Could you open your Bible with me to
the book of Isaiah again?
And we're going to go to part two
of a series I began last week, which
is how to pray.
How to pray.
And let's read in a couple places, taking
a little different approach today than we did
last week when we studied the great prayer
of King Hezekiah.
And now what we're going to do is
look at some other aspects of this important
subject.
Isaiah 40, please.
I'm sorry, Isaiah 40.
And we'll start to read in the 12th
verse.
And just follow me, we're going to skip
parts of the text because I want to
just touch on some key areas here which
will help me.
Verse 12, God is speaking now through the
prophet.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow
of his hand, or with the breath of
his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth
in a basket, or weighed the mountains on
the scales, and the hills in a balance?
Who has understood the mind of the Lord,
or instructed him as his counselor?
Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge, or
showed him the path of understanding?
Surely the nations, including America, are like a
drop in a bucket.
They are regarded as dust on the scales.
He weighs the islands, like Trinidad, and Jamaica,
and Long Island, as though they were fine
dust.
Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires, nor
its animals enough for burnt offerings.
Before him all the nations are as nothing.
They are regarded by him as worthless, and
less than nothing.
Verse 17, 21.
Do you know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the
beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was
founded?
He, God, sits enthroned above the circle of
the earth, and its people are like what?
Grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to
live in.
He brings princes to naught, and reduces the
rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted, no sooner are
they sown, no sooner do they take root
in the ground, that he blows on them,
and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them
away like chaff.
To whom will you compare me, or who
is my equal, says the Holy One?
Lift your eyes, and look to the heavens.
Who created all these?
He brings out the starry hosts, one by
one, the stars, and calls them each by
name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain,
O Israel, my way is hidden from the
Lord, my cause is disregarded by my God?
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God.
Hallelujah.
The creator of the ends of the earth,
he will not grow tired or weary, and
his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary, praise the
Lord, and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young
men stumble and fall, but those who wait
upon or hope in the Lord will renew
their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles, they
will run and not grow weary, they will
not walk and not be faint.
Jump ahead to chapter 49, just a few
verses there.
49 verse 8, speaking of the restoration of
Israel, speaking of that chapter of the servant
of the Lord becoming Messiah.
But listen to verse 8, this is what
the Lord says, in the time of my
favor I will answer you, and in the
day of salvation I will help you.
Go to verse 14 please.
But Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me,
the Lord has forgotten me.
Can a mother forget the baby at her
breast, and have no compassion on the child
she has born?
Though she may forget, I will not forget
you.
See, I have engraved you on the palms
of my hands.
Your walls are ever before me.
And lastly, just verse 23 of that chapter.
Kings will be your foster fathers, and their
queens your nursing mothers.
They will bow down before you with their
faces to the ground.
They will lick the dust at your feet.
Then you will know that I am the
Lord, and those who hope in or those
who wait for me will not be disappointed.
Or as one translation has it, those who
wait for me will never be put to
shame.
Look at me.
Those who wait for me will never be
put to shame.
Do I get a witness?
Those who wait for me will never be
put to shame.
Now last week we mentioned the fact that
for me not to teach you to pray
would be a very sad thing at the
judgment seat of Christ.
Because there are a lot of things that
we have to learn as Christians.
We're going to walk with the Lord.
But then there are major things, and then
there are minor things.
There are minor subjects in the Bible that
are not critical to salvation, critical to real
growth in the Lord.
I don't know if understanding every nuance of
the prophetic scriptures and the mark of the
beast and all that's going to happen in
the future, how heaven will exactly be, how
that will all work out, what the number
666 really represents, how that will all play
out.
If you got the book commentaries on the
book of Revelation for the last, since the
Puritans in the 1600s, if you saw those
commentaries, godly men and women have disagreed about
what all that means.
How many times we ought to serve communion
in a church?
How often we ought to take it?
These things are not things to argue about.
But faith in Jesus Christ, who Jesus Christ
is, his virgin birth, his death on the
cross, his resurrection, his return to sit at
the right hand of the Father, to walk
by faith, to walk in the Spirit, to
have your life characterized by love.
Now we're talking turkey.
How many say amen?
And how to pray?
Because God has used prayer as the channel
through which he's going to pour out his
blessings of grace upon his people.
You have not.
What a tragedy.
You have not because you can't now cop
out of that by saying, well, in God's
sovereignty, you know.
No, there are cases where you have not
because you ask not.
God would have done it just if someone
would ask.
So Jesus said men ought always to pray
and not to faint or give up.
In the continuous present tense, it's ask and
keep on asking.
And you'll receive.
Seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep
on knocking.
The early church was born.
The Christian church was born not with someone
teaching, not with a choir singing, but in
a prayer meeting.
And whenever the church was attacked, they prayed.
When Peter was arrested, they prayed.
When they were threatened in Acts 3 and
4 not to preach in the name of
Jesus, they called a prayer meeting and prayed.
So unlike maybe where you grew up or
where I grew up, we're not supposed to
go by our church traditions.
We're supposed to go by the Bible.
Prayer was all important.
I first of all, Paul tells Timothy, first
of all, I want men everywhere to lift
up holy hands in prayer.
How many are not embarrassed to lift up
your hands, lift them up to God?
You're not embarrassed to do that, are you?
Someone comes in and laughs at us for
doing that.
Let them laugh.
Better to do what God says.
Amen.
So maybe the way we grew up, what
we're used to is not exactly what God
had intended for the church, but he wants
to restore to us these important fundamentals like
prayer.
You can't find hardly a church in America
nowadays that has a prayer meeting.
I get emails every single week, more than
a hundred, and I get hundreds every month.
And a lot of them are by leaders
in a church, sometimes by pastors, thank God,
who say, I want to begin a prayer
meeting.
I read one of your books.
Or how do you start a prayer meeting
where more than three or five or ten
people will come?
Others, pastors, I started a prayer meeting.
We started out with 30.
The next week was 15.
Now we're down to three.
What do I do?
Do I just cave in or what?
Others are leaders in the churches saying, you
know, we're in lay leadership.
We're on staff.
We want to have a prayer meeting.
The church is prayerless.
We want to have a prayer meeting, but
the pastor won't come.
And he gives us some back room so
just a couple people will pray.
Something's wrong there.
So it's not only the secrets of praying
effectively, which we said no one message will
do this.
We're praying in Jesus' name, the prayer of
faith, etc.
We learn a lot of things from Hezekiah's
prayer.
But now I want to talk about the
problem areas of prayer, three main problem areas.
You know, it's like when you learn a
golf swing.
I don't play golf, really.
But I know enough that when somebody teaches
you how to swing, there are problems that
even the pros have to be careful of,
that if they move their heads, if their
weight is wrong, they can start to hit
the ball wrong.
Because those are inherent problems just in swinging
a golf club.
There are inherent problems in praying.
And these verses touch on three of them.
One, it refers to it.
The other two are more overt.
The number one problem when we pray is
we are sometimes stymied and overcome, and we
don't pray because the problem is so big
and the problem seems so huge that it's
bigger than God.
In other words, you know, other things God
might do, but not this thing, because this
thing is incredible.
I mean, my son, you know, if he
had just backslid a few months ago, but
he's in prison now.
Now who's going to, how is he going
to get saved in prison?
And the bills that are coming in.
You know, if I was a couple hundred
thousand dollars in the hole, that'd be one
thing.
But I'm thousands and thousands of dollars in
the red.
Or for this church, things we face.
You know, this is just too big for
God.
Number two is the delay that comes.
The delay and discouragement in not seeing the
answer that you're praying for.
A lot of people pray for a while.
That's why Jesus said men ought always to
pray and not to quit.
You pray for a while, you don't see
an answer.
And I don't know, it's not going to
happen.
I'm going to quit.
That's a real problem.
A lot of people have started out all
psyched up.
How many pastors have looked at their churches
and said, this can't be what God intended.
We got to pray.
But then after three, four weeks, nothing really
happens.
So let's go back to same old, same
old.
Thirdly, because of these delays and this waiting
time, spiritual fatigue comes into play.
And a lot of people just quit and
give up.
Because to play basketball, like I did in
college, you have to be in shape.
To box, you have to be in tremendous
shape.
I remember at the United States Naval Academy,
I learned how to box.
At least they taught me.
I had boxed at the boys club here
on Bedford Avenue near Church Avenue in Brooklyn
as a kid.
But at the Naval Academy, they teach you
how to box.
They put a thing on and you learn
the science of boxing.
So you have to box a couple rounds
with somebody.
Do you know how much strength it takes
just to keep your hands up?
And then to be doing this?
Get your left hand up there, mister.
Keep your left hand up there and you
know, and jab and jab.
And do that for three minutes.
Have somebody be swinging at you, ducking and
you're blocking and you're punching.
You talk about fatigue.
That's why those guys train for months before
they fight.
Why?
Because when you get fatigued, you let your
guard down.
There's a saying in a locker room when
you play any sport, especially basketball, others.
Fatigue makes cowards of us all.
When you get fatigued, you lose your boldness
to play.
When you lose spiritual, when you get into
spiritual fatigue, you quit.
Because it takes spiritual strength to keep on
praying, to keep on believing.
You have to be in shape spiritually.
You have to be strengthened by God or
else your arms begin to droop.
The Bible talks about that.
Lift up arms that are drooping and knees
that's starting to wobble.
So here we have verses in this passage
which refer to that.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain,
O Israel?
My way is hidden from the Lord.
My cause is disregarded by my God.
In other words, God doesn't see what I'm
going through.
What's the sense?
I haven't gotten an answer.
God just missed my situation.
I've been praying.
I don't see an answer.
Where's the answer?
And then the devil will whisper that to
you.
Where's the answer?
Come on, you've been praying.
Where's the answer?
And then you hear that suggestion in your
mind.
Your minds will quit.
Isaiah 49, 14.
But Zion, God's people said, God's people said,
The Lord has forsaken me.
The Lord has forgotten me.
Why?
Why would they say that?
Because they hadn't seen anything happen.
Have you ever prayed and not seen anything
happen?
Come on, be honest.
Lift up your hand.
Have you ever prayed for something?
You didn't get the answer within five minutes.
So now it's what to do?
This delay in the answer.
This seeming no response from heaven raises some
real problems.
And our faith and our prayer life is
attacked by, Ah, this problem, this mountain must
be too big.
It's too hard even for God.
Or maybe God doesn't notice and see my
situation and need because nothing's happening.
Or maybe there's no answer yet.
It must mean that God won't ever answer.
And I can't go on.
I'm quitting.
My dad started drinking when I was 14.
He was a full-fledged alcoholic by the
time I was 16.
Held the job just for a little while.
My mother's here.
He drank for 23 years.
She prayed and hung on to God for
him for 23 years.
She prayed.
We prayed.
I cried as I grew up in the
faith.
Went in the ministry.
He was still drinking.
But then we saw him delivered by the
power of God.
It didn't happen right away.
But people kept praying.
R.A. Torrey, the first president of Moody
Bible Institute, said that he prayed for the
same two people for more than 40 years
every day.
And then within one month saw both of
them get saved after praying for 40 years.
In other words, the simple formulas of just
pray, confess the word, and it'll happen, praise
God, and you march on.
It doesn't always happen that way.
And we might as well face that if
we're going to be real.
Come on, how many want to be real
today?
Say amen.
We want to be real.
We want to learn how this works.
See, Zion was even saying, God, God has
forgotten me.
I don't see it happening.
The Lord has forsaken me.
I can't go on.
I'm quitting.
I give up.
I've seen people like that for 30 years.
Pastor Simbala, there was a day when I
was on fire for God and believing God.
But Pastor Simbala, I mean, que pasa?
What's happening?
So now God, understanding this, gives a response.
God understands what we go through.
He knows we're made of dust.
And God says, in response to this question
of how big is our problem, God wants
us to know how awesome and huge He
is.
Do you know that when you and I
pray, we pray to a very big God?
Did you know that that's one of the
problems of faith and lack of faith?
I have found in my own life that
if I'm not careful, my problems, as I
said last week, seem this big and God
is this big.
But then when faith comes in your heart
and God shows you and reminds you who
He is, God seems as high as the
ceiling and your problems seem this big.
So God begins to talk through the prophet.
And He begins to say, you want to
know how big I am?
You think your problems are too big for
me?
Haven't you heard?
Don't you know who I am?
I'm the creator who measures the mighty oceans
and the sea in the hollow of my
hand.
All these oceans that we see, you know,
the major figure or the major statement of
this earth, the major part of this earth
is really the Pacific Ocean.
Did you ever look at a map and
see how big the Pacific Ocean is?
It dwarfs the Atlantic Ocean.
And God says, don't you know that the
Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean,
all the seas, all the rivers, they're like
nothing.
I hold all those waters in the hollow
of my hand.
I'm your creator.
I'm not some fly-by-night idol.
I'm the God who created everything.
The highest mountains and the numerous hills are
like specks of dirt in my sight.
Mount Everest and these mountains that you look
up, they're nothing.
They're little pebbles to me.
The vast spaces of the universe I mark
off with my hand.
Like somebody would measure like this.
God says, that's what I do with the
vast universe.
The mighty nations of the earth are as
a drop in the bucket to me, God
says.
The islands of the sea are like fine
dust to me.
We look at these empires and we look
at these nations and we look at the
map of the world or we fly in
an airplane and say, would you look at
that?
And God says, that's nothing to me.
That's how huge God is.
Why would He be using language like this?
Because He knows our problem.
All the animals alive are not enough to
properly sacrifice to Him.
Nor all the trees.
Lebanon was known for its trees.
All the trees in Lebanon, if you cut
them all down and burned them, it wouldn't
make enough wood to offer a proper sacrifice
to a God that's this huge and that
big.
He sits and reigns high above the earth
and all of its inhabitants are like ants
before Him.
Princes, rulers, presidents, emperors, dictators, kings and queens.
He lifts one up, lifts one up, He
puts another one down.
All these rulers that people are bowing down
to that seem so important, they're like a
little vapor before Him.
They're like little specks before Him.
He lifts one up, puts another down.
When He just speaks a word, they disappear
off the face of the earth.
Saddam Hussein is nothing to Him.
President Bush is nothing to Him.
All the military hardware is nothing to Him.
All the nuclear weapons are nothing to God.
They're nothing.
Come on, let's put our hands together and
thank God how huge He is and how
big He is.
What an awesome God we serve.
I love to consider these things because I
got some big problems I'm praying for.
I got to be reminded how awesome is
our God, how big is our God.
To whom will you compare me, says the
Lord.
He who brings out the starry hosts one
by one, stars, and calls them each by
name because of His great power and mighty
strength, not one of them is missing.
Why would He say that about stars?
God says, you want to know how big
I am?
Go out one night and look up and
see the stars.
I created them out of nothing.
I know that I have them all by
name.
Now stars have always fascinated me.
So I want to give you just a
little information.
I'm not a scientist, astronomer.
I barely passed that in school.
Some of you laughing at me.
You barely passed it too.
I don't know why you're laughing.
Listen, there's about 3,000 stars that you
can see with your natural eye.
Stars are like our sun.
Our sun is a star, but most stars
dwarf our sun.
Our sun is a speck compared to some
star.
God made them all.
Now they have discovered that there are 1
,000 million stars in our universe.
For those of you who have some big
problem that you're not sure God can handle,
they have discovered 1,000 million stars just
in our galaxy, in our universe.
And they're spread out in our sky in
a disk, arranged in a disk 60,000
light years across.
You can't even comprehend that space.
But our present telescopes has found out that
beside the 1,000 million stars in our
universe, the new telescopes have found tens of
millions of other universes and galaxies visible up
to 1,000 million light years away.
So there's 1,000 million stars in our
universe and our galaxy, but now they're finding
tens of millions of other galaxies that God
just said one day, throw them out there.
Out of nothing.
He just spoke and they came into existence.
Oh, come on.
Somebody say praise the Lord or hallelujah or
something.
Just think how big God is.
I need this myself.
I need this.
And what's amazing about God is that He
created all these universes and galaxies and He
calls all the stars that are in them
by name.
And there's 1,000 million just in our
galaxy.
Now there are only about 3,000 stars
visible to the naked eye.
So it would seem back thousands of years
ago when God spoke to Abraham and notice
He equated the number of stars to the
number of grains of sand on the earth.
Remember when He said to Abraham, Abraham, I'm
going to bless you with more offspring to
show how innumerable they would be.
Your offspring, and they would be spiritual offspring
and natural.
They will be as many as the grains
of sand.
Remember that?
Then one night, what did He do?
He told them to go up and look
into the sky, right?
And He said, can you count those stars?
Now in that day, if he would have
had a good eye, Abraham, remember he was
no spring chicken though when God told him
this, right?
He would have seen about 3,000 stars.
So that seems like a bad equation, doesn't
it?
Your offspring are going to be as number
as same as the grains of sand in
the earth.
Now look up and see the stars.
Well, that doesn't seem right.
That's not right.
You can only count about 3,000, 3
,000 stars compared to all of that.
But did you know what they found out?
That all the stars in all the universes,
in all the galaxies that they discovered, there's
as many stars as there are grains of
sand in the earth.
And our God created them.
Hallelujah.
And He hasn't lost one of them.
Come on, let's put our hands together and
thank Him.
What an awesome God.
Awesome universe that He created.
I remember one day, oh, at Atlantic Avenue,
when we just began and the first offering
was like $85, the total tithes and offerings,
and my wife and I were both working
jobs and things were so difficult.
And my daughter Susan, who just sang, was
just born.
Things were so hard.
Didn't know how we would pay the bills.
And one day before the prayer meeting, I
was reading, studying something, put down my Bible,
picked up something, and I read this.
Oh no, it was in the newspaper or
some journal.
That they had just discovered a star and
named it, the astronomers.
A star that is so big, it's the
mother of all stars.
It's the big mama of all the stars.
It's so big that if you moved it
from its place and tried to get it
to pass between the earth and our sun,
it wouldn't fit.
We are 93 million miles away from the
sun.
There is a star, oh, that God created
that couldn't fit between us and the sun.
And God is saying, what do you have
that's too big for me?
What problem do you have that's too big
for me that I can't handle it?
And he mentions the stars.
He says, look up at the stars and
realize what I've made.
And I keep them that way.
Haven't lost one of them and I know
them by name.
Let me bring this to conclusion.
The Bible tells us that the second problem
that his people faced was, yes, all right,
God might be that powerful, but he's forsaken
me.
You know, he just forgotten my case.
I don't see an answer.
Pastor Cimbala, please explain this to me.
You're a minister.
I've been praying for weeks and months.
I don't see a thing.
God's forgotten me.
And God knew that Zion would sometimes say
that.
So he says, can a mother forget her
baby who's at her breast and have no
compassion on the child she has born?
Though a mother might forget her child, God
says, I'll never forget you.
You can play.
You can play something.
I'll never forget you.
Look, you're engraved on my hand.
Now, the scholars, the commentators don't know what
that meant in the Old Testament.
What that would mean that you were engraved
in my hands.
They're not sure what that meant, the significance
it had to people then.
Where God says, would a mother forget the
baby that's taking her milk from her breast?
Would she not care about that child?
When that child gets older, no matter what
that child goes through, would a mother not
care for her child?
Even though she might, I'll never forget you.
My eye is always on you.
You're engraved in the palms of my hand.
But how many know 2,000 years ago,
Jesus hung on a cross and they engraved
those nails in his hands.
And those holes were made for you and
me.
We are engraved in the palms of his
hands.
And the Bible tells us that in his
resurrection body, that we're going to one day
see in heaven, one of the parts of
his body is that the nail prints are
still there.
He had a body that could go through
doors.
He could go through solid matter and just
appear.
He could disguise himself, the Bible said.
And people didn't know who he was, the
two men on the road to Emmaus.
He could keep people from understanding who he
was.
He could go through solid doors.
He could eat.
He had fish with them, prepared a meal
for them on the beach one night.
But one of the things that are still
in his resurrection body, he said to Thomas,
Thomas, look, look at the nail prints.
Imagine in heaven when we see Jesus, if
for some reason he would ever lift his
hand, we're going to see the nail prints
that were made for you and me.
Listen, you didn't even know God then.
You weren't even looking for God.
And he bore the nail prints for us.
How much more that we're his sons and
daughters now.
Is he going to take care of his
people?
He who has begun a good work in
us, what is he going to do?
He's going to complete it until the day
of Jesus Christ.
I want you to know today, I don't
care, mother, what you're going through up in
the balcony.
I don't care what you're going through.
God has not forgotten you.
That's a lie from the devil.
Come on, say amen with me.
It's a lie from the devil.
Let's put our hands together.
God has not forgotten.
God cannot forget.
Hallelujah.
Come on.
God cannot forget.
He will never forget.
I will never leave you.
I will never forsake you.
Remember what Hebrews 13, 5 says about being
content with what you have.
God has said, never will I leave you.
Never will I forsake you.
Now, listen, lastly, beside that there's this problem.
Pastor, Pastor Simba, I can relate to this.
Israel was said, Israel was saying, I can't
hold out any longer waiting.
Maybe he hasn't forsaken me, but the wait
is too much.
Why so long?
I can't hold out any longer.
I've been praying.
I've been holding on to the horns of
the altar.
But you know what?
My grasp is starting to, you know, to,
to just lose, I'm losing my grip.
Because Pastor Simba, I've been holding on for
a long time.
I don't see anything happening.
The wait is too much for me.
See, and one of the things the devil
does, one of his devices, Hank Hanegraaff will
preach it a lot better than me, but
one of his devices is when you believe
in God, he just exerts constant pressure of
negativity against you.
It's not a punch.
It's just a constant pressure.
But see, if I put all my weight
on Pastor Volkstav, as strong as he is,
he's going to start to feel it and
he's going to have to brace his back.
See, he's starting to give way right now.
And there, there you go.
And that's how Satan is.
Satan, he just exerts that pressure.
Nothing's going to happen.
You're a chump.
Now, notice what God says.
Brothers and sisters, when God is going to
answer us, it's on his timetable.
And he says here in 49.8, Isaiah,
in the time of my favor, I will
answer you.
And in the day of salvation, I will
help you.
God has a date of delivery for the
answer to our prayer.
But it's in the time of his favor
and in the day of salvation.
That's when he answers.
So even when people break through and God
says, I will do that for you.
God sets a time known to him where
his name will be glorified the most.
And in all of his wisdom and dealing
in our lives, he knows exactly when we
need that answer to come.
Like someone said, he doesn't answer you when
you want, but he's never late.
He's always on time.
In the time of my favor, that's when
I'll answer you.
Well, when is that?
Don't worry.
Hold on.
Keep trusting me.
Because in the time of my favor, in
the day of salvation, that's when I'm going
to do it.
Every prayer has a date of delivery.
So if your hands begin to flag and
you say you can't wait, you got to
wait.
But you got to wait expectantly.
You can't be depressed.
You got to be praising God while you're
waiting.
You got to be expecting from God.
For he gives strength to the weary and
he increases the power of the weak.
Even young people grow tired and weary.
Young men stumble and fall.
But those who wait on the Lord, they
shall renew their strength.
Hallelujah.
You know what one translation has?
Those who are expecting Jehovah will renew their
strength.
They shall mount up with wings as an
eagle.
They'll run and not be weary.
They'll walk and nothing.
You're here today and you say, Pastor Simba,
I want to learn how to pray.
But I don't only want to learn how
to pray.
I got some situations that I need strength
from God.
He needs to encourage me so that I
can gain strength to hold on and keep
believing him.
Until that time of favor, until that day
of salvation, when I know he's going to
answer me.
Pastors, are we praying for things?
Pastor Ware, have you and I and the
rest of us, have we held together and
believe God that he's going to do certain
things here for us?
Has it happened yet?
No, it hasn't happened yet.
Is it going to happen?
Yes, it is.
We're waiting for the time of his favor,
the day of salvation.
He knows exactly how long we need to
wait.
And now he says, you don't have to
faint.
Just have to wait on me.
Expect me to come.
Just worship me and say it's on its
way.
Hallelujah.
Don't put your head down and say, I
don't know.
Just say, I know in whom I have
believed.
That's the secret to prayer.
Listen, a lot of people start praying.
You pray naturally.
You pray from your heart, but you got
to keep on.
Remember, he's the creator of the universe who
made all those stars.
He's never going to leave us nor forsake
us.
And he gives strength to the weary.
He revives those who are ready to fall
down.
Close your eyes with me.
Come on, let's do business with God today.
If you're here and say, Pastor Cimbala, I'm
believing God for something, but I need him
to strengthen my arms.
I need him to lift me up.
I need to learn how to wait and
expect from him.
Well, Pastor Cimbala, I need an answer, but
I haven't been able to pray because I
don't have the faith.
The problem seems so big.
But now while you were preaching, the word
of God smoked me and I realized what
an awesome God I have.
Nothing's too hard for him.
You get up out of your seat and
come up here and stand in the front.
If you need a bigger God, a revelation
of a bigger God to you, and it's
coming as you're listening to the word of
God today.
You want to bring that big problem to
a bigger God.
Or if you're flagging in your strength and
you're beginning to fail, you admit it to
God.
Say, God, but I'm going to wait upon
you.
I'm going to expect from you.
I'm going to praise you while I'm waiting.
And you're going to renew my strength.
I'm going to mount up with wings as
an eagle.
I'm going to fly above all of Satan's
wicked devices.
I'm going to keep running, scourge and despondent
because you thought God forgot you.
Get up out of your seat and come
to the front and say, Pastor Cimbala, I
believe in my heart and I confess with
my mouth what you taught from the word
of God today.
At the Brooklyn Tabernacle, we're about to enter
a time of prayer and we want to
be sure that all of us listening at
home and by tape are invited to pray.
Is the problem you're facing so big that
you've lost sight of how much bigger God
is?
Let's pray.
Have you been praying and praying for a
long, long time?
It feels like an eternity and you still
haven't seen an answer from God.
Let's pray.
Has spiritual fatigue set in?
Are you giving up on God?
No, let's don't do that.
Let's pray.
As Pastor Cimbala comes back and prays with
everyone at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, he's praying for
you as well.
Let's join him.
And the Atlantic you hold in the hollow
of your hand that we
might see.
We're not going to listen to the devil.
He's a liar.
We resist him in the name of Jesus.