The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his091/gospray.lzh/GOSPRAY.TXT

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INS:The gospel of prayer  by Lenard Ravenhill

   THE GOSPEL OF PRAYER

   There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer. People often say,
"Why do you insist on prayer so much?" The answer is very simple -
because Jesus did. You could change the title of the Gospel according
to St. Luke to the Gospel of Prayer. It's the prayer life of Jesus. The
other evangelists say that Jesus was in the Jordan and the Spirit
descended on Him as a dove - Luke says it was while He was praying that
the Spirit descended on Him. The other evangelists say that Jesus chose
12 disciples - Luke says it was after He spent a night in prayer that
He chose 12 disciples. The other evangelists say that Jesus died on a
cross - Luke says that even when He was dying Jesus was praying for
those who persecuted Him. The other evangelists say Jesus went on a
mount and He was transfigured - Luke says it was while He was praying
that He was transfigured.

   There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer. The scriptures say
that the disciples went to bed, but Jesus went to pray as was the
custom. It was His custom to pray. Now Jesus was the Son of God - He
was definitely anointed for his ministry. If Jesus needed all that time
in prayer, don't you and I need time in prayer? If Jesus needed it in
every crisis, don't you and I need it in every crisis?

   The story goes that a group of tourists visiting a picturesque
village saw an old man sitting by a fence. In a rather patronizing way,
one of the visitors asked, "Were any great men born in this village?"
Without looking up the old man replied, "No, only babies." The greatest
men were once babies. The greatest saints were once toddlers in the
things of the Spirit.

   C. H. Spurgeon was converted at the age of 14. When he was 19 they
built him a tabernacle seating 5,000 which he packed twice a day -
that's 10,000. How? He waited on God. He got alone with God. He
studied...and he prayed.

   DESPERATE PRAYER

   God makes all His best people in loneliness. Do you know what the
secret of praying is? Praying in secret. "But you, when you pray, go
into your inner room, and when you have shut your door... "(Matt. 6:6)
You can't show off when the door's shut and nobody's there. You can't
display your gifts. You can impress others, but you can't impress God.

   I Samuel 1:1-15 gives an account of the yearly trip Elkanah and his
wife, Hannah, made to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice to the Lord.
During this time, Hannah had been distressed that she was not able to
bear a son for her husband. This passage of Scripture gives quite a
descriptive account of her time in prayer concerning the bareness of
her womb. It says that Hannah wept. More than this, she wept until she
was sore. She poured out her soul before the Lord. Her heart was
grieving; she was bitter of soul, provoked, and of a sorrowful spirit.
Now that's a pretty good list of afflictions - sorrow, hardship and
everything else that came upon this woman. But the key to the whole
situation is that she was a praying woman. In verse 20 it says that she
reaped her reward. "Wherefore it came to pass, when the time was come
about after Hannah had conceived, that she bare a son, and called his
name Samuel, saying, "Because I have asked him of the Lord."

   Now I say very often - and people don't like it - that God doesn't
answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer! Your prayer life denotes
how much dependability you have on your own ability, and how much you
really believe in your heart when you sing, "Nothing in my hands I
bring, simply to Thy cross I cling ..." The more self - confidence you
have, the less you pray. The less self - confidence you have, the more
you have to pray. What does the Scripture say? It says that God takes
the lowly, the things that are not. Paul says in I Corinthians 1:28
that God takes the things that are not to bring to nothing the things
that are, so that no flesh should glory in His presence. We need a
bunch of "are nots" today.

   THE LANGUAGE OF THE POOR

   Prayer is the language of the poor. Over and over again David, the
King of Israel, says, "Bow down thine ear, O Lord, hear me: for I am
poor and needy." (Psalm 86:1)

   And do you remember that one of the greatest psalms he wrote says,
"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him..." (Psalm 34:6)

   The apostle Paul overwhelms me with his spirituality, his pedigree,
his colossal intellect. Yet he says that he's very conscious that when
he's weak, he is strong. He was always trying to prove to himself and
to others that he was a nobody.

   True prayer is a two-way communication. I speak to God and God
speaks to me. I don't know how the Spirit makes communication - or why
God needs me to pray - but that's how God works.

   "GET UP AND PRAY!"

   One day I was at a conference with Dr. Raymond Edmond of Wheaton
College, one of the greatest Christian educators in this country. He
told us of an experience he had while he was in Uruguay as a
missionary. He hadn't been there long before he was sick and dying. He
was so near death that they had already dug his grave. He had great
beads of sweat on his brow and there was a death rattle in his throat.
But suddenly he sat straight up in bed and said to his wife, "Bring me
my clothes!" Nobody knew what had happened.

   Many years later he was retelling the story in Boston. Afterward, a
little old lady with a small dog-eared, beaten-up book, approached him
and asked, "What day did you say you were dying? What time was it in
Uruguay? What time would it be in Boston?" When he answered her, her
wrinkled face lit up. Pointing to her book, she said, "There it is, you
see? At 2 a.m. God said get up and pray - the devil's trying to kill
Raymond Edmond in Uruguay." And she'd gotten up and prayed.

   Duncan Campbell told the story of hearing a farmer in his field who
was praying. He was praying about Greece. Afterward, he asked him why
he was praying. The man said, "I don't know. I had a burden in the
spirit and God said, 'You pray, there's someone in Greece that is in a
bad situation.' I prayed until I got a release." Two or three years
later the farmer was in a meeting listening to a missionary. The man
described a time when he was working in Greece. He had been in serious
trouble. The time? Two or three years ago. The men compared notes and
discovered that it was the very same day that God had burdened a
farmer, on a little island off the coast of Scotland, to pray for a man
in Greece whose name he didn't even know.

   It may seem the Lord gives you strange things. I don't care. If the
Lord tells you something, carry on with what the Lord tells you. "WHO
SHALL ASCEND TO THE HILL OF THE LORD?"

   There's another experience Duncan Campbell told about when he was
working in Scotland. "I couldn't preach," he said. "I couldn't get
through to God. The heavens were solid. It was as though there was a 10
ft. ceiling of steel." So he quit trying to preach. He asked a young
man named John Cameron to pray. The boy stood up and said, "What's the
use of praying if we're not right right with God? He quoted the 24th
Psalm, "Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord?"

   You can't approach God unless your hands are clean, which means your
relationships with others are clean and your heart is clean. "Who shall
ascend to the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure
heart ..." (Psalm 24:3-4)

   After the boy recited Psalm 24 he began to pray. He prayed 10, 15,
20 minutes. Then he suddenly said, "Excuse me, Lord, while I resist the
devil." He turned around and began to tell the devil where to go and
how to get there. He fought for all he was worth. You talk about having
on the armor of God and resisting the devil! When he finished resisting
the devil, he finished his prayer. He prayed for 45 minutes! When he
finished praying it was just as though God had pulled a little switch
in heaven. The Spirit of God came down on that church, that community,
on the dance hall at the other end of town and the tavern on this end
of town. Revival was born in that prayer!

   At the end of Malachi it says, "The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly
(that's the word I like, suddenly) come to his temple." (Mal. 3:1)
Remember a bunch of men that had been waiting in the upper room?
Suddenly the Holy Spirit came on them in that room.

   There's a date in history that I love very much. It was Wednesday,
August 13, 1737. A little group of people in Moravia were waiting in a
prayer meeting. At 11:00 suddenly the Holy Spirit came. Do you know
what happened? The prayer meeting that began at 11:00 lasted 100 years!
That's right. That prayer room was not empty for a century! It's the
longest prayer among men and women that I know of. Even children six
and seven years old trevailed in prayer for countries the name of which
they couldn't even spell.

   WHY WE DON'T HAVE REVIVAL

   In an old town in Ireland they'll show you with reverence a place
where four young men met night after night after night praying for
revival. In Wales, there's a place in the hills where three or four
young men only 18 or 19 years old met and prayed night after night.
They wouldn't let God go; they would not take no for an answer. As far
as humanly possible they prayed a revival into birth. If you're
thinking of revival at your church without any inconvenience, forget
it. Revival costs a lot.

   I can give you one simple reason why we don't have revival in
America. Because we're content to live without it. We're not seeking
God - we're seeking miracles, we're seeking big crusades, we're seeking
blessings. In Numbers 11, Moses said to God, "You're asking me to carry
a burden I can't handle. Do something or kill me!" Do you think it's
time we changed Patrick Henry's prayer from, Give me liberty or give me
death," to "Give me revival or let me die"?

   In the 30th chapter of Genesis, Rachael goes to Jacob and throws
herself down in despair. She says, "Give me children or I die." Are you
willing to throw yourself down before God to seek the spiritual birth
of spiritual children in our country? People say, "I'm filled with the
Holy Spirit." If the coming of the Spirit didn't revolutionize your
prayer life, you'd better check on it. I'm not so sure you got what God
wanted you get.

   We've said that prayer changes things. No! Prayer doesn't change
things. Prayer changes people and they change things. We all want
Gabriel to do the job. God says do it yourself - with My sufficiency
and My strength. We need to get like this woman, Hannah. What did she
do? she wept, she was grieved, she said she had a complaint, she
fasted-and she prayed. Jesus, the anointed of God, made prayer His
custom. Paul, with his background and intellect, depended on prayer
because he said he was weak. David, the king, called himself a poor man
and cried to the lord. Hannah prayed for a son and gave birth to a
prophet. The prayers of a handful of young men sparked revival.

   There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer.