Thank you for that precious prayer, Pastor.
Well, this almost feels like anticlimax because this
morning's service and message was so lush, rich.
And I'll be on the same theme.
It'll probably be a complement to this morning's
message.
The two will relate together, essentially the subject
of prayer, but much more than technique or
methodology.
And my text will be Mark chapter 9,
single episode in the life of Jesus.
But I don't know how you are, but
something's happening to me in my old age
as I ponder the so-called single episodes.
Because I see them as having such portent
for the last days.
As if in the Father's wisdom, the Lord
had to walk out something in actuality in
that historical moment, but it is given for
our instruction upon whom the ends of the
age have come.
And it's in that prophetic sense that I
will be commending this chapter to you and
its instruction, which has remarkable eschatological implications for
the last days and the issue of Israel
through the church.
Why could we not cast him out is
a pregnant question raised by the disciples after
their embarrassing failure to deal with this chronic
and persistent evil spirit that had been ravaging
this young boy from his infancy.
They had succeeded elsewhere when he sent them
out by twos, but here they collapsed painfully.
And we have to understand why.
This kind that cometh not out but by
fasting and by prayer.
What is this kind?
Who is this boy?
He's not merely being harassed.
The Father said since his childhood these spirits
are out to destroy him.
So will you excuse me if I use
a prophetic liberty and interpret this boy to
stand symbolically for the nation Israel, which since
its inception has been pursued and hounded and
plagued and harassed, not just to disturb it
by the powers of darkness, but to destroy
it.
And they will have one last shot at
the end of the age, and you had
better be able to cast it out.
So isn't it interesting that chapter 9 begins
with the mount of transfiguration?
You think that is coincidental?
After six days, six being the number of
men, in verse 2 of chapter 9 Jesus
took Peter, James, John and led them up
to a high mountain apart by themselves, and
he was transfigured before them.
That's not my text, but we must make
some reference to that, because what a privilege
to see the Lord transfigured, to catch a
glimpse of what his glory was before he
came down to this earth, and while he
was yet with the Father, and will again
be his when he ascends to the throne.
They caught for a moment that glory which
is always with him, but was concealed.
And Peter was stupefied, they fell on their
faces, and the voice of the Father in
a cloud from heaven said, this is my
son, hear ye him.
And when they got up they saw no
man but Jesus only.
So it's a remarkable episode, but it proceeds
coming down from the mount into a valley.
And so there we have to say, this
is a pattern, this is richly instructive, that
mountaintop experience is not to be retained, you've
got to come down from it.
You can't stay there and languish and enjoy
the remarkable rippling effect of that high spiritual
experience.
It's to prepare you for the valley, but
not to be a thing in itself.
But what did Peter say?
Lord, let us build three booths, one for
you, one for Elijah, one for Moses, because
Jesus was seen communicating both with Elijah and
Moses, and they spoke about his impending death.
It's not only to see Jesus transcendent in
radiant glory, but to see the great prophet
Elijah and the founding father Moses, the two
great pillars of Hebraic faith, conversing with their
Lord about his soon-coming decease.
No wonder they were stupefied and went down
in their faces like dead men.
But the heck of it is this, they
could not retain the vision.
No sooner had they come down and saw
this evil spirit taking this boy, and like
a mad dog with a rag doll in
its teeth, just shaking the living daylights out
of it and throwing him into the fire,
and it terrified them.
It choked their faith.
They stooped, they stupefied.
They could not bring and apply the vision
of the transfigured Lord into the valley of
demonic opposition, hatred, and power.
Dum-da-dum-dum.
And that is the colossal setting of the
issue of the church for the last days.
So it behooves us to study this text
and to draw out from it its instruction.
So in verse 14, when he came to
his disciples, he saw a great multitude about
them and the scribes questioning with them.
And straightaway all the people, when they beheld
him, were greatly amazed and running to him,
saluted him.
And he asked one of the scribes, What
question thee with them?
And one of the multitude answered and said,
Master, I have brought unto thee my son,
which hath a dumb spirit.
And wheresoever he takes him, he tears him,
and he foams and gnashes with his teeth
and pines away.
And I spoke to your disciples that they
should cast him out, and they could not.
He answered him and said, O faithless generation,
how long shall I be with you?
How long shall I suffer you?
Bring him unto me.
This is a remarkable reprimand by Jesus.
O faithless generation, I don't know what it
is that evoked this disparaging, sweeping indictment of
his own disciples and of the generation of
Jews and their unbelief.
How long must I suffer you, but bring
him unto me?
And they brought him unto him, and when
he saw him, the evil spirit, straightaway the
spirit tore him, and he fell on the
ground, wallowed, foaming.
Jesus turned to his father and said, Asked,
How long is it since this has come
unto him?
And he said, Of a child, from his
inception.
And oft times it hath cast him into
the fire and into the waters to destroy
him, not to harass him, to destroy him,
because the evil one is a murderer and
a destroyer.
And what is it about this young boy
that he picks on him?
Why has he all his life long been
a source of torment and has harried him
and thrown him into fire and into water
in every way?
What is it about this one boy that
deserves that kind of attention from the powers
of darkness that are relentless?
Well, because the one boy is Israel, and
Israel must be obliterated, must be destroyed, because
should Israel succeed and come from childhood to
maturity in God and take its place in
his purposes, the powers of darkness are once
and for all forever defeated and done.
Another kingdom has come.
They're finished.
So to avoid that terrible loss of influence
and power and the way in which they
have jerked and manipulated nations, they know where
the problem lies.
And if you get rid of the Jew,
you get rid of the threat of the
kingdom of Israel, for the kingdom to come
is Davidic, and it has to do with
a restored nation whose restoration cannot be permitted.
And the only way to avoid it is
to obliterate.
That's the way that you need to see
the issue of Israel, not the present state
that's only a preliminary in this whole great
drama, but the powers of darkness know better
than you what a restored nation means in
terms of the kingdom that waits their restoration
and the king who will not rule until
they shall say, Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord.
But what if they're not there to say?
What if they're obliterated?
What if to be thrown into the fire
and into the water is not just a
momentary harassment to deform at your mouth, but
to die in those fixations.
What do they call them?
These fits.
That's what the enemy is after.
And what an enemy, powerful in his intention
not to be placated, because even after Jesus
commands him to loose him, thou dumb and
deaf spirit, verse 25, I charge thee come
out of him and enter him no more.
So we can say, if I'm not being
too fancy here, Israel has suffered a deaf
and dumb spirit.
That is to say they've not been able
to hear God and they've not been able
to speak for God.
They've been bound by spirits that have had
opportunity to assail them when the door is
opened through their sin, unbelief, insubordination and rejection
of their Messiah.
But that nation is called both to hear
and to speak.
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is
one.
But their ears are stopped.
Their mouth is stopped.
They can't speak.
And what you see in me is a
foretaste of things to come.
I'm a picture of a restored nation, of
an Israelite in whom is no guile and
fulfilling the calling of God and that of
my fathers to proclaim and to preach and
to speak, to bless the nations in a
priestly way.
So can you imagine a nation of outcasts?
My wife says one is quite enough.
So I charge you in the authority that
is mine, come out of him and enter
him no more.
This is your last harassment.
I'm commanding you that this will not be
permitted you again.
This is once and for all.
This is final deliverance.
Those spirits do not come out easily, and
they want every opportunity to return seven times
more.
And the spirit cried and rent him sore,
shook him and tore him like that dog
with that stuffed doll, and came out of
him, and he was as one dead, insomuch
that many said he is dead.
If he's going to be commanded not to
come back again, and this is his last
opportunity to inflict his satanic, demonic, evil power
upon this hapless child, he's going to really
do a job.
He's not just going to give him one
last kick.
He's going to leave him as dead.
And the fact that people said he is
dead.
He came out, but he didn't come out
willingly.
He came out reluctantly.
He came out taking every last thing he
could from this child's life and leaving him
as a dead cadaver.
It shows how malicious and evil these powers
and spirits of darkness are, that even when
they're commanded to come out, yes, they'll come,
but not without first extracting the uttermost last
iota of suffering and infliction, devastation and death
upon its victim.
So Jesus took him by the hand and
lifted him up, and he arose.
You know what I see in that?
Not just that Jesus delivered him in the
authority and power that was his as the
Son of God, but he resurrected him.
Ultimate deliverance is resurrection, and that's what the
people of Israel must and will experience, not
just deliverance from the harassment of the enemy
that has plagued them since childhood, but resurrection
unto a newness of life.
That's going to require something much more even
than the authority to deliver, is the authority
to raise up a victim apparently dead unto
life.
And what Jesus is depicting in this episode
is a picture of that to which we
are called in the last days when the
nation Israel in the front of our face
will be victimized and attacked and beaten and
thrown into fires and left for dead.
And if we have not the authority of
Jesus to command those spirits to cease and
to lift that flailing nation unto death unto
life, the whole story is over.
Do you realize that the whole epical issue,
the whole remarkable drama of redemption and restoration
of Israel in the last analysis waits on
one question only.
A church corporately that can act as one
in the same power and authority that Jesus
himself exhibited.
That means that we have to be agreed.
We have to be as one.
We have to be in a certain relationship
with the Father as Jesus himself was because
to confront those powers in their spiteful malicious
intention to destroy is going to require of
us an authority and spirituality and a genuineness
in God beyond anything else that could be
asked of us.
And yet the disciples then privileged as they
were and given authority and they went by
twos and they came back with a report,
even the spirits are submitted to us.
But they couldn't handle this one because this
kind, this ultimate kind cometh not out but
by fasting and prayer.
Why could we not cast him out, they
said, because this kind, this ultimate kind requires
an ultimate expression of the authority of God
at the moment of collision and confrontation that
asserts the supreme authority of the invisible God
in the face of the visible powers of
evil.
That's why it's easier to pray for someone
with a sniffle and a cold than someone
who comes in a wheelchair paralyzed when you
feel the virtue go out from you because
the requirement of faith to believe for that
is so much greater than to believe for
someone who has only a cold.
But can you believe for this?
So, here's the way I see it.
In the last analysis what the issue is,
is a collision and a confrontation between two
ultimate realities which is going to prevail.
The apparent visible reality of evil who has
all the marvels, has all the demonstrable strength,
is able at will to pick this boy
up and throw him into fire and to
make him to foam at the mouth and
bring him nigh unto death.
That's terrifying to see the powers of evil
so graphically displayed in a visible way where
the victim foams at the mouth, is beside
himself in paroxysms and fits and is thrown
as a hapless rag into the fire as
dead.
You're going to face that head on?
So what it means is this.
It's not just abracadabra, in the name of
Jesus I command you.
You know what will happen with prayer like
that?
Nothing.
Because it's only a little formula.
Because it's only an easy and glib religious
reflex action to which the powers can say,
Jesus we know and Paul we know, but
who the heck are you?
What do you think that you're intimidating us
because you can say, in the name of
Jesus I command you to come out?
You count nothing with us.
You have no authority.
You're shallow.
You're a counterfeit.
You're a fraud.
You're a play actor.
Jesus we know.
Paul we know.
Their authority is unquestionable.
When they say come out, we come out
that very hour.
But when you say it, what else is
new?
And yet look at the faith of God.
That he's trusting the salvation of his nation
Israel to you.
He's believing that you will be so one
with Jesus, so much in his authority and
love and compassion and mercy, having such an
awareness of the sense of God, that no
matter what physical and visible expression of evil
confronts you, you are not impressed.
You see right through it because your sense
of the true God and his majesty and
glory is greater than the visible demonstration of
evil that is before you.
It's one or the other.
There's a collision of realities, and the issue
is to what degree do you have the
reality of God in his majesty, in his
supreme authority, in his sovereignty, in his power,
his love, his nature, his will.
If you're only correct or shallow or I
don't know what, ordinary, conventional, you'll not be
able to meet that situation.
And it's not a crisis that you'll meet
in the moment.
It's a crisis for which you need now
to be in actual preparation.
That the issue in the last analysis of
Israel's deliverance through a church like Jesus is
the issue of its fasting and prayer.
This kind cometh not out but by fasting
and prayer.
But there's prayer and prayer.
There's unctuous, religious, obligatory, ceremonial prayer that doesn't
bring anything out.
But the prayer that Jesus is speaking about
is ultimate.
It's prayer beyond petition.
It's the kind of prayer that should begin
when we end.
Because we make our petitions to the Lord,
Lord, I need this, Lord, do that, bless
the meeting, bless the speaker, and then we
stop.
That's when we should be beginning.
When Jesus prayed to the Father at Gethsemane
or on mountaintops or in the dark before
the dawn, it wasn't just plying the Father
with petitions.
It was communing with his God.
It's not described to us, but it took
hours.
And it was so important to him, he
could not begin his day until he had
first had this communion with the Father.
Not to receive instruction, but to receive the
Father.
Because when you're in communion, and you're prevailing
in your soul and interceding and praying and
extending something to him out of your deeps,
do you know what he's doing?
He's extending something to you out of his
deeps.
How do you think I got to the
place that I'm enjoying?
Or else I would not be a speaker.
I would not be standing before you.
If there was not a measure of authority,
the reality of God, the ability to be
led by him, the sense of him, because
everything is communicated.
No matter what the subject, the true preacher
is always preaching Christ.
Something of the resonance of God, to the
degree that he has it, to the degree
that he's had that communion, that relationship, that
he's been with him in the fellowship of
his sufferings.
And he knows something about resurrection out of
death, because he himself has been raised on
occasions.
He has a history with God.
He has a sense of God.
And as our pastor confessed at the end
of the first service, he's not satisfied with
his prayer life.
I'm not satisfied with mine.
I'm not satisfied that I have a sense
of God that does him justice.
I don't know him as I ought.
As much as I'm used and God is
circulating me to all these nations, and they're
blessed, I'm not personally satisfied that I have
the sense of him that my soul cherishes
and has not yet obtained.
And you know, dear saints, as I said
in the first service, every power in the
world, the flesh and the devil, will conspire
to keep you from that kind of knowledge.
You try to seek God with all your
heart, not to apply him with petitions because
you need this or want that, or good
grades in school, or a girlfriend, boyfriend, but
for his own sake.
You just want to be in communion.
You want the sense of him.
You want a real love, if not an
adoration, to be generated by some communion with
him and see where it will get you.
You know where it will get you?
The heavens will be his breasts.
Your mind will be drifting.
You'll be looking at your watch.
You'll be thinking of practical things.
It's remarkably demanding to break through the layers
and actualities of this all-too-practical earthly
life to find a place of communion with
a God of heaven.
And most of us have not the incentive.
Most of us have not the Jacob spirit,
as I said this morning, who will not
let him go except that he bless us.
Most of us are slothful, lazy, casual, indifferent.
We get by.
Our prayers are okay.
It satisfies the need of the moment.
Our colleagues are pleased with us.
Nobody is faulting us.
And everyone seems to be in essentially that
situation condition.
So we think it's normative.
But this kind cometh not out but by
fasting and by prayer.
Why fasting?
Is that some technique?
Because fasting is a statement of self-denial.
Fasting is a statement that you mean it,
that you're sincere in your quest for God
and the knowledge of him and to be
used of him for the deliverance of a
nation whose, if its deliverance does not come
from you, will perish.
That's why I can tell you now I
have not eaten since after my arrival.
And I only ate that meal because of
the fellowship and touch base and spirit with
pastor and others involved.
But we have been fasting ever since to
this moment.
And what is that?
No great deal.
But I'll tell you what.
Something in the heavenlies is expressed.
The powers of darkness take into account the
intent and the sincerity of these servants who
demonstrated by their willingness to deny themselves food.
It's not so much that our bodies, as
you can see, are in so great need.
We can easily go on.
But it's psychological hunger.
It's wanting to pacify the annoyance within and
passing all these delicious places and watching as
the cars go by, people picking up their
noodles and you're beginning to salivate.
There's a psychological hunger and a soulishness, a
sensuality over food that needs to be gratified.
After all, when has it been denied last?
It's been fed on schedule.
And if it's not, you'll soon enough know
it.
They'll knock and complain that, hey, get with
it.
You're denying me.
What is my due?
Self-denial is the great heart of the
principle of separation and faith in the key
to power.
That's why Jesus celebrated that woman who poured
that vase of expensive ointment upon his head.
The disciples were indignant.
To what purpose is this waste?
Why, this money could have been used for
pamphlets and religious material and tracts.
Take it easy, you guys.
What this woman has done shall be spoken
of her wheresoever this gospel is preached in
all the earth, for she has done a
good work upon me.
She was lavish and unstinting.
She didn't just screw off the cap and
give me a few drops.
She took a year's wages of an expensive
ointment and broke the vessel and poured the
entire content upon my head that the whole
house was filled with its fragrance.
She was preparing me for burial.
It was an act of lavish love as
only a woman could perform it because we
men are too stingy and too counting the
cost.
And wasn't a spoonful enough?
Couldn't we have an atomizer and a little
spritz?
Not only must you lose the content, must
you break the vessel?
Jesus celebrated that as a good work.
It's the only such acknowledgement he made in
his entire earthly tenure where he can call
any work performed by man good.
That was a good work.
Why?
Because it subsumed and expressed the very genius
of God.
Because he himself was soon to be a
poured-out vessel at the cross of Calvary
and not stinting but giving the whole of
his life and being unto death.
She preceded and gave a resonance of that
which he was to fulfill by something much
more costly than ointment.
Listen, you dear saints.
We are all of us stingy, utilitarian, so
much given for so much desired.
You want this and you're willing to give
that much in exchange for paying that.
But it falls short of the reality of
the kingdom which has not to do with
a measure tit-for-tat, so much given.
That's utilitarian, that's the spirit of the world.
His wisdom is great and other.
It is lavish, it is outpouring, it is
extravagant.
And Watchman Lee rightly says that the principle
of waste is the principle of power.
Praise the Lord for a Chinese oracle.
What hinders thee?
The principle of waste is the principle of
power, the principle of extravagance.
This kind comes not out but by fasting,
by self-denial and by prayer of a
kind that is beyond petition, that is communion,
that is relationship because in that and the
frequency of that which is costly because you
have to get up early and you need
your sleep and you don't want to fall
asleep in class or on the job so
you can only give the Lord a limited
time.
Where's your faith?
To believe that if you'll expend yourself for
him, he'll expend himself for you.
And more will be accomplished in the shortened
hours of that day than if you had
the whole day at your disposal and not
given the Lord a portion and especially a
first portion at the commencement of the day
which he deserves.
In a word, the issue of Israel's survival
and restoration and resurrection is the issue of
the church's devotional life.
Isn't that remarkable?
Not some great dramatic and explosive thing of
her heroism in the last days but the
issue of the consistency day by day and
morning by morning of a devotional relationship with
God that no one sees that is private
and secret at sacrifice because it means early
arising because it means breaking through the handicaps
and the obstacles to prayer and to communion
and especially when you're fasting and your stomach
is rattling.
Jesus was in that relationship.
Bring him to me.
And the powers recognize the evil one that
he is one with whom we cannot counter.
He is absolute in the reality of God
which he brings to bear and the point
of confrontation with us which is his and
the expression of his intimate knowledge of God
the Father.
In that last collision, two realities are budding
head on and which is the greater?
I'm repeating myself.
What is visible, frightening, terrifying?
A man being shaken like a mad dog
and thrown down into the fire and the
victim is foaming at the mouth in a
fit and that has been his experience since
childhood?
Or the invisible, quiet, unobtrusive sense of God
that resonates when you speak the word of
authority in the name of Jesus and say
come out of him and don't enter him
again.
Authority is not a technique.
It's not raising your voice.
It's not turning up the amplifiers.
You have it in proportion to the knowledge
of the reality of God as God and
that's got to be sought in sacrifice and
extravagant love and giving him the choices in
first time of the day before you will
allow yourself to turn to anything and you'll
not feel the benefit.
In fact, the Lord will test you.
He will not give you any empirical sense
that he's even present.
You'll feel like a fool because you're on
the floor and there's a cold draft coming
out under the door and you should be
better off in bed resting and safely and
warm under your covers after all it's a
hard day ahead.
Everything will militate against devotion.
Even the Lord himself will not accommodate you
by giving you a sense of his presence
so as to encourage you but to see
the earnestness of your heart that believes for
his reality even when he's not felt because
there's going to be a moment for you
as the church when you are in the
most excruciating bind of last day's opposition and
persecution unto death when you desperately want the
sense of God's presence as Jesus needed it
at the cross and will have to say
with him my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?
Listen, saints, you're not going to hear this
from anyone else but kid cats.
I'm the only one who knows this, sees
this and speaks this.
I'm the only one at that so-called
prophetic conference where some hot shots came to
tell us how to invoke God's presence through
worship.
You sing these choruses and he's compelled to
come down and so we'll feel his presence
as if we can manipulate him by our
platform exercises.
I got up in my full Hebraic indignation
in priestly authority and said you guys would
be better off if you could teach us
how to be faithful to God not because
we feel his presence but in the absence
of any sense of that presence because that's
going to be our last day's experience.
So start getting with it now and believing
that though you don't feel a presence the
Lord very much appreciates that you've taken time
early to seek him.
And though you think it's vain and the
enemies there say, you fool, you're wasting your
time you should be in bed, you need
your strength, you need your rest you persist
and you're giving the Lord your heart and
you're not happy with your own prayer.
It sounds so inadequate, so lacking in the
kind of dignity and eloquence that God deserves
but it's the best that you're able.
And while you're giving him that best he's
giving you his best and every operation of
devotion something is being imparted to you even
when it's not felt.
So that when you get up at the
last service at Cornerstone Church in Singapore on
April 10th, 2005 which may well be your
last speaking at this church something has got
to be communicated in the authority and power
of God to the measure that you have
obtained that kind of relationship with all of
the unseen private and quiet devotions that have
preceded it.
What I am to you now publicly is
the sum of all that you cannot know
privately but if it were not for that
the privacy of that devotion you would be
getting much less now than what you're getting.
Got the picture?
The issue of Israel's salvation and resurrection is
not your heroism, but your devotion.
Even when there's no tangible, felt appreciation from
the God whom you're seeking and no visible
benefit that you can in any way assess
or measure you still maintain a continuing devotion
before him not because you're in it to
get something though that's the way you've been
till now but because he deserves that devotion
without any payoff for yourself.
If you come for a payoff it's no
longer devotion it's commerce, which you're good at
even too good becoming the great economic power
of the world and reducing my country to
a third rate power so you've been bred
with that that means it's going to take
an extraordinary operation of the cross to break
the power of the utilitarian mentality in which
you have grown up that you expect a
return for an investment God's not an object
of commerce He's the living God, you precious
saints He's the holy one of Israel He's
the creator of heavens and the earth and
all that in it is He's a soon
coming king He's an exalted, crucified, risen and
ascended son He deserves our worship He deserves
our acknowledgement and our seeking and our communion
independent of anything that returns to us as
benefit You've got to break the power of
that utilitarian mentality that expects a return for
so much invested because that's the spirit of
the world and the wisdom of the world
and the mentality of the world and so
long as you're in the world like that
and subscribing to that spirit, that mentality what
are you going to say to the dark
spirits of that same world whose wisdom that
is what authority are you going to have
with them when you're submitting to their wisdom
when your life is contextually in that wisdom
but when you've broken its power when you're
not in it for what you can get
you're fingering and touching the nexus of a
world system ruled over by the prince of
darkness and when it comes to confront his
messengers and his demons you have the authority
to do so because you're independent and free
from their influence and their authority on a
consistent life basis Am I getting too fancy?
Is this too much?
Can you follow this?
There's a struggle, you dear saints a conflict
coming to final consummation over the issue of
a child How long has he suffered this?
Since a child and your disciples could not
cast him out Judaism could not cast him
out Human philosophy, ethics and morality could not
cast him out Bring him to me I've
got the authority I know the father and
my knowledge inwardly of the greatness of my
God eclipses this little mock phony baloney show
that this jerky dark spirit thinks that he's
performing I'm not intimidated by it because my
vision and inward understanding far eclipses anything that
he can dramatically perform Got the picture?
Thank you, Lord May we graduate from prayer
as petition because there it is, it's utilitarian
again We're praying to receive something and God
is gracious to hear those petitions and to
answer them but he's wanting something more prayer
as communion for himself and for his own
sake without any benefit that redounds to you
for the sacrifice of seeking it and the
issue is the ability not just to deliver
but to stretch forth your arm and raise
up one who would otherwise be accounted as
dead So I want to pray for such
a church This is not an appeal to
individual virtuosos This is the church in its
corporateness in its single man brought to the
stature of Christ in agreement, having this kind
of reality inward that has been nurtured, cultivated,
strengthened by the frequency of its relationship with
its God in the spirit and in truth
at sacrifice and early morning risings and inconvenience
So Lord, this is your final word for
me?
Okay We thought that what was going to
be required of us to conclude the age
is apostolic boldness and great courage and the
great exploits that conclude the age It never
once occurred to us that the issue of
the consummation of the age and Israel's deliverance
your coming kingdom and glory is what takes
place privately quietly, unobtrusively secretly, on our knees,
at our beds on a carpet and on
our face as frequently and as often as
we will So I'm asking my God the
spirit of prayer, the spirit of supplication the
spirit of devotion and that in it, progressively
and increasingly we will come to an abiding
sense of yourself because you know how often
I have prayed when I'm speaking in different
places that Lord, I'm asking to bring the
sense of yourself The church needs the sense
of God as God or else we will
make him in our image and he'll become
an errand boy and do our favors and
run our errands we'll make him less than
other than he is invariably, unless we have
a sense of who he is in himself
and Lord, I'm asking that a gift for
this people that you would give increasingly the
sense of God as God holy, majestic, sovereign
all-wise God that we might have a
sense of the transfigured Christ inwardly, and be
able to carry it into the valleys to
which we're called in so great a measure
that whatever the intimidating demonstration of the powers
of darkness we're not at all threatened we
know whom we know and he's the author
and the finisher of our faith, he's the
great creator and king and redeemer and even
these filthy demonic spirits and principalities and powers
of the air were originally his own creation
and even in a certain sense serve his
purposes he's the supreme God and we've got
to know him as that yes, even in
Singapore so Lord, bless this people bless these
young ones give them a heart for this
I know that they want to succeed in
school and grades are so important that they
can go on to university and careers, etc,
etc but give them a faith to believe
that whatever sacrifice they make of their valuable
time in the early morning's day you will
not deny them a blessing to strengthen and
lengthen the hours that do remain and accomplish
more in that than if they had not
sought you because you're a rewarder of them
who diligently seek you but we're not seeking
you for the reward thank you, Lord oh,
make us worshippers in spirit and in truth,
Lord we bless you and thank you for
the privilege you're an all deserving God you're
a great deity you deserve, my God, such
devotion and invest in us some measure of
yourself with each moment of prayer we thank
you and give you praise that this church,
this people will be Israel's deliverer not by
its heroism but by its devotion in Jesus'
name we ask it Amen