A powerful prayer life is rooted in a right relationship with Jesus Christ and a proper spiritual condition. It emphasizes that effective prayer requires abiding in Christ and His Word, as highlighted in John 15:7, meaning God's Word must control our habits, desires, and priorities. Furthermore, prayer is strengthened by a motive to glorify God, a thankful heart, and obedience to His commands, as seen in passages like Psalm 66:18 and James 4:3. Ultimately, engaging in God's work and bearing fruit for His kingdom enhances prayer power, leading to a more effective and dynamic prayer life.
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Nice to be with you again. I trust that everybody has in their possession a blue booklet which contains skeletal outlines of the messages. We didn't quite get through with our first one. Lord willing, we'll finish that tonight. If you do not have one of these booklets and you'd like to have one, I think if you raise your hand, maybe one of the men would get you some. There are plenty in the back. Before we begin this evening, as we did this morning, I would ask again that we would have a moment of silent prayer And in that time, specifically request that you ask the Lord that I will be empowered by the Spirit and also that our hearts will be open to the challenge that we receive from God's word.
Let's pray those things silently, please. Father, again we ask that you would speak to us in the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We pray, Heavenly Father, that whatever challenges you have for us from your words would be applied to our hearts and would show up in our lives, but we ask it in our Savior's precious name. Amen. For those of you who may not have been here this morning, and maybe for the benefit of all of us, we're proceeding to talk about the subject of prayer, and we're approaching it from the premise that a really effective, really powerful, really dynamic prayer life arises from abiding in Jesus Christ, that it arises from the proper relationship to the Lord Jesus. We found this morning that the power of prayer depends on our relationship to the Lord.
that we need to be totally controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. That we need to be abiding in the Lord Jesus, to be walking with Him. That we need to be desiring the glory and the will of the Father. And as we walk and as we seek His kingship or His control of our lives, then we can claim all the promises that we like to claim in Scripture regarding prayer. If we seek first His kingship in our lives and His righteousness, then we can move along and claim the promise that whatever we ask of Him, He will do it. And so if we're abiding in Christ and controlled by the Spirit, desiring the will of the Father, we can claim the promises of an effective prayer life.
There's nothing more important, I think, in this day and age than for all of us to have powerful prayer lives before the Lord, so that we can help bring about the changes that this world so desperately needs, and so that we can be involved in bringing people to Christ. We found this morning that not only does our relationship with the Lord have to be in the right place, but also our relationship with our spouses, our relationship with others. Because any breach in a relationship that we have with another human being will hinder our prayer life. We would like to move on tonight to the second point in session one in your outline. The top of the page is labeled session one, and we're now to letter B.
Now we're proceeding from the dependency upon our relationship to the dependency upon our rightness of spiritual condition. We'll find that there are favorable conditions and unfavorable conditions for a proper prayer life. Our spiritual condition before the Lord is so important if we are to have the kind of prayer life that the God wants us to experience. I should say at the very beginning, as we look at this rightness of spiritual condition, I don't know all of you. I'm trying the best I can. This is my first time here and I'm really enjoying it. But there possibly is someone here this evening who does not know the Lord Jesus as their Savior.
And that's of course the prime prerequisite. That is the beginning of the rightness of spiritual condition. There is no way that you can have an effective prayer life if you're not properly related to the Lord, if you don't know Him as your Savior. So I would just want to share with you a little bit of what I shared last night and that is that It's so wonderful and so exciting to belong to the Lord Jesus. And He loves you. He died for you. And if there is someone here this evening who has never trusted Christ as Savior, I would just hardly recommend that you fall before the Lord, confess your sin, confess your need of a Savior, and invite the Lord Jesus to take over your life. Commit your life to Him, and you'll have forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
and you'll have the beginning of that relationship that is necessary that we're talking about this evening. So our prayer power is dependent upon the rightness of our spiritual condition. The first favorable condition that I've listed there is one that we didn't cover this morning and that is found in John chapter fifteen and verse seven. We talked about the first part of this verse and now we'd like to talk a little bit about the second part. We find that abiding in his word is one of the conditions that we must meet in order to have a proper spiritual condition and therefore to have a powerful prayer life. John chapter fifteen and verse seven.
Now read that verse again. It says, Jesus is speaking, it says, If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Now this morning we talked about the importance of us abiding in in Jesus Christ. We talked about the importance of walking hand in hand with Him. We talked about the importance of being controlled and influenced by the Holy Spirit of God, who causes us to walk with the Lord Jesus. And tonight we want to look at the other part of that verse, the importance of His Word abiding in us. It's important that we abide in Him. It's also important for our prayer lives that His Word abides in us.
What does that actually mean? It means briefly that if we neglect daily, quiet, meditative study of God's Word, our prayer power will be blocked. When the Word of God is not controlling every aspect of our lives, then our prayer power is blocked. It's reduced. Now, this doesn't mean that we have to be perfect in order to have a proper prayer life. If that were the case, then I don't think any of us would ever measure up. But it does mean that we need to have Christ's Word, God's Word, abiding in our heart. And that means more than just a quick glance over our daily bread every morning or a quick glance over some other devotional.
It means that we need to be saturated in the Word of God. It means that the Word of God has to control our habits, our desires, our priorities. You see, if we like to pray, but we don't want to be saturated in the Word of God. What we're essentially saying to the Lord is, it's more important what I say to you, Lord, than what you have to say to me. And so you see, an effective prayer life goes hand in hand with a real concentrated, faithful study and involvement in the Word of God. Because communication is a two-way proposition. God speaks to us through His Word, and we speak to the Lord through prayer.
And if we want a proper prayer life, if we want the Lord to listen to us, we show Him our willingness to listen to Him by being involved in His Word. And so we need to have His Word implanted in our heart. We need to meditate on it. We need to obey it. Our thoughts and our speech and our actions and our priorities and our directions and our habits all need to be subjected to the Word of God. It needs to control every aspect of our life. And obedience to His Word is so important. When we pray the Bible way, we're already in a right spiritual condition. And only a spiritual person can pray effectively. Now, I want to qualify that.
God hears the sinner's prayer. God hears our prayers of desperation, our prayers of confession, and so on. But I'm talking about the real effective, dynamic, powerful prayer life that we all covet. It can only happen as we are obeying the Word of God. because in obeying the Word of God, we are abiding in Jesus Christ, and when we abide, we have the powerful prayer life as we saw this morning. It is as the Word of God rules in my heart, that's when I experience the kind of prayer power that He wants me to have. This vital dialogue between God and ourselves through His Word.
So I can't emphasize enough the importance of studying and treasuring the Word of God as far as our prayer lives go. As we are saturated with the Word of God, our mind begins to come into harmony with the mind of God, and our will begins to come into harmony with the will of God. And as the Word of God controls our life, what God wants, I will want. You see? And as my will comes into conformance with His will, that's when my prayers are answered. Then I will pray according to His will, and then I will see real power. I will see prayers answered. Now secondly, I've written down there, another favorable condition is desiring His glory. And we did talk about this a little bit this morning.
Again, we're talking about motivation. What are our motives when we go to the Lord in prayer? And our sole motive in all that we pray... should be that the Lord be glorified. When we pray for someone's salvation, our motivation should be that the Lord be glorified because He's glorified each and every time someone comes to the Lord. Every once in a while we'll run across a man or a woman who has an unsaved spouse and they really want prayer for their spouse's salvation. And that's good. But sometimes when you ask them why they want their spouse to be saved so badly, They'll say something like, oh, our life would be so much better, or we could get along so much better, or we'd have so much more in common.
Now, those are not bad things, but the motivation in praying for the spouse of salvation shouldn't be so our lives would be better. It should be that Jesus Christ be glorified, you see. The motivation of all prayer should be that the Lord be glorified, and that's what we should really be concentrating on. And so a favorable condition. for a powerful prayer life is that we desire the glory of God. And incidentally, I should mention that oftentimes God is glorified through what we might say is unanswered prayer. Personally, I don't believe there's any such thing as unanswered prayer. I believe that God hears and answers every prayer, but He hears and answers in different ways sometimes than we had in mind.
And Laman Strauss uses four D's to help us remember the ways that God answers prayer. One is that he answers directly. That is, he answers immediately and answers just the way we ask him. He answers directly. The second way that God answers prayer is differently. He answers the prayer, but he answers it in a different manner than we had in mind. And the third way that he answers is delay. He answers our prayer, but he answers it in his own timing, not ours. And the fourth way God answers prayer is denial. Sometimes God says no, and he only says no because our best interest is in his heart. And so God can be glorified through these kinds of answers to prayer as well.
What we might consider unanswered prayer, God can be glorified. So we need to remember that when God answers prayer differently or when he denies our request or when he delays our request, that that is ultimately to his glory as well. And we should desire his glory and we should not ask for things to be changed in our lives that will rob him of the glory that he had planned for his holy name. Now there are some unfavorable conditions for prayer, and I've listed a couple of them. I'm sure there are many more. The rightness of our spiritual condition, there are unfavorable spiritual conditions. One of them is unconfessed sin. Unconfessed sin.
Psalm sixty-six verse eighteen. I'm just giving one reference for most of these and we're not looking all of them up for sake of time, but I am going to read this one from Psalm sixty-six verse eighteen. It says, If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. If I have unconfessed sin in my life, it blocks my prayer power. It blocks the prayer channel. And that is sin and word and thought and deed. Some of us who have been Christians for a while, and many of you have been Christians for a lot longer than I have, we may come to a point where we have our words and our deeds pretty well in conformance with the holiness of God.
But I've never talked to a person yet who thought that their thought life was completely holy. And you see, that sin that we have in thought or word or deed, but thought, that sin needs to be confessed before the Lord. And if we have unconfessed sin, if we refuse to deal with sin in our lives, then we have to expect that our prayer will be blocked. And it's really presumptuous to ask something of God when there's known sin in our heart that we refuse to judge and confess and forsake. Now, the word confess, as many of you probably know, literally means to say it as the same way, to say it the same way as God. And what that means is that we need to see our sin the way God sees our sin.
Sometimes we do something or say something or think something that's sinful, and we know we should be sorry, but we really aren't. And the reason for that is that our perception differs from that of God. We need to pray that our perception of our sin will be the same as God. That we would hate sin as much as God hates sin. because it cost him the life of his son. And if we refuse to confess sin, we've refused to meet God's requirements for an effective prayer life. And I want to mention something on an assembly-wide scale, that if we as elders or we as spiritual leaders tolerate known sin in the assembly, and we refuse or we are reluctant to discipline where discipline is needed, or there's passive toleration of overt sin by the saints, then God will shut down the prayer power of the assembly.
We need to deal in a loving, gentle, but scriptural and clear way with sin on an assembly-wide scale. In the assembly that I happen to be in, I'm privileged to serve as one of the elders and the thing that I least like to do as an elder is to engage in discipline. but it's something that's needed. And tolerating sin without discipline is going to shut down the power of an assembly as far as prayer is concerned. So that's another area that we need to deal with if we want the powerful prayer that we should have. And then another unfavorable condition is found in James four three.
And I know many of you know this verse. This deals again with our motivation. It deals with the selfishness of our spirit. And James four three reads thusly, ye ask and receive not because ye ask amidst that you may consume it upon your own life. If our motives are selfish, if our motives are to bring glory to ourselves, then surely our prayer power will be cut off. Psalm thirty seven four, perhaps one of your favorite verses of scripture, certainly is one of mine, delight thyself and the Lord, and he will give thee the desires of thy heart. Delight ourselves and the Lord means to enter into His will completely and to abandon that selfish spirit that will block our prayer lives.
Now, we'd like to move on to session two. Incidentally, you'll notice that after each of the messages, there is a list of questions which really put the rubber on the road, so to speak. They are questions that are designed to be gone over in your own time and to really honestly search. these questions, ask yourself, examine your prayer life. These are what they're designed for and I would really ask that you would try to do that on your own time because I found them to be very helpful. So we'll move on to session two and this is continuing experiencing the power of prayer and we'd like to see now how the power of our prayer depends on our attitude.
If we are to have a powerful prayer life, our attitude must be examined. First of all, our attitude towards God. I've listed here several. There are more. The first that I'd like to mention is worship and pray. If we are to have an effective prayer life, then it's of vital importance that we have reverence for God. Yes, He is our Father. Yes, we are personally related to Him, but we need to realize that He is God. We need to realize that He is the Holy One, and we need to have reverence for Him. And when Jesus gave the model prayers of the disciples, the phrase occurs, Hallowood, be thy name. It means that His name should be revered.
It means that His name should be set apart. It means that His name is in a class all by itself. And sometimes, I'm sure it's not the case with most of you, but sometimes we have become flippant and lighthearted and irreverent. We've become overly familiar. We need to realize the great name of God, and we need to reverence that name. And I think it's important that we point out that we reverence the name of God not only by use of our words, but by our behavior. And when we say hallowed be thy name, or we say anything akin to it, we must make sure that our lives are saying hallowed be thy name, as well as our lips.
You see, it's a mockery for us to praise the name of the Lord with our lips if we're not dedicated and committed to praising the Lord with our lives. And that's what it means when we say hallowed be thy name. We need to praise the Lord not only for what He has done, but we need to praise Him for who He is. We need to recognize His greatness and His attributes. And we need to praise Him for the great God that He is. And I have to admit that many times my own prayer does not contain much in the way of pray. Too often when I pray, I'm asking for something, either for myself, or for someone else, when really my prayer should be characterized by praise.
I should be praising the Lord for who He is and for what He has done. And I think it's a good practice when we're in prayer to begin our prayer with praise, even when we're coming with a feeling of defeat or despair or frustration or hardship, we should begin our prayer with praise. God is seeking worshipers. His heart is full of joy when he is worshiped. And that should be our priority. He should be first in our lives. Now, we're going to talk later about the importance of serving. Worship and serving go hand in hand.
To worship without serving is not right. To serve without worship is not right. We're going to talk about that. But for right now, I want to emphasize the importance of praising the name of the Lord. And I want to say that many people, I have no idea how you feel about it, but many people feel that worship is confined to the breaking of bread meeting. And many people experience their worship at the breaking of bread. And I believe scripturally that worship should be an ongoing daily moment-by-moment experience. I believe we should be praising the Lord and worshiping the Lord not only on Sundays at the breaking of bread, but day by day and moment by moment as we praise Him for who He is.
Another aspect of our attitude that I should mention is Thanksgiving. Prayer and Thanksgiving are inseparably linked together in the Bible. They cannot be disassociated in Scripture. Philippians four, six, for example, tells us that with Thanksgiving we present our supplications or our prayers to the Lord. It says, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And our prayer is more effective and our prayer is more powerful when it's laced with thanksgiving. Prayer thrives best in the soil of a thankful heart, someone has said. And prayer without thanksgiving is ineffective. We should approach the Lord with praise and with thanksgiving.
Psalm one hundred and verse four. You'll notice that the Lord Jesus Always thanked. Always gave thanksgiving in association with his prayers. Paul has many notes of thanksgiving in his prayers. And we need to have the same urgency in thanking the Lord as we do in asking him for thanks. I know what it is to really pray and really ask the Lord for something, but I'm not so quick to thank him, and I should be. Hebrews thirteen, fifteen tells us that one of the sacrifices that we are to give to the Lord as priests is the sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of giving thanks. It's part of our priesthood. And you know, there's tremendous practical value in Thanksgiving, I believe.
Thanksgiving reminds us of, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of the Christian life, and that is our total dependence on God. Thanksgiving reminds us of our total dependence on God. One of the prayer postures of the Bible is for people to have their hands out like this before the Lord looking to heaven, and they're in a posture of wanting to receive from the Lord. They're in a posture that expresses their total dependence on God. And one of the real values in Thanksgiving, and I think in our prayer lives, is that it reminds us that we are totally dependent on the Lord.
We are dependent on Him for our next breath. We are dependent on Him for our next heartbeat. We are dependent on Him for all that we have and all that we need to live, our dependence on the Lord. We'll talk about that a little more later. Another idea that arises from Thanksgiving, another benefit, is that it keeps us from grumbling, doesn't it? It keeps us from complaining. I don't know about you, but Sometimes I'm quick to criticize the Israelites for all their grumbling and mumbling in the wilderness. But then I look at my own life and I see that I do a lot of complaining and a lot of grumbling and a lot of mumbling, even though I've been richly blessed. But the value of constant thanksgiving is that it keeps us from grumbling and mumbling because we realize how good God has been to us and how much He's done for us.
And so we need to ask Him for a grateful heart. Another aspect of our attitude that we could talk about is the preeminence of His will and not our own. The preeminence of His will really means that we are willing to go in any direction that He asks us to go in. The old story of many people looking for the Lord's will and they want to know what the Lord's will is before they'll commit themselves as to whether they'll follow it. You see, if somebody wants to be a missionary, they want to know what country the Lord has in mind before they'll commit themselves to the will of God. And if the Lord wants to send them as a missionary to Hawaii or something like that, they're all for it.
But if he wants to send them to some deep, dark, uncivilized portion of Africa, they're not quite as excited. But the real secret of a powerful prayer life is the preeminence or the will of Jesus Christ. Lord, wherever you want me to go, whatever you want me to do, whatever you want me to be, Lord, that's what I want. Even before I know what your will is, Lord, I'm ready to follow. That was Abraham, wasn't it? Abraham followed the Lord not even knowing where he was going. And that's the secret of an effective prayer life, the preeminence of the will of God over our own will. Then not only is our attitude towards God important, but really our attitude towards ourselves is extremely important.
Subjection of will and desire, akin to what we've just been speaking about. Really what's involved here is a denial of self, not a denial of self in terms of making life hard on ourselves and saying we're not going to partake of this or we're not going to partake of that. But the whole idea of this, it's sort of like the word deny as it's used in Luke chapter nine about denying ourselves. It's the same word that's used to describe what Peter did at the time of the crucifixion when he denied the Lord. And what did Peter really do? Peter said, I don't know this man. I don't want to have anything to do with this man.
I'm not with him. He denied the Lord. And I'm not being critical of Peter because I know I would be the same way. But when we say no, when we deny ourselves, it means that we say no to ourselves. It means that I say, I don't want to have anything to do with the old Bill Wilson. I don't want to live for him. I don't want to be associated with him. I'm saying no to myself and yes to Jesus Christ. You see, I'm saying no to the self-life and yes to the life of Jesus Christ. It's a denial of self, not in terms of depriving ourselves of something, but simply saying, no, I don't want to live for self, I want to live for the Lord.
And only when we can have that attitude, or at least desire to have that attitude, will we experience the power of prayer that we can really have. As long as we live for self, or as long as we desire to live for self, our prayer power is going to be blocked. Now, I have the phrase written there, casting away the visible. Casting away the visible. What this means is that in order to really have a powerful prayer life, we must be willing to cast away those things which we see and totally concentrate on those things which we do not see. Okay? Another word, when we are in deep prayer and when we are experiencing the power of prayer, those things which would distract us, those things which would divert our attention and our vision, must be done away with and we must concentrate on the living Lord, who is to us right now invisible.
Now, along these lines, I believe that this is one of the reasons that there is a connection in Scripture between prayer and fasting. Jesus talked a lot about prayer and fasting. And the connection there is, is fasting is not something that we deprive ourselves of, so God will be impressed, so He will grant our request. That's not what it is. Fasting is a means by which we can concentrate on the things that need to be concentrated upon, the prayer. And so the connection between prayer and fasting is that those things which are visible are temporarily put aside so that we can concentrate on prayer before the Lord.
Now, I'm not making any recommendation or exhortation regarding fasting. That's something that we all deal with in our own lives before the Lord. But what I am saying is this. that the Bible teaches clearly the importance of putting aside all those things which would divert our energy and attention so that we can devote ourselves to prayer. In First Corinthians seven, the suggestion is even made that a man and a woman engaged in the marital relationship might want to temporarily interrupt their physical relationship in order to concentrate on prayer. The idea there is that we put all the things of life aside that we can really concentrate on prayer. And I wonder if we really have those kinds of experiences.
I wonder if we know what it is to detach ourselves from the things of the world because the burden that we have is so heavy. Not saying that we do any of these things to attract man's attention or any of those things. I'm simply suggesting that we need to understand that to concentrate on the deep things of prayer can really help us in our effectiveness. as we grasp the invisible and the eternal and we put away the visual and the temporal. And then I want to mention again this idea of the total dependence on God. To me, one of the greatest things in living by faith is that it's a constant reminder of our total dependence on the Lord.
Many times people will ask us about our ministry. They'll ask how the ministry is supported. And many times I will explain to them living on faith and trusting the Lord for our needs. And their mouths just hang open. They can't grasp this. They can't understand how this would work. And they say, well, doesn't that bother you? Doesn't that make you uneasy and unsure? And my answer to that is, sure, there's times when it's a little bit hairy. There's times when I worry but my answer to the question basically is to me the most precious thing about living on faith is it gives me a unique opportunity to realize how dependent on God I am and the more I realize how dependent upon God I am the more I can grow and the closer I'll be to Him and the more powerful prayer life that I'll have and so I think one of the greatest blessings in living on faith is just to know how dependent upon God that I am.
And I praise Him for that. And even though times I get a little upset and a little nervous when we're right down to the wire on something, nevertheless, it's a great blessing to be totally dependent on the Lord. And I must say that all of us need to realize that we are all totally dependent on the Lord, whether we have a salary or a pension or whatever. We're still totally dependent on the Lord for everything, materially, spiritually, emotionally, wisdom, mentally, every way. We're totally dependent on the Lord. And the more we realize that, the greater our prayer life will be. One illustration that I'd like to share with you, I'm sure that those of you who have lived on faith or those of you who've had your needs met by the Lord for all these years could tell many, many stories.
It's just one that I want to share with you that's especially meaningful. We had a situation when we first went into the Lord's work and we were living on faith and it was kind of a new experience for us. And we were down to the last day to pay a certain bill before our credit standing would have been impaired. before we would have had to pay a penalty. And we needed forty-seven dollars to pay this particular bill. And we had forty-two dollars. And we were literally down to our last hour. There was a certain time that the payment had to be at the bank. And, you know, I could have gone to a friend or a neighbor or to somebody in the assembly and asked them to borrow five dollars, and I'm sure they would have given it to me.
But the Lord had impressed upon my wife and myself the importance of totally depending on him. And so we knelt before the Lord and we asked him to meet that particular need. And shortly after we are finished praying, the mailman came into our yard and amongst other things there was an envelope in the mail and it was from the North Adams Regional Hospital. That's our local hospital. And it was a rebate, if you can believe that. It was a rebate for some services that had occurred over two years before, nothing that we expected, nothing that we knew anything about. And let's be honest, how often do you get a check from the hospital? Not too often, right? And I opened up the envelope and there was the check and it was for precisely five dollars.
Now that's just one of many stories that I could tell and I'm sure many of you could tell, but it shows that what a glorious thing it is to be dependent on the Lord and how He'll meet our needs and how important that is as we talk about prayer. Then I want to talk about the dependence on our actions. We've already talked a lot about walking with the Lord in obedience. I'd like to have you turn to First John chapter three, please. First John chapter three. Now here we have a clear statement from Scripture in First John chapter three. We'll read twenty-two through twenty-four.
A clear statement that it is our obedience and our walking with the Lord that enhances our prayer power. First John, chapter three, verse twenty-two. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandments. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him or abideth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that He abideth in us by the Spirit which He has given us.
There it is again. You see, the power of our prayer life, the effectiveness of our prayer life is dependent on our walk of obedience with Jesus Christ. As we walk with Him in obedience, we have the prayer power. And I also want to mention not only walking with Him and living the life, but I want to close this evening with this idea of working for the Lord. in order to really experience the full power that God wants us to have in our prayer life, in order to have really effective prayer life, part of it is working in the name of the Lord and working in His vineyard. If you were to read John fourteen, twelve through fourteen, in another verse that we'll look at in a moment, you will see that if we do the works of the Lord Jesus, If we're out there serving Him, if we're working in His will, He will enhance our prayer power.
That is taught by those verses. And of course, those who wish to do the work of Christ must pray in His name. But if we really want to pray powerfully, we're going to work in His name. See, it works both ways. In prayer, power for the work is obtained. Yes, we know that. But according to Scripture, It is as we are working for the Lord that power for effectual prayer is gained. Let me repeat that. As we are working for the Lord, as we are doing His will, as we are serving Him, effectual power for prayer is gained. As we do His work, as we use our gifts in the power of the Spirit, as we labor for Him, He gives us greater and greater prayer power.
Now, the reason that I emphasize that is because sometimes we think that as long as we worship and as long as we praise and as long as we pray, we're doing our part. But Scripture clearly teaches that in addition to worship and in addition to praise and in addition to prayer, we must be serving the Lord. We must be out there using our gifts. We must be laboring for Him. And as we labor for Him, and as we work for Him and do His work and use our gifts, He gives us greater and greater prayer power. Now I share that because sometimes we fall into this habit of thinking that we're doing our part simply by praying and by worshiping.
And Scripture teaches that each of us have been given gifts, each of us have been given opportunity, and each of us has a little niche of service. And many of the gifts that God gives are gifts that are very, very important, but they're behind the scenes type gifts. And if you have one of those gifts, you use it to the glory of the Lord, because that's just as important as someone who has the gifts of teaching, for instance. You see? So each of us has a little niche. It doesn't matter how old we are or how young we are. It doesn't matter where we are in life or how long we've walked with the Lord. We all have a part in God's work. We all have a part in God's service. He has something for us to do, and He will give us the opportunity and the gift.
And we need to serve Him. We need to labor for Him. And as we serve Him and as we labor for Him, He will give us greater and greater prayer power. So, yes, we need to pray in order to work, but we also need to work for the Lord that we might even have greater prayer power. And all the promises that you'll read about in John are all given in the context of those who do the work of Christ. All the times when Jesus says, if you ask in my name, I will do it. In that section, He's talking in the context of those who are out there doing the will of God. So every day, you and I have the opportunity to go out there into the world and to do the will of the Lord to serve Him.
There's so many things that need to be done. And I realize that some of you are invalid. And I know that you have a beautiful ministry right here. in the park. I know that you have a beautiful ministry and prayer and health and encouragement. There are others of you who are able to get out. God will use you. God will give you opportunity. There's a lot of loneliness out there. There's a lot of hurt out there. There's a lot of need for comfort. There's a lot of need for the message of salvation. There's a lot of need just to people who already know the Lord to be uplifted and encouraged. We need to be out there doing His work. And as we do His work, He'll bless us. with greater and greater prayer power. Close this evening by turning to the Gospel of John chapter fifteen.
We find that our prayer power is dependent on our work in His vineyard. John chapter fifteen and verse sixteen. John fifteen and verse sixteen. And here we see that connection between laboring in his vineyard and experiencing power in prayer. John, fifteen, sixteen. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
You see that as we bear fruit, we're given greater and greater prayer power. And as we're totally given over to our calling, as we're totally given over to the Lord Jesus and He's working through us and the Spirit of God is producing fruit through us, that path of fruit bearing leads us to a place of powerful prayer. It's as we're out being controlled by the Spirit of God, as we're out bearing fruit for the Lord, that He gives us greater and greater prayer power. It almost sounds backwards. We need to pray in order to bear the fruit, but scripture here teaches that as we are out controlled by the Spirit, bearing that fruit, our prayer life will become more and more effective.
The reason for that is, is that the path of bearing fruit is the path of obedience and abiding. As we obey the Lord, as we abide in the Lord, as we're controlled by the Holy Spirit of God, we're going to bear fruit. and we're also going to have a powerful prayer life. And so we're commanded as branches to bear fruit in the Lord's power, and as we do that, He will bless our prayer lives. So we've discovered tonight, as we've gone through God's Word, that in order to experience the power of prayer, that we need to examine our spiritual condition, we need to examine our attitudes, we need to examine our actions, And particularly, we need to realize that it is as our condition is right and our attitudes and actions are right before the Lord that we will experience real prayer power.
And so tonight, as we close in prayer, may each of us be willing to look at our own lives and to see what may be lacking in keeping us from experiencing dynamic power in prayer. The choices really are. The choices are whether to abide or whether to go our own way. And if we'll abide, and if we'll be right before the Lord, if we'll work in His vineyard, He'll bless us with mighty prayer. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for your word.
We thank you, Lord, that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. We thank you that we can be in a right spiritual condition as we confess, as we come before you, as we abide in your word. Oh, Lord, give us a love for your word. Give us a thirst for your word. May we be saturated in your word and meditate upon it. As, Lord, we listen to you. and then our prayer lives will be effective as we speak to you, having been saturated with your will. Heavenly Father, may our attitude be one of worship and praise.