Prayer: Do it with a Clean Heart, Persistently, and Be Patient!

Prayer: Do it with a Clean Heart, Persistently, and Be Patient!   Kelly Durant                                                     

There is a testimony by a Sergeant in the Salvation Army that was stationed in the Middle East years ago. He frequently traveled from Cairo to Haifa and every time he would get up and say a prayer for the safe journey of the train. One day, however, there were heavy storms and the train’s engine failed with no explanation at 3:00am in the morning and no one could understand why it would not work. Also, some men had been sent to check out the rails in from of them to make sure they were safe. To their amazement, not far up the tracks their had been a washout from the rains and it had made a hole in the ground big enough to swallow the train! Here we see a lesson. Sometimes when we pray, at first some things appear to go wrong, but many times the Lord is doing something for our safety and good, or for a reason we will not know until we get to heaven!

Did you know the Bible has 667 prayers in it and 454 of those are prayers that got answered?  In the U.S, it has been a tragedy that prayer has been removed from our schools and now we have crime and destruction like never before, but do you know what the greatest tragedy is? It is that the Christians like you and me quite often don’t even pray in our homes! I know there are a few here who do pray, because they tell me about it. Please tell me about your prayers because when you do it shows you have faith and you are trusting God to do something in your life! We all have seen many people in this church get jobs, and obtain their needs supplied by unusual means, and it has been the power if prayer that has done it! How many of you are praying, not just for you own needs, but for the needs of others, and for our church so that we can win more confused suffering souls to Jesus so they will be saved from a life of enslavement and tragedies that come from the consequences of their sins?

I heard a testimony once of how one church made a list of people in their town that needed to be converted and come to the Lord, and one by one even the worst drunk was getting converted because everyone was praying, united and it works! I want to make a list like that for our church too. And also, do you know what the latest trend of some churches is for prayer? They have a 24/7 prayer chain. That means for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (that is 168 hours) there is a volunteer praying every hour! The Salvation Army has that program in effect too, and it you want to be a part, please tell me and we will put you on the schedule.

Let’s open our Bibles to                Luke 18:1-8

18:1 And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;

2 Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:

3 And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.

4 And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;

5 Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.

6 And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.

7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?

8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

What we learn here is that you should not expect a $1,000 answer to a 10 cent prayer! Sometimes some of us pray with pessimism, that God has never done much for me, and why should I even put effort into prayer when He probably won’t answer. Well, maybe the reason He hasn’t answered isn’t His fault, but your fault! As you will remember Job, who lost every thing, prayed, and He didn’t get an answer right away but months later, be He was persistent; and because He passed the test of loyalty and faithfulness to God, God answered and blessed Him with even more than what He had had!

I know the greatest dilemma that most of you have is why doesn’t God answer me when I need Him most?  God is always there, and sometimes He has us in the same position as Job, He is waiting on us to mature and realize that we are nobodies to be judging Him as to what He should or should not do. We forget the part that talks about how the self righteous man, who reminded God of how he fasted and did not sin, like the people that tell God, I go to church thinking that is all the have to do. The prayer of those who heart is not right does not get answered; but the sinner that said, “God have mercy on me a sinner,” was the one that got His prayer answered. And I know the sinner that got an answer from God provoked the jealousy and criticism of the self righteous one, and that has happened here in our church too. The people that are not obeying so much what God wants get jealous and mad when someone gets a special answer to prayer. It is a terrible thing in human nature that we all can be just like Cain who killed his brother, because his brother was willing to do what God wanted and he pleased God, but Cain was not willing and he burned with jealousy and anger. Check your heart, are you jealous and angry with the prosperity and the spirituality of others who often speak of how God answers their prayers?

So to pray you must

1) Start with a clean heart, knowing you have no righteous of your own, your only righteousness is the blood of Jesus

2)Pray with faith, and pray with persistence and passion

3)Be patient for the answer, and willing for God to teach you what you need to learn from your trial

Let’s pray so that we all can pray more, and in the right way, and to pray as I Tess 5:17 says, “To pray without ceasing”.