Sala Phoenician. And he said, I'm not going to take the children for that that would belong to a Jew and give it to a Gentile God. She could have got a pen, a God of genius. But he didn't. He said, Lord, that's true. The God keeps at come this fall from the rich man's womb. I am willing to get some scrap. That's all I deserve. Jesus, O woman, great is thy grace. For this shame go thy way, thy daughter is healed. For this is what is the dog weep upon, and with the dog's voice. And it's those kind of prayers, those humblest prayers that the Lord hears. Amen. Then a manner, another manner in which we should pray, is in a simple manner. You know, if you go through the Lord's Prayer or the Disciples' Prayer rather, you'll notice it's everyday language. Here it is. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is known, heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. and forgive us our sins as we forgive those that trespass against us. And deliver, need be not as a temptation, but deliver each need, that I have continued in the following of glory in our fellowship, that is not really a long word in the full book. Now we should, after this, and I don't use it. In other words, very simple, everyday language. Not long, eloquent praises. No. Simple prayer. I'll never forget a man telling me he worked in some of the slums around New York and Brooklyn and the ghettos, trying to reach some of these boys who weren't even educated and go to school and hardly could spell or write their own name, and he was having meetings with them, and some of them got saved. And this night two of these boys got there. And of course, they went on their way home. They had to go down this road. And this creature, he had been working among them. Happened to have been going down the same road. And after he was in this business and all the lunches were there. And as he was going down this road, he saw it, he heard something. Once. Over in the bush. And so he let me stop and let me kind of echo over there. And here were two of these young boys who would pass to get saved that night. And one would say to the other, well, you should pray. The Lord said to me. The other boy said, well, I can't pray. I don't want to say it. And the boy said, well, I can't pray. Never paid for them all. for our child. And so he woken his mouth and he said, Thank you. To our Lord, we thank you for giving his son away. Remember what he's been taught by this slave worker. He's brought a thank you for giving his son the life of sin. Thank you for saving us, putting our sins away in the ordained disunion. and saying, are the six fathers? Amen. Tell them, God, that's just me too, Lord. Me too. Oh, that's impressive. That's impressive. And the Lord loves simplicity. Another young fellow in the same area, he professed to get saved, and he was overheard going through the alphabet. And when this man listened, he realized the little fellow was on his knees over there in the corner. He went through the alphabet, A, B, C, D, yeah. After which he rose from the alphabet, he said, Well, you didn't, son. He said, Are you praying? I'm praying. He said, I didn't hear you pray, he said. You going through the alphabet. Yeah, he said, but... I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what words to use. He said, I just went through the alphabet. I knew the Lord put it together, what I need. Now there's some simplicity there. The Lord would put it together. In other words, we've got two thousand letters, we've got two hundred thousand words in his big dictionary, and it's all composed out of our alphabet. You ever think of that? Twenty-six letters, isn't it? This little fellow got the idea. Well, the Lord knows what I need, and I just can't put them in the word. But the Spirit made this intercession, brought them to the moon, and he cannot be uttered. He just went through them. And Lord, he could put it in the Word. within the world. And so simplicity in prayer is one of the things we need to practice. And then this will have to be our last little time that we persist in prayer. No matter. It persists. Or, she fared. Now the woman we referred to in the fifteenth of Matthew, she had four rebuffs, four setbacks. She went where the daughter was sick, and she wanted her daughter to be healed. And she went to the Lord, and she started to talk to the Lord, and she said, Lord, my daughter is a cold sick. What does the Lord do when she asked that question? It says, He answers her in all the words. Come on, you say, Lord Jesus, the Son of God, a perfect gentleman, had he not the courtesy to answer a woman who's asking him to heal, said his daughter, that he asked him to heal, she might have thought of that. That, I'm sure, didn't he? He didn't think any more about me and my sister, all of that. That's the hit. Well, she didn't stop at that. as you get down, and the disciples came and said, Send it away. Send it away. If you follow that, we don't want her. If you're a Gentile, we don't want her falling up. Imagine the disciples saying that to the Lord, concerning a seeking soul. Send it away. You could have taken that as no thing. and rebuke. I'm not even that. So no, he said that. And the next thing, he knows what the Lord did. He said, you know, it's not me. Take the children's bread and give them salt. There was one other thing that he had said prior to that. He said, I am not sent, but unto the law sheep of the house of which In other words, you are not at the house of Israel. You're a Gentile, and I'm not sent under the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Well, there's the next reply. First of all, he wouldn't even answer. Second, the disciple said, send her away. Third, I'm not sent, but under the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Did that deter her? No. She said, but I said, it's not neat for me to take the children's bread and give it to the dog. She reached the dog. Now do you think the Lord at heart that he looked upon her that way? No, I did the Lord love me. He was bringing her down. First of all, she addressed him wrongly. She addressed him as son of David. and she being a Jew had no claim on him as son of David. But finally, when she says, Lord, have mercy on me, now she's talking language that gives her acceptance, she called them Lord, after she had said, the dog eateth from this, all from the last few days. And then it was, Woman, go thy way. The devil is drawn out of thy mouth. O thy daughter is healed. For this sake, and because of her persistency, because of her importunity, her keeping air, and not being discouraged, and so you have the persistency in prayer. Why is it the Lord doesn't answer us right away sometimes? He wanted to answer right away, but why is it he doesn't for the first time that we ask him? He wants us to learn certain lessons. He wants us to learn our weakness. He wants us to realize how weak, how helpless we are in the face of these circumstances. Lord, I can't do a thing myself. My hands are tied. I'm absolutely weak. I can't. No man can do. Man's extremity is God's opportunity and God wants us to learn that lesson our own weakness. The second reason why he doesn't always answer right away is that he wants more searching for God. David says, search your God. know my heart, pine in though my thoughts can see it to me any way to get in me. And when our prayers are not answered, cause they produce a certain way of heart, to see if there might be something in my life that prevented my prayer from being answered. The next thing is patience, teaching us patience. You currently won't give your child something. wants the first time it asked for certain things, the chance it wouldn't be the proper thing for the child to have at its age. And then if a child wants a weapon, and if the parent gave it to, there would be a foolish thing to do, a knife, or something that it could cause damage to itself or others, the parent has to use it, it's discernment. It'd be foolish for a parent to give a ten-year-old child an automobile. It's not an A. It doesn't have the ability to operate a vehicle. And God is wise. He's a wise father. He knows when it's wise to give a thing and when it's not wise to give a thing. And we have to learn patience. That's why... He refused to answer some of our prayers. He wants to teach us patience. And he wants to teach us to intimacy with himself. If God gave you what you want the first time you asked for it, that'd be the end of it. You pull your weight. Next day you'll be back and asked for something else. But supposing day after day you spent five minutes praying about this matter, praying about it, praying about it. And for twelve days you prayed, five minutes every day, when you spent one hour in the presence of the Lord, it didn't. God had given it to you the first day you'd have spent about one minute for a couple of minutes. Whereas he got an hour of your time, and that's what the Lord wants. He wants more of your time. He wants you to get to know him then, more intimacy with him. And you have a lesson, we have a time now, our time's up. The unjust judge. And the Lord said to that woman, You see, this unjust judge, because of her continual coming, because the woman is weary of him, he will rise and give her what she needs, because of her continual coming. The Lord wants persistence. He prayed. I've been praying for things for years. I've been praying since I'm in nineteen years of age. I've been praying for the conversion of some of my loved ones, and they're not saying, yes, I'm still praying. I know God wants my loved ones to be saved. He will have not the death of any man, and I believe every time I'm asking God to save my brother, And my sister-in-law were here a couple weeks ago. I'm certainly praying in the Spirit because it's God's will that they be saved. Unsafe people come to know Christ. And I have confidence that God will save them. I'm talking to my Father. And it gives you a cup. And it's a good thing to spend time in God's presence praying. the best atmosphere you can be in as a Christian, and it will teach you many lessons that you'll never learn others. He says, ask. He that asks it, you get what you want. Seek it. He shall find, knock, and it shall be opened up. You notice those three things, ask, seek, and knock. Now take the first letter of each one of those words. ASK, what's the first letter? A. C, what's the first letter? S. Knock, what's the first letter? K. ASK. ASK. ASK, ASK. ASK, keep on at. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking. Keep on knocking until the door opens. keep knocking in one of these days you'll knock on the right door at the right time and in his will the door will open and you'll get your request shall we pray our father resharkens heaven in the name of our lord jesus christ we commence with i We ask thee, Lord, that seek us, house of grace, the holy ark of calling upon God, having dealings with thee. For, Father, thou dost love to hear the voice of thy children, and we pray that we may realize this, and spend time in thy presence. Be an unsavable in our bodies tonight. O God, may that one cry out to be in the depths of his or her heart. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Know that thou will answer immediately. If that terror is intense, thou will answer right now, and save that soul forever. We ask these things, Lord, be your precious.