Well, I appreciate this opportunity to worship together
with you.
I believe the highest calling we have as
believers is to worship Him and to praise
Him.
That's what we were created for.
We weren't created so that someone later on
could evangelize us.
We were created to worship Him, but because
we made a mess, we had to be
redeemed.
Sometimes on the ship where I lived for
a few years, we spent many hours just
worshiping Him, praising Him.
I'd love to be able to teach you
some of the new songs of worship that
some of our people have written.
And our hearts are just more and more
convinced about this.
In fact, one of the main books I
chose to bring along this evening to mention
to you is a book on this whole
subject of worship.
The most radical book on worship and intercession
that perhaps has been produced in many years.
You may not agree with everything, but I
think you will see something of the significance
of intercession and worship as you read this
book, Destined for the Throne.
You see, the Word of God teaches that
we someday, who are believers, will rule with
Him.
We will rule with Jesus Christ.
Those who suffer for Him will rule with
Him.
And there are many other verses.
So it's been wonderful that you have taken
this time to worship and to praise the
Lord.
It's a very important night for me because
it was 23 years ago tonight that I
came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as
my Savior.
So it's my birthday.
And...
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.
Oh, thank you, that's enough.
But it fits in because I've been asked
to speak on the subject of prayer.
And I came to the Lord because of
an elderly lady who prayed for me for
three years and who interceded for the grammar
school that I was attending for 15 years.
And the whole of OM was born out
of that lady's prayers.
By the way, I'm not the leader of
OM in Europe, that's actually Jonathan McCrosty.
The leader of OM in Britain is Peter
Maiden, who many of you know.
And I'm somewhere in between there or around
there.
My job being the task of fellowshipping with
all the leaders around the world and trying
to figure out what they're doing.
But perhaps I could just begin with my
testimony in order to lay a foundation for
this talk tonight.
And as a testimony of just how God
does answer prayer.
My grandfather was from Glasgow and he was
a drunk.
I hope that doesn't offend any of our
friends from north of the border.
My other grandfather was from the Netherlands, he
was an atheist.
And I was not reared in a Christian
home, I was reared in a very materialistic
home.
Though my parents were good people in some
ways, they didn't know Christ.
I became religious because I was interested in
various things, including the girls that were in
the church.
Became a president of the young people's organization
in the church, but I didn't know Christ.
And this lady began to pray for me.
She had prayed for this school for 15
years, and she not only prayed that people
would be converted in that school, but she
prayed that they would go all over the
world spreading the gospel.
She had an enormous vision, a totally unknown
lady, an enormous vision of the world.
And that was her prayer.
All of her own children, about four or
five, became outstanding and wonderful Christians.
One of them already with the Lord after
serving in the Congo.
Another one, one of the outstanding Christian violinists
in the world today.
So she didn't sacrifice her own family on
the altar of the world mission vision, but
she had both.
And she walked with God and she knew
the reality of prayer.
I went into that grammar school, a rather
wild, materialistic, lustful character, and she targeted it,
zeroed in on me in her praying.
And three years later, at a Billy Graham
meeting in New York City, I surrendered to
Jesus Christ.
People always say, well, that's just emotion.
And there may be someone here tonight that
doesn't know the Lord Jesus and you have
doubts about all this.
Well, you're looking at a doubting Thomas, first
class.
I'm still a doubter.
One thing I know, Jesus Christ radically invaded
my life on that night, changed it, still
changing it.
Twenty-three years later, I hardly think of
that as an emotional experience.
It's a rather long time for one emotion.
To last, especially in someone as unstable as
I am.
God is real and God answers prayer.
The most normal thing for us to do
as Christians and as God's creatures is to
learn how to talk with him.
Just as a son learns how to talk
with his father.
I have three children, one of them 17.
And one of the great joys that I've
had in my experience with my 17 year
old, is we've learned to communicate, to share,
to discuss things, all kinds of things from
masturbation to homosexuality to horses.
He just had one fall on him, by
the way, and broke his leg in two
places.
And this is very meaningful.
It's also very normal.
And so it is with our Heavenly Father.
We can come to him, we can talk
to him, we can share with him.
And prayer is a very practical thing.
It's a very real thing.
It was when I was 18, approximately shortly
after my conversion, just before I went up
to university, as you say here, that I
dedicated my life to prayer.
I never wanted to start an organization.
I was just a nobody.
I didn't have a high IQ.
I had a lot of problems, especially lust,
impatience, pride.
Ten other areas of difficulty.
But God convicted me as a young person
that the first thing in life was to
learn to pray.
So I made this the main priority my
whole life, to learn to pray.
I started nights of prayer with a few
other students.
We started to pray for that high school.
Within the next one year and a half,
200 students in one of the most ungodly,
drunken high schools in the New York City
area surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.
And some of those students are serving Christ
in many parts of the world today.
Also, among other things, OM was born out
of that situation and soon began to spread
until today.
There's about 1,000 plus of us in
OM full time around the world.
Two and two and a half thousand in
the summer.
One lady knew how to pray.
Just think of the possibility tonight.
Some of you will learn how to pray.
Some of you are already learning.
George Mueller, by the end of his life,
had 30,000 answers to prayer.
One man, he was a German, came to
Britain as a missionary to this pagan country.
And still going strong at 80, picked up
some of the British stubbornness and lived a
long life.
Still praying and winning great victories at 80
years of age.
30,000 answers to prayer.
How are you doing?
Specific answers.
He wrote many of them down.
Keep any records?
Answers to prayer.
Some people in their prayers specialize in being
vague, lest they have to be pinned down
on expecting something to actually happen.
And that could be perhaps embarrassing.
Like one lady who prayed after reading the
prayer on faith moving mountains.
She prayed for this mountain near her home
that it would be moved.
She went out to look and she saw
the mountain was still there.
She said to her friend, well, I knew
it wasn't going to move.
Real faith.
Now, before I go any further, I would
like to say a word about the books
in realization that as I speak about books,
I will turn someone off.
There's always someone here in England who doesn't
like salesmanship.
There's always someone in every audience who doesn't
like Americans.
And what to do?
I just so believe in books.
I brought two little cases with me and
so little I couldn't even lift them.
So I'm glad your men met me on
the platform.
But I believe in Christian literature because I
would probably have deserted the Christian faith and
become an agnostic if it wasn't for Christian
books.
I went to a college where every professor
was against the evangelical cause, including the Bible
professor who was totally immersed in this German
higher criticism that our friend Robert referred to.
But somehow through books, I managed to see
there were some other viewpoints.
By the way, probably one of the greatest
problems in Sweden where I've been a few
dozen times, we, by the way, get a
higher number of recruits from Sweden per capita
than we do from the British Isles.
They may not all be university students, but
God is working in Sweden.
Certainly not in the universities as much as
here, but in other ways.
But one of the great weaknesses is a
lack of in-depth literature in the Swedish
language.
And this is something we have in the
English language that we just should be so
grateful to God for.
An unbelievable heritage of Christian literature that can
answer almost any question that you can conceive
of that may come against you in your
faith.
In fact, since I specialize in books, if
you wrote to me on any question, I
probably could recommend at least 10 books on
that subject.
So my life, my Christian life, has greatly
helped through books, and I, therefore, always recommend
books wherever I go.
I want to recommend this book, fitting into
our subject of prayer, Knowing God by J
.I. Packer.
Now, we would tend to think, because this
book is very popular, widely read, that everyone
would have it.
But you see, you have new students in
every year.
New people being converted.
This is one of the most popular books
among students.
So just for my own interest, I'd like
to know how many of you have already
read it, or read half of it.
Raise your hand.
Good.
Still less than 50%.
So there's still room for some of you
to load out your copy of Knowing God
to the poorer student, and to the student
who may happen to be on a grant,
most of you.
You can get a copy at either one
of the book tables.
Knowing God.
And then, if you want to approach this
whole exact same subject from the other side
of the theological fence, you may want to
look at Tozer's book called Knowledge of the
Holy, a book, again, on the attributes of
God.
There's nothing more important than our knowledge of
God, our theology of God himself.
Especially when it comes to prayer.
In fact, our whole Christian life will be
built on the foundation of our knowledge of
God and his attributes.
That's why I strongly recommend both of those
books.
Some people face intellectual problems.
The more traditional Calvinistic approach is that we
should not worry too much about apologetics, especially
for anyone who's unconverted.
But perhaps many of you are not from
that approach.
Even if you are, I'm sure you'll have
an open mind.
But I believe there is a legitimate need
for apologetics, even this kind.
A bit American, some people would say.
But Josh McDowell's book, Evidence Demands a Verdict,
is one of the fastest selling books in
the university scene in Britain today.
Whenever it's available.
And it is almost impossible to keep it
in stock.
This man has led literally thousands and thousands
of university students to Christ, including a fair
number of PhDs and all the rest.
And he's a man you'll want to read.
When you get done with this, he has
more evidence than Demands a Verdict, an equally
large volume.
And he's done a lot of research.
And I think you'll find it a helpful
book.
May not be your approach, but I know
a lot of people who have been helped
through it.
I'm very grateful that soon InterVarsity will be
publishing a book called Eros Defiled.
You can write that down and I hope
you will take notes.
I know as students, you must by Saturday
be tired of taking notes.
But it may be helpful.
But if you write down that book, I
believe it's going to be one of the
most unique books published by InterVarsity here in
Britain.
Eros Defiled, I'm reading it right now.
The best book on the subject of morality
I've ever read.
And I've read about 15 on that subject.
Eros Defiled by John White.
Whole chapter on homosexuality, one of the best.
Whole chapter on masturbation, almost unheard of in
Christian books.
A very good chapter on whether to go
to bed or not just before you're married.
What is marriage?
Do you have to marry the girl that
you have sex with before marriage?
Every conceivable subject is discussed in Eros Defiled.
So I challenge you.
Meanwhile, to prepare for that book, you can
read Roy Hessian's book on the problem of
morals and immorality among Christians.
Subject not too many people want to talk
about.
An aid to deeper repentance of the forgotten
factors of sexual misbehavior.
I'm convinced the number one problem among students
in the Christian unions is their morality.
And I've been 15 years lecturing in the
British universities, in fact, every week for the
last two months.
And a lot of that involves correspondence, some
of which has gone on 15 years.
The only thing I can think of that
gives more difficulty than lust is pride.
I can't think of anything.
Materialism runs a close third.
And for some people, of course, bypasses lust.
With women, I might just adjust my statistic
to say that worry does generally bypass lust,
though they have a gift in the area
of lust as well.
And it usually, together with worry, gets many
of them in difficulty.
I would say many of the reasons, one
of the main reasons students, after three years
in a Christian union, two years later, have
deserted the Christian faith and become agnostics, and
that has happened to hundreds, hundreds of Christian
union students, is because they got this very
high standard that is preached to us in
the evangelical cause.
They tried to keep it, especially tried to
stay moral.
It worked all right when they were, you
know, in the midst of many other Christians
who could encourage them, not always even there.
But when they got out of the little
evangelical hotbed that they were being reared in
and met some of the real women who
are crawling around planet Earth, and men, it
didn't work.
And down they went morally, which wasn't the
greatest problem.
The greatest problem was they didn't know what
to do when they fell.
They were so shattered, their ego was so
broken, their image was so destroyed, it led
them further into depression, discouragement, and then in
some cases to the conviction that Christianity doesn't
work.
Because God didn't keep them from this.
They prayed to be kept from this 488
times, and then they fell and they blamed
it on God.
So I'm very interested in this subject of
morality, and I praise God for this book
by Roy Hesschen, who has dealt with so
many people, including missionaries, the greatest problem on
the mission field.
Perhaps again, next to pride and one or
two other things, would be morality.
Unbelievable.
We're all in it.
Billy Graham says we're a generation of sex
gluttons.
The church may not talk about it much,
but the Bible has over 300 verses on
the subject of sex.
And if we're going to even begin to
speak on the whole counsel of God, we
better get God's sex book open and read
it and find out where we're going and
where we are.
And if we're not living in victory in
this area, Roy Hesschen has the answer.
The cross, Jesus, the lordship of Christ, and
I recommend that book.
I don't generally choose my subject when I
go to the Christian Union, otherwise I would
choose to preach on sex.
Instead, I get chosen to preach on dull
subjects like missions and not really dull, but
it certainly does frighten a lot of people
away.
A great book on Christian leadership is by
Oswald Sanders, the former leader of the OMF.
The present leader is Michael Griffiths.
On Tuesday night, I had my heart challenged
as I listened to Michael Griffiths at the
Thanksgiving service for the 12 missionaries who were
just killed in Thailand.
What a meeting that was.
Before Michael Griffiths had this job, Oswald Sanders
had it, and this is the greatest book
on leadership I've ever read.
I recommend it to you.
We also have our prayer cards.
Some of you have already seen these.
52 of the most needy nations in the
world put on cards that you can carry
in your pocket, use them to redeem the
time, build up a knowledge of these mission
fields.
Some of these countries have no church.
Some of them have no missionaries.
Some of them have no believers, like Mauritania,
no believers.
Libya's a little better, three believers.
Tunisia's climbing high, 14 believers.
Afghanistan's ahead of Tunisia with 18 believers.
That's in the entire population, nationals.
The average Christian doesn't know these things, and
we want Christians to know a little more
about the mission field.
And these cards are being wonderfully used.
Here's Mongolia.
I wonder what the situation is there.
There's four prayer requests on the back of
the card.
There's a map on the front, and then
the basic figures.
There are no known believers in the whole
country of Mongolia among the nationals.
What a challenge.
And we try to distribute these cards together
with these maps of the world to get
people into intelligent prayer.
We're challenging all of our British friends and
Americans, Scandinavians, anybody to take this little map
and to hang it over the front of
their television.
And to spend a little more time interceding
and a little less time breeding poison in
their own minds.
So we hope you'll take one of our
world maps and make use of it.
For everyone who takes a book at either
book table, I won't even tell you which
one's mine.
You might guess.
Not really mine.
But for anyone who buys a book, we
give you a book free.
Either this book or when we run out,
unfortunately, one of my own books.
Not a very good book called Come Live,
Die.
But it's got a lot of good quotations
from other people's books.
I'm not going to be speaking about OM
tonight.
Maybe Peter Maiden has told you something about
that.
But we do have some literature about India,
which is especially on my heart since British
people can go there without a visa and
stay there.
And about Turkey, one of the priority fields
of our work where there are 38 million
people and less than 50 known converted Turks.
And I hope that you will take advantage
of some of this material.
And I have one prayer request, and that's
that you would pray for this second ship
tonight.
She is on her maiden voyage.
If I was honest with you, I could
tell you the bouts I have with fear,
anxiety, and everything else you can think of.
I'm not a man of great faith.
And when I think of this old ship
coming up now into Northern Europe, it's probably
along the coast of Spain, I just tremble.
Because I know that God does allow disasters.
He allowed those 12 missionaries to be killed.
And yet, it seems to me, the last
thing that God would want at present is
for 160 people to be in a disaster
on that ship.
Yet, as we come in these difficult waters
through the Straits of Dover and up to
Brennan, we really would like your prayers.
On the maiden voyage of the MV Dulles,
most people do not even know this ship
has left Genoa.
We bought this ship cash as we don't
believe in borrowing money.
The Lord brought in an answer to prayer
on the 28th of December.
It's a ship that has room for 400
people in cabins, 600 people in her preaching
lounges, and an exhibition on her huge after
deck after we overcover the swimming pool for
three times as many books as we have
on Lagos.
Lagos, by the way, the first ship is
in Calcutta.
They've already sold 200,000 rupees of books
in a massive citywide campaign in that great
nation.
We spoke with them on the telephone this
afternoon just before coming here and they would
appreciate prayer for Calcutta.
We're seeing people come to Christ almost every
day in the open air ministry.
And flocks of people, thousands and thousands are
flocking to the ship.
People are asking in some cases how they
can come to know Christ in this needy
land of India, which is much upon our
hearts.
And then lastly, my own book just published
last month, A Revolution of Love and Balance.
I mention this because I'll probably say some
extreme things that will upset some of you.
Not so much on a message about prayer,
but it is difficult to speak just one
night and this book will help balance out
some of the things I say.
A very interesting little book that has been
on my heart.
Let's just pray before we look into the
word of God.
Not that what I've said isn't part of
the message, all part of it.
Let's pray.
Lord, we need your help.
I need your help.
I feel so inadequate and weak.
I know enough about miscommunication to never preach
again.
And I know enough about all the different
temperaments and types of people that we can
find in an audience like this to just
fall on my face and say, Lord, what
can I do?
Lord, speak to us about prayer.
Speak to us about our own lives.
Don't let our prejudices, don't let my own
personality kinks hinder what you want to say
tonight.
We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.
Now, it's an unusual night.
I even have some notes.
I wrote these down about 20 minutes ago
during one of the announcements because I didn't
want to go astray.
My message is called Foundations for a Prayer
Ministry.
I believe God is calling every believer into
a prayer ministry.
There are many scriptures I would like to
read, but perhaps we could begin in the
book of Matthew.
Some verses that I think are very familiar
to you, starting at Matthew 6, 36.
By the way, that's my favorite worship hymn,
Seek ye first the kingdom of God.
And if we weren't already running a little
over time, I'd have you all sing it.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and
His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you.
Be therefore not anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow
will be anxious for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Then going down to verse 7 in chapter
7.
Ask, and it shall be given you.
Seek, and ye shall find.
Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that
seeketh findeth unto him that knocketh, it shall
be opened.
Or what man is there of you, whom
if his son ask bread, will he give
him a stone?
Or if he asketh fish, will he give
him a serpent?
If ye, then, being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children, how much
more shall your Father, who is in heaven,
give good things to them that ask him?
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye also to
them.
For this is the law and the prophets.
Over to chapter 9.
Last four verses.
Chapter 9, verse 35.
And Jesus went about all the cities and
villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the
gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness
and every disease among the people.
But when he saw the multitudes, he was
moved with compassion on them, because they were
faint and were scattered abroad as sheep having
no shepherd.
Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest
truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth laborers into his
harvest.
How extremely clear.
The ministry of prayer, the ministry of asking
for that which we need, that which the
church needs, that which is the will of
God, the ministry of praying forth laborers out
into the harvest field.
It's very, very clear.
When I was a young Christian, I made
a study on prayer, went through the whole
Bible, marking every verse on the subject of
prayer.
It's a book of prayer.
It's a book about prayer.
It's a book with many prayers.
And yet so often today, this is the
weakest area in our local churches and in
our own lives.
One of the leading Christian magazines some months
ago asked me to write an article.
I'm not a writer.
I can dictate a thousand letters to individuals
easier than write one chapter in a book.
But anyway, I was so concerned about this
subject of prayer that I wrote this article,
What Happened to the Prayer Meeting?
To my amazement, it's being published in magazines
all over the world because Christian leaders are
aware that this is certainly one of the
greatest problems in the church today.
And some churches no longer have a prayer
meeting.
And if they have one, hardly anyone comes.
In my surveys of the Christian unions here
in Britain also, and many executive senior presidents
have expressed this to me that they can't
get the prayer life really the way it
should be.
I hope Sheffield is an exception to that.
Even in some of our big Christian unions,
unbelievably few show up to the prayer meetings.
And this is not right.
A pastor in one of the largest churches
in southern England just went out to minister
in our work in India.
We have about 200 men and women in
India now.
So we find gifted men, pastors, teachers who
can go out and teach the Word of
God.
As our main work is not evangelism, but
it's grounding people in the Word of God,
building them up as disciples.
And we believe that as men grow and
become mature in Christ, that evangelism will flow
spontaneously out from them.
And he came back.
And his greatest burden now in his church
is to make the main meeting in the
church next to his breaking of bread, the
prayer meeting.
And God is moving in that church.
They've sent thousands of pounds out to missions,
even in the past few weeks.
And they're seeing tremendous things happen in their
prayer meeting, where sometimes up to 200 or
300 in Britain are gathering in the prayer
meeting just to intercede.
I believe that we have not begun to
see what God could do in this nation
if we will learn to pray, if we
will learn to persevere in prayer.
There are many great books on this subject.
There are a few actually on the table.
There's one I'll be happy to send to
you as a free gift called Power Through
Prayer by E.M. Bounds.
If I had my literature van with me
tonight, I'd have a lot more books and
I'm ashamed of this little display I have.
But all of our people are in the
midst of a retreat where I was supposed
to be as well.
140 OEMers full time here in Britain are
all down in the Wycliffe Center this weekend.
And so I only have these few books.
But I would like to see that book
go out.
And if you want one, I'll be happy
to send it to you as a free
gift.
Power Through Prayer by E.M. Bounds.
Now, there's a lot that I would like
to say in a sense try to motivate
you to pray.
Telling you illustrations about great men of prayer,
Brainerd and Hudson Taylor and so many others.
Giving some quotations from some of these men,
like Samuel Chadwick, who said the one main
strategy of Satan will be to keep you
from prayer.
And how Satan doesn't fear prayerless study and
prayerless work.
A lot of other prayerless things, but he
trembles.
When we pray.
But to some degree, I'm just not going
to be able to cover everything tonight.
And so I'm going to assume that many
of you want to pray and you want
to learn how to pray and you're hungry
for God.
And that's why you're here tonight.
So I want to share with you what
I call the foundations for a ministry of
prayer, assuming that you want to get started.
And you have to begin somewhere.
By the way, the greatest book on prayer,
perhaps ever written.
Is by a Norwegian, Hallowsby's book on prayer.
And I hope your CU book table will
have many of those, if not tonight, in
the future.
It's another great inner varsity book.
You know, I believe that you're the publishing
group.
Inner varsity connected with the Christian unions is
one of the greatest publishing groups in the
world today.
And it's just a thrill to be able
to distribute their books by the tens of
thousands all over the world.
These books by Michael Green.
You must be joking.
And that great book.
I'm thinking of the one where the man
is on the chair and then he's free.
The cover was designed by a friend of
mine about Jesus.
Jesus spells freedom.
Runaway world.
It's just so tremendous to have these books.
I hope you're using these books in evangelism.
You can have my method of witnessing is
very low profile.
I'm not sort of a hard driving person.
I am on the saints, but not on
the sinners.
My profile of the sinners is very low.
I just sort of talk and feel them
out, see where they are, try to show
some love, maybe carry their bag or do
something and then come in as they ask
questions.
It's a terrific method to witness.
Just get people to ask questions.
One method I do is carry a Christian
sex book and stick it on the top
of my pile.
I have one in my case, this book,
Eros Defiled.
I got an advanced copy.
You just put that, just carry one of
those around the university.
Eros Defiled on the top of your books.
You know, you'll find that people will be
asking questions.
Of course, some of your girls may get
in trouble, but the question method is one
of my favorite methods to get people asking
questions and to share with them the message
of Jesus Christ.
But I want to talk and avoid sidetracks
and talk about some of these foundations for
a prayer ministry.
The first foundation I have is that you
need to make sure that you know Jesus
Christ personally.
Now, that's pretty basic, isn't it?
But there may be someone here tonight.
You're trying to pray.
You're not getting very far.
And one of the reasons, the main reason
is that you've never prayed for your own
life and for your own soul or whatever
terminology you want to use to be saved,
to know God personally, to be converted.
It's not just pagans from the jungles that
need to be converted.
Sophisticated, semi-civilized pagans in America and Britain
need to be converted.
Often in Britain, I have people, not everybody's
as friendly as you all look tonight, who
tell me to go back to where I
came from.
I'm one of those immigrants, of course, the
entire National Front chasing me.
I understand I want to get 400 running
or 500 running in the next election and
somebody else is thinking of putting up the
price.
They feel they won't be able to afford
it.
But as someone who immigrated here 15 years
ago, still, of course, as you can see,
haven't learned the language.
I can tell you I have very seldom
found an Englishman that loves this country as
much as I do.
And one of the curses on Britain today
is a lack of appreciation for your own
country.
You're most of you a bunch of spoiled
people who have lived in one of the
greatest countries too long, who know very little
about living in other places and therefore don't
appreciate what God in his mercy has allowed
you to have in this country.
And I say that with deep feeling because
I believe that God wants to do much
more in this country.
And I believe it's a hindrance to what
God wants to do when there are so
many people running around moaning and complaining and
griping about everything.
I'm always on the trains meeting the British
rail complainers, these, who I can't even describe
some of them.
Most of them have never traveled in any
other train system in any other part of
the world.
I've traveled in 20 train systems in most
countries in the world, apart from South America
and Africa.
But out Asia, India, I've been on almost
every main line in India.
And I tell you, British rail is heaven.
That would be, of course, slight American exaggeration.
So there may be someone here who's never
been born again.
You've never been converted and of course you
can't pray.
God will not hear you.
Now, I've heard exceptions to that.
Some unconverted person felt that God heard his
prayer.
It could be in the process of bringing
that man to himself.
I would not say God can never hear
and answer the prayer of a sinner.
But step one is to know that you're
converted.
We have that great verse in 1 John,
I think it's chapter 5, where it says
we should know.
These things are written that ye may know
that ye have eternal life.
Isn't that great?
It's great to know where we're going.
I wouldn't want to go to sleep tonight
without knowing that I am going to be
with God.
Now, I am not a person of great
faith.
I don't pretend to understand heaven.
I'm not a person sort of yearning to
die.
At this stage of my Christian maturity and
I have a long way to go, I've
learned yearning to live as long as I
can, especially if I can stay in Britain
and travel through the Welsh mountains and the
Scottish mountains and go rock climbing in the
devil's kitchen and all kinds of other experiences
I've had.
But I know that that's not God's way.
I know that I have to grow in
faith and be able to say, I can't
say it yet, as Paul said, to live
as Christ and to die as Cain.
Well, actually, I can say it.
I especially said it a lot as a
young Christian.
Until I got a few close calls with
death.
Then I started to play a different tune.
And then I got married.
And I don't want to leave her.
It's just getting exciting.
18 years marriage.
We were, you know, I'm a very slow
learner in that area.
And it's just getting so wonderful.
And to me, life is tremendous.
And that can be a problem.
It's people who suffer and people who have
been constantly hazarding their lives for the sake
of the gospel and people who have been
through all the agony that this life can
be that often begin to just pine to
be with God.
And I met people like that.
And that's my goal.
But it is good, even though my faith
in heaven and understanding of it is small.
I have that great assurance.
That's where I'm going.
Someone once helped me by saying that heaven
is just being with God.
And if you have a lot of trouble
with that, don't read six books on the
subject of heaven.
Just by faith.
Take it.
You're going to be with God.
He will know how to handle you.
Do you think God will know how to
handle you when you get there?
I think so.
And it's wonderful to know that when we
die, we're going to be with God.
Some of my closest friends have been killed
already.
And I had to speak at their funeral.
I tell you, if there's anything that ever
shook me in my life was speaking at
the funeral of two or three of my
closest friends.
And yet we know heaven is real.
You don't talk about death in our society.
It's one of the no-nos.
The no-no years ago used to be
sex.
Now the no-no is death.
People don't want to talk about it.
And yet people go and sit through every
kind of wild film watching people killed by
the dozens in the films now.
Something about that, isn't there?
Number two is if we're going to lay
a foundation for our prayer ministry, we have
to become strong in the Word of God.
I've discovered in most Christian unions, less than
10% are memorizing the Word of God.
To me, that's just basic.
Within months after becoming a believer, I was
just a toddler falling all over the place.
I learned that I must memorize Scripture, get
it into my heart, get it into my
mind.
This is not just for the navigators.
It's for everybody.
The psalmist said, I have hid my word
in my heart that I might not sin
against you.
And I found that so many of my
problems began to get rectified through the memorization,
the meditation of the Word of God.
Terrific lust problem that I had.
I was peddling pornography at 16.
My mind was as crooked as a snake
falling off a canyon.
And I wondered, was there any hope for
me?
You know, we always have these wonderful testimonies
of wicked things we did before we were
saved.
But sometimes it's not so interesting for the
saints to hear some of the crazy things
we do after we're saved.
Like leading a girl to Christ and ending
up almost in bed with her on the
same night and discovering that she actually fell
more in love with me than Jesus and
the whole thing became one utter miserable mess.
And I thought the whole thing was a
wonderful answer to prayer, at least in the
beginning stage.
Endless messed up situations I got into as
a young Christian.
And I wondered, is there any hope for
me?
I wonder if any of you, you know,
I know I can't relate to all of
you, but hopefully someone may be here that
can relate.
Have God in any messes in your Christian
life along this line and wondered whether there
was any hope for you?
Well, there is.
There's hope for the hopeless.
And I believe one of the keys to
coming into greater victory, to dealing with lust
or whatever other problem you have is intensive
meditation and memorizing the Word of God.
And that will lay the foundation you need
for prayer.
By the way, prayer plays a major part
in this because we have to learn to
resist the devil.
I'm reading Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's book on
the Christian Warfare's exposition on Ephesians 6, one
of the best books ever put in print.
The best book put in print, in my
view, by the way, in the past 50
years in the British Isles is Spiritual Depression
by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
And if you don't have a copy, I'll
be happy to send you one as a
gift.
We're just publishing, co-publishing a new edition
with Pickering and Inglis of that book.
Incredible book, should be read by everybody.
And some people say, well, he's too Calvinistic
for me.
By the way, if you think he's too
Calvinistic for you, you might realize that he
introduced A.
W.
Tozer into the British Isles and A.
W.
Tozer's Armenian.
It's interesting how we sometimes get caught up
in our little denominational viewpoints.
I like people who are a little open
-minded.
I was preaching to a group of 100
pastors in London, and one of these types
of pastors stood up and said, now, I
want to know, young man, are you a
Calvinist?
I was talking about having evangelism in London.
And I said, look, I just want to
assure you that I am a Calvinist.
And a big smile.
I am an Arminianized Calvinist.
Hallelujah.
Would you be seated?
And I went on to give my message.
But it's a challenge to be able to
read books from different sides of the theological
fence.
But no matter what side you come from,
you've got to get into God's Word.
And I would challenge you, what a joy
it would be if a few people tonight
would say, from now on, I'm going to
memorize God's Word.
It's basic.
It's biblical.
A young man is making the greatest impact
in North America right now of any man
apart from Billy Graham.
His name is Bill Gothard.
He'll have 54 seminars this year.
Every seminar will have over 15,000 people,
some of them 20, 30,000 people sitting
for a week.
He's developed the most elaborate Bible
study method to deal with people's real problems
that any man I've ever heard of.
I went through one of those seminars.
Bill Gothard's whole testimony, the radical change that
took place in his life, goes back to
basically learning how to memorize and meditate for
your prayer ministry.
Third, we've got to get to know reality
in disciplined living.
1 Corinthians chapter 9, we have a word
from Paul, the theologian.
Now, you can imagine what this probably one
of the greatest theologians of all time had
to say.
You know what he said?
I buffet my body and bring it into
subjection, lest after preaching to others, I become
a reprobate.
How do you like that for theology?
No wonder a very high percentage of our
theologians get wiped out either by immorality or
by liberalism or by something else.
The great problem among theologians is not really
objective theological problems.
That is true in some cases.
The greater problem is how to live it.
And if you don't live it, if it
isn't reality, the natural thing is to seek
a theology that is going to be more
in line with your sin and more in
line with your life.
And I've counseled and written and been in
contact with endless people in that category.
And I think the missing link in our
theology and in much of our living is
discipline.
Billy Graham speaking to 9,000 students at
the Inner Varsity Convention many years ago, I've
heard the tape 15 times.
He said, if you're not willing to discipline
your life, forget it, you'll never live for
Christ.
You just never will.
You may get a lot of other things.
There's a great emphasis on worship right now
in Britain, at least certain kinds of worship.
I'm not against that.
But I want to tell you, if you
build a life of worship without a foundation
of discipline, you will become another immoral worshiper.
And some of the men who have gone
to the highest levels of worship have gone
to the lowest levels, even living with three
or four women all at the same time.
You've got to have all the truths.
And whatever truth you have, it's got to
be built on a disciplined life.
Learning how to say no to the impulses
of instinct.
People are surprised what happened to the children
of God cult.
It never surprised me.
I knew that was going to happen five
years before it happened.
I confronted them about it.
I remember going to a man and the
children of God and saying, look, what's all
this hugging and kissing going on?
Of course, they were praising Jesus the whole
time.
Jesus, Jesus, you know, kissing and hugging sometimes
three, four or five minutes.
And you know what the leader of the
cog said to me?
He said, we are learning that in Jesus
Christ, there's neither male nor female.
And now we see them actually sending their
women into the streets as so-called Christian
prostitutes to bring men to God.
That is hit television in this country and
newspaper, though it actually started over a year
ago.
Unbelievable.
I saw a picture in their literature of
girls nailed on the cross next to Christ,
completely naked with the nails through their most
intimate part.
As an indication, this is their own literature
that this is the highest calling of a
girl to God is to give her body.
To any man in order to bring him
to God.
And some of these girls doing this are
absolutely sincere.
Some of you don't think there's a real
devil.
Who do you think gets all this kind
of madness going in the world today?
And history has shown that the sex emotion
and the religious emotion run very, very close.
And the only thing that will separate it
for many people is a disciplined mind.
And there's no purpose in talking about prayer
unless firstly, we're willing to talk about discipline.
This is why most people don't come to
prayer meetings because it's hard.
Hallowsby in his book on prayer says prayer
is work.
And I'm convinced we're being deceived in a
massive way, away from disciplined living.
Paul said, I buffet my body.
I bring it into subjection.
Lest after preaching to others, I become a
reprobate.
Jesus said again and again, if any man
will come after me, let him deny himself,
take up a cross daily and follow me.
Sure it's hard and there will be failure
and there is provision for failure.
That in itself is the greatest discipline.
It's the discipline of repentance.
It's to immediately repent when failure comes in,
to immediately repent when sin comes in and
not allow the devil to drag you into
depression or discouragement or self-pity.
Which is one of the more subtle forms
of self-love.
Now I find a lot of Christians that
I get involved in counseling, especially through the
post, engage in a lot of self-pity
without realizing it, it's a subtle form of
self-love.
And we have our little evangelical purgatory.
We sin, we do something really wrong and
we're unable to bounce back immediately.
We feel several weeks have to go by
until, you know, it's a past memory.
And we need to learn to deal with
sin instantly.
I'll never forget Roy Hession speaking at one
of our conferences years ago.
He said, if you've committed a particular sin
even 10 times, if you have repented of
it, it's under the blood, it's gone.
Don't go out into the cemetery and dig
up all the dirty old bones.
Operation introspection.
And he said this, if you commit that
same sin again tomorrow, as far as God
is concerned, it's the first time in history
you've ever committed it.
So that's all you have to deal with.
That's not so hard, is it?
But what happens?
Because people tend to allow the past to
destroy their spiritual life.
When they sin, they think of all the
past.
And of course, that becomes very, very depressing.
And then the fourth foundation for this ministry
of intercession is we need a vision.
Without a vision, the people perish, it says.
We need a vision.
And that vision needs to be coupled with
initiative.
We don't need to, for example, just go
to organized prayer meetings.
We can have spontaneous prayer meetings in our
own room.
Sometimes I go out for a walk with
a brother.
And as we're walking through the woods, I
just start to talk with God.
Sometimes people get a bit frightened that they
usually come back.
But why not?
Why can't we just talk to God as
we're walking, as we're driving?
I'm often driving with someone.
And I just start to talk to the
Lord as I'm sitting there.
Of course, if I'm driving myself, I usually
keep my eyes open.
This is advisable.
But this idea that we always have to
kneel or we have to get some kind
of a holy aroma around us before we
can pray, I believe is false.
We need initiative in prayer.
But none of this is going to work
until we have a vision.
A vision of what God can do through
you, through us as a body.
A vision of some of these countries we've
been talking about today.
A vision of the fact that one half
of the world has never once heard the
gospel.
I tell you, when that began to sink
into my soul at 18 years of age,
I was never the same again.
A lot of the things of the world
very much attracted me.
But when God gave me a vision of
His world, and the way I could fit
into it, most of those things, in fact,
to a large degree, all of them, they
dropped off.
For example, I was a fanatic rock and
roll dancer.
Dancing was in me as deep as anything.
If I couldn't find a woman, I'd dance
with a broom.
I would dance all night before I was
converted.
And after I was converted, I didn't drop
this.
I even argued with people.
I'm talking about ballroom dancing and rock and
roll.
I was just coming out of the jitterbug
era, which really dates me.
And I thought, I never can give this
up.
And I found this vibe, this verse in
the Psalms about dancing.
And I pushed that down some of my
Bible-believing friends' throats as a young convert.
One time I was dancing at a wedding
reception, my sister's wedding reception.
They wanted me to put on an exhibition.
And I did.
And yet I felt wrong about it that
night.
And I went out into the woods to
pray near this bar where this reception was.
And I said, Lord, you know how I
love this dancing.
And my whole body is injected with music.
I can never stop this unless you give
me something better.
And I went back toward the bar.
My grandfather was an atheist, came out, and
he was upset about something, came out of
the reception.
He sat in the car.
And for the first time, I shared with
my Dutch atheist grandfather, Jesus Christ.
And it clicked, there's something better.
Sharing Jesus Christ every possible minute.
And then I got involved in literature evangelism.
And then I got involved in training and
mobilizing other people and going off to Mexico.
And I never did dance, at least in
that style, again.
You know, you'll never get rid of some
of your worldly habits until you fall in
love with Jesus and get involved in His
work and in something that is better.
Our life is not a consistent, it does
not consist of 19 things we cannot do.
But it consists of dozens of things we
can do.
David Wilkerson said, the greatest sin of young
people is wasting time.
And I'm convinced it's true.
And oftentimes, as we live for Christ, the
enemy of the best is often the good.
So many good things we have in our
life.
Some of them are going to have to
go out the window if we're going to
get into the best.
And the best is prayer.
You do have time for the prayer meeting
if you want to pray.
It will not hinder your studies.
Many of our men, when they got involved
in a prayer ministry, their grades at university
went higher.
Not always, because in some cases, people shouldn't
even be in university.
They're only there.
Many of them don't even know why they're
there.
And sometimes, God has led people when they
got involved in depth prayer ministry, even out
of university, into something else.
I'm convinced the foundation has got to be
laid.
And then fifth, we've got to lay a
foundation of patience and balance.
We shall reap if we faint not, it
says in Galatians.
Whatever you do in prayer, you must not
be discouraged.
One of my main prayer targets is the
land of Turkey.
Ninety percent of my prayers for Turkey are
unanswered.
And I've been praying 19 years, steady for
Turkey, thrusting out every year new labors to
Turkey, many of them a direct result of
prayer.
That's part of the prayer that has been
answered.
But the prayer for Turkish churches, the prayer
for more Turkish believers, perhaps the toughest nation
in the world next to Albania and Afghanistan
and Mongolia.
Only a little has been answered.
But I believe in perseverance.
What is 19 years with God?
It seems a lot to me.
Nothing with God.
He's testing me.
And God's going to test you in some
areas.
And we've got to knock and keep on
knocking and ask and keep on asking.
That's what it says in the word of
God.
We have the story of the importunate man.
And this is key, persevering prayer.
And that means a foundation for prayer is
patience and balance.
One of my favorite books, and we're just
publishing a new edition, is called No Easy
Answers.
I can't tell you how much that book
has helped me.
Because I was trying to find total answers
to everything.
I probably read more books than you'd ever
imagine, looking for all the answers.
And this little lady comes along, Eugenia Price,
one of my favorite authors.
And I tell you, it takes a woman
to get through a stubborn Dutchman.
And she just zeroed in on me and
cut me to pieces and showed me up
for the many things in my life, especially
lack of love, lack of balance, lack of
freedom.
And that little book, No Easy Answers, originally
called No Pat Answers.
There are some things when we get into
these heavy realms of prayer that are mysteries.
The whole area of suffering, the whole area
of unanswered prayer.
Why do we try to manufacture so many
little answers when sometimes these things have to
be left with God?
I've had to leave some things in my
Christian life with God and move on by
faith.
The man of God once said, that great
faith is not made in the absence of
fear, but it's made as we battle through
fear, often daily, to a position of faith.
Some of you find unbelief the big giant
in your Christian life.
You're not alone.
It's only normal, especially when we're studying at
university, especially if you're studying philosophy or theology,
to have every kind of wild dart of
unbelief thrown at your mind.
I once talked to a brilliant PhD from
Princeton who studied mainly under liberal theologians and
men who just love to destroy your faith.
And I said, how did you come out
of there preaching the blood of Christ in
a great Presbyterian church?
Do you know what he told me?
This Presbyterian on fire for God minister.
He said two hours every morning on my
knees.
You see, we're in a spiritual warfare and
we cannot go into enemy territory with our
own little tin armor in our own little
evangelical pop guns.
We've got to go in as soldiers wearing
the armor of God.
And if you're going to study theology in
a liberal cemetery or seminary, you're going to
have to wear.
You're going to have to wear the armor
of God.
And the reason many men have had their
faith blown out of them is they never
learned to pray.
They learned to think and they didn't learn
to pray.
And they, as Watchman Nee would explain, and
I don't agree with everything he says, they're
trying to use their soul instead of their
spirit to accomplish God's purposes.
And of course, the mind is natural and
it will go toward unbelief.
A foundation of balance and patience is essential.
And number six, a foundation of true obedience.
One of my favorite choruses, trust and obey.
There's no other way.
We've tried, haven't we?
Many other ways.
There's no other way.
Jesus said, if you love me, feel my
feelings.
Have you read that in your Bible?
By the way, I've discovered less than 10
% of the students in the Christian unions
I've been to, and a lot of them
lately, have ever read the Bible through once.
Let's take a survey.
Can we have your permission to take a
survey?
Thank you.
How many of you have read the whole
Bible through at least once, Genesis through Revelation?
Raise your hand.
That's better than the average Christian.
It looks like about 15%, including your president.
Boy, you are lucky.
No, I don't hold that against you.
I know it takes time.
You're trying to read 50 other books, get
through university and survive.
It's rough, and there's a lot of pressure.
But I would just commend you to that.
Just take, you know, it is the Word
of God.
What if God sent you a letter?
Would you read it?
There it is.
God's love letter.
Start in Genesis, go through Revelation.
There'll be things you don't understand.
You don't expect to read a great letter
from an omnipotent God poured through human vessels
and understand it all at the first reading.
But I'm convinced that's an important way to
grow in Christ.
And that will lead you to a deeper
obedience and the Lordship of Christ and the
cross of Christ.
We cannot separate basic spirituality from your ministry
of prayer.
They're together.
And prayer is often the thermometer.
Prayer is often the thermometer of where you
are spiritually.
There'll be setbacks.
There'll be failures.
I remember one day going out for a
night of prayer alone.
I had quite a few nights of prayer
with groups, you know, while keeping each other
awake.
I was going to go out to Spain
when I first lived there in 1916.
For a night of prayer alone, I took
a little piece of bread that I was
going to fast and eat that in the
morning.
I was praying away.
I lasted about three hours, fell completely asleep.
Woke up because it was warm in the
daytime in Spain and cold at night.
And I woke up shivering.
And I said, boy, it's time to eat.
I reached for that bread.
It was gone.
Obviously, some animal had come along and sniffed
me and decided the bread was better.
And I tell you, I was scared.
I left and went back home.
And I felt like a terrific failure.
Failure is often the back door to success.
And you are looking at it.
Failure.
Some of you have heard of my good
friend, Brother Andrew, God smuggler.
You're looking face to face with God's bungler.
I'm not kidding.
I went to the Soviet Union about the
same time he did.
I had these great plans.
Within three days, the secret police had me.
Due to my own stupidity.
And God showed me a lot of things
through that.
In fact, O.M. partly was born out
of it.
The present state or way that O.M.
is today was born out of that failure
because coming back from there, I was so
shaken.
What happened?
You know, all my prayers and they took
my printing press and they almost took the
car.
I went into a day of prayer in
the mountains of Germany and I climbed this
tree.
I love to climb.
And I climbed this tree and I was
praising God on the top of this tree
is one of the places I can sing
and not bother anybody.
And it was there on the top of
this tree in southern Germany.
God brought me these words, operation, mobilization.
And the burden was to see Europeans evangelizing
Western Europe first and then let if they
matured and if I matured, let it spill
over into those communist countries.
And that's happened.
And God oftentimes brings success through failure.
Don't be afraid of failure.
Don't be afraid to fail exam.
Try your best, committed to God.
I've seen people get so uptight in university
over these past 15 years.
They've actually hindered their mind.
One of the most brilliant mathematicians that I
know graduated from one of your universities within
one year.
He was gone mentally.
He was gone.
Never got back straight again.
You're not meant to be a study machine.
You've got to experience wholeness.
There's got to be relaxation.
There's got to be the Lord in prayer.
There's got to be fellowship.
There's got to be sharing.
I find many people don't really share.
They got everything bottled up.
They got a sex problem.
Can't talk about that.
And they got this jealousy or this problem.
They pretend they're living up here.
In fact, they're down here.
They wonder why their prayers are hindered.
And I believe that one of the ways
we lay a foundation for prayer is fellowship,
sharing.
Fellowship isn't all marching into a church, sitting
down there, singing the same hymns and marching
out and have a big meal.
It's getting to know each other personally.
That's why small groups, one of the fastest
growing phenomenas in the whole Christian world today.
And being honest and praying together that you
may be healed.
What a terrific value.
Have at least...
What a wonderful fellowship you're in.
And I've heard some very good things about
your Christian union.
That's the truth.
And I hope you will take advantage of
this fellowship, every one of you, to have
at least one person you can share with.
That could revolutionize your prayer life.
And then lastly, the last foundation, steadfast in
faith.
Ephesians 6, put on the whole armor of
God, the shield of faith, wherewith you can
stop all the fiery darts of the devil.
And there'll be many of them.
The fiery dart of unbelief, shield of faith.
The fiery dart of pride, shield of faith.
The fiery dart of failure, we've already talked
about that.
The shield of faith, faith that claims the
sovereignty of God.
That's really my greatest doctrine, grace in the
sovereignty of God.
And without that, I would have been finished.
Many people think of O.M. as a
successful movement.
They think of me as a successful leader.
It's not true.
My life is one big series of disappointments,
failures.
Sure, there have been successes and God in
his sovereignty has done much.
But with my, the way I view things
and with the idealism that I had when
I was about your age, it's been disappointment,
failure, setbacks, but never, never did God fail.
God is God.
God is our God.
And God wants to commune with you.
These books can follow up on what I've
said, especially this book, Destined for the Throne.
There are many other books on prayer.
And I feel led to close here and
recommend them to you, especially this one.
As you read from Genesis to Revelation, memorizing
as you go, underline the books on prayer
and my visit will have been well spent.
And I hope some of you, perhaps after
some time, will write to me and say,
as a result of this visit, I began
to pray more.
I learned more about prayer.
If you have some trouble, you have some
question, I'll be happy to correspond.
The only reason I can take these Christian
Union meetings, this is not my main ministry,
is because I get more letters done on
the train than I do in my office.
I did at least 30, 40 letters between
London and Sheffield.
And I just find situations like this very
hard.
Now after the meeting, there's so many people
I'd like to talk to.
And many times people are not relaxed when
they first meet me.
And there's other emotions with so many people
around.
But when you can sit down quietly alone
and read a man's letter and then answer
it, you can begin to build some of
the most meaningful relationships you can ever have.
And then later on, you often do me.
And that's even more meaningful.
May God make you a man, a woman
of prayer.
It's not just for a few spiritual supermen.
It's for the ordinary, weak, trembling, little of
faith people.
It's for that elderly lady who began this
movement through her prayers.
And I tell you, Sheffield is not yet
seen.
This university is not yet seen.
This country is not yet seen.
What a group of praying men and women
on this foundation could do for the kingdom
of God.
Let's pray.
Lord, you know, each one of our hearts.
You know that we can, if we want
to, bring forth our excuses and defend ourselves.
But we know that won't get us anywhere.
And we yearn to come to your cross
in repentance and brokenness for the sin of
prayerlessness, for falling into the traps of the
devil in this area of unbelief or lust
or pride or undisciplined living through living my
feelings instead of my faith, through building on
sand instead of on rock.
And we would pray that, oh God, by
your spirit, you would touch our hearts and
draw us into your closet of prayer.
And we may learn to persevere through prayer
and through the failures that will come as
we join your school of prayer.
We pray that you would send out laborers.
God, you know the need in Europe.
You know the University of Paris with more
students than all the universities in the whole
of England and less in the Christian Union
than we'd find in the front section of
this one room in that great university.
And what can we say of Milan and
Rome and Madrid and Barcelona and Leon and
Zurich and Geneva and Vienna and communist countries.
Lord, send out laborers.
Send many right out of this very room.
We have come here to consider mission and
we know the foundation is holy living and
prayer.
And we believe that it shall be and
it will be.
And we know there will come results as
a result of our time together here seeking
your face.
Lord, you know each one individually.
Minister to us now.
Show us what book we should be reading.
Show us what plan we should have for
your word.
That we may have reality and not just
ritual.
That we may have revival and revolution and
reformation in our lives, in our churches, and
in this fellowship.
Through Jesus Christ we pray.
Amen.