Jesus, I just ask that your presence would
continue to minister, Lord.
You just give me clarity of thought, fill
in the gaps, the voids, the things that
need to be said that I have not
noticed, and the things that need to be
with my mouth, Lord Jesus, that you would
give me an anointing.
Let your anointing just rest on me, Lord,
and I pray that you would help me
to do this with all my heart.
With every inch, every fiber that's within me,
Lord, help me deliver, Lord, what I believe
you've started to show me.
And God, I just ask that you'd be
with me, and I just declare and confess
that I can't do this without you, Lord
Jesus.
I just humble myself before you, Lord, and
just ask you to strengthen me, God.
That you'd be with me, and I just
declare and confess that I can't do this
without you, Lord Jesus.
I just humble myself before you, Lord, and
just ask you to strengthen me, God.
That you'd just strengthen me, Lord Jesus.
Thank you, Lord Jesus.
Praise your holy name, holy name.
Thank you, God.
Thank you, Jesus.
Amen.
The title of my message is called Extreme
Prayer, or Pray Till You Bleed.
That's a real subtle title, isn't it?
Extreme Prayer, or Pray Till You Bleed.
As I was preparing this just in the
last few weeks, it seemed strange to me
in a day when there is such a
lack of fervent prayer in the church, and
when so much of the church is still
what we would call lukewarm.
That the term extreme, praying extremely or doing
anything for Jesus extremely, would catch so much
caution and warning.
We are living in a day that we
need God to do some extreme things.
There is extreme need.
How else can we explain the things that
Marquita talked about tonight?
The things Brad brought up about the condition
of our world and our communities.
These are extreme times.
People are doing extreme, if not excessive things
with the power of the enemy.
And we need extreme prayer.
We need extreme Christians.
In the kingdom of God, extreme examples of
devotion serve a very important purpose.
I just want to explain the purpose of
all this and give a few definitions.
Extreme examples reveal to us the possibilities of
grace.
They show us how far God can empower
us.
We shouldn't be condemned about these things.
We shouldn't feel badly.
These things should encourage our heart.
They show us how far the grace of
Jesus Christ can really carry us.
Have we really appropriated the full work of
the cross in our Christian devotion?
This is the question that these things should
raise to us.
Are such examples meant to condemn?
Certainly not.
Such examples stretch us and teach us that
if others have found such grace, we too
can go deeper in Christ.
I'm a real lover of Christian biographies and
talking to people about those.
You either find that people really love them
or they hate them.
They say, oh, what a great biography, it
just changed my life.
Then I'll run into somebody that read exactly
the same biography and they said, oh, I
just felt terrible after I read that thing.
I mean, I felt like, am I a
Christian?
This is the ploy of the enemy.
These kind of extreme examples are meant to
challenge us, again, to show us how we
can go farther in Jesus Christ.
We're going to get to some of these
later, but let me just continue.
Turn with me to Hebrews 12, 3 and
4.
This really lays the foundation for the purpose
of those who seek Jesus in an extreme
way.
Examples of extreme Christianity, examples of extreme prayer.
Hebrews 12, 3 and 4.
For consider him who endured such hostility from
sinners against himself, lest you become weary and
discouraged in your souls.
Hebrews 12, 3 and 4.
You have not yet resisted bloodshed striving against
sin.
Do you see the principle here?
It's that when we feel weary, when we
grow faint, when the Christian walk becomes rough,
we should consider Christ who laid down his
very life in order to fight against sin.
These examples of extreme Christianity, of extreme prayer,
are not meant to condemn us, not meant
to bring us down, but to lift us
up.
Ask the question, have we prayed till we've
bled?
Have we strived in the power and grace
of God till we've shed blood in resisting
against sin in order to establish the kingdom
of God?
How far have we really went?
In light of what Jesus has done on
the cross, all of our consecration, all of
our devotion to him pales and is seemingly
insignificant.
So when you grow weary, when you grow
faint, look at the cross and ask yourself,
have you yet shed blood in resisting against
sin?
This is the purpose for extreme examples.
And perhaps there's no greater and more extreme
example of love and devotion to God the
Father than what Jesus did on the cross.
When someone presents to you, when they raise
the standard, when they tell you how saints
in the past, how people in the scriptures
of the past laid down their life in
love and lordship of Jesus Christ, these things,
if you feel under the pressure, if these
things weigh you down, if these things condemn
you, you need to know right there that
that's the scheme of the enemy.
That is, he's you trying to monopolize, manipulate
these kind of things to wound you.
But that is not the purpose.
That is not the purpose.
And you just need to deny that work
and to see what God's really trying to
show you.
But don't deny the examples.
See, what's happening a lot is people will
lift up a standard, perhaps of holiness, of
devotion, of prayer.
Real, live examples of how people of God
in the past have walked with Jesus.
And then all of a sudden somebody will
say, well, that makes me feel bad.
I don't like to look at that.
That's either one or two things, folks.
It's either conviction of sin, God's trying to
take you deeper, trying to break the vessel
a little bit, or the enemy is trying
to use that and twist the word.
And we all know how effective the enemy
can twist the words.
What did Satan come to Jesus with in
the wilderness?
The scripture, truth.
What did Satan come to Eve with in
the garden?
Truth, twisted, a little bit of it left
out, a little bit of it added.
So this is a scheme of the enemy,
but it does not necessarily mean that the
standard that's being lifted is not accurate, is
not true.
The title, Pray Till You Bleed, is meant
to communicate a concept of prayer that contains
sacrifice.
In 2 Samuel 24, 24, David declared, Nor
will I offer offerings to the Lord my
God, which cost me nothing.
How much does your prayer life cost you?
Much, much of what's called prayer today is
cheap, is way too cheap.
It doesn't cost us anything, folks.
Does it cost you anything to shoot up
a prayer while you're driving on the freeway?
We should really, we should be ashamed of
some of the books that line the Christian
bookstores today, the shelves of them.
I was reading through a book list the
other day, and a title caught my eye.
It said, 15 Minutes Alone with God.
Or I've seen another one that was entitled,
Prayer for Busy People.
Folks, this stuff's shameful.
You tell me.
Now, you know, with the big emphasis on
marriage and intimacy and correct family life, you
write a book that's entitled, 15 Minutes Alone
with Your Wife, and you see how long
your ministry would last.
Man, if you were a radio preacher, you'd
be off the air.
Man, it would be over.
Well, how much more, how much more intimacy,
love, closeness does Jesus deserve than our spouses?
In Ephesians 5, the writer there, Paul, is
telling us that God has so organized, so
constructed the marital relationships between a man and
a woman to teach us about our relationship
with Jesus Christ.
And we make special nights to have dates
and spend time, meaningful time with our children,
with our spouses, and yet we can talk
about 15 minutes alone with Jesus.
Can you see how that is twisted?
And it comes, it flows out of something
that says down deep in the back of
our mind, in the recesses of our heart,
that God cannot be hurt, that He cannot
be affected by our careless attitude.
Yet the Scripture is clear that the Holy
Spirit is grieved, that He is quenched, that
His heart is wounded, that God longs for
intimacy with His people.
And we talk about 15 minutes alone with
Him.
Do you begrudge the service like we even
had tonight, where we just take time to
sing songs to Jesus, and we can wait?
Are the long pauses in worship uncomfortable for
you?
We wouldn't dare, you know, begrudge our spouse
the time it takes to listen.
It takes time to listen, folks.
You've got to sit there for a while,
not saying anything, not doing anything.
That's what's going on in worship sometimes.
Give the Holy Spirit time to speak to
people's hearts.
This concept is totally inconsistent with the holy
and loving God who gave everything, everything in
order to redeem us from the eternal death
sentence.
So no one misunderstands me, let me say
this, that we do not desire costly, sacrificial
devotion and prayer in order to obtain God's
love, but as the natural and grateful response
to receiving God's love.
Do you see the difference?
I'm not talking about works here, folks.
I'm not talking about, you know, earning God's
love by praise and worship, by hours spent
in prayer.
But what else is consistent with what Jesus
has done for us?
He's given us it all.
He laid everything down for us.
We love because He first loved us, the
Scripture says.
And if you begrudge Jesus in prayer, the
love that He deserves, in worship, the love
that He desires, all that reveals about you
is that you have never really come into
a revelation of His love for you.
Because if you really, really knew that Jesus
loved you, if you felt the depth of
that love, it would never be a hard
thing.
To the extent that we understand this revelation
is to the extent that we go deeper
in prayer, deeper in love with Christ, deeper
in worship, deeper in devotion, deeper in obedience,
deeper in holiness.
We often equate extreme with excessive.
I was so blessed as I studied about
this word extreme a little bit.
To be excessive is to be beyond established
laws of morality and religion.
To put it simply, it is to go
beyond that which God desires.
Excessive is just that too much.
Excessive is the reason why Nadab and Abihu,
Aaron's sons, were burnt before the congregation of
God.
Because they asked for that which God did
not require.
They offered a strange sacrifice, and like that
they were consumed by the fire of God.
The same fire of God that was being
poured out on the altar to show the
people that he had received their sacrifice freely
was now consuming the very priests of God
because they offered that which he did not
ask for.
They were excessive.
The definition of extreme is the outermost edge,
uttermost, greatest, most violent, best or worst, depending
on your perspective, or most pressing.
It's the outermost edge.
A derivative of extreme is extremities.
Our extremities, you know what those are?
There are fingers, there are hands, our feet,
our head.
They are the outermost edge of our body.
Extremities.
Is this bad stuff, folks?
Or some of the most valuable stuff that
we have?
Some of the things that we get the
kingdom work done with.
What is it that holds the shield of
faith up but an extremity?
An extreme edge.
What is it that takes up the sword
of the Spirit but an extreme edge, an
extremity?
What does God say are beautiful?
The feet of those who bring glad tidings.
The extremity.
The extreme edge.
Do you want to get something done in
the kingdom of God and yet you're so
afraid to be extreme for Jesus?
It won't happen, folks.
Some of the most useful parts in the
body of Christ are the extremities, the extreme
edge.
Now, just talking about it just stirs me.
I want to be extreme for Jesus, to
lose myself in sacrifice and devotion to Him.
I don't want to be way back here.
I want to be out at the edge.
The extreme edge.
That's where the fruit grows, folks, on a
tree.
It's at the extremities, out on the end
of the branches.
But if you want to play it safe,
it may be hard to be on that
extreme edge.
C.H. Spurgeon in a great little book
called The Eccentric Preacher puts it another way,
but he's talking about the same thing.
He just explains that for a machinery to
operate, a machine, there must be a large
gear and then several other gears that are
eccentric to the main gear.
In other words, the word concentric means everything
to run in the same circle.
But nothing gets done that way, folks.
The eccentric gear, one to another, makes the
machinery operate.
They're on the extreme edge.
You want to be normal?
You want the status quo?
That's not where God's doing things.
His people are eccentric of one another.
This speaks of the beauty of the body
of Christ, the multifaceted members of Jesus' body.
Amen.
We need to be eccentric.
We need to be extreme.
I hope you have a greater appreciation for
those words.
And don't confuse them with some others.
God's mandate is this.
This is one that He laid on my
heart early on as a believer.
Never determine your Christian progress on the basis
of the run-of-the-mill status quo
religious systems.
Folks, get your eyes off what's going on
around here.
Never determine your Christian progress on the basis
of the run-of-the-mill status quo
religious systems.
Surround yourselves with courageous, daring, yes, even extreme
examples of faith.
This is one of the main motivations for
me personally, studying the histories of revival and
studying the biographies.
The Lord early on said, David, don't look
at this stuff that's going on, that they're
calling ministry.
For one thing, I was having a big
trouble, a big problem.
It wasn't lining up with what I felt
the Lord was showing me as a new
believer.
I felt Him pouring out a vision in
my heart, and this wasn't making sense.
And really, too, this is where some of
the precious biographies of time pass, of real
men of God and women of God.
You surround yourself by these folks, and they
will nurture an extreme Christianity.
And praise God, there's still plenty of living
extreme believers to expose ourselves to.
But find somebody that is pushing the edge.
This term extreme is a lot of times
you'll find connected with this, something like this.
They push the envelope.
They're pushing the envelope.
They're not busting through it.
That would be excessive.
But the boundaries that God is giving, they
are pushing it.
They're going to the outside edge.
Find people like that to surround yourself.
Let's look at some examples, though, of extreme
devotion to God.
Let's start with Jesus Himself.
He's the extreme Savior.
The extreme Savior.
Hebrews 7, 22 to 25.
And one of my famous sayings throughout the
whole book of Hebrews is, Consider Jesus.
It's all about pointing you back to Christ,
to consider the beauty, the depth of Him
as a perfect mediator between God and man.
By so much more, Jesus had become a
surety of a better covenant.
Also, there were many priests because they were
prevented by death from continuing.
But He, because He continues forever, has an
unchangeable priesthood.
Therefore, He is also able to save to
the uttermost those who come to God through
Him since He always lives to make intercession
for them.
Christ right now is interceding on our behalf.
And because of that, He is able, because
of what He has done on the cross
and being risen from the dead in His
intercessory role right now at the right hand
of the Father, He is able to save
us to the uttermost.
To the uttermost edge.
Right to the extreme.
He is able to do great things in
our life.
Take us from being one kind of person
to the totally opposite extreme and change us
in a radical way.
Jesus always desires to save us extremely.
To save us to the uttermost.
Jesus doesn't do anything halfway.
The only reason why we have a halfway
work of grace is because we got in
the middle of it.
It's not the will of Christ.
Hebrews 5.7 Let's back up and take
a look there.
While you're looking for that, let me read
to you a little book that also has
an extreme title.
Heaven Taken by Storm Showing the Holy Violence
a Christian is to put forth in the
pursuit after glory.
One of my favorite Puritan preachers, Thomas Watson,
he says in regard to Christ and His
perfect work, His extreme work, how violent Christ
was about our salvation.
Remember, one of those definitions for extreme was
with violence.
How violent Christ was about our salvation.
He was in agony.
He continued all night in prayer, Luke 6
.12. He wept.
He fasted.
He died a violent death.
He rose violently out of the grave.
Was Christ so violent for our salvation and
does it not become us to be violent
who are so intimately concerned in it?
Christ's violence was not only satisfactory, but exemplary.
It was not only to appease God, but
to teach us.
Christ was violent in dying to teach us
to be violent in believing.
Jesus is an extreme Christ, extreme Savior.
Hebrews 5.7 Now again, we're talking about
this applies to the whole gambit of our
Christian life.
I'm really trying to focus in here on
prayer.
Speaking again of Christ, who in the days
of His flesh, when He had offered up
prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears
to Him who was able to save Him
from death and was heard because of His
godly fear.
Jesus, how did He pray?
Surely, the Son of God didn't need to
go to any extra effort to communicate with
the Father with loud crying, vehement tears, strong
crying.
This is how Jesus prayed?
And we talk about 15 minutes along with
God.
Luke 22, 39-46 Of
course, everybody is familiar with the passage.
Christ, before the crucifixion, going into the garden
to pray.
Coming out, He went to the Mount of
Olives as He was accustomed.
This was Jesus' habit.
He was used to going there and praying.
He made prayer a habit.
And His disciples also followed Him.
When He came to the place, He said
to them, Pray that you may not enter
into temptation.
And He was withdrawn from them about a
stone's throw, and He knelt down and prayed,
saying, Father, if it is Your will, let
this cup pass away from Me.
Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.
Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven,
strengthening Him.
You notice that?
That's the direct result of prayer.
What does prayer do?
You want to see some angels?
Start praying, folks.
Prayer is the place where you see God
do miraculous things.
And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly.
Then His sweat became like great drops of
blood falling down to the ground.
When He rose up from prayer and had
come to His disciples, He found them sleeping
from sorrow.
Then He said to them, Why do you
sleep?
Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation.
Folks, I don't know about you, but the
kind of agony, the kind of travail that
would produce blood, or as some have interpreted
it, as sweat as great drops of blood,
however you want to look at it.
Either way, it does not make any difference.
This is real travail.
This is something that gripped Jesus' heart.
He literally was praying till He bled.
The anxiety, the burden of this whole thing.
He had to touch the heart of Jesus.
He wasn't afraid.
He touched the heart of His Father.
Excuse me.
He wasn't afraid to be called extreme.
One who would go to the outermost edge
in order to accomplish kingdom business, kingdom work.
If it wasn't for an extreme Savior, none
of us would be here in this little
place tonight.
If it wasn't for extreme prayer, extreme sacrifice,
taking it right out to the edge, where
would we be today?
Revelations 3, 14-22.
Jesus sums it up nicely, what He desires
from His church in this passage.
And so to the angel of the church
of the latest, Sian's right, these things says
the Amen, the faithful, the true witness and
the beginning of the creation of God, Jesus
Himself.
I know your works, that you are neither
cold nor hot.
I would wish you were cold or hot.
What does God want?
How can Jesus deal with you when you're
either extremely cold or extremely hot?
He has a hard time reaching His people
when they're lukewarm.
He can't do much with us when we
want to be status quo, mediocre, middle of
the road, safe.
If you're extremely cold, He can break you.
He can draw you back.
If you're extremely hot, He can do anything.
He can turn the world upside down through
you.
But God would rather you be extreme one
way or the other.
God wants His church extreme, not middle of
the road.
What does He say in the next verse?
Verse 15, excuse me, 16.
So then because you are lukewarm and neither
cold nor hot, I will vomit you out
of My mouth, spit you out, you're unpleasant
to Me.
I want you to be extreme.
I want you to be the outermost edge,
hot for Me.
What does it mean?
There's all this talk about the fire of
God today.
What is that?
It means be extreme, folks.
Be extreme in your praying, in your devotion,
in your love for Jesus.
The outermost edge.
But we throw these things around like they're
cute little clichés today.
They're little buzzwords in the church and they've
kind of already lost their meaning.
They were trendy last year and now we
just say them and yet live quite middle
of the road.
The Lord doesn't want us to be halfway.
And I'm not standing up here saying that
in every area of my life I'm at
its extreme edge.
But what I am saying is I know
where the standard is.
It's out at the edge.
See, and one of the things that happens
is if you have shallow Christianity over here
and acceptable Christianity over here, we usually fall
somewhere in between.
The balance, you know, falls somewhere in between.
And if we have disqualified all this part
of seeking Christ as extreme or something unpleasant,
something uncomfortable, something that we really would rather
not have in our life, then, you see,
we've distorted the whole picture of where we
should be and realizing that we'll probably float
more to the center, even though that may
not be God's perfect will.
That's the truth of how things work for
us.
If we chop out this big section of
what we're calling extreme, we're usually going to
fall way down here on the scale.
We've got to keep the thing right.
How's the balance?
Where is it?
Is the word balance acceptable?
Yeah, I believe there's truths that clarify one
another.
But we need to be careful about this.
I got myself in a lot of trouble
trying to play the balance game, trying to
always, oh yes, I must qualify all this
and qualify all this, and pretty soon, I
wasn't walking right with Jesus anymore.
What a lot of that amounts to is
trying to be four or five, maybe six
or eight different members of the body of
Christ a lot of times.
I'm not saying that there's not a place
for clarity, to see in the Scripture a
healthy balance of what the truth is.
But again, the word extreme doesn't really apply.
Excess would apply there better.
Okay, let's look at another extreme follower of
God, Moses in Exodus 32.
This is right after the incident with the
golden calf and Israel's great sin and great
backsliding.
And Moses is here interceding for the children
of Israel who had broken his heart.
Then Moses returned to the Lord and said,
oh, these people have committed great sin and
made for themselves a God of gold.
And I want you to notice here, you
can say that same thing in a lot
of different ways.
This was not a condemning, this was not
an angry, bitter statement from an outside observer.
This was something that was breaking Moses' heart.
This was something that had driven to his
knees.
And there's a lot of pain you can
hear here in his voice.
Verse 31, excuse me.
Then Moses returned to the Lord and said,
oh, these people have committed great sin and
have made for themselves a God of gold.
Yet now if you will forgive their sin,
so Lord, please forgive them.
Please have mercy on them.
God be merciful.
But look how quick Moses' response is.
He's already got a second plan just out
of his love for these folks.
But if not, I pray, blot me out
of your book which you have written.
I mean, is that extreme or what?
Is that extreme prayer?
Is that extreme intercession?
It says, Lord, if you can't forgive these
people, if you can't look over this, if
you can't cleanse this, Lord, somehow let me
be a substitute.
Let me take their place.
Let me take their judgment.
I don't know about you folks, but I
can't even comprehend that.
That is extreme.
That is out at the edge.
That is an extremity.
A hand way out here doing something that
others can't touch.
Jacob, Genesis 32.
Another extreme follower of God.
24 through 30.
Then Jacob was left alone and a man
wrestled with him until the breaking of day.
Now, when he saw that he did not
prevail against him, he touched the socket of
his hip and the socket of Jacob's hip
was out of joint as he wrestled with
him.
And he said, let me go for the
day breaks.
Speaking of Jacob here, he said, I will
not let you go unless you bless me.
So he said to him, what is your
name?
He said, Jacob.
And he said, your name shall no longer
be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have
struggled with God and with men and have
prevailed.
Then Jacob asked, saying, tell me your name,
I pray.
And he said, why is it that you
have asked about my name?
And he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the name of that place
Peniel.
Jacob knew without hearing it.
He called the place Peniel, for I have
seen God face to face and my life
has been preserved.
Is that extreme?
Is that extreme prayer?
Will we begrudge and judge one another because
they perhaps do something that we don't think
is acceptable in devotion to Jesus?
You know, I've asked this question many times.
What is too extreme in light of a
holy God, an eternal hell, an everlasting heaven,
and a lost world right in the middle
of it?
What is too extreme?
When your brother cries out and prays, when
he weeps, when he worships like there's no
tomorrow, is that too extreme?
Rachel, Genesis 30 verse 1.
Back up.
Now here we see Rachel desiring a son.
But she is the perfect picture of the
intercessory prayer, the ministry of intercession.
She recognizes within her the incapacity to bear
fruit, to produce after her own kind.
This breaks her heart, shatters her.
It creates reproach, a shame.
How many of us have that same shame?
Unable to produce fruit.
Are you a fruitful believer?
Where are your works?