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In, uh, Luke's Gospel, chapter eighteen. Luke's Gospel, chapter eighteen and we'll read it verse one. And he spoke a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint, saying, there was in a city a judge who feared not God, neither regarded man. And there was a widow in the city, and she came unto him saying, avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while, but afterwards he said within himself, though I fear not God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust ju- unjust judge saith, and shall not God avenge his own elect who cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them. May the Lord just add his blessing to the reading of that short portion of his word this evening. We've been talking to you last Sunday night and on Wednesday about the subject of prayer, and judging from the comments that are coming, uh, from you, dear people, w- we realize that we're hitting some tender spots in our, um, individual life, in our prayer life.
I did suggest to you, and I would not dare suggest this to you without looking into my own heart, that perhaps this is one of the, it could be the weakest part of our Christian life and experience, our prayer life. How long do you spend in prayer before God? And prayer is very important. A Christian can't function properly without spending time and beseeching God's help. Cannot, impossible. And we will show you certain things that will happen if, uh, if we don't pray.
You know, there's power in prayer, and that's a cliche. You've heard that from Sunday school days or from the day you were born again. There's power in prayer. And while we say that, I believe that the most of us don't believe that. We say it, it's nice, it's a platitude, but we don't believe it. Power in prayer, but apart from what we believe, there is power in prayer. And I was reminded this afternoon that at one time in our spiritual experience, and this involves someone that you, the older folks, knew very well, Bill Patterson, in our meeting in Telekutre, that we were experiencing tremendous blessing, no special meetings, no evangelists, uh, within twenty miles of the place, but God was just speaking, and God was working through the local brethren, and young people were being saved, and some adults were being saved too.
And we just couldn't understand, uh, it all. We knew that God was working, but why was he working? And I took a trip one day to the city of Edinburgh to visit an elderly sister who had been taken from our area with, uh, arthritis. She was absolutely stiff and, uh, in tremendous pain, and she was taken to what we called an incurable home, a hospital in Edinburgh. I went to see her, and she was lying in this room, quite a large room, and lying out on her bed, just as stiff as a board, couldn't move a muscle or a limb.
And she said, come round to the front so I can see you. She couldn't move her head in any way, but she could move her eyes. And I was not a friend of her, but my grandmother and she, Miss Gorley was her name, were very close, and for my grandmother's sake, uh, who had gone to be with the Lord, I went to see her. And she said, it's nice to see you. And she said, I want to tell you something, Dan. She said, I know when you meet on a Sunday for the Lord's Supper, and I pray all the time. I can just see the clock and the time on the clock if I move my eyes, and I'm in prayer all the time.
I know when you're in Sunday school, and I was a superintendent at that time, and I pray for you and the Sunday school teachers and children all the time you're gathered together. I know when you go to the open air, and I'm praying. I know when you come in for your gospel meeting, and I'm praying all the time. And I could have broken my heart right there at her bedside, because there was the secret of blessing in an a- in an assembly forty miles away. An aged sister, paralyzed, her mind clear, praying, praying, praying, and God was, was good, and God was faithful and answered her prayer.
We don't have too many people like that, and all due respect to our dear sisters, whom I love in the Lord, that's unusual, it's uncommon. But I believe that if there were more men and women of prayer, that we would see the results in our assemblies today. The practice of prayer. I did mention, just in closing, I believe last Sunday night, that no man or woman is greater than their prayer life. You are what you are tonight because of how you pray in secret.
That's all. And you can try to be pious. You can try to, uh, appear to be spiritual and godly. But you cannot rise above your prayer life. And God knows. It's possible that by doing these things I have just mentioned, that you may impress some people. You'll never impress God, never, because he knows you through and through. I did mention to you also last Sunday that when Paul is mentioned in the scriptures, that he always prayed night and day.
Now, if you were to write that today, you wouldn't use that phraseology. You would reverse it. I would, every writer would. And we would say that Paul prayed day and night, but that's not what the scripture says, that he prayed night and day. And here was a man who prayed and preached during the day, and at nighttime, when the preaching was over, he was found continually in prayer. Was it worth it? Did God, did God honor the sacrifice that he was making? Of course he did.
And we can see one of the most glorious and fruitful and successful lives for God as we study his character. The man or the woman who is weak in prayer is weak in life-giving forces. Someone who is steeped in prayer and who lives before the Lord in prayer, when he comes into the presence of an unconverted person, for instance, that life just flows from him to the other. There's just no problem, or hardly any problem.
Maybe a problem to get started, but once they're started, the life-giving forces flow from him to the other, and that man knows that he is speaking to a man of prayer, a man of God. I've heard it so often as we travel amongst God's people, oh, I can't do it. I can't speak to anyone. I just not cut out for that. Well, there are occasions when such a saying would be true, but in a great many instances, beloved, the reason why we can't talk is because we have never prayed, and we are not men and women of prayer.
Now, what is true of an individual is also true of a, of a, a local church, or the corporate body of believers. And the corporate body of believers that is weak in prayer usually is incompetent, lethargic, and lacks the flow of life-giving forces into the world around. Now, having said that, I have to stop and think because I'm with you here, and I remember our former visits, and I don't think that there is any assembly on the mainland that prays as much as you pray.
You have the announcements, all the different prayer meetings, and your prayer meetings, uh, extend for half an hour or, or so. It's very commendable to that. But don't you think, brethren, that you must pause here and think that despite the prayer that you are offering up, your numbers are diminishing, and I'm not saying that as an observer. I listen to the prayers of the men at the men's prayer group, and and in conversation, you admit that slowly and slowly and slowly your numbers have been depleted, and yet there is prayer going up from different brethren, and, uh, for me it's very refreshing, and yet there must be something wrong.
How can God withstand being bombarded, as we would reckon humanly, uh, with so many different requests, and yet, on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any, um, immediate, uh, uh, interference, uh, by God. Is it, is it possible, and I'm looking at my own heart, don't think ever that, that I would, uh, throw stones at anyone. Is it, is it possible that, um, we pray, and we have words, and you people have words, there's no doubt about that, and many of them, and you pray, and you pray.
But the point is, do you believe what you're praying? I think it was Wednesday night that we had a little conversation with two of the brethren outside, and this same subject came up from them, not from me, but from them. And I mentioned a verse, and I mentioned it at the Wednesday night meeting, and listen carefully now, whatsoever you shall, uh, ask the Father, he will give it to you. Remember me saying that on Wednesday?
And I deliberately misquoted that down. I don't know if you've picked it up. Some of you have, I know you're nodding your head. That's not what the scripture says. You can ask God from now until you die or until he comes and get nothing. Because the scripture says that if you ask anything in my name, believing, I will give it to you. Believing, believing, believing. Brethren and sisters, do you believe that God is going to answer your prayer?
You're going to have special prayer meetings, and we had one last night in the other building, and and and earnest prayers were being put up for for for March. And that's wonderful, but when we're looking at March, don't ever forget January and February, because God is not confined to saving souls in March. God can save souls in January and in February. And perhaps the reason why he's not doing that at the moment, and I'll tell you right now that this past week I have been in travail because my own ministry has been taking hold of my heart.
And I fully expected this morning for someone to get saved. I really did, and I was disappointed. And this afternoon I've been going over it in my mind. I know God hasn't failed. I thought I was doing all the right things, praying in the right way. And I asked God, help my unbelief, and what that means is take away my unbelief. I believe that you will answer this morning. And he didn't. At least not the way that I wanted. Was it me? Was it you?
It wasn't God. And so, you see, we we have, we have a, we have a lot to learn here. It was two years ago in March, in in June, excuse me, that I spoke at the Brethren's Conference at Guelph, and there was over two hundred men present, uh, on that occasion. And after the meeting was over, and I spoke on prayer, not, not going into it in detail the way we are with you.
I spoke on prayer, and after it was all over, beloved, there were almost thirty men on their knees, on their knees, young men crying to the Lord to forgive them for their lives up to that moment had been not, had been ill spent so far as a Christian is concerned, and that their, their prayer life didn't amount to a hill of beans. And they were confessing that before the Lord. And these men traveled, some of them were traveling at eleven thirty and quarter to twelve at nighttime, and the meeting has finished at ten. Maybe that's what we need in Nassau.
Can you wonder that the disciples said to the Lord on one occasion, Lord, teach us to preach. Teach us to teach. Teach us to cast out demons, Lord. Teach us to heal the sick, Lord. No. Boy, wouldn't it have been great if, if... What would you have asked for? I guess we would have gone for, for these extraneous things. But you know, these disciples said, Lord, teach us to pray.
Now, what was it that prompted that question? Well, I look at it in my own, with my own mind, and the Lord had withdrawn himself just a little from his disciples after a discourse together. And I can picture him kneeling down, perhaps, uh, there's a rock there on which he is leaning on, and his arms are, are outstretched just like this, and his face is uplifted to God, and he's speaking to his father, and he's communing with his father out loud, speaking out loud. And the disciples are looking, and they're listening, and they're amazed at what the Lord was saying to his father, and they were amazed at the, the closeness that there was between, uh, the Lord and his father.
And when the Lord was finished praying, he came back to his disciples, and perhaps some of them fell on their knees and said, Lord, teach us to pray just in the way that you were praying. Would you like to be able to pray like that? You know, as you grow older, I guess you get more mature. I trust that is so. I believe it is. And, uh, the Lord gives you the, the spirit of discernment.
And we've been in prayer meetings wherever, and uh, we have heard beautiful phraseology and many words, and yet there's a something about the whole thing that doesn't ring true. Someone has said that godly men never pray long prayers. Well, that could be true, but I don't think, uh, I don't really think it can be true in every instance, because there were godly men who spent hours and hours and hours in the presence of God.
It's said of a man called Booz, an evangelist of long ago, that he soaked his pillow as he travailed for souls during the night. Soaked his pillow with tears. And when Brother Bruce spoke, that the hearts of of the people, the audience, were like grass before a fire. So great was the power. Power. There's power in prayer. It may have been some time since you heard the text quoted, the verse quoted, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be done unto you by my Father who is in heaven.
Now that verse may be new to some of the younger ones here because we don't quote that verse, and the reason why we don't quote it, we don't believe it. Let me go over it again. It says that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be done unto you by my Father, who is in heaven. Now, beloved, you could, you here this evening could revolutionize this assembly.
If you were to agree, agree to the smallest possible number, but think if there, there was, uh, there'd be fifty here tonight or so. If fifty of you were to really agree with regards to the condition and to the, the, uh, sterility that seems to be, uh, among you with regards to conversions. You could revolutionize the, the, the meeting as you reached out into the neighborhood around you, if two of you shall agree.
I suppose the portion that we have read to you, the widow woman, but before I go on to that, let me go back to the eleventh chapter of Luke. Don't look it up, but read it before you go to bed tonight. And here we have, uh, a story that the Lord told about a man whose friend came to him around midnight, and he didn't have anything in the house to give him to eat, and so he went to his personal friend and knocked on the door and said, give me three loaves and so on. And you know the story, how that the man inside is, oh, don't trouble me, it's midnight, I'm in bed, my children are in bed, and so on.
But the man said, but you- you'll- you'll have to help me. And eventually, uh, he gave him bread, and he went away. Now, can you interpret that story correctly? Oh, I've- I've heard it murdered, absolutely murdered. And they try to picture the man who was in bed and who was reluctant to give us God, and and the other one was the suppliant. Oh, banish this heart. The Lord, when he told the story, wasn't wasn't meaning anyone to take that meaning out of it. Forget the man, for instance, who was in the house, the reluctant man.
Look at the man who came and asked for bread. We are told that he was importunate. Now, I guess that that's another word that's gone over our head, but what it means today is that he was persistent. He was persistent, and he knocked on the door. And although he was rebuffed and rebuked, he kept knocking on the door. And although he says, oh, I'm sorry, we're all in bed, don't wake my children, he knocked on the door, and because of his persistence, he was given his desire.
Now, that's the meaning of that story, the persistence of that man. How many of you are persistent in your prayers? We say, oh Lord, give us something, and then that's it, it's away. Well, it seems from that story that the Lord told that you'll never get an answer if, if that's how you ask. Then we come to the eighteenth chapter of Luke, which we read together, and here we don't have a man this time, but it's a woman, and she's a widow woman, and in those days, a widow woman was a nobody.
She was not an asset. She, she really wasn't. Widows weren't in those. They were a liability. But she had a problem too with someone else who was tormenting her. And there was a judge up there, and he was a ruthless man. He didn't fear God, he didn't fear man, he feared nobody. And here she had a problem. And what was she going to do? Suffer down here all the time or go to this judge? And she was courageous and determined and persistent.
And she went to that man that, that m- most other people would, would be afraid to go, but she went and she presented her petition, and she got through, and the unjust judge answered her prayer. Don't think that God is like the unjust judge. Please don't. The lesson for you is to see the attitude of the widow. And my dear sister and my dear brother, you don't have to be a preacher to be a prayer. You don't have to be a public man to be a prayer.
You don't have to be an unimportant person in the assembly publicly to be a prayer. Oh no. I believe that we owe more to the prayers of our dear sisters than we men are willing to admit. What would we do if it were not for the prayers of our godly sisters in the assembly? And so there's prayer, persistence in prayer. I suppose that, uh, there have been times, many times, when you go into your room, say, and, uh, you go to pray.
But you don't get through. Oh, I'm sorry. It's different in the Bahamas. You get through every time, do you? No, you don't. And you can be in there for five minutes, and you just get tired. It's just like s- me speaking to the microphone. Nothing. So you stop. What's happened? Well, because you stop, you show that you are not impartinate, you are not persistent. That's one thing. But the other thing is this, that Satan has come around you.