Persistent and Persuasive Prayer (Ephesians 6:18-20)

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Well, you turn in your Bibles now to Ephesians chapter six. Ephesians chapter six, and we'll be looking at this morning at verses 18 through 20. Ephesians chapter six, verses 18 through 20. But this morning, just to make sure we have the right context, we'll read verses 10 through 20 together. Ephesians chapter six, beginning at verse 10, that's on page 1,041, if you're using the Pew Bibles. Ephesians chapter 6 beginning at verse 10.

Final Point

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord. and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand, stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Above all, taking the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one. and takes the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, And for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak." Well, in the reading of God's word there, brothers and sisters, the grass withers and the flower fades, but indeed the word of our God endures forever.

There was a monk, a story of a monk in the Middle Ages who decided that he wanted to, or a man who decided he wanted to be a monk, he wanted to live a life of prayer, to get away from the desires of this world, to get away from the problems of this world, to get away from the lusts of his heart, and so he decided, I'm going to be a monk, and so he joined a monastery.

But the problem is, after a while in the monastery, in a life of prayer, he realized all of his problems were still there. Because the problems weren't things outside, but the things inside. See, God calls us to live a life of prayer, but when we look at this text, verses 18 through 20, that life of prayer doesn't happen in a monastery. It doesn't happen by secluding yourself as an ascetic, going somewhere away from everybody else and away from all the temptations. No, there's just as many temptations if you're in a monastery as if you're in the world.

But we are called, all of us, as saints, to have persistent and pervasive prayer lives. And so that is your calling today, is to live persistent and pervasive prayer lives. Let's just look real quick at that section for this morning, verse 18 through 20. praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. And for me, the utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. As we look through what does it mean to live a persistent and pervasive prayer lives, we need to remember that Paul is writing to normal people. Paul is writing to the people who are in Ephesus.

These are living people, not idealized people. These are people who have to work. These are people who go to the bank. These are people who have to work in the fields. These are people who have to go about their trade with the ships that are coming in and out of the harbor. These are people who have livelihoods, who make things, and who have children, and some of them are slaves, and some of them are masters, some of them are children, some of them are parents. This is an earthy letter that he's writing, dealing with earthy problems.

And here he's telling them, pray always. Pray always. That's exactly what he says in 18. Praying always. What does that mean we don't do anything but prayer? Does that mean that, okay, all of you, you're doing everything wrong, you need to go sell all your worldly goods, stop working, stop doing everything and just go and be on your knees and pray for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Well, that's not what Paul did. Paul still worked as a tent maker. Paul still did his industry, but as he was doing his industry, he prayed.

His life was filled with a heart cultivated for prayer. The Christian heart is a heart that wells up like a spring water that bubbles over and flows out in prayer. And so the Christian heart, when he tells us here that we are to pray always, it's talking about praying in every circumstance. Christian, you are to pray always, yes. When you are having troubles with your spouse, pray for yourself and for your spouse. When things are going well with your spouse, guess what you can do? Thank God that things are going well with your spouse.

When your children are displaying all the depravity that you think they might possibly have, you can pray for those little children and pray for yourself. And when your children or your grandchildren are well-behaved, you can thank the Lord for that. Children, when you think that your parents are being unjust and too harsh on you, you can pray for us. When you think we're doing well, You can pray and thank the Lord for good parents.

When the harvest season is done and the harvest is all in the bins and everybody is safe, you can thank the Lord for a good harvest. When you go and you get a good price for your grain or for your cattle, you can thank the Lord for a good price. And when you don't get a good price and the yield is down, you can thank the Lord for what He has given you and pray that He would give you your daily bread.

When you're having strife and trouble with your co-workers at work, guess what you can do? You can pray. When you are grieving about those who are in the hospital or those who are on their deathbeds, guess what you can do? You can pray. When God heals those whom you love, guess what you can do? You can thank the Lord and you can pray.

Our hearts are to be a heart full and overflowing with prayer at all times, in every circumstance, in every season, there is a time for prayer. Why do we need to pray always though? Why do we always have to pray? Why is he so emphatic that he says at all times or always we must pray? Remember the context of this. You're to pray at all times. because you have an adversary, the evil one, and he's always lurking about. He's always seeking to devour you. He's always trying to tempt you.

Satan doesn't slumber nor sleep, and neither should we stop praying. We keep praying, we keep praying, we keep praying, also because Jesus is the one who commanded us to do that in Luke chapter 18, verse one, when he says, you ought always to pray. And Jesus doesn't just command us to pray, but Jesus is our model for praying. Think about the Gospels and think about Jesus's life.

Jesus is always praying. When Jesus is tired and he's worn down, what does he do? He wakes up very in the morning while it was still dark and he departs to a desolate place and there, what does he do? He prays. Often when we find Jesus getting together and he has people around, he prays for them and with them. What do we find Jesus doing at the Last Supper? Before he institutes that supper, before he breaks the bread, what does he do? He lifts up his eyes to heaven and he thanks God for it. What does Jesus do? What does he tell Peter? Satan has desired to sift you out, but I have what? I have prayed for you.

You can go to the gospel of John chapter 17 and you can see an entire chapter of the gospel specifically devoted to Jesus praying for his disciples. Jesus was praying. And it's not just in easy times when Jesus prayed. Think about when Jesus was on that cross. We often think of His words, Eli, Eli, Lamash, Abachtanim, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But that is Jesus praying, Psalm 22. And what do we even find as they are laughing at him, as they are ridiculing him, as he is literally there on the cross with blood dripping from his body and pain going through every part of his nervous system, what do we find Jesus doing?

Praying for those around him. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Jesus is our model for prayer. Jesus is always praying. Jesus is always in that communication with his Father, and it didn't just stop at his death, but the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus intercedes for us now. Jesus didn't just stop praying for his disciples in John chapter 17, but he prays for his people now. Jesus is the one who commands us to always pray. Jesus is our model for always praying.

And we fight for prayer because it doesn't come naturally. All right, I said it's like a spring, it just bubbles up, right? But hold on, if you're anything like me, it's sometimes difficult to pray. If we're honest with ourselves, right, sometimes, especially in the technological age when, for me, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube is always there, it's always ready, you open up your computer and it's like, bam, you turn on, the remote never seem too far away from you when you think that maybe you should pray. We have to fight for this prayer life. We have to put priority of this prayer life. We have to realize why we are praying, right? If we're going to say we have to pray always, we need to answer the question, why do we pray? Why do we pray?

Well, we are called here Christian soldiers. We put on the armor of God. We're told to stand strong. We have a general up in heaven. His name is Yahweh himself. He is the Lord of hosts. And this is the walkie-talkie, the battle communication lines between us and our general. We get our marching orders from him. We get our encouragement from him. We get everything that we need. We get our supplies from him. And so we get on that radio and we call out to God for everything we need. Because without Him, we have nothing. We have to fight for our prayer lives.

Chuck Swindoll, in a sermon he preached one time, When I was a brand new Christian, I'm not sure if this is an exact quote, but he said something along the lines of, every Christian, before your feet hit the ground, your knees should be there first in the morning.

When you get out of bed in the morning, the first thing you think about when you open your eyes, God, thank you. Now that might continue on, God, thank you for coffee, but do you thank the Lord? Do you thank the Lord for waking you up, for giving you another day? Do you thank the Lord that your spouse is there? Do you thank the Lord that you have a warm home?

We have no shortage of things to give thanks to God for. We live in one of the richest countries in the world. Every time you put that key in your car and you turn it on and it starts, that is a miracle. We should thank God for internal combustion engines. You know, thank God every time you turn on a light switch, brothers and sisters, we pray for missionaries in other countries who do not have that blessing, who do not have stoves, who do not have ovens, who do not have running water, who do not have electricity, who do not even have toilets. When's the last time you sat on the porcelain throne and thanked God for indoor plumbing? This is God's blessing to us. We are so richly blessed and we ought always to thank God. We should always be coming to God with our requests and with our thankfulness.

But it shouldn't just be a general prayer life, right? This would be all fine and dandy to just say, just be thankful, just be thankful, all this stuff, right? But sometimes you're not thankful. Sometimes you need stuff. Sometimes you just need to tell God things.

Well, verse 18 doesn't just say pray always, but what does it say? Pray always with all prayer and supplication. Pray always with all prayer and supplication. That word prayer there is just a general word for prayer. But the word supplication is a branch off of that, and it means begging or pleading with God for things.

Do we come to God asking him for good things? Do we come to God with all sorts of prayers? It's not just coming to God and acting all super pious and acting like we don't need things. No, what did Jesus tell us to do? Matthew chapter six, 26. Give us this day our daily bread. Right, do we go to him and do we cry out when we're underemployed or unemployed? God, please supply for our family.

Do we cry out to God when we need mercy or when we need patience? There's all sorts of prayers that God is telling us to pray here always with. We should be praying on all sorts of occasions. We should be praying publicly. We should be praying privately. We should be praying with our family. There should be times of our lives when we just suddenly need to pray and thank God that something happened or was provided for.

There might be times where you need to plan seasons of prayer in your life, where you need to say, no, I'm going into the office, I'm going into the bedroom, and we're praying. You might need to schedule a time every day where you could pray with your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your grandchildren. Do you schedule that time for prayer? But it's more than just all these times, but it's also all sorts of prayers.

Praying to God in adoration, just thanking God for who He is. On the back table, I have a whole bunch of these sheets. I'm going to be handing them to you and I'll talk about this in a second. On the back of the sheet are just different points of who God is and Bible references with that, that might help you as an aid for praying prayers of adoration.

As you think about God and his mercy, as you think about who God is being holy, as you meditate on who God is, you can pray, God, you are the holy one of Israel. You alone are God. You are loving and gracious and kind. And you can just bring up those things from the scripture that they teach us about who God is.

And when you turn into the Psalms, this is all over the place. The Psalms is a giant prayer book of the Old Testament. A giant messianic prayer book of the Old Testament. And it's there that we find all sorts of imagery about who God is as they prayed about God being the God of the thunder and the lightning. Go read Psalm 29 and this prayer of just God's majesty in the heavens. Go read Psalm 19, the second half of Psalm 19 about how beautiful God is in his word and the first half of that, how God has displayed his beauty in creation.

We can pray prayers of adoration. We can pray the prayers of confession, Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. We can tell God that we have sinned against Him. We can plead with God to cleanse us from our sins, 1 John 1.6-2.2. We are told that this is part of the Christian life, to confess our sins to God. Again, we can thank God for many things, but we can also make supplication, we can make pleading, we can cry out to God, we can beg to God for things. But I have a feeling most of us are pretty good at asking God for things. If you're like me, or like most Americans, or like most Christians I've ever met, the petition and supplication isn't that difficult.

God, be with my kids. God, be with my grandkids. God, please help me with my job. Please let my students not be so crazy. Please give me patience with the children. But sometimes we treat God like he's some type of celestial grandpa. You know what it's like, right, to have, if you've ever raised kids, for grandpa to come by. All of a sudden, everything that Johnny wants, Johnny gets. That's not what God is like. Sometimes we treat prayer like that. But He's not some type of Santa Claus in the sky we just take our wish list to. But we come to Him as a Heavenly Father who knows us and loves us, but who also deserves all sorts of prayer, all sorts of prayers, all sorts of supplication.

We come to God with all sorts of prayer. We pray always, but we don't just pray always or with all sorts of prayer, but we also pray in the Spirit. Look with me again at verse 18. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. In the Spirit. Brothers and sisters, if we are not praying in the Spirit, we are not praying at all.

It is the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us. Romans chapter eight, verses 26 through 28, it teaches us that it is the Holy Spirit. When we are aching and mourning and in such pain that we don't even have the words to express the things that we wanna take to God, it is the Holy Spirit who takes it to the Father for us. Galatians chapter four, verse four, teaches us that it is the Holy Spirit that wells up in us this heart and desire that we might call out to God, Abba, Father. It is praying in the Spirit because the Spirit is in us and by us that we might pray unto God. And he takes our prayers to Jesus Christ and Jesus makes them perfect as he presents them to the Father.

We pray Trinitarian prayers. We pray in the Spirit, through the Spirit. The Spirit leads us. The Spirit moves us. As we read what the sword of the Spirit tells us, it ought to provoke us to prayer. When we find passages in the scripture that are difficult, we cry out to the Spirit that He might illuminate our minds that we could understand what's going on here. This doesn't mean that we have long, flowing, ornate, beautiful prayers for everyone to hear. Praying in the Spirit doesn't mean that you have a type of praying eloquence that everybody goes, wow, did you hear that person pray?

Now, I gotta tell you, there was a time where we were in Beaver Falls, and there was a man who had come out of a really rough lifestyle. I'm gonna call his name Mike. And when Mike had come out of this rough lifestyle, out of a life of addiction, alcoholism, and things like that, he came to our Wednesday night prayer meeting as a young baby Christian, having just said that he believed in Jesus Christ, and that we started seeing fruits in his life from that. He decided he wanted to come to prayer meeting. And there, as we sat in prayer meeting, he was here on this side of the table and I was on the other corner, just arm's reach away from him. And Mike, as he prayed his simple prayer, reciting part of Psalm 51, I saw dots on the floor from where his tears were landing and darkening the carpet. The only words he had to say were the words that he had remembered from Psalm 51 about God cleansing him like the snow.

I thought, man, I want to pray like that. I want to pray in spirit. I don't want to just have long, flowing prayers. I want to have spirit-filled prayers. I wanna have Holy Spirit-driven prayers. I wanna have the Holy Spirit that urges me on in a type of belief of His Word that would change radically every fabric of my being.

Is that how we pray? Do we pray in the Spirit? Do we pray always? Do we pray with all sorts of prayers? Do we pray in the Spirit? Yes, we do all those things, but brothers and sisters, we must also be alert in our prayer life. Look with me again at verse 18. praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for the saints. Brothers and sisters, it's not just good enough that we pray always, it's not just good enough that we pray with all sorts of prayers, it's not just good enough that we pray in the Spirit, but we must also be alert in prayer.

The idea here of being watchful is this word picture that they would have known really well at that time. In that day and era, there were cities and the cities were enclosed with a wall. And the walls weren't like a dividing wall or just a fence, privacy fence, but these were walls that were thick. Actually, at times, these walls, people would live in them and when times of war would come, they would take all the rock and rubble and fill in their houses with rocks and rubbles to make an impenetrable wall. And people would walk along the top of the wall and as night time came, watchmen would stand out on the wall and they would just survey outside the walls, just making sure that no enemies were coming close. No flickers of flame in the distance, listening for any footsteps of a marching army, watching for anybody who might scale up the walls in places. They were like watchmen in the night.

We're called to be watchmen in our prayer lives. We're called to stand there and to be watchful and diligent in our prayer. This isn't just, you know, General praying have you have you ever been tempted like that before? When you're praying but you're you get done and you're like that was the most weak sauce prayer I've ever prayed in my entire life Like I just prayed but it was It wasn't from my heart. I didn't even think about what I was saying. God. Thank you for this food and I was more excited about the food than about the God who gave me the food.

Have you ever been there before? I Right, this is talking about being watchful, right? This is saying, I'm alert. I know what I'm praying for. I know what I should be praying for. I'm being careful. Maybe you even might need to keep a reading log or a prayer journal about the things that you are praying about so you don't just pray mindlessly, but being alert in prayer, being alert to times that you should be praying. Right, we're meant to have our minds towards this. That we are alert in our prayer. This is what Jesus dealt with. And this is a human problem. This is how I know it's not just you and it's not just me. Because the disciples dealt with this.

Do you remember when Jesus went to that garden in Gethsemane? Do you remember what he told his disciples to do when he went up to pray? He told them, stand here and watch and pray while I go over there and pray. And Jesus prays, and when he comes back, what does he find the disciples doing? Right? They're sawing logs, right? They're asleep. And what does Jesus say?

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. We need to be watchful. Yeah, sometimes you're going to be tired when you pray. Don't be discouraged. Keep praying. Sometimes you're going to think, man, that was a horrible prayer life. Don't give up, keep praying. And that's exactly what this next point is about. It's not just being alert in prayer, but it's also persevering in prayer. Persevere in prayer, verse 18. Being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. Persevere, persevere, persevere.

Have you ever run before? Man, we joined this gym and I didn't, I just, I told you guys last week, you know, I've, well, I'm not gonna go too far in how I felt, but man, it's like every time I go into that gym, I just wanna quit. It's just hard, you know? You sit there and you're like, man, I worked really hard packing on all this weight. You're sitting there thinking, do I really wanna give all this up, right?

But you're sitting there and you have to persevere. It takes effort. When you're playing a sport, it's not easy. When we take our boys to wrestling, that's one of the things we have to talk to them about. Not all hard things are bad things. Yeah, it was a really hard practice today. Was that good or bad? Oh, it was good. Why was it good? Well, it made me stronger. That's right.

That's right, keep going, keep going, keep going, don't give up just because it's hard. This is why so many people pick up a language and they think, oh, I'm just gonna learn Greek, I'm gonna learn Russian, I'm gonna learn Latin, I'm gonna pick up Spanish, and I'm just gonna do this, and they get like five lessons in, they're like, meh, nevermind, it's too hard. Right, because when you learn a language, it's hard, you mess up, you get things wrong, you feel like a fool, and then the question is, will you keep pushing past that? Brothers and sisters, we push past that in prayer. So what if you haven't had a good prayer life so far? Tomorrow is a new day. This afternoon is a new afternoon. Persevere in your prayer. Don't give up. Persevere. It's going to be difficult. Sometimes it's going to feel like God might not even be listening to you.

Jesus gives us a parable for that, right? He tells us to go and to be like the widow who went to go to the judge and the judge wouldn't hear her out, and so what did this widow do? She kept coming every single day to the judge. Hear me out, hear me out, give me justice, give me justice, give me justice. And as she went to the judge, eventually the judge relented, right? She's gonna wear me out by all these petitions. Just give her what she needs. Jesus says pray like that. Pray with perseverance. Be like the widow who goes to the judge. So we have a pervasive and a persistent prayer life. But it's not just about us. It's not just about us. The last point, pray for others. Look with me. The last part of verse 18 and through verse 20.

That being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, and for me the utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak.

What does this mean? For all the saints? Does this mean like we're supposed to start praying to saints? Does this mean we pray to like special people who intercede for us? No, that's not what this is saying at all, right? This is how the book started, Ephesians chapter one, verse one, right? To the saints who are in Ephesus, to the holy ones, to the church there, those who believe in Jesus Christ.

We are to pray for the whole church. We're to pray for our brothers and sisters. We're to pray for one another. We pray for God's people. Remember last week we take up that shield of faith and that shield of faith was curved and we stand shoulder to shoulder in that phalanx, that line of shields with the people behind us with their shield over us that we might not get hit with the fiery darts of the devil. One of the ways in which we strengthen our brothers and sisters, those who are with us in this battle is through prayer. We need to pray with and for one another.

Again, on the back, it's just providentially, just happens to be that there's a new prayer calendar for December. And on the back, as you walk out, I'll be handing you prayer calendars. This isn't just something cute that we do, but you are in a spiritual battle. All the wages, or all the legions of the army of Satan are against Jesus Christ and His church.

Your brothers and sisters need you to pray for them. They need you to petition God for them. Our sister Lynn needs you to pray to God that you would keep her strong. Our sister Virginia needed your prayers when she was sick. Our brothers and sisters need our prayers. We ought to pray for one another.

The people in Ephesus were meant to pray to the other people who were sitting in the seats, at that time probably standing or sitting on the floor next to each other. But they were also meant not just to pray for the saints in Ephesus, but to pray for the saints in Colossae, and the saints in Corinth, and the saints in Antioch, and the saints in Tarsus, and the saints in Jerusalem, even the saints in Rome. They were meant to pray for the whole church.

Brothers and sisters, you get to pray for the churches in Colorado and in China. You get to pray for saints who are in South Sudan and in South Dakota. You get to pray for the church broadly. If you want to know some people who desperately need your prayers, again, on the back wall is a map for praying for the persecuted church, those who live within the 1040 window, those who are under the heavy hand of authoritarian communist rule and of Muslim hatred. Our brothers and sisters in those countries need your prayers. Our brothers and sisters in the US desperately need your prayers. Will you pray? for the saints. Also on the back wall, there's a weekly prayer chart.

And on this, you don't need to fill this whole thing out. This is just to help. Don't feel legalistic. Don't feel like you have to do this. If you're watching online, it's on the member portal. But there's each day of the week, Sunday through Saturday, a slot for family, personal, Christian friends, non-Christians, areas to grow, church ministries, spiritual leaders, secular leaders, and missionaries. And you can write in people's names there. You can write in ministries there.

You can think about and try to plan on, I'm not just going to think about praying for Pakistan. I'm going to actually write it down, and I'm going to devote time every Wednesday that I'm going to pray for the work that's going on in Pakistan. This is just an aid. I want to give you aids that you can use, but I don't want to spur it on by legalism. I pray that you might be filled with this desire to have prayer in your life as you pray for the saints. But it's not just praying for people's needs and things like that. When we pray, we are making an assault upon the gates of hell itself. That's what Paul finishes this portion with. Look, he doesn't ask that he would get food. Paul doesn't even ask that he would be released from the prison that he's in. What does he say?

And for me, verse 19, and for me, the utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Paul is needing the assistance of the prayer warriors in Ephesus behind him, even though he's all the way in Rome. Paul needs the spiritual care and the supplications that go into God's throne room and saying, help our brother Paul, care for Paul, give him strength to be able to proclaim the message.

I don't know about you, but when I think about Paul, I think of a bastion of the faith. I think of a man who's not afraid at all. I think of the man who wrote Romans 1, 16, you know, for I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, first the Jew and also to the Gentile. I think of the man who went to King Agrippa and preached the gospel to his face. I think of Paul as the man who went and preached the gospel in Ephesus and they tried to kill him. I think of the Paul who preached the gospel to his Roman captors as they were on a ship and he was shipwrecked and he continued to preach the gospel.

I think of this man who is so bold in the faith, but how was he so bold in the faith? Because he had the support of the saints behind him. I remember watching a Ligonier conference ministry, and at this conference, all these big-name pastors in the Reformed world were walking across the stage. There goes R.C. Sproul, and there goes John MacArthur, and next comes out Sinclair Ferguson.

And as we were sitting at Olivia's parents' house on the couch, I went, wow, isn't that incredible that God has given these men such a great ministry? And I'll never forget what my father-in-law said. He said, I'm not going to be surprised when we get to heaven. And what we find out is not that these men were so great, but that some widow on her bed was praying for them every single day.

And it was her prayer that propelled them and strengthened them in preaching the gospel. Brothers and sisters, prayer is the strongest, most powerful thing you can do. Do you actually pray? Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Are you tired of the downward cultural trend in which you see our American culture going? Do you know the only thing that can stop it? It is the Holy Spirit himself. It is God changing the hearts of men. It is a supernatural work of taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh. It is a spiritual rebirth that will happen, and it only happens through prayer.

Do you want to see God's name extended throughout all the earth? Are you praying for it? Are you praying that gospel ministers would actually proclaim the gospel and would get rid of their gimmicks of people just being happy with good lives and the American dream? Pray that our land would actually have gospel preachers. Do you wish that those churches that have gone far theologically liberal and have left the Christian tradition, and you wish that they would come back to the Scriptures, pray that God would fire up the bones of those who are members in the Church, that they would hold accountable their elders and their clergy people, that they would actually hold to the Scriptures and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified alone? It is by prayer that these things can happen. It is by prayer that God can pour out His Holy Spirit. It is by prayer that His saints are lifted up. It is by prayer that God does miraculous things.

Do we actually believe it? Will we have persistent and pervasive prayers? Will we pray in all sorts of occasions? Will we pray with supplication and with normal prayers? Will we go to God daily in the Spirit? pleading with him to change the hearts of our family members. Will we go to him persistently begging him, Father, save my unbelieving son.

Father, bring my granddaughter back to you. Lord, stop where our government is going in this decision. Father, stop the persecution that's happening of our brothers and sisters who are in China as they're being thrown in the prison, ripped out of their jobs, and kicked out of their houses.

Closing Prayer

Will we actually pray for our brothers and sisters in the faith? This is how the world has turned on its head. Will we pray? Will we pray for God's kingdom to come here on earth as it is in heaven? Brothers and sisters, we march against the gates of hell itself when we get on our knees and we ask for the spirit to do his work. Let's pray. Oh God, you can do these things. Lord, propel us towards our knees. Equip us for spiritual warfare. Move us towards prayer. Let the world be changed. Let our families be changed. Let our own hearts be reformed. In Jesus' name, Amen.

We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.