It's a real joy to be here at
the Praise Gathering.
And I want to talk for a few
moments about something so vital, and yet it's
so simple.
It's so familiar to us that that's the
danger.
I want our session this morning to be
something that will make a difference in our
lives rather than just some kind of talk
with more information about God.
I pray that by His grace we can
have fresh communion with God.
To approach that subject, I want to give
you one of the most strange and stunning
pictures of Jesus found anywhere in the Bible.
Of all the portraits you've ever seen painted,
there is no portrait found in the Bible
stranger.
We see Christ on the cross.
We know Christ as the Good Shepherd.
We know Christ walking on the water.
We see Christ sitting at the well with
a woman in Samaria.
But in your wildest dreams, can you ever
picture this?
Have you ever wondered why God would put
this in the Bible, not just once, but
twice?
And so they came to Jerusalem, and Jesus
went into the temple and began to drive
out those who bought and sold in the
temple.
And He overturned the tables of the money
changers and the seats of those who sold
doves, and He would not allow anyone to
carry wares through the temple.
And then He taught them, saying, Is it
not written, My house shall be called a
house of prayer for all nations?
But you have made it a den of
thieves.
And the scribes and the chief priests heard
it and sought how they might destroy Him,
for they feared Him, because all the people
were astonished at His teaching.
And when evening had come, He went out
of the city.
Now, the Bible has many pictures of Jesus
Christ, and to me, none is stranger.
The Lamb of God, the One who came
to take away the sins of the world,
the gentle, loving Jesus, who, as the Good
Shepherd, puts the Lamb on His shoulders and
brings it home.
And yet, in this portion of Scripture, we
see Jesus physically emoting in a way that
is really hard for us to picture.
That He would actually take tables and overturn
them and throw money on the ground, that
He somehow, all by Himself, with no armed
helpers, the disciples were passive in this, that
He would stop people from carrying their merchandise,
and just by a word of authority said,
Get out of here with that!
You can't bring that through the court!
And that He would go to the people
who sold the oxen and the sheep and
the doves for the poor people, and He
would say, Out!
Get your business out of here!
I mean, it's an amazing picture of Jesus
Christ.
The loving Jesus that we know, you know,
we think that for Him, anybody to be
that irate and physical must mean they're not
in the Spirit.
But this is Jesus Christ.
And what's strange about this is this is
not the first time this has happened.
I read from Mark, and the Bible tells
us, in John the second chapter, that in
Jesus' first visit to the temple after He
began His public ministry when He was about
30 years old, He did the same exact
thing.
In fact, the Bible tells us there that
He made, are you ready?
A whip out of cords.
And use a cord, these cords and this
whip to actually physically thrash them out of
the temple.
Now it's three years, two years later from
there, and now He's getting ready to face
Calvary, and He comes back to the temple,
and He cleanses it again.
Why would God put something so stunning in
the Bible that He would go into the
holy temple of God and get so physical
and so irate and say, you've made it
a house of merchandise, you've made it a
den of thieves, get out of here.
Is it not written, my Father's house shall
be called the house of prayer?
Now what's odd about all of this is
that the people who were in there belong
there.
The people who were selling the animals had
to be near the temple precincts because there
was no way to offer the sacrifices prescribed
in Leviticus and the books of Moses unless
somebody could have those animals available for you.
You couldn't be carting these animals from your
home or all through the streets of Jerusalem.
So those people belong there.
But they had put a gouging uplift on
the price.
They were making money hand over fist, taking
advantage of the fact that they were the
ones who could assist, and they were hiking
the prices up so that people were getting
taken advantage of.
And the money changers, you know, you had
to pay the temple tax if you were
a good Jew, and you couldn't use Greek
or Roman money.
You had to actually use the special coins
that were minted in Jerusalem itself.
So those money changers were there to take
your money from wherever you came from, Macedonia
or whatever, and you changed your money so
that you could make the proper donation.
But they were, once again, tacking on big
-time profit.
And the people carrying stuff through the temple,
actually the writers of that time tell us
that instead of going around the temple, they
said, let's take a shortcut.
And they went through the court of the
Gentiles, right through the temple, carting their stuff,
making the house of God a shortcut to
big-time money.
And Jesus, with his whip made of cords,
and Jesus somehow physically, with just his presence
and his authority, just thrashes them out of
there and kicks them all out.
Before I get to my main point, it
does remind us that all of us who
are involved in singing in choirs and preaching
the gospel and pastoring churches and gospel singing,
whatever the style is, and you who are
Sunday school teachers, because I know there's a
lot of influence in this room right now,
you're going to go back, a lot of
you are leaders in the place where you
came from.
Boy, does that challenge us to remember that
it's not just not if you're doing God's
work, it's how you do God's work.
For the Bible tells us that one day
Jim Simba is going to stand at the
judgment seat of Christ and God's going to
ask me why I pastored the Brooklyn Tabernacle
and with what spirit.
You see, these people were in the temple,
but they didn't have the spirit of the
temple.
They were supposed to be there to assist
people to worship and to come into God's
presence and they were there, but they were
out of sync with the whole purpose that
God had for the place called the house
of the Lord.
I mean, they were doing it, they were
doing the job, but they were making big
-time money and they were greedy and they
had brought a secular spirit into a sacred
place.
They were businessmen, they were crass businessmen coming
into something that God said, my house shall
be called a house of prayer.
You made it a den of thieves, you're
getting over on the people, out with you.
Awesome thought.
And in a day when gospel music and
gospel preaching and gospel work can become so
mechanical or oriented toward me, myself and I,
it reminds all of us today here at
the praise gathering that as we go back
to our separate duties that we have to
do God's work with God's spirit.
We have to do God's work and approach
it with God's heart because one day, it
doesn't matter if your friends approve of you,
it doesn't matter how many albums you sell
or how popular Jim Simbler is or if
he writes a book, one day the Bible
says, I'm going to stand in front of
the one whose eyes are like fire and
I can't get over on him.
All of you that sing in that choir,
it's not just if you're on your note,
it's why you're on your note.
It's the spirit that you do in it.
Am I doing it for the glory of
God?
Do I really care about those people in
New York City?
I mean, am I preaching just to put
on a show and get through another service
or does my heart really radiate with God's
love and am I saying the things that
he wants me to say with the spirit
he wants me to say them in?
Why are you teaching that Christian ed class,
that Sunday school class?
Why are you singing in that choir?
Why do you serve?
The Bible says that when Jesus went into
the temple, he reminded them, this is not
your house, this is my father's house.
And my father's house has to be run
my father's way and when you touch something
sacred in a secular way, I'm going to
kick you all out of here.
And even though he's not walking through churches
today and kicking people out, there is going
to come that day when Paul says we'll
all stand at the judgment seat of Christ
and we're going to have to give a
review to the Lord and we will be
reviewed on why we did what we did
and how we did it.
But that's not my main point this morning,
but that's a well-taken point for all
of us.
Not only on the crass business side of
money, because it's so easy to make gospel
work just another way to make a living,
that's what these people were doing.
They weren't interested in people getting in contact
with God, they were making a living out
of it.
But as we do God's work, we must
not rob the glory that is only due
to him.
Whatever we do and whatever we say, the
Lord wants to remind us through this that
all the glory and all the honor must
go to Jesus Christ.
But the thing that really provoked Jesus into
this angry tirade was this.
He said, you men don't even understand about
my Father's house.
You've revised, you've given your opinion about the
temple, but the temple doesn't belong to you.
My Father's house shall be called a house
of prayer.
And you've made it a den of thieves.
This is the first principle of religion, so
listen closely.
Jesus said, my house, my Father's house shall
be called a house of prayer.
The atmosphere of my Father's house is supposed
to be prayer.
The atmosphere around the things of my Father
must be that aroma of people opening their
heart and coming to my Father in worship
and in petition and supplication.
And instead of keeping that atmosphere and aiming
at that atmosphere and understanding my Father's purpose,
you've made it a place just to make
a buck.
So out with you.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
The thing that's supposed to distinguish Christian churches
and Christian people and Christian gatherings is the
aroma and the atmosphere of prayer.
You might say, well, Pastor Semble or Brother
Jim, that's not our style.
We come from a different tradition.
It doesn't matter what your tradition is or
what my tradition is.
It's His Father's house.
And His Father says, in my house it
shall be a house of prayer and supplication.
Now, we know that that temple is unlike
any church.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle, the building that I pastor
in, is not a sacred building.
Your church building is not a sacred building.
There are no sacred buildings like the temple.
We know that.
That temple that sat there in Jerusalem, which
now the Mosque of Omar sits on that
land, was the only place that God said
the brazen altar could be put and the
animal sacrifices could be given.
It was the only geographical spot in the
world where the holy place and the holy
of holies could be.
So what I'm not trying to say today
is that in our churches, there's some counterparts
at the temple.
We know that.
In fact, the Bible says we're the temple
of the Holy Spirit.
But what I want to say to you
is that God's work from the very beginning
is not like you and I often imagine
it.
God's work, God's house, the Christian religion is
always supposed to have the aroma of prayer.
Preaching, yes, but not my house shall be
called a house of preaching.
Music, yes, but my house shall not be
called a house of music.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
There were choirs, but it was called a
house of prayer.
There was the reading of the word, but
my house shall be called a house of
prayer.
So the Bible tells us that when Jesus
Christ died and resurrected and went back to
heaven and he began his church, which the
gates of hell shall not prevail against, he
kept the same line running through the formation
of the church, which was in his father's
house.
Have you ever noticed that the Christian church
was not born while someone was preaching, but
while people were praying?
Have you ever noticed that in the second
chapter of the book of Acts, when the
church was born, they were doing nothing but
just waiting on God and praying?
And they were just sitting there, and as
they were praying and worshiping and waiting and
having heart communion with God and God shaping
them and cleaning them out and building faith
into them and doing those heart operations that
only the Holy Spirit could do.
The church was born.
The Spirit was poured out.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
In the fourth chapter, Peter and John are
arrested and they're slapped around and threatened.
Don't you preach anymore in that name.
And what do they do?
They don't go and protest.
They don't go to the Supreme Court.
They don't try to get some political leverage.
They go back to a prayer meeting.
They go back and say, behold the threat.
Oh God, look how they're threatening us.
But oh God, we lift our voices together
to you.
Oh God, behold their threats and give your
servants boldness that we might preach in the
name of Jesus.
And the place where they prayed again was
shaken, and they were all filled with the
Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God
with boldness.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
They have this instinct.
When in trouble, pray.
When intimidated, pray.
When challenged, pray.
When persecuted, pray.
When you're in trouble, pray.
In fact, this thing called prayer, whatever it
is, is so unique.
It's not like what we're used to.
You know, we talk about pray, we say
prayers.
Most of them, a lot of them are
mental prayers.
This thing called praying is so deep that
when the apostle Paul got converted, and he
was first Saul of Tarsus, this violent persecutor
of the church, Jesus went to Ananias, and
the Lord appeared to Ananias in Damascus and
said, go to this man, this Jew, this
church persecutor named Saul of Tarsus, and pray
for him.
And Ananias said, you know, I know about
this man.
This man is trouble with a capital T.
And Jesus said, as if this was proof
that everything had changed.
No, Ananias, you can go, for behold, he
prays.
He prays.
You can go now because he's in that
room blind somewhere waiting for you because he
actually, for the first time in his religious
life, is offering a true prayer.
And because he's praying, you can go and
not be afraid.
It was as if that was the sign
whether somebody was the real deal with God.
Behold, he prays.
And that same apostle Paul, when he writes
to Timothy, and he wants to encourage him
how to do God's work, he says this,
first of all then, I want supplications, first
of all, in your church, Timothy, first of
all, before anything else, supplications, and prayers, and
intercessions, and thanksgiving to be made for all
men, that's first of all, it doesn't matter
what your tradition is, or what American Christianity
says, the word of God says, first of
all then, I want supplications because we got
to remember, Timothy, my house shall be called
the house of prayer.
Later on in the same chapter, he says,
and then I, remember, Timothy, I want men
everywhere to lift up holy hands without wrath
or doubting, and I want them to pray.
That's the sign of a Christian church.
Paul says, men, pray with holy hands without
wrath or doubt.
In fact, the book of Revelation says that
when the 4 in 24, the 4 in
20 elders fall at the feet of Jesus,
they have these golden bowls, and you know
what's in the bowls?
This incense that is so fragrant to Christ.
It's the prayers of the saints.
I mean, what must prayer be to God
that he keeps it in bowls in heaven?
Just imagine, when you and I kneel or
stand or pray seated, and we really open
our hearts to God, somehow those things are
kept.
They're so precious to God.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
And we have, in the day that we
live in, a lot of revisionism going on.
But it's not coming from Washington, it's coming
from the church.
We're revising what a church is today.
The Bible says, and they continue, the early
church, they continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine
and in fellowship, and in the breaking of
bread and in prayers.
Now, we've revised that and said, if you
can get people for one hour on Sunday
morning in a building, that's the church.
That's not the church.
We can use every device we want to
get people for one hour and keep it
early and keep it moving and keep it
going, because people have important things to do
that day.
That's not the story of the Christian church.
That might be the story of my church
or your church, but that's not the church
Jesus built.
And the history of revivals down through the
ages have told us that whenever things have
grown crass and commercial and secular and hard
and worldly, God sends a revival.
And what's always the sign of the revival?
Behold, they pray.
The church begins to pray.
Moody goes somewhere in England, and they begin
to pray.
Finney goes to upstate New York, and they
begin to pray.
The Great Awakening happens in America, and they
begin to pray.
Who was the fancy preacher?
Nobody.
They pray.
Where was the great music?
Oh, they made great songs, but that wasn't
the great thing about it.
It was they pray.
Prayer preceded it.
Prayer kept it going.
And the minute prayer ended, the Spirit of
God lifted, and we got back into one
of those tougher times for the church of
Jesus Christ.
You folks, young people who are going to
these schools, let me tell you, as someone
who went to college as a basketball player
on a full scholarship and traveled around the
country playing basketball, never had the privilege of
going to a school like you folks are
going to.
The greatest thing anybody can learn in this
building is how to pray.
How to call on God so that God
intervenes in the situation.
They continued steadfast in the Apostles' Doctrine, fellowship,
breaking of bread, and in prayers.
And that's the church.
And I talked to well-known ministers.
I talked to men.
If I mentioned their names, a lot of
you would know a lot of their names,
and they tell me privately off the record,
Hey, listen, I know I'm dazzling them with
my books and my sermons, but Brother Jim,
something's wrong because except for Sunday morning one
hour, I can't get a soul into the
church.
If I called a prayer meeting, not one
-tenth of the congregation would come.
They'll pay $20 for a concert, but Jesus
can't draw.
They'll pay all kinds of money to hear
somebody do something, and that's wonderful.
I'm all for that.
But doesn't it awaken us that if the
prayer meeting was called, that nobody would come
when God said, My house shall be called
a house of prayer.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
And you represent all kinds of cities, and
just ask yourself that question in the city
you live in.
What church do you know takes a night,
a prominent night, with all the leadership there
and says, If prayer is so great, and
His house shall be called a house of
prayer, and we have all these promises, Ask,
you shall receive.
Seek, you shall find.
Knock, it shall be opened.
And all of those promises, call unto me
and I will answer you.
You would think the Christian church would say,
Time out.
We're going to pray because God said when
we pray, He'll intervene.
The truth of the matter is, in the
city I live in, New York, and the
same is for Chicago and Philly and all
of that.
Who are we kidding?
More people are turning to crack than to
Christ.
There are more people trying crack than are
getting baptized in water.
That's the real deal.
And preaching is not going to do it
alone, and teaching is not going to do
it alone.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
That's what brings God's power and grace into
a situation.
The proof of that is, in the last
40 years, there's been more books written about
marriages than in all the preceding 2,000
years of church history.
More books in the last 40 years on
marriages go to any pastor in America and
ask him if there aren't more problems per
hundred marriages today than at any time.
And we have the most books.
We've got all the how-tos, but what
we're missing is the grace of God.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer.
A couple that prays together stays together.
A church that prays together stays together.
There'll be difficult moments, I'm not being simplistic,
but God's word is true.
Call upon me and I will answer you.
I'll show you things you can't even imagine.
Just give me a chance.
There's more books on child-rearing, quality time
with your children, ad nauseam.
Talk to any pastor.
There's more problem with children, young people in
the church, per hundred young people, than at
any time previous.
It's not because we're lacking knowledge.
It's not because we're lacking how-to.
And all of that has its place.
But brother, sister, when the rubber meets the
road, we need the power of God.
We need the grace of God.
And listen to the promise as I come
to a close.
Therefore, let us come boldly to the throne
of grace so that we might receive grace
and mercy to help us in our time
of need.
It doesn't say, therefore, let us come to
the sermon.
We in America have made the sermon the
centerpiece.
God never intended the sermon to be the
centerpiece.
The preacher, if he does his job, is
supposed to get people to come to the
throne of grace.
Why?
Because it's at the throne of grace that
God gives grace and mercy.
If a singer, a gospel singer, really does
his job and every gospel singer listening to
me, you're going to answer up one day
because God's going to say to you, did
you bring people to where the action was
at the throne of grace?
If you just entertained them, if you just
tickled them and gave them a little warm
fuzzy moment, woe unto you, because at the
throne of grace, I could have changed their
life.
Pastor Simba, did you bring the people and
dazzle them with your footwork and try to
be clever?
Or did you make Jesus wonderful so that
they could come to the throne of grace?
Therefore, let us come boldly to the throne
of grace.
That's why Jesus ascended to the right hand
of the Father so that he could make
a way so that me with my problems
could go and receive grace and mercy to
help me coming apart here.
That's an awesome thing.
Just an awesome thought.
That we've created a religion kind of of
our own and sometimes His house shall be
called the house of prayer.
In a lot of churches and a lot
of services, you have everything but prayer.
You have talks, readings, talent, choir, and my
wife conducts a choir.
I'm all for those things, but you get
what I'm driving at?
If it doesn't end up with somebody touching
God and praying, who are we kidding?
We need the Lord.
For someone who's so ill-prepared as myself
for the ministry, it seems to me that
God has chosen, among other things, to make
my wife and I example of those foolish
things that confound the wise.
My wife writes music and directs the Brooklyn
Tabernacle Choir and she neither reads nor writes
music.
She's never been trained.
She doesn't know what she's doing.
She just does it.
I've never been to a seminary or a
Bible school and I ended up with 15
or 18, 20 people in New York City
on a street that was so depressing.
Our church was so depressing, I didn't want
to go and I was in charge.
Drugs everywhere, inner city, totally different culture than
especially my wife grew up in.
I, as a ball player, had been around.
And then I realized, what am I going
to do?
Am I going to live in this Christian
fantasy about what God once did and then
what God's going to do one day, but
then your life goes by and you never
see God do anything?
And you can let your life pass by
with that kind of talk.
Remember, the worst epitaph on anybody's tombstone will
be this.
You have not because you ask not.
Someone says, well, Brother Jim, now you understand,
Jim, that you don't get everything you ask
for.
It has to be according to God's will.
I understand all of that, but we can't
use little theological dodges to get away from
the fact that a lot of people don't
have things that God wants you to have
right now today.
He wants you to have it right now
today, but over my life or possibly yours,
he writes, you have not because you ask
not.
I want to do it for you.
But God has chosen prayer to be the
one conductor, listen, the one conductor, the one
channel for all of God's blessings.
The channel is prayer.
In other words, God has this table set
for us and he sees Jay and Amy
and he knows exactly what they need to
raise that child and he has the table
spread with every kind of wisdom and grace
and strength that they could possibly need.
But he says, the only way you can
get it is to pull up to the
table and taste and see that the Lord
is good.
And pulling up to the table is called
prayer.
In other words, God doesn't tell us, pray
because I want my people to pray.
He says, pray because I have all kinds
of things for you.
And when you ask, you shall receive.
In other words, it's not legalism, it's not,
get in there and start praying, it's, I
need thee.
Oh, I need thee.
Every hour, I need thee.
God, you see what I'm facing, help me
Lord.
And as we pray, he's faithful to his
word and supplies.
Well, my wife and I began to learn
a little bit about this conductor and this
channel called prayer.
And we began to see people's lives get
changed and, you know, I began to preach
and not being trained and studying on my
own and building a library which has grown
quite large and trying to stay a student.
But at the very beginning, it was rough.
Sermons I preach at the beginning.
It's tough when you fall asleep doing your
own sermons.
Not just the people falling asleep.
It's when you doze off.
But you know, I found this, that God,
when you become a Christian, and because of
what I just said, how he blesses people
through prayer, he's going to make you a
woman of prayer.
He's going to make you, a man of
prayer.
And you try to run, he'll chase you,
but he will make us people of prayer.
He knows how to order our lives and
to get our attention and say, do you
realize how much you need me now?
Oh, no, Lord, I can handle this on
my own.
And God says, all right, fine.
When you hit the stone wall the 32nd
time, remember that you need me.
But notice, he's not making me a man
of prayer so he can say, see, I
got him praying.
It's, it's a father saying, I have all
of this and you live with such scarcity.
Please, come unto me all ye that labor.
Pray, talk, spend time.
Why are you so rushed for?
You're running for what?
Working with what?
There's nothing in Jim's and Bill's to work
with you.
Everything that you need, I have.
So when are we going to talk?
So I began to learn and we began
to stress our Tuesday night prayer meeting as
the Brahma of our church.
And this past Tuesday night, between 12 and
1500 people gathered like every Tuesday night.
And since, of course, those days, we've had
like 14 other churches begin all stressing that
prayer meeting night because we found if you
can beat the devil on the prayer meeting
night, you'll beat him on every other level.
And that's the way it is in our
personal lives.
If you can beat the enemy in prayer,
you can beat him on every level.
You will read the word.
There's grace flowing through your life.
You have an appetite for the things of
God.
So from me standing in front of two
people on a Tuesday night, I used to
do that.
First offering I took on a Sunday was
$85, tithes and offerings.
And I had a daughter named Chrissy who
was about a year old.
My wife took a second job.
I took a second job.
But the people began to pray.
But in closing, let me just tell you
some of the last lessons I've learned about
this wonderful truth because I'm not trying to
preach down to anyone.
I'm preaching to myself as I was talking
to you about eight or nine years ago.
My daughter who is here today, she got
away from us.
She got away from not only us, she
got away from God.
She got away from our house.
And my wife and I went through a
two and a half year long nightmare that
I don't want to go into.
But I promised God as I was getting
at the end of it that as he
brought me through it that wherever I got
a chance, I promised God no matter how
hard it would be as he's my witness
today, no matter how hard it would be,
I would tell people what God does and
answer the prayer.
You know what the feeling is?
Not to know where your daughter is.
She grew up as a model child.
I have two other children.
Chrissy's now 25.
I have a daughter 21 and a boy
18.
But at that time, Chrissy was about 17,
18.
And it was, I'm talking nightmare.
I'm talking about getting in my car and
leaving my house to go to the church
in the inner city where I'm going to
face 10 new people who visit who are
HIV positive and a battered woman and no
need family units and everything discombobulated.
And I don't want to be the focus.
I'm supposed to be there, Carol and I,
to minister to them.
But I'm crying from the minute I leave
my door to the church and saying, God,
my heart is broken.
My nerves are shot.
I've screamed, begged, pleaded, tried to use money,
reasoned, cried.
And she's getting worse.
She's not getting better.
And how am I going to minister?
And we're starting other churches and renting Radio
City Musical and starting new churches in the
city and going to South America and Carol's
writing songs and making albums, but nobody knows
and very few people know that we're hanging
by a thread, my friend, by a thread.
And all the times I drove and cried
out to God coming in and saying, God,
please, just get me through these three meetings.
We have 11, 3.30 and 7.30
services each about two hours long or more.
And I'm just saying, God, please, just get
me through another Sunday.
And God would just lift me and I
would have the grace to get through and
minister to people even though inside I was
so, so just shaking.
And I learned that when you pray, God
comes.
I learned that when you have no logical
way to stand, God somehow when you pray
gives you fresh feet and a fresh foundation.
We have a prayer band in our church.
It's a more important ministry than the 240
voice Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.
There's a prayer band that not only prays
through each service, about 20 of them pray
through each service on Sunday while I'm preaching
and ministering there in a room locked away
praying, but now they pray for several years
now from two in the afternoon till six
in the morning.
There's, in the church, there's people praying every
seven days a week, two in the afternoon
till six in the morning.
Then if you have some need, you can
just mail it to our church.
Someone will pray for it three in the
morning.
It's an amazing thing how God honors that.
Well, they began to pray for me and
as God is my witness, I would sense
myself at night sometimes or shaving in the
morning.
I would feel God's grace just come underneath
me and begin to steady me and hold
my emotions and I hadn't even been thinking
about God and I would say, Lord, what
is this that's just come into my life?
Somebody's praying for you.
If people would be praying for me, God
bless them.
Then my wife got ill.
Had to have a hysterectomy and the hormonal
imbalance that she ended up with.
My daughter's out of the house.
The other two children, I'm doing the best
I can.
Now my wife is not talking just about
leaving New York, which she wanted to because
the enemy had told her, fine, start your
churches and influence people for Christ, but I'm
going to have all your children.
I've got one and I'm coming for the
other two.
And my wife believed it and told me,
you can leave with me or you can
stay, but I'm leaving because he already has
Chrissy and I'm not losing my other two
kids.
Enough with this.
We can't do this.
The atmosphere in the city, New York is
a miserable place to be.
I'm not there because I like it.
I'm there because God put me there.
And then after the operation, she's talking about
she doesn't feel any reason to live any
longer.
And I mean, what do you do?
Your wife is flipping out.
Your daughter's, you're preaching, you're doing all of
these things.
I'm just telling you, oh, how wonderful it
is to know that at the throne of
grace, no matter what's happening, God can lift
you and hold you.
What a wonderful God.
One November, after about two years had passed,
Chrissy was awake.
God and I got totally alone in Florida
and God spoke to me and said, I
know you've been praying for Chrissy.
The impressions I got were basically this, I
don't want to sound mystical or sensational, I'm
just going to tell you from my heart.
No more talking to Chrissy and no more
talking to anyone else and no more money
and no more screaming and no more crying.
Drop it.
Just tell me.
Let's make a covenant.
You just tell me and I'll take care
of it.
And I told my wife, I'm not going
to see my daughter until she's right.
And that's my first child.
My wife kept in touch with her.
Months went by.
Christmas, sad Christmas.
Who wants presents when your daughter's away?
On a February night in the prayer meeting,
my house shall be called the house of
prayer.
We were all praying and calling on God
and waiting on God.
You know, nobody in charge, no choir, no
speaker.
Who needs it?
You have Jesus.
It's amazing how wonderful He is.
And someone sent a note up to me,
a woman, a young lady who's sensitive to
the Lord and she sent a note up
through an usher and the note said, I
feel deeply impressed that we should stop the
prayer meeting and pray for your daughter.
I looked at the note.
People were praying all around me.
I looked at the note and said, God,
is this really you?
I don't want to be the center of
attraction.
People have their own needs.
But I felt impressed it was.
I stopped the prayer meeting after a little
while and everybody gathered together in that room,
in that church and held hands.
Over a thousand people probably that night.
And I called one of my associate pastors
in the front and he began to pray.
And all I can tell you, and I
don't know what your theology is, and it
really doesn't matter.
I'm just going to tell you what happened.
You know where Paul said, I travail like
a mother giving birth to Christ before I'm
done with you?
Well, I told the people, my daughter thinks
up is down and down is up and
she thinks light is dark and dark is
light.
And unless God visits her and intervenes, my
daughter is out there.
And someone wants me to stop the meeting
so you could pray.
My associate's going to come.
He's going to pray.
And suddenly, it turned into a labor room.
You ever hear women when they're giving labor?
Having labor?
It's not pleasant, but it has some great
results.
And they began to pray.
I was overwhelmed by it.
I was, as God is my witness, I
was overwhelmed by it.
I mean, they began to pray as if
they went to the throne of grace like,
and now, Satan, you will give up that
girl.
Dave, you would just come.
Let's sing Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.
And they prayed.
I came home.
My wife wasn't there that night and over
a cup of coffee at night, I told
her, Carol, it's over.
She said, what's over?
I said, it's over.
If there's a God in heaven, what I
just experienced tonight, it is over, finito, it's
over.
Just about a day later, I was shaving.
And my wife burst into the bathroom and
said, Chrissy's here.
I said, Chrissy, I haven't seen her in
four months.
Chrissy, and you better go down.
I went down the steps and ended, wiping
off the shave cream and on the kitchen
floor was my daughter on her knees.
And when I walked in the kitchen, she
grabbed at my pants leg.
She pulled it.
She was weeping and she said, Daddy, I've
sinned against God.
I've sinned against myself.
I've sinned against you and Mommy.
Daddy, forgive me for being rebellious, etc.
Daddy, Daddy, it's different.
But Daddy, who was praying for me?
Who was praying Tuesday night for me?
Why, Chrissy, what happened?
And she drew up to me.
She said, in the middle of the night,
God woke me up.
And He showed me that I was heading
toward a chasm and it had no bottom.
But Daddy, even as He showed me that
and showed me how awful I was, He
put His arms around me and He showed
me that He loved me and He had
a plan for my life.
And Daddy, I made it right with God
and I could tell by her face she
was my daughter again, the one I had
raised.
Very soon, God opened the door and for
the next four years, she directed the music
program at a Bible school.
She married a man of God.
They're both in the ministry today.
And God reminded me once again, My house
shall be called a house of prayer because
when you call, I will answer.
And the hard cases that some of you
are facing, I want to tell you now,
it won't come from another seminar.
Seminars have their limit.
All they can do is be an arrow
and that's all that gets you to the
throne of grace.
But when you get there, watch out.
Because God can do exceedingly beyond what we
ask to think.
I'm not being emotional.
I'm not being simplistic.
But we have too many technicians now invading
the church that are into methodology.
The answer is not in methodology.
The answer is in the power of the
Holy Spirit.
The answer is in the grace of God.
Could you just close your eyes right now?
They've given me permission and I thank Bill
and Gloria for this and Randy and the
folks who work here.
Pass me not, O gentle Savior.
Sing it.
Hear my humble cry.
While on others Thou art.
Save me in
Thy mercy.
I wonder,
before we sing that song again, and the
lights are dimmed because the last thing we
need is any kind of spectacle or any
sense of embarrassment for anyone.
I have a feeling that there's more than
one mom or dad that could all too
empathize with what Carol and I went through.
And you have a son or a daughter
who's out there.
Even some of them are in church, but
you know they're out there.
When you consecrated and dedicated them to God,
this is not the end result that you
knew God had in mind.
They're maybe totally away from God and your
house even, or maybe you could just sense
there's like a hardness, a crust.
They're just going through the motions and the
tenderness that you know they're going to need
in life.
Tenderness to God is not there.
Instead of worrying or just praying, crying about
it, I'm going to ask, as we sing
that song again, for every mom and dad
or every grandma or granddad who has a
grandchild that is a burden to you.
You love them.
And they've been reasoned with.
They've been talked to.
They know the Word of God.
Now it's up to God.
It's up to God, the Holy Spirit, to
get them.
We're not God.
We can just bring it to God.
Or maybe you're a husband or a wife
and your spouse is not with you today
and is not with the Lord, serving the
Lord, and yet you got married in Christ.
And now there's trouble in the house.
Listen, those are the real battles of life.
This stuff in Haiti and this stuff in
the Persian Gulf, that's child's play compared to
the real battles of life.
I'm going to ask every mom or dad,
grandparent or husband or wife who identifies with
anything I've just said, would you stand right
now, wherever you are, and by standing, you're
saying, I'm bringing that situation to the throne
of grace.
I'm not embarrassed.
Just stand.
That's it.
Don't be ashamed.
This morning, we sense your presence here.
I've done my best to honor your Word,
God.
We're not the ones who invented prayer.
You're the one who called us to your
side, to the throne of grace.
And Lord, for these moms and dads who
are weeping, some of them, over that son
or that daughter, we understand, God.
For those grandparents who are concerned about a
grandchild or that marriage that's falling apart, God,
we need your grace.
We need your mercy, oh Lord.
We need the Holy Spirit to come.
And even as you've changed my daughter and
countless other people who have been prayed for
over the decades and centuries, as Christians have
called upon you, God, we ask you to
do it again, oh Lord.
We're coming to the throne of grace.
We don't have the strength to do it.
Our money won't do it.
We're not smart enough to do it.
We can't finesse it.
We need an outright invasion of the Holy
Spirit into that person's life.
Wake them up in the middle of the
night, oh Lord.
While they're driving in a car, let them
feel the glory of the Lord.
While they're taking a shower, remind them of
verses that were taught to them when they
were children.
But God, we're not going to hand them
over to the enemy.
We're going to fight the good fight of
faith.
We're going to pray and we're going to
keep praying.
And after we pray, we're going to pray
again.
We won't let you go, Lord, unless you
bless us.
Unless you touch these situations by your grace.
Lord, I pray that there'll be a new
aroma and fragrance of prayer in all of
our lives as we go back to our
several homes.
Oh God, let prayer meetings begin in churches.
Let prayer meetings begin in family altars in
homes.
Let people see, God, all of us afresh
that when we call upon you, you're faithful
to answer us.
Stop us from being so rushed and so
busy and we're learning and never coming really
to the knowledge of the truth.
Work on our hearts and not just our
heads, oh God.
Make us men and women who live at
the throne of grace, tasting and seeing how
good you are.
While every eye is still closed, I just
want to sing it one more time.
And if someone is standing next to you
or near you, just look up briefly.
Put your hand right now on their arm
or their shoulder.
They need your encouragement.
We all understand what they're feeling.
Would you sing it with me?
Pass me not, oh gentle Savior.
All stand
and sing, Savior.
Based on the verses I've read, how many
of you believe that God has heard our
prayers today?
Could you lift up your hand?
Let's put our hands together and just give
God a hand.