Prophecy6

[0:00] We are continuing to examine the right division of Scripture, and we will see it as being, as we go along, as being so absolutely essential to the understanding of the Word of God.

[0:12] And in an effort to, I guess, inject a little bit of understanding regarding the practicality of rightly dividing the Word of God, we are taking what we might call just a very brief detour for a couple of weeks from the heavier stuff to get into a more practical thing.

[0:30] And personally, I do not know of any area more practical in the Christian life than the subject of prayer. Having been a believer now for over 60 years, I have come to appreciate some of the misunderstandings that people in the lay ranks think about the clergy.

[0:53] And one of those is, a lot of people there in the pews think that the clergy, simply because they are the clergy and they know all about the Bible and they know all about God, and if there's anything they really know all about and are really plugged into and really have just wonderful, wonderful understanding of, it's the subject of prayer.

[1:14] That's pure malarkey. There is no truth in that. I do not know of anything in my Christian life that has been more perplexing to me than the subject of prayer.

[1:28] I do not understand in so many instances how it works. And someone said, well, that's your first problem there. When you say that prayer works, it isn't prayer that works, it's God that works.

[1:44] Yes, and we know, and God works through prayer. Sometimes. And sometimes He chooses not to. And God is absolutely sovereign in prayer. But there are some passages of Scripture, and we'll be looking at them in just a moment, that seem to provide a slam dunk when it comes to the subject of prayer.

[2:05] That if there's anything you can count on, it is that. And my experience has been that it isn't so.

[2:15] It was so once upon a time. But it isn't so now. Because the administration has changed.

[2:28] And we are operating under an entirely different set of guidelines now. That's the distinction between what is referred to as prophecy and what is referred to as mystery. And when we come to the Gospels, like I would ask you to turn to even now, to Matthew chapter 6, we'll be looking just a moment at the Lord's Prayer, what's commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer.

[2:49] And we will see that it, as well as all the other Gospel content, by that we mean, in addition to Matthew, we mean Mark and Luke and John, and even at least the first, approximately the first half of the Book of Acts.

[3:08] All of that content, the four Gospels and half of the Book of Acts, is written under the expression of prophecy.

[3:25] And it is the former administration. And when you get into the latter half of the Book of Acts, we find some curious things taking place as a result of the transition from prophecy to mystery, where we kind of scratch our head and say, well, wait a minute now, what's this all about?

[3:45] What's going on here? Because we know the Apostle Paul was used on a number of occasions to perform some just flat-out downright miracles, like casting the...

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[4:26] Oh, wonderful. Back in business. Okay. What was I saying before I was so rudely interrupted? Yeah, yeah.

[4:41] Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We're talking about those being under a different administration. And under a different administration, guess what? The pattern, the requirements, the way prayer works, if we can use that term, prayer works, is different.

[4:58] Because hard on the heels of the Apostle Paul saying something like, to this girl who was possessed of the demon and casting the demons out, and this transition that's taking place moving from the area of prophecy into the area of mystery, what complicates the issue even further is you've got some splashover effect from both.

[5:26] Because that's the nature of a transition. And someone might ask the question, well, exactly what was it that was in vogue during the time of the transition?

[5:37] And the answer is both. That's what makes it so difficult. Because the scriptures and the plan and program of God is in the process of moving from physical, material, Israel, Jewish, only to spiritual, Jew, and Gentile.

[6:00] And the emphasis on the physical is gone. Not that it doesn't matter, but it no longer takes the front place. Now it is the spiritual.

[6:11] So we find things like this, where Paul is in this transition period, casting out this demon, and then later he writes to Timothy and he says, Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.

[6:37] What's that all about? Why did he leave Trophimus, one of his aides, at Miletum sick? The impression is too sick to travel, so I had to leave him.

[6:53] Why didn't he just heal him? Why didn't he just lay hands on him and heal him? And then later, and this is complicating things even further.

[7:07] This muddies up this pastor's mind more than you can imagine. In Malta, when they have that shipwreck, and all the souls are saved, 176 souls saved, remember that?

[7:22] Or was it 276? I don't know. But anyway, there's a bunch of people. Nobody was lost. And they are building a fire. They're on the island of Malta, and they're trying to dry out their clothes and everything.

[7:34] And Paul reaches with a stick into the fire, and one of the local super poisonous vipers comes out of that fire and bites him.

[7:48] And all of the locals stand there and go, Oh. Oh. And every one of them knew that snake and knew its reputation.

[8:00] And they were confident that Paul, bless his heart, is just going to drop dead. Watch him. Because the venom in that thing just takes a few seconds to work, and you're a goner.

[8:12] But what did he do? He shook the thing off into the fire and went on and was unscathed. So we've got some unexplained stuff going on here, and I can't give you the answer to it.

[8:27] I just kind of scratch my head like everybody else and say, Well, what's going on here? So we've got this very complicated kind of transition period that is taking place where, and this is, I hadn't planned to go here, but sometimes the best laid plans of vice and men.

[8:47] Go to Galatians chapter 2, just quickly. And I don't want to spend much time here, but I just want to point out, make what I think is an irrefutable observation.

[9:02] And it's in Galatians chapter 2. This is, of course, after Paul had been on the scene, has been preaching the gospel with great success.

[9:17] And remember, he is the apostle to the Gentiles. That does not mean that he ignored the Jews because he felt deeply for them because he knew that they were coming from the same place that he was coming from in his unbelief.

[9:30] And here in Galatians chapter 2, and beginning with verse 7, Paul says, On the contrary, seeing that I, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, and every time that word is used, it's just a synonym for the Gentile, for the non-Jewish person.

[10:01] He had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter, with the gospel to the circumcised.

[10:13] Two entirely different classes of people. And the Gentiles would look to Paul and say, He's our guy. And the Jews, that is the believing Jews, would look to Peter and say, He's our guy.

[10:32] Both of these men were preaching at the same time. What was Paul preaching to the Gentiles? He was preaching to the Gentiles, to the uncircumcised, you are justified by faith in Jesus Christ plus nothing.

[10:52] Christ died for your sins. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. What was Peter preaching to the circumcised?

[11:06] He was preaching the kingdom. He was preaching the gospel of the kingdom, which is an entirely different administration. So we've got two administrations side by side, whereas one of them is becoming less and less.

[11:22] It's fading out. And it is fading out with the continued rejection of the Jewish nation regarding Jesus as their Messiah and as their king.

[11:36] And as their unbelief grows over the nation and more and more come to that conclusion, that opportunity that was extended to Israel to believe and to receive Jesus as their Messiah, that opportunity is becoming less and less available.

[11:57] And pretty soon, it's going to be cut off altogether. And I don't know for sure exactly when that was. I know some of my colleagues do rather emphatically, but all I can say is there are two or three different possibilities as to when that time actually ended, and I've held all of them at one time or another, and I honestly don't know.

[12:21] I do know that the stoning of Stephen was a really, really big event because of who carried it out. It was the leadership of Israel.

[12:33] And then it is almost as if with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD under Titus, who later became the Roman emperor, the offer was completely withdrawn.

[12:51] And Israel is set aside in unbelief until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. That's what's taken place here in this transition period. And this is why it is kind of difficult to nail it down.

[13:05] So let us go back to our passage in Matthew chapter 6 and look at this subject of prayer again. And here, we've talked a little bit about this, but it's such a conundrum to so many people.

[13:17] I want to make sure that there's good understanding. In Matthew 6 and verse 7, in what's commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer, and when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetitions.

[13:37] Now, you define for me, if you will, what is a meaningless repetition? Anybody? Do you want to mind, Mark?

[13:50] No. Well, I think we can. I'll try to repeat your comment. Yes. It's saying the same thing over and over again, like the rosary. Okay. Saying the same prayer over and over and over again.

[14:00] Okay. Saying the same thing over and over again. Repetitive. And that does not mean that there is absolutely no sincerity in it at all.

[14:11] There may be, especially in the beginning. But after a while, let's face it. It gets old. And it can be just repeated from memory.

[14:22] And it just becomes kind of an automatic type thing. And this, by the way, is the logical, practical reason, I think, why the rosary came into existence.

[14:39] With those beads, you can keep track of how many times you say the prayer. And each time you say the prayer, you slip the bead along a little one, you know, and you can count up after a while you've got the beads.

[14:54] And these are things that the priest may assign to you when you go into the confessional. And I guess Roman Catholics still do this, but it's certainly not as prevalent as it once was.

[15:10] But when a Catholic goes into the confessional, confesses their sin, whatever it might be, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. And what is your sin, my child? And you've got this veil between there so that you get privacy.

[15:21] And you say, well, I stole three reams of paper from my office. Okay? Well, you are assigned 15 Hail Marys and three Our Fathers.

[15:37] So that's your penance. And the word penance and the word punishment are related. And the idea is you are paying for the sins you committed by reciting those prayers over and over again.

[15:53] That's your punishment. And it is called penance, doing penance. And because of that, there has been a lot of misunderstanding as to what the word repent means because it doesn't mean that at all.

[16:09] It doesn't mean that you are paying back or that you owe something. It means a changed mind. But that's, okay, let's go on here. When you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.

[16:28] Now, the Gentiles, of course, were praying to false gods, whether it was the Baals or the gods of fertility or the goddess of love or whatever.

[16:42] They were all futile prayers, but they would pray them over and over again. And the idea was, of course, that the more prayers you said, the more likely you were to get an answer.

[16:58] Can you extrapolate that and bring that over into Christian praying? And do you see any connection there? How many times have we heard things like, and this is why I always prefer to refer to our prayer situation here at Grace as a prayer network rather than a prayer chain.

[17:27] It's just something about that word that kind of grates me. Prayer network, I think, is legitimate. You have people praying for situations, and sometimes the impression is given that if you get enough people praying, which sometimes is the rationale for putting this out on the Internet with emails, please send this to everybody else, so the more people we have praying, what we are going to do is bend God's will.

[18:01] Because if we get enough people praying about this thing where we just overwhelm heaven with our prayers because you've got 3,285,619 people praying for this, God is going to say, oh, well, okay, okay, I give in and I'll answer that prayer because only because you've got a lot of people, so the name of the game is bombard heaven with all these prayers, and that way we're sure that God will answer and he won't be able to resist.

[18:37] And that, too, is pure bunkum. But you would be surprised how many people kind of give you that impression that if you get enough people praying, God will do something.

[18:47] Now, there is something legitimate to be said about that, however, and that is if you get enough people praying about something that is legitimate, something that needs to be done, something that is of concern to them because we are told to bring our prayer requests to God and pour out our hearts to God, and he will hear.

[19:11] So I'm not denying the legitimacy of a number of people getting together, especially if we are praying about our own shortcomings and our own faults and that kind of thing.

[19:24] God is impressed with that. God has always been impressed and in tune with sincere prayer, the prayer of the cry of the heart.

[19:36] But you know something? And he doesn't always answer that in the way that we would like. This too is part of the mystery of this thing called prayer.

[19:47] So, do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you pray. Then ask him. And our, I know that there are a lot of churches, a lot of churches where you will not get in and get out of the service without this prayer being offered.

[20:04] It would almost be sacrilegious to do that. It has just made an automatic part of every service that these people come together for.

[20:15] It's become so entrenched as a kind of a ritual thing. You just don't feel like you've been to church if you don't conclude the service by saying the Lord's Prayer. And as we pointed out, this is not the Lord's Prayer anyway.

[20:31] The Lord's Prayer is in John 17. That's the Lord's Prayer. That's the prayer that Jesus prayed. This prayer is kind of like a model prayer. And do you think, do you think that right after, right after he says, don't use meaningless prayers where you repeat them over and over and over like the heathen do, and then he gives this as a model prayer, do you think he meant pray this one?

[21:02] Over and over and over and over and over and over. No, no. What he's doing here is simply providing a model prayer. This is kind of like a guideline. And he's saying that when you pray, it should include these things.

[21:19] Like for instance, God is your Father. He is in heaven. His name is hallowed. The prayer is for the coming of the kingdom. The prayer is for our daily needs.

[21:31] The prayer is for forgiveness. And by the way, this forgiveness here, that's another thing that is dispensational. Verse 14, if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

[21:48] But, if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. How do you work that into this present day?

[21:59] And the answer is, you don't. This was a prayer and this was a command that was given exclusively to the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, under the Mosaic Old Covenant.

[22:15] And it was their pattern and their responsibility to forgive those in order to be forgiven. Now, is that clearly a works thing? Absolutely it is.

[22:28] Absolutely it is. How do you square that? How do you square that with the Colossians 1 passage that talks about having been forgiven all trespasses?

[22:44] That's under a different administration. That's under the administration of grace. I don't know about you, but I suspect that there are people who have wronged me over my 80 plus years of living that I, whatever they said or did toward me or about me or whatever, I don't recall that I ever forgave them.

[23:06] I can't even remember them now, whatever it might be. And I'm talking about what started on the grade school playground for crying out loud. So, what do we have?

[23:17] What do we have under the grace dispensation? We do not have a pattern like this found here in the Gospels at all. What we have, praise God, is a blanket forgiveness where we are forgiven all trespasses, past, present, and future.

[23:36] Someone says, are you telling me that God has forgiven you for sins that you haven't even committed yet? Yes, exactly. Exactly. And is it not also true that in Christ, in Christ, he died for sins.

[23:56] Every sin that I've ever committed, he died for before I committed it, didn't he? 2,000 years ago? Of course he did. So, these things, when you start examining them and breaking them down, this whole concept of prayer just gets on a very tenuous kind of foundation.

[24:12] We wonder, what's going on here? Prayer of faith. Let's look at that for a moment in James, James chapter 5.

[24:27] This too is, and I know that this is sincerely practiced, and by the way, nobody is at all questioning the sincerity of people who engage in these things, but I do question whether they're doing it in accordance with what God requires.

[24:47] James chapter 5 and verse 13. By the way, where does James belong in this thing?

[24:58] James belongs with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and so do Hebrews, and so do the Petrines, and so do the Jehanine epistles.

[25:10] They are all part of that Jewish administration. What is it that is sandwiched in between them that we have to give special, careful attention to?

[25:21] It's that which pertains to the administration of grace as it was administered by Paul. Here, we've got in verse 13 of chapter 5, is anyone among you suffering?

[25:34] Well, you're going to look far and wide to find a congregation that doesn't have somebody in it that's suffering. Well, let him pray.

[25:47] What's the implication? There'll be relief, there'll be healing. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises. There's two extremes. We'll take the second one, won't we?

[25:59] Verse 14, is anyone among you sick? Yeah. Well, let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

[26:16] And, maybe they'll be healed and maybe they won't. No, the verse goes on to say, and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.

[26:39] Therefore, confess your sins to one another, pray for one another. I remember years and years ago when we were at another church, a local church here in Springfield that is since, by the way, no longer operating, but an evangelist was called in and this church was accustomed to having evangelistic meetings in the spring and in the fall and a lot of churches did.

[27:06] By the way, that's something else that's pretty much gone by the wayside, hasn't it? You just don't see that very much anymore. But anyway, this evangelist that came in and I well remember him because his son-in-law was a fellow student of mine at the time at Cedarville and he preached a message on this and was encouraging the congregation there to implement these principles and call in the deacons or elders and lay hands on someone and the prayer of faith would raise this one up.

[27:42] And the conversation went on and by the way, he was, at the time, he was being entertained as a dinner guest at the house of Marie and Dave Weinbrenner because they were there at the church as well and invited him to the home and the subject came up about this evangelist's wife and it was too bad that she could not accompany him and why she could not accompany him was because she had severe arthritis and was unable to travel.

[28:14] and knowing Dave like I do is very, very compassionate and very kind, you know, and, well, tell me, did you, did you have the elders, the deacons from the church come in and lay hands on your wife for healing?

[28:32] Well, yes, yes, we did. what happened? Well, I don't know. It didn't work. Nothing was changed.

[28:44] Now, what is the easy fallback there? Hmm? Yeah. Somebody didn't have enough faith because if you really had enough faith, really meant business with God, she would have been healed.

[28:59] so you're left with wondering, who's the guilty party here? Who is it that doesn't have the faith when we lay hands on her? And, you know, no one is questioning, not for a moment, the sincerity of those dear people.

[29:15] But can you imagine the confusion and the disappointment that comes from something like that? And you know what it's due to largely, at least in this case, I think it's due to not rightly dividing the Word of God.

[29:33] And to many people, if you pose what I am suggesting to you as a solution, invariably, they'll come back with something like this. Well, I believe the whole Bible. Well, I believe the whole Bible too.

[29:48] But, as we gave you Miles Coverdale's rules for interpreting the Bible, it's in your bulletin for today. I won't take time to go over it, but we'll spend a little time on it later.

[30:02] If everyone would come to the Scriptures and implement the principles that Miles Coverdale wrote there in the year 1535, when he gave us the first complete printed English Bible, a lot of the discouragement and the confusion, not only about prayer, but about a whole lot of other things, would go right out the window.

[30:25] Because when you rightly divide the Word of God, everything fits and makes sense. And when you don't, it doesn't. It doesn't.

[30:36] You've got all kinds of conflicts. And then, the waters are muddied further by people who come along and insist on, God hasn't changed.

[30:47] God is the same today, yesterday, and forever. Therefore, what He did back then, He's willing to do today if you meet the conditions. And the conditions are, of course, you have to have enough faith.

[31:00] And you'd be surprised how many people traffic in. How many of you ever heard of Popoff?

[31:12] Popoff, what was his name? Peter. Peter Popoff. You ever heard that name? Peter Popoff? You can look it up. You can Google him. P-O-P-O-F-F.

[31:24] Peter Popoff. There was a big expose about this guy. He was holding this big meeting in Canada.

[31:35] This was years ago. This was 1986, I think. 1986, holding this big meeting. And people would stand and say that he would ask you to stand if you had a need for prayer or something like that.

[31:52] And someone would stand. And he would say something about describing, yes, the lady in the third row there. Yes, the lady in the black sweater. You know.

[32:03] Would you stand, please? And what... And then she would stand and he would say, now, you are struggling.

[32:17] You are struggling with such and such a disease. And he would name it. And she'd say, yes. And you have been to two or three doctors and you've gotten no relief.

[32:30] And she is just, yes. And the people perk up and just say, what's going on here? And he goes on and tells her other things that there's no way that he could know those things.

[32:45] And people really get into this. And by the way, it helps a bunch when you take the collection. Oh, wow.

[32:57] And when this skunk, and I call him a skunk, I'm being kind, had a situation going with his wife.

[33:07] and she was out in the vestibule receiving people as they came in. And this dear little lady would come in and say, well, I certainly hope that Brother Popov can help me or do something.

[33:20] Well, what's the problem, dear? Well, I have this such and such and such and I've been to $3 and nobody could help me and on and on and she gives us stuff. You know? And this gal's making notes of all of this.

[33:34] And Peter Popov has a listening device in his ear and she goes aside and whispers to him up on the platform what this dear lady told her and he gets all of this information that this woman just gave to his wife and he stands up there rattling it off and she is just amazed.

[33:59] And so is everybody else. And boy, when this guy was exposed, you know, the guy by the name of Randy, R-A-N-D-I, I don't know if he was an agnostic and atheist or what, but he made a, he kind of made a profession out of exposing all of these shams and they need to be exposed too.

[34:19] And I don't know if the guy served time or not. And then there was another. Have you ever heard of Robert Tilton? He's another one. You can, and you know what? This guy actually did time for scam and cheating people and stuff like that.

[34:34] He served some time and don't you know when he was exposed as a fraud, I don't know about the same methodology with the hearing, everything, but he was as phony as all get out and he served time and when he got out and the last I heard, last I heard, he's back in business and conducting meetings and people are going and dumping money in the offering plate and they think that he's just the greatest thing that ever happened.

[35:07] What, what, what is this? What's going on? There, there are two kinds of faith healers and I don't know a different name to call them other than the faith healers, but you know what I mean and they're the sincere and the insincere and I'll tell you what, the sincere, I have at least some sympathy for because they really believe the stuff they're teaching.

[35:32] They really believe, they honestly believe that if you have enough faith and you know something, every now and then they seem to hit on something and somebody does seem to be really miraculously healed and don't you know people who are walking around who really ought to be dead and the doctors have no medical explanation and the doctors say, we don't know what happened, the tumor was there, we didn't do surgery, we were just talking about it, but we went in for updated x-rays and CAT scans before the surgery and the tumor was gone.

[36:21] We have no medical explanation. Well, that happens. We don't have an explanation for it and you know something?

[36:32] It may have been an atheist or an unbeliever who was the subject of that.

[36:43] So it has nothing to do with somebody praying and having faith and we don't know what's taking place sometimes that these bodies are so incredibly complex.

[36:55] We have no idea sometimes what is taking place inside these bodies and why something that was supposed to be deadly and there is all of a sudden gone they don't have any explanation for.

[37:05] And what else can you call it? It's a miracle. We don't know. But the miracle of miracles is sometimes nobody can find anybody who was praying about it or even knew about it.

[37:16] So what's going on there? And the answer is we don't know. We don't know. There's so much about this that we don't understand. About God's ways, about healing, about miracles and all the rest of it.

[37:29] So anyway, this Robert Tilton who's back in business again, I saw a picture of his home. It's a palatial-like place. One of these, you know, 10,000, 12,000 square feet estates in Florida where he is living sumptuously and faring every day and fine purple, you know, that kind of stuff.

[37:47] And he's just bilking people. And they had a dumpster. They, who did the expose on this guy, went behind his house and got into the dumpster.

[37:59] And what they found was thousands and thousands of prayer letters that he had encouraged people all over the country to write to him and that he and his staff would take those prayer letters and pray over each one and they would, and people, and by the way, and we would really appreciate it if you would show your faith by sowing your seed in the most generous amount that you can provide for this ministry and think of the thousands of people you will be helping by keeping this program on the air.

[38:33] And, and you know what? You know who sends our money in? You know, for the most part, who sends our money in? Poor little old widow ladies desperate in ill health or they have a husband who has cancer and they're afraid he's going to die.

[38:50] And I don't know if this will do any good or not, but it certainly won't hurt. And they send their money off to these people in good faith. And you know what happens.

[39:01] So in this dumpster, this guy who was doing the expose took pictures of the letters that he had dumped into this dumpster. And he went through some of the letters and, and opened them.

[39:16] And all he could tell was that the letter had been opened. And if there was money or a check in it, of course, it was gone. But the letter and sometimes a long letter was whatever their malady was and whatever they were praying about.

[39:28] Who knows whether they even read them or prayed over them and they just dumped them. And you know, this is what desperate people do though. When the doctor says, there's no hope, we've done everything we can do.

[39:40] Well, when people are desperate and they think that there's even the possibility that this might work, yeah, they can send in $100.

[39:50] It'll strap them to do it. But they, and these people, I suspect, are going to have a special place in hell when the time comes. So out of these supposed healers, there are two kinds.

[40:03] There's a sincere kind who is sincerely misled, but he really believes it. He honestly believes it. And he's not in it for the money. He really believes the healing thing. And yet many of those come to despair with their failures and I can understand that.

[40:18] And then there are the charlatans who know full well what they're doing and they are just scam artists and that is pathetic. But you know what? They can point to verses like this and people say, well, he got it right out of the Bible.

[40:32] It's in the Bible. And for a number of people, that'll cause them to write the check and then send it in. So, okay, well, I think this is very legitimate, the James 5 thing.

[40:48] I think it was very legitimate and I suspect that many, many times it worked in the administration and the dispensation for which it was intended.

[40:59] is there anything wrong with the group of people going in to the home of someone who is ill? Here in this congregation, for instance, anything wrong with the elders going in to the bedside of someone and having prayer for that one?

[41:17] Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It's a good and honorable thing to do. And I don't know how many times I've been at the hospital bedside of someone or in their home and prayed for them.

[41:28] And you do so because you care about them, you are concerned about them, and you want the will of God to be done and if it is physical healing, that's great.

[41:39] Everybody will rejoice over it. But sometimes, you know what happens when, nine times out of ten, do you know what happens when the doctor says, you've got three months to live probably.

[41:53] You're going to die. You're going to die. Now, that's not hard and fast and it doesn't always happen that way, but it usually does. It usually does.

[42:06] It isn't always God's will to heal and raise up someone. It isn't always God's will to heal someone of their arthritis. It isn't always God's will to heal someone of their thorn in the flesh.

[42:18] Sometimes, it's God's will to say, I'm not going to do that. I know what's best for you. You only think you know what's best. But I really do know what's best. And I'm going to give you an extra measure of grace so that you will be able to contend with that thing.

[42:36] And I'm not going to remove it. That was the Apostle Paul's testimony. Wow. Can we live with something like that? And what do we do?

[42:46] What do we do about our prayer? How do we pray? Well, our time is gone now. But I just want to say this. I have long since given up on what I call gimme prayers.

[43:01] God, give me this, give me that, and do this, and do that. And I've long since given up. Maybe it's just the years of experience. Or maybe it's having experienced my own degree of frustration and confusion about this whole thing.

[43:18] But the vast majority of my prayers now are prayers of thanksgiving. When Paul said, look, don't be anxious.

[43:33] He meant don't be uptight. Don't be all wrung out. Don't be uptight about anything, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God, and God will give you whatever you ask for.

[43:52] Doesn't say that, does it? But you know something? There is a place where it does say that. And it's found in the Gospels, and it is right out of the mouth of Jesus.

[44:08] Whatsoever you ask in my name, that will I do. Where two or three of you are gathered together, whatever you ask in my name, that will, well, there's more than two or three of us here. Why don't we, why don't we pray that God brings Lee and Hamoki back from the dead?

[44:23] Because when two or three are gathered together, I will do it. What's wrong with that?

[44:36] What's going on here? And this causes some people to just chuck the Bible because they say, well, that's what it says here, but you can't do that. It doesn't work that way.

[44:46] You can't believe it. Therefore, you can't take the Bible seriously. Well, you can take it seriously, and you should take it seriously, but you have to rightly divide it. Otherwise, it's not going to fit.

[44:58] It's not going to work. Our time is gone, and I'm sorry that I took all the time. Well, sweetie, would you remind me next week to let them have questions at the beginning?

[45:14] And you've probably got a ton of questions about prayer, so jot them down, if you will, and we'll open with Q&A next week. Okay? Thank you. Thank you for your kind toleration.

[45:28] Thank you. Thank you.