Prayer is essential for a fruitful Christian life, as demonstrated by numerous biblical examples, both positive and negative. The sermon highlights the detrimental consequences of prayerlessness through figures like Adam and Eve, Jacob, King Saul, Peter, John Mark, Demas, and the Laodiceans, illustrating how neglecting prayer leads to failure, loss, and spiritual decay. Conversely, it showcases the power of prayer under stress and for others through the examples of Hannah, Esther, David, Hezekiah, Elijah, Peter, Job, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Epaphras, emphasizing that consistent and earnest prayer, even when delayed, is met with God's faithfulness. Ultimately, Daniel's life serves as a profound model of prayer, demonstrating its importance in character, under pressure, as a daily habit, and in intercession, even amidst spiritual opposition, urging believers to prioritize prayer for spiritual vitality and effective ministry.
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Some of them fail to pray. We can learn from horrible examples as well as from good ones. And number one, Adam and Eve. Result the fall of the human race. Let's think what a difference it could have made if Eve had prayed or even gone to her husband about that temptation. They knew God well enough that they could have talked to him about it, but they ignored him. Number two, Jacob. The result, a scheming, wasted life.
For twenty years, Jacob forgot all about what he had promised God and what God had offered him. He spent his time trying to beat his father-in-law, and his father-in-law was a match for him. When he got all through with it, he acknowledged to be son Joseph that the Lord had been taking care of him all that time. What a pity he didn't discover it years before. There's no indication that Jacob ever prayed once in all of those twenty years. His own family had idols when he left Laban, and went back up into the land. He had to gather them up and destroy them before he went into the land.
Number three, King Saul. In I Samuel fourteen, it tells all that they were in danger of Philistines attacking So he asked the priest to bring the ifad, which they used when they prayed. Then when he started to pray, he heard the noise of battle, and he said, lift your all my hand. Haven't got any time to pray now. The result was, says in that section, there was very great confusion. Next time you feel like you're in very great confusion, Remember, that's exactly how it's all got there.
Number four, Peter. Mark fourteen describes the result of his prayerlessness. He denied the Lord. Now he went off and wept bitterly afterward, and he was restored. you know the advocate the Lord Jesus is our advocate is always ready to help us to get back to himself how much better it would be to count on him as our high priest to keep us from getting into that trouble see the work of the high priest is to prevent us from failing the work of the advocate is to restore us after we have failed the fifth one John Mark Acts thirteen describes how he started out with Paul and his company and then he Acts fifteen describes how he decided he couldn't take it we don't know why but we do know that he was wrong because
later on Paul refused to take him out the second time however some years later He was restored also. And Paul said, bring Mark with you because he's profitable to me, to the ministry to serve. So the result, in John Mark's case, he deserted and lost time. How much time he lost, I don't know, but it's lost anyway. number six chosen Demas I'm sure that Demas was not a praying man because I'm sure that prayer would have kept him from what happened the result he loved the world are we told in first John two that if any man loved the world the love of the father is not in him the love of the father dwells in us when we spend time with him.
And last of all, the Laodiceans, a whole group, a whole church described in the third chapter of the Revelation. The reason they didn't pray was because they didn't need anything. So they thought, they said, we are rich and increased in goods and they've needed nothing. So if you don't need anything, You don't pray. That's why God keeps us meeting. It doesn't have any other effect. It keeps us close to him. And the results of their prayerlessness lost testimony.
Now, if any of them were the children of God, they didn't lose their souls. But you don't want to get to heaven just by the skin of your teeth, do you? We don't want to lose our testimony, our usefulness here on this earth. The pathway of Christians is strewn with the wreckage of prayerless Christians. Now the second section, prayers under stress. It's interesting to read in the scriptures of people who prayed when they had a definite need. and the circumstances surrounding that prayer.
Number one, Hannah prayed for a son, and you might add a deliverer, because she said, if the Lord would give her a son, she would give him back to him as long as he lived. And that's exactly what happened. First Samuel one describes how she prayed for that son. In fact, the name Samuel means heard of God. People used to name children names that meant something. Our names don't mean a thing. I've got a very good name, but I'm sure my parents didn't have any idea that that's what it meant when they named me.
That is because my father, my grandfather, and way on back the line, were all John Walus, and so there had to be a John Walus. Well, John means the grace of God, but that wasn't why they called me that. That's why Hannah called Samuel, which she did, because she recognized that this was an answer to prayer, and indeed it was, because the nation was in desperate condition. And this prayer, under stress, and if you'll read it, you'll In the first place, it was a disgrace for a Jewish woman not to have any children. And in the second place, she was tormented by her competitor, the other wife of her husband, and she prayed earnestly.
And poor old Eli, who was the priest, was so unused to seeing anybody pray that he thought she was drunk. Right there in the temple. It's been so long since he'd seen anybody prayed. He said, why don't you put your wine away from you? Well, she prayed, and God answered her prayer. And then Esther. Esther prayed for her life and for the lives of her people. Now, if there's anything that will make you pray, it's when your life is in danger. Mordecai sent to Esther and said, Haman is going to try to destroy the whole race.
And you're the only one who can go to the king and intercede for them. But she said, I don't dare to. If anybody goes to the king without being called, and he doesn't hold out the scepter, they'll be killed. Well, he said, if you don't do it, God will send deliverance from some other quarter. That was faith, wasn't it? He didn't say, if you don't do it, we'll all be lost. He said, if you don't do it, God will send deliverance from another quarter, but don't think that you was given. So she was faced up with it. This was real stress and wonderfully answered was her prayer, too.
Then David, number three, We ought to study these two Psalms, Psalm thirty-two and Psalm fifty-one. The occasion of writing these two Psalms was David's terrible sins. It seems almost impossible that a man as godly as David could fall into sins like this. He stole another man's wife, and then in order to try to cover up, this man was one of his trusted generals. one of his chief men, and he sent him into the thick of the battle to get him killed off to cover up his sin.
So it really was adultery plus murder. Sins like that, you know, it multiplies. You get away from God and you do one thing wrong and you do other things wrong to try to get out of it. Instead of doing what he should have done, should have gone to God about this in the first place. If he had prayed about it, when the temptation came, the whole thing never would have happened. But he did pray, thank God for that. When he did find himself in this awful predicament, he did pray. The thirty-second Psalm says, Day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me, and then I said, I will confess my sin.
A man with whom I used to preach, Mr. Ann O'Brien, said, God put his hand on David's head and he pushed and he pushed until he bent at the knees. And that's what God does to us sometimes, when we have sinned against him. Day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. Then I said, I will confess my sin. And then there was Hezekiah, number four in our list. And Hezekiah prayed about his enemies, first of all. And then he prayed about longer life. Now this is an interesting case. In Second Chronicles chapter thirty-two, the first part of this tells about his praying.
He was so distressed that these enemies were coming in and it looked like they were going to take over. And he called on God about it. And God very mercifully heard him and delivered him. and the deliverance was a total one. Then the prophet said, now your life is going to come to an end. And he acted like a baby about the thing. He was so upset to think that his life is coming to an end, that he just insisted that God extend his life.
And so the prophet said, all right, God will extend your life by fifteen years. Was that good? Well, if you've ever read the history of Hezekiah, you know what happened. During that fifteen years, a child was born to him named Manasseh. And Manasseh succeeded him to the throne, and he was the most wicked king that Judah ever had. It says he made the people of God to do worse than the heathen. Now God will answer some prayers that are really not his directive will, but only his permissive will.
There's another case like this. It says in the book of the Psalms that the children of Israel really demanded of God. And it says he gave them their request, but he sent them leanness of soul. it's possible for you to get what you demand from God and then wish you didn't have it. So one of the prayers of Hezekiah was a good prayer and one of them was a bad prayer. And number five, Elijah. I'm reading in first Kings, seventeen and eighteen, these two chapters, you don't read much about prayer.
But when you read the book of James, chapter five and verses seventeen and eighteen, that'll help you to remember where to find it in Kings. It tells the seventeenth and eighteenth verses in James five, and that's the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters in first Kings. And it tells there in James that he prayed that it would not rain. And then he prayed again that it would rain. And God answered both prayers. Now to understand this prayer, you have to read back in what God said was going to happen if the children of Israel got away from it. He said that if they persisted in self-will, that God would send a drop on the country.
See, the land of Canaan was not watered by irrigation as Egypt had been, where they had spent four hundred years. He said, now you're going into a country where you're going to have to depend on God for the moisture. with your foot that is kick a side out of an irrigation ditch and let some water run out and then see it can't do that anymore now you're gonna have to trust God and he said if you don't do what I tell you to do I'll withhold the rain now it had reached such a state that Elijah who knew God's ways and knew God's Word knew that it was time for the drought so he said Lord Send the drought.
And then he said to the king, there won't be any rain until I tell you. And was he sticking his neck out? Well, of course not. He believed God. That's one of the essentials to answer your prayer. And then he prayed that it would rain. And after he had prayed that it would rain and told the king that it was going to rain, he said to his servant, now go and see the cloud. He came back six times, said there isn't any cloud. And the sudden time he came back and he said, well, there's a little thought about the size of a man's hand. He said, that's it. He told the king, get your chariot down so you don't get caught in the rain. A little thought the size of a man's hand?
But to faith, that's enough, you see. Elijah knew that this was God's answer, and he was. And then number six, Peter. I've included this so that you would understand that prayers don't have to be for drastic things like drows and rains. Peter prayed the shortest prayer on record. And I thought sometimes it'd be good training for us in our prayer meetings for some of our long, tiresome prayers. If he'd prayed some of the prayers that we prayed, he had his mouth full of water because he was trying to walk on the water to go to the Lord. and he started to go down and he said, Lord, save me.
That was enough. You don't have to, it isn't, we're not heard for much speaking. It isn't how long a prayer you can pray. It's praying the right prayer at the right time. And don't feel that you have to be able to word things correctly. Some young men are a little bit backward about participating in a prayer meeting audibly so others will hear because they're afraid they can't do it right. Well, there isn't any wrong way if you're really calling on your Heavenly Father. You tell him what's on your heart. That's what counts. And last of all, the early church, A, prayed for boldness.
Acts, four and twenty-nine. and D prayed for Peter's release, Acts twelve and five. I've used these two examples. We know that there were many more prayers in the early church than these, but I've used these two examples so that you can see how wonderfully God answered the prayers of these young believers at the outset of the church. Now in third section, prayers for others. Number one, Job prayed for his unkind friends.
Now if you're familiar with the book of Job, you know what they did to him. They accused him of everything under the sun. Finally said to him, miserable comforters, are you all? And he got to where he could hardly take him. He said, no doubt you're the people and wisdom will perish with you. And I think he was excusable for his sarcasm because they were a miserable lot. But now God was allowing all this trouble in Job's life in order to sort out, in order to win out the pride in his life. The devil's idea was to make Job fall and he failed.
But God's reason for allowing Satan to sift Job was that he might get the pride out of his system. And this is the final test. After these men have bugged him like they have for all of this time, what's he going to say? The Lord said, Now Job, I want you to pray for your three friends. And the Scripture says, Then the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends. You remember that. Prayer for others. Second, Abraham prayed for Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis chapter eighteen.
I don't know whether Abraham quit too soon or not. He said, Lord, you wouldn't destroy those cities if there were fifty righteous there, would you? And he said, no, I'll spare it if there are fifty righteous. And then he kept whittling down, forty-five and forty and thirty and twenty, and finally got down to ten. Now, he was positive there'd be ten, because you see, there was Lot and his wife and his two single daughters. And then there had to be at least two married daughters and possibly three, and then their husbands. So he had to figure it out. It wouldn't be any problem that there'd be ten righteous. But what he didn't know was that these married daughters and their husbands were not righteous.
And the only ones who were actually saved out of the city were a lot, and these two daughters, because his wife turned back. looked back and was turned into a filler saw. Whether Abraham quit too soon or not, I'm not prepared to say because he was a great man and a man of faith, but I know one thing, I quit too soon a lot of times. This is a good example of importunity in prayer. And then third, Moses. Now, I'd like to mention four men here who prayed for the nation of Israel.
The first one is Moses in the thirty-second chapter of Exodus. He prayed for sinning Israel. Remember he was leading them out of Egypt through the wilderness and up to the border of the land. He was never allowed to lead them into the land. Joshua took them in. But when the people sinned against God, God said, Let me destroy them, and I'll make a greater nation out of you. And Moses said, No, Lord, you can't do that. Your own name and glory are at stake. And he interceded for the people, and God graciously accepted his prayer and spared the people.
And then Samuel prayed for rebellious Israel. The story in First Samuel, seven, and again in the twelfth chapter, tells you that when conditions were terribly bad, that Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered that lamb for an offering for the nation. And God heard his prayer and spared the people. And then they said to him, Now don't ever quit praying for it. And he said, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. I think that over a little bit.
God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. It isn't simply a nice thing to do to pray for God's people. It's a sin not to do it. Because we have a responsibility for other people. And then Jeremiah... prayed for captive Judah. In the ninth chapter of Jeremiah in verse one, he said that he said, oh, that my head were waters and my eyes, fountains of tears, that I might weep for the daughter of my people. And then the little book of Lamentations, which most people pass over, is really a book of sorrowful songs for the suffering of the children of Judah, that is the southern kingdom, when they were down in captivity.
Now, a little while after this, in fact, seventy years after this, Ezra and Nehemiah were used of God to bring them back up out of the land. And so in the ninth chapter of Ezra, you find him, Ezra the scribe, praying for the returned captives. Well, there's always something to pray about among God's people. And when these captives were in the land, you would think when everything's fine now, they're back in Jerusalem and they're building, oh no, things were not fine.
They had all kinds of problems. They got discouraged and quit for a while. And many things happened. But Ezra prayed for them. And if you'll read the ninth chapter of Ezra, you'll find that he confessed the sins of the people as though they were really his own. He took his place right along with the people, although he was the one who was leading them back to the city and to rebuild the city and Nehemiah, or to rebuild the temple and Nehemiah to rebuild the walls. Although he was leading them in the right way, yet he confessed that he was a part of this failing nation.
And last of all, a New Testament character, Epiphras, or Epaphras, some pronounce it, prayed for converts, even in prison. It's interesting to read about Epaphras. He was the one who had founded the Church of God at Colossae. Paul hadn't visited them when he wrote his letter. But he said, I heard through Epaphras about you. And I know that he's been a faithful minister of yours.
That is, he served you well. He's taught you the gospel. And now he was in jail with Paul. in the Marantine prison in Rome, and he said he labors fervently for you in prayer. And then he says he has a great zeal for you and for those in Hierapolis and those in Laodicea. If you look on the map, you'll see that those cities form a triangle about fifteen miles each leg. So these were three cities close together. And Epiphras was concerned about all of God's people in his own neighborhood. Now, I want to reserve a little time to say something about Daniel's prayer life, because this is one of the outstanding Bible examples of prayer.
Number one, Daniel's character. A, he was a young captive. And incidentally, they've made a eunuch of him. which means that they had castrated him and made him to be a slave that they could put anywhere to serve. He was a prince, you know, from the royal house of Judah, and this was a very difficult thing for him to go through. Now you had a godly upbringing. Here's another man who had a good name. Daniel means my God is judged. And he didn't care what other people thought.
He remembered that he was answerable to God. And see, he was a separated young man. Now, the Bible teaches separation from evil. There's no way of getting away from it. And he refused to drink the wine and eat the flesh that was offered to idols. And this is why Jeconiah, was brought under the curse because this man was willing to go right along with the Babylonians while Daniel refused to. And then D, he was a man of great courage and wisdom. A little boy said he reckoned that the lions couldn't eat him because he was all grit and backbone.
And that's not too far off either. He was a man of real courage. I remember that His prayer, number two, prayer under pressure, his prayer in the second chapter of Daniel was while he was still a very young man. He was still a teenager. He and his three friends, Hanani, Mishel, and Azariah, who were later named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and Daniel was called Belshazzar. Don't mix him up with Belshazzar, the king. These were heathen names, but Daniel still called them by their spiritual names.
Now, the pressure was this. The king demanded that the wise men interpret his dream. When they couldn't do it, he said, all right, kill a whole lot of them. This was typical of Babylonian kings. They were cruel and vindictive. And Daniel said, what's the hurry? Why this? killing the people off. I haven't had a chance. So he said, just give me a little time to pray, and I'll get the answer. Now, I've pointed out some things. A, there was no scheming nor panic. He didn't try to work out some way to get the king to change his mind.
He just got down before the Lord in prayer. And B, there was fellowship with his brothers. He called his three brothers, three friends together to pray with him. And see, there was answered prayer. Because God did give him the answer. God did tell him what the dream was. See, this king couldn't even remember the dream. So he had to not only tell him what the dream did, he had to tell him what he dreamed. And that's pretty hard to do. In fact, that's impossible unless God gives him the wisdom. And then D, there was humility. He didn't say, well, I figured this thing all out.
He said, oh, no, there's a God in heaven that answers prayer. God is the one who gave this to me. And so he was humble and he witnessed to God. That's D. And then E, there was promotion. God gave him an important place in the kingdom. And F, he shared this with his brothers. because as soon as the king gave him a high place, he said, now I'd like to have my three friends share with me in this. When God exalts you, don't forget the rest of your brothers and sisters. Now, number three, I'd like to point out his life habits of prayer.
In the sixth of Daniel, A, he is now an old man. Babylon had fallen to the Media Persian Empire, and Darius was a king now. So this takes place, although it's only four chapters later, it's many, many years later, and he's now an old man. B, he's in a place of honor. He was the head president of the three presidents over all the princes. And C, his enemies could not find a flaw in his conduct. They say if you really want to find out your weak spots, run for office and your opponents will find something on you.
Well, they didn't on Daniel. I could tell you. His life, all his life, had been one of godliness. In fact, they said the only way we'll ever find anything against him is concerning his God. It was no secret that he prayed daily toward Jerusalem. Remember Solomon had asked that anyone who was in captivity and would pray toward Jerusalem that God was here. So he opened his window on the east, looking toward Jerusalem and prayed. And then he, he had a place and a time for prayer.
The place was his own room. He didn't do it out on the street corner like the Pharisees. And the time was three times in the day. I'm sure he prayed in between times, but he had these stated times when he did nothing else to pray. And then, F, he was confident in God. Now, Darius couldn't sleep that night, but Daniel wasn't disturbed. He knew that God would answer. And G, the prayer was answered. God didn't keep him from being put in the den of lions, but he did keep him from being eaten, which after all is an important thing. It isn't important that you be kept from trials.
It's just important that you be preserved through them. And that's what happened to him. And then both Daniel and Darius glorified God. Now his intercession for his people, and this is the third prayer, In Daniel nine, he prayed to Jehovah Master Adonai. His prayer, B, was based on God's promises. C, he confessed the national guilt.
This was sort of like Ezra. It's in the ninth chapter also, so that's easy to remember. Ninth of Ezra, ninth of Daniel. Both of them prayed about the national guilt and took their place right with them. And D, his prayer was earnest. He did it with fasting. And E, it was specific. Don't pray all around it. Say what you got to say. If you've got a request, ask God for it. And F, and this is important, it was answered immediately. Now in contrast to this, number five, the tenth of Daniel, his labor in prayer.
A, with morning and fasting. B, for three weeks. Twenty-one days he labored in prayer and he never got an answer. See, the answer was delayed. It was not a matter of God's refusing to answer. It was delayed. And D, by satanic opposition. God had sent an angel with the answer, but Satan had withstood him for those three weeks.
There was a real battle going on in space. And he, Daniel was assured of God's love, for he said, O Daniel, thou art a man greatly beloved. Just because I've held up an answer for three weeks doesn't mean I don't love you anymore. Remember that. It'll be a lot of times that God will make you wait three weeks or maybe three years, but He still loves you. And last of all, the prayer was answered after delay, in contrast to the prayer in the ninth of Daniel, which was answered immediately.