SPEAKER_04 0:06

If you had the privilege of going to camp meeting this week, it was good. If you didn't go get online and watch it. And Tuesday we were at Celebrate Recovery. Here we weren't at camp meeting. But Wednesday night we got there. And before I went, I knew where God was leading me in this. And it's something I've been had in the back of my mind for a while. And I knew that God was pointing me toward this passage of Scripture to talk about this morning. And when I got to camp meeting and I saw that the theme was persevere, I was like, oh shoot, yeah, that's what we got to talk about. There we go. And it was like time after time after time, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night, that God just confirmed that this message is for this class at this time. In our spiritual lives, there's going to be achievements or accomplishments or whatever you want to look at it as that cannot be done in our lives just because we have a desire for it to happen. You know, we all want good things, right? We all want that person to be healed. We all want our kids to be saved. We all want all the things. But sometimes desire is just not enough. The only way you can accomplish those or have those things accomplished in your life is you have to have durability or stamina to see it through. As I look through this class, I see people that know they're shaking their heads going, oh yeah, I've been there. You know, I battled a disease for a long time. I battled a marriage that was falling apart. I battled addiction. I battled whatever the thing is for a long, long time. And I wanted something, but it wasn't there yet. And it took the stamina and the perseverance. Because we start things sometimes in our lives. We have a tendency to be all fired up when we start. But then as time goes on, it starts wearing on you, and you, well, you know, maybe maybe this is not God's will. Maybe this is something else going on. And it makes you question your faith. But really, it's not a question of your faith. You had the faith for it, it's a question of endurance. So that's what we're going to talk about that uh over the next over the next couple minutes. So um, in our spiritual lives, if we're serious about becoming disciples of Christ, we have to understand spiritual persistence. We have to understand that sometimes what happens in our life is based solely on the fact that we did not give up on God in the process. Paul understood this, and this is not our key verse today, but we're going to go there first. It's in Galatians 6 9, and it says, Don't let us become weary doing good, because at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we don't give up. He that that if I I made it bold and underlined. Uh Paul didn't do that, but I think if he was writing it to us today, he would underline that and bold it for us because it's important. If you don't give up. Persistence is a key there. Persistence is a key. And I think you could argue that we probably need to keep the principle of persistence. That's hard to say. The principle of persistence should be in all areas of our lives. Our bosses would love for the principle of persistence to be in our lives, of our jobs. Not give up, don't quit. They don't want you to quit. They want you to keep going. Uh, in our finances, in our relationships. I hope you have a principle of perseverance in your relationships because God put those people in your life for a reason. But today we're going to apply this principle of persistence to our prayer life. Um, if you want to turn to Luke 18, that's where we're going to spend most of our time. Uh Jesus addresses persistence in our prayer life in Luke 18. Let's jump into it. Um, it says in verse 1, then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. And he said, In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. Nice guy. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with a plea, grant me justice against my adversary. For some times he for some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, Even though I don't fear God and I don't care what people think, yet, because this widow keeps on bothering me, don't you love that? Uh I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me. Now, this is one of those parables, if you're like me, you read that and you go, I'm just not smart enough to understand that. Because it seems to me like you're asking God for something and you gotta bother him. Is that what Jesus is saying? That we're a bother sometimes to God? No, we'll get into that in a minute, okay? I don't think that's what Jesus is saying at all. Um, but I think the key to this whole parable is the part that we just skip right over so many times, and that's the opening line. It tells us why Jesus was doing this. And it says Jesus told them a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. That's the key to the parable. Without that opening statement, yeah, it's very confusing. It's very confusing to look at this and go, okay, there's a judge who's not got the best interest uh for this lady in mind. And uh I get confused, is that God or not? I don't know what Jesus is trying to say. Is Jesus saying that God's up there just kind of helping some people and not helping other ones? And we've got to wear him out sometimes. As growing up in the church of God, that's the way I read that parable and thought, I don't understand. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure that out, okay? I'm just gonna leave that one alone. Let that parable sit over there and not understand it, and that's okay, I don't have to understand everything. Um, but when you look, when when you read that opening statement, and we got to remember, y'all, the book of Luke is what we're talking about today. When Luke wrote this book, he did not intend for us to open up to chapter 18. He didn't have chapters in there, it was all one big long, right? He expected people to get his book, like Sarah's book, and open it up and read it from the front to the back. Not skip to chapter 18 and go, what does he mean? What is he? He means what he meant when he started the thing, okay? It's a book. It makes sense when you read it together. And we do that so often, I think, in the church and even in our own personal life. We pick one scripture and we read it and we try to say, that means this. Read it in the context. Read it in the context. If you look at the book of Luke, this is not the first time Jesus has taught someone how to pray about something. If you go back to chapter 11, that's when it all started. And what I like to think of, as I got to looking at this this week, it's almost as if Jesus has been teaching them about prayer from 11 to 18. And what I like to call it is this is the evolution of prayer. That's what I call it this week, evolution of prayer. Because if you went to college, you know this, you know this truth. You got a degree, and you you you you you say that's what I want to be when I grow up. I need that degree. And you look at the course curriculum, and it says you've got to have this class. All right? Let's just say it's English 202. Well, alright, I've got to take English 202, but guess what? You can't just take English 202. Let's say it says you've got to have calculus three. I don't mean to give anybody PTSD about calculus this morning, but let's say it says you need calculus three. Guess what? You just don't go in there and go, I need to take calculus three. No, you've got to do calculus one first. Then you do two, and then you can take three, the one you need. And those are called prerequisites. Right, right, right, right, right. So what I think we see here in the book of Luke is the prerequisite to chapter 18 is in 11. Okay? Uh I think that's what we see throughout this book. Let's look at chapter 11. Maybe this makes more sense if once I read 11 to you, right? It says, one day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of the disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught disciples. Now, it goes on, and Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer. And we're going to talk about that in a minute, okay? But let's concentrate on this right here for a second, because I want you to grasp that line the same way we grasp the one in 18 about Jesus telling him he needed to teach them how to pray and not give up. It's interesting that a disciple, it doesn't tell us which one here, goes to Jesus and says, Teach us how to pray, us. In other words, he's speaking for everyone else in the group. He's like the spokesman. And I want you to grasp this right here because I'd never thought about this to this week. These guys are not non-praying men. Every single one of them are Jewish. They grew up praying. They grew up following Yahweh. Okay? They had a bar mitzvah. I don't know what all that entails, but they had one. Okay? I'm not Jewish. I don't know. Maybe somebody in here can tell us what all that means. They'd gone through that. They prayed at every meal. They had fixed times during the day that they prayed certain prayers. And in all of this, they looked at Jesus and they said, Something about the devil when you pray, it's different. Something about the way you're doing it is different than what we do. And we know how to pray, but you're doing something different. Because we've we've followed you for 11 chapters here. We're in the 11th chapter, right? We followed you for 11 chapters, Jesus. And when you pray something happens, when you pray people are healed, when you pray demons flee. When you pray people get raised from the dead, I want to do that. You know, what I find interesting is these guys, this may hit some of y'all, it hit me this week. These guys are willing to let Jesus teach them how to do something they think they already know how to do. That hit me today. I mean, this week. They're saying, I know how to do this, but I think you know a better way, so show me how. I want you to show me how. They grew up having church one way, but they wanted to do it Jesus' way now. No matter how much they enjoyed or how comfortable they felt with their prayers they had, they were willing to say to Jesus, hey, this just ain't happening when we do this, okay? We we we we need your help. So we're coming to you and we want results. We want the results you get, Jesus. So what does Jesus do? Like I said, he gives them a template, he gives them the Lord's Prayer. You know, and there's been a lot of people talking about the Lord's Prayer about how you're not supposed to pray the Lord's Prayer, you're supposed to, that's a template, and I agree with that. You know, I I when I was in high school, our band director, not a very religious guy at all, um, love him to death though. But he he we said the Lord's Prayer, though, every single time after we warmed up at halftime before we marched on the field. And I respected that, even at that age. But the Lord's prayer is just a template of what we're supposed to pray. It's not the prayer. We're not supposed to sit down every single day, our Father who are out in heaven. It's the template. So let's let's look at it though. This is what Jesus says to them in the Luke version. I know other gospels have another version of this with a little bit more. But Luke said that Jesus told them, When you pray, say this Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day your daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not into temptation into temptation. So let's break that down for a second. The template. Jesus is saying to them, Father, is the way you're supposed to start your prayer. You're no longer in this creature-creator relationship with God. He is your heavenly father. You're now in a son father or a daughter-father relationship. It's no longer God, the creator of the universe. And if you've, how many chosen friends we got? I'm not gonna say you're wrong. I love chosen. Okay, I love it. I think it's great, the chosen. You know, the movie series. You know what I'm talking about? Okay. If you've watched that, the disciples, every time they prayed, they said the same prayer. They go, Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe. Y'all remember that? Blessed are you. It's because that's from the Torah, and that's the way they looked at their relationship with God, creator of the universe, not Father. That's different. That's different than Father is different than God of everything, creator, and he's both. Don't miss that. He's both, but what Jesus is saying, I'm going to introduce to you a new relationship. Father. You're a son or a daughter now. So that's part of the template. That's different than what they were praying before. Y'all see that, right? Okay. And then he says, Hallowed be your name, holy is your name. Your name is above every other name. That's important. He says, Your kingdom come. I don't have to wait till I get to heaven to be in your presence. I don't have to wait to get to heaven to have some of what heaven provides. I can have it here. Jesus was really introducing them there then to the Holy Spirit. He ain't talking about it yet, but that's really what he's doing. Guess what? This is the way you're going to pray in the future. And then he says, give us our daily bread. And I think a lot of times we get very close-minded about bread and think food only, but really what he's saying is, give me what I need today. If that's food, that's awfully important. But I don't think any of us in this room really need to worry about what we're going to eat for lunch tomorrow. Be good. We probably don't need to worry about what we're going to eat for lunch the rest of the week. We're all good, right? But we do need healing. That's a need, and that's daily bread. We need encouragement. We need wisdom. That's daily bread. All of that's daily bread. And then he says, forgive us as we forgive others. And really what I think Jesus is doing there is he is introducing the idea that your relationship with each other is just as important as your relationship with God. You've got to forgive everybody else if you're expecting God to forgive you. Therefore, if there's something your brother has against you, when you're at the altar, lay it down and go get it straightened out before you come back to the altar. That's important. That's in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talks about that. It's an important principle. He wanted to teach those disciples who wanted to teach us. So Jesus, and then he finishes up, lead us not into temptation. I mean, guard my heart, God. Help me put up barriers in my life so that I'm not affected by all the junk that's out there trying to get at me. You know, whatever that barrier is in my life, God, help me with that barrier. Help me guard my heart. It's a pattern for prayer. It's not a pattern from the, it's not a prayer from the Torah that Jesus said, this is what you should say every single time. It was different for those guys. It was a framework. And really, if you think about it, this was extremely revolutionary for those 12 guys because they were not raised praying that way. I can just go in and go, hey God, this is what I need today. This is uh I thank you for everything you've done in my life. And you're you're I love this relationship we have as a father and son. And uh today, this is what I need. I need you to help me talk to my kids today about something that happened yesterday. I need you to help me talk to that co-worker today because their husband died yesterday. That's what I need. There wasn't a prayer in the Torah for that. Jesus is saying, you can pray that way. That changed everything. That was prayer 101. And that's what Jesus was teaching them there, right there. Because they knew they had a deficit. They knew, hey, look, this ain't happening. I prayed this, these same prayers all my life, and then this guy comes along and tells me to follow him, and I start following him, and I see him go away and pray for a long time. He goes up in the mountains, and we have to go find him, okay? And he's like hid out somewhere praying. And then he comes out of that experience and people's lives are changed. I want that in my life. So this was revolutionary, and it was prayer 101. And then that takes us back to chapter 18, when Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should not, they should always pray and not give up. Now, don't get this messed up. It's not like the way they were praying from chapter 11 to chapter 18 was wrong. It was right. Jesus is just saying to them at chapter 18, where you're going, this is key. Where you're going and what you're about to experience, the Lord's prayer ain't gonna get you there. You need more. You need more than the Lord's Prayer now. You need prayer 202 now. Before you can graduate from your disciple program, you need prayer 202 now. And it is a persistent prayer. So he gave them this framework, the Lord's Prayer. But he knows that they're gonna need to be able to pray that Lord's Prayer, but they're gonna have to do it in a persistent attitude because of what they're about to face. They need to be able to pray and not give up. They know the importance. They went to Jesus because they're like, this is important. We've got to learn how to pray like this guy. They don't understand where they're going yet, though. They don't know what's happening tomorrow. Because if you flip your Bible over right now and look at chapter 19, that's triumphant entry. The wheels are about to come off the bus in their lives. And Jesus is going, I need to tell you a parable today of how to pray and not give up. Because he knows the heat's about to get turned up. And yeah, they got this framework down. They're praying like crazy men now. They're asking God for all these things, but I'm afraid that when resistance hits, they may. Not be able to kick on through that. So he tells them this parable, and like we've said, this parable can be hard to understand. Because a lot of times we read that and think that the judge in this is God. And I don't think that it's God. I think that the judge is one of the obstacles in the way of this widow getting what God wants to do in her life. Okay? And don't so don't get that out of your mind. God's not up there just messing with us. He doesn't do that. So what I'm going to do for the remaining of our time is look at three needs in our lives that require persistent prayers. Three times. We need to be able to have persistent prayer lives. Because without persistent prayer lives, we're going to fall short. And the first one is when it seems like you don't have any hope. Yeah, I see a lot of people in here that have been there before. Where a doctor walked in and said, You ain't got no hope. This is going to kill you or somebody else. Or your family has been ripped apart by whatever, and you thought, there ain't no way in this world we can ever work all this out. Ain't no hope. Jesus picks for this parable a main character, and she's a widow. A widow woman. Because that's what widows are, right? Widowers are men. Widow woman. And she's got some kind of legal issue. He doesn't tell us what it is, it don't matter what it is, it's a legal issue. And she needs justice. She's been done wrong, and she needs justice. And this is significant why he chose a widow in this parable. Because during this time, this widow did not have any social or legal standing. Okay? She couldn't testify in court. A woman couldn't testify in court. That's the problem, is the society she lives in, women were looked down on. You know, we talked about this back during Easter. That's why I think God arranged it for Mary Magdalene to be the first person to go to the tomb. Because her testimony wouldn't even stand up in court. Okay? Nobody's gonna believe her. But she's the first one that goes back and tells the disciples to come, and they come out and they're look at the guys get there, the men who have so much control over their lives and can really testify in court and tell us all the truth. I'm being sarcastic, okay? Um, it's a woman, she has no legal standing. She couldn't present things for herself, she couldn't represent herself in court. So don't and don't miss this. Her support and her security and her safety were in her husband and it's gone. It ain't there no more. Support, security, and safety are gone. She doesn't have those anymore. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you've lost your support and your security and your safety, where it just seems like, okay, I'm in this situation and the system is stacked against me because I can't, I don't have much hope in this situation because I'm told this is the rules that I have to go by, and I can't change the rules. The rule was you don't go to court, woman. So therefore, I can't do anything. I have lost hope. I'll never be able to get justice for this wrong that has happened in my life. So, what does she do? She doesn't have a pity party and just go home and sit on the couch and turn on Jerry Springer and gripe and complain all day long. And get on Facebook and tell everybody how bad it's been. She doesn't do that. She gets her clothes on, she gets her purse, she goes against every social norm that she knows and what other people call normal. She gets in her car and she drives to the courthouse. Don't miss the fact that when she pulls up at that courthouse, everybody there is a man. Okay? And they're all gonna go and look at her when she gets out of the car. What's she doing here? Who does she think she is? She's not allowed to do that. How does she even know to go about this? I like this part. How did she even know where to go? Because if you've not been, if you're a little girl growing up in that environment, they don't teach you, okay, look, if something goes wrong, this is what you gotta do. You gotta go to Jasper, you gotta find you a lawyer, okay? Or you can find one here in Somiton, and you can get you a lawyer, and then you go to Jasper, and you gotta go find out what's going on, that lawyer's gonna help you. She doesn't know all of that. She goes in by herself because she doesn't know what to do. Nobody's ever taught her what to do. She needs assistance doing something, and she doesn't even know that she what to ask for. And I think that's where the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. When you don't, I don't know what to do. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't even know what the first step in this is. The Holy Spirit intervenes in our lives and shows us the first step. And then you next thing you know, you're up to this thing in your waist, and the Holy Spirit's still there with you, and you're going, This is crazy. I just pulled up out here in this parking lot and I don't even know what to do, God. I need you to speak through me when I walk through this door. I think that's exactly what Jesus is pointing to here in this parable. It's a hopeless situation. She has no support system. Society's looking at her like she's crazy, and she doesn't have experience. She probably didn't even know where the judge's office was. Have you ever found yourself there where you're like, I don't even know where to go? But she knew one thing. God cared about this injustice in her life, and he was going to see it through. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I'm going to push on through it. I don't, they're telling me there ain't no hope in this situation, but I'm going to keep on praying about it. I'm going to keep on telling God, hey, this is the problem right here, and this is what I need to happen. I'm going to keep on showing it. That is persistent prayer. When everything is stacked against you, when society tells you you're half crazy because you believe this is going to happen, that is persistent prayer. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Like I said, you know what the work out the way. She knows how you work. She didn't know what she didn't know. No, she didn't know what to ask. So all along the way, you know, the Lord said, You've got to go get help.

SPEAKER_04 29:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

So she's having to talk to people.

SPEAKER_04 29:40

Yeah, she's having to talk to people. Who do you think you are?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

You've got to get a man.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

That's against the rules.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

She's getting that pushback. People aren't just looking at her. They're quite telling her she's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

That's right. That's right.

unknown 29:56

Just like the world does us.

SPEAKER_04 29:58

Just like the world does us today when we when somebody tells us when we get a death sentence in a diagnosis and we go, well, I just believe God's going to heal them. That doesn't happen. You need to follow the science. Well, I don't follow science. Yeah, yeah. You know, but this 98% of the cases this happened. Well, there's 2% there that it didn't happen. What happened there? It's exactly when I was doing it, I was thinking about your dad, yeah. I will tell you this after you got better than I got on your life. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean that there there there there's there's times in our lives where we're gonna face things that just don't make any sense. And we've got to have a persistent prayer life. That's praying without ceasing, Dana. That's praying without ceasing. That's what that is. Yeah. It's staying in a state of prayer, keeping it open. You know, when I pray in the mornings, I don't ever say amen, because I ain't done. God knows I'm coming back. So I I just go, hang on a minute, I gotta go take a shower, okay? Uh departed. Yeah.

unknown 31:54

Nobody has your meeting.

SPEAKER_04 31:56

No.

unknown 31:57

So when I got saved, I know Jesus Christ was God.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

Absolutely. That that that that's prayer 202, right there. The second the second reason we need this is uh when you think, underline think there, the answer is no. Uh because in our parable, it says a certain town, there was a judge, and he neither feared God nor cared about people or what people thought, and there was a widow that kept in the town that kept coming to him with a plea, grant me justice against my adversary, and for some reason he refused. I think that refuse there really means he just refused to even listen to her. Okay? He didn't tell her no. He was like, no, leave me alone. Leave me alone. Because he never went to court with it. When you go to court with something, that's the final, right? This judge is not even giving her the time of day. Okay? So what we're looking at here is it looks like a no. It says he refused for some time. That means it wasn't one trip down to the courthouse and got out of the car and they shut you down, and the judge wouldn't even give you a minute in his office, and you go back to the house and go, well, don't guess that's God's will. You didn't get a no. You didn't get an answer, is what you got. And then what I don't want us to miss about that is it was time consuming. She had to take a day off. Here's a widow. And in that time, there wasn't many jobs for widow women to make money with. I mean, she had to come up with something on her own. So she ain't making money that day. And in our world, you'd call in sick, right? Drive down to the courthouse. Well, that's $4 a gallon gas now. You gotta get there. You gotta find a parking place. You gotta get out, go find the judge. It's a sacrifice, is what I'm getting at. It's a sacrifice for you to go do that. And it wasn't a one-time thing. It was a pain in the butt, is what I'm getting at. It was a day after day after day, because it says, after some time. Day after day after day of doing the same old thing, going down there to the courthouse and letting this judge's secretary look at me like I'm crazy when I walk in and saying he doesn't have time to see you today. Okay, well, just tell him I'm gonna be in the parking lot then. And I'm gonna be waiting on him out there. And when he comes out to his car, I'm gonna start screaming at him. Because I I gotta have this. I don't have any, I don't have any other hope. This is it. Uh it cost her something every time she went down there. She was, she was, she was scrutinized, she was looked down on. It cost her money, uh, physical money. Um, and it would have been very easy to stop and go, okay, obviously this is not working. Maybe this is God just saying no. But she had not heard a no yet. And I think that that's discernment right there. God promised me this, and it's gonna happen. And I ain't heard no yet, so I'm gonna keep on going. Don't assume a no just because God is quiet.

unknown 35:34

That's right. That's good.

SPEAKER_04 35:36

Because we do that. I I do that. We all do that. We we we we are be praying about something, and God's going, hmm? No, no, not right now. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, wait a minute. He never tells you flat out, no, that's not going to happen in your life. He says, not right now. Hold on, hold on. And we get tired and we quit. And we just go, well, that's I don't guess that's just the way it's gonna be. I gotta learn to deal with this thorn in my side now. And uh don't assume a no just when he ain't answered you yet. Um that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, she had to get creative, yes. That's right. Right. Um, and so that's gonna lead us to our third. We got a rock. Here we go. It's 16 after. Um the last one is, and I hope y'all understand what I mean by this. I know some of the young people in the room will understand. The third way, third time you need to have persistent prayer is when you need to flex your position. Do y'all know what I mean by that? Uh it it what I mean when you flex on somebody, y'all know what I mean? You know what I mean? When you flex on somebody, you're showing them your capabilities. Okay? This is popular in the young kids, the Gen Z and X's folks, and they they'll flex on you, is what they call it. They'll go, it's like flexing your muscles, showing somebody what you got, you know. Um they you're you're helping someone understand who they're dealing with, is when you flex on somebody. You understand what I'm saying? Because like like somebody comes in a conversation and they don't think you know what you're talking about, and all of a sudden you just start talking about something that's above them, and they're like, oh. Shoot, you know what you're talking about. You just flexed on me, didn't you? You went under that whole subject that nobody understands, and oh my gosh. This is why you need a persistent prayer lie, because you gotta flex sometimes.

unknown 37:55

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

You gotta flex on Satan, so you gotta flex on because it says, even though I don't fear God or care what people think, because this widow keeps on bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me. He thinks she's crazy. That's exactly what and and I I got challenged this week. I was like, just stay and think you're crazy, Jonathan. Not enough. Uh because every morning she's in that parking lot with this judge is thinking. Every morning I get here and she's already here, y'all, posted up over there in the corner, flexing on me. Every morning she follows me all the way to my office. Every day, it's the same old thing. She wants justice. You've got to get me justice. She's bothering me. Why does it, but why does he get he gives in? Because what Jamie just, she's crazy. This girl's crazy. She's gonna hurt me. This is a grown man that's a judge, afraid of a widow woman right now. He's gonna attack me and hurt me. He is afraid of this woman. And I don't think that Jesus is advocating for violence here for us to go out and be crazy and hurt people, but I think there's something about the vibe this girl is putting off that that makes that judge go, I'm concerned that she may do something insane today. Okay? How many times has our enemy got that vibe from us? Persistent prayers are not limp-rested mambi-pamby prayers. What Jesus is teaching them is look, you're gonna have to storm the gates of hell. And you're gonna have to go in there and you're gonna have to set things straight. And you're gonna have to flex on Satan and let him understand who you are and the fact that you know who you are. Because Satan knows who you are, he knows the relationship you have with the Heavenly Father, he knows all those things, but he's betting on the fact that you don't believe it. So you're needing to flex on the fact that I know it, and that should terrify you, Satan. Because we're about to get it on. And things are gonna change. Jesus knew in 19, chapter 19, they're gonna need this. Because when we go through the triumphant entry, you're gonna need to be able to pray with persistence. Because they're gonna think I'm a rock star next chapter, and soon after that, I'm not gonna be a rock star anymore. And you're gonna have to be able to pray even though you're a disciple of me, and I have lost all the love in the room. You're gonna need to be able to pray after the crucifixion. You're gonna need to pray when it seems like you just gotta know. Can you imagine that? This guy you just gave up three years for to follow around? Just got crucified? That sounds like a big fat no, doesn't it? You're a moron. You followed this guy for three years and he just got killed. That's a big no. And Jesus is going, no, you've got to be able to pray, my Father who art in heaven, even after all of that. You need to be able to pray in that upper room when I tell you to go wait for the Holy Spirit and not give up after eight days. It's gotta be ten days. Ten days is a long time to pray, y'all. I mean, we're we're making a lot of uh movements probably in our schedule tomorrow to come up here and pray for about an hour. Can you imagine if Sarah had challenged all of us? Hey, listen to what we're gonna do. Everybody's used to vacation days next week, and uh we're gonna just be here for 10 days, right here in this room. Uh, and we're gonna pray, and we're gonna get after it, and uh, we don't even really know what we're praying for. It's some kind of promise, okay? Uh we don't really know what it is. So see y'all then. I don't know that all of us would be here for that, okay? I think we would go, well, maybe Sarah's a little crazy, you know. I know she she probably don't have a whole lot going on this week, but I gotta go to work. I mean, I can't do that. Um, but God Jesus knew when they're in that upper room, they they're gonna want to give up. Because I'm sure there was like, can you imagine that? You've been there for five days. I'm pretty sure like day six was probably not very exciting at all. You're up there just praying. The Holy Spirit has not descended yet. So this is just a bunch of people praying, y'all. It's not like people are getting slain in the spirit and it's fun and it's exciting, you know, what we all like. This is just people praying in a room. Yeah. They started yeah, you're right. They started out with a lot more. It dwindled. Yeah, and that that's why. That is why they gave up. They weren't there for this parable. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah. Another way to look at it. That's right. Right.

unknown 44:26

But there will never find on all the time. I still remember all the frame and all the un all I want to write a bottle.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

Right.

unknown 44:35

Amen.

SPEAKER_04 44:37

That's a modern day parable right there. So this is what I believe, y'all. I believe that we as a Christ, Jesus taught us this parable today. I think that uh he we we all know the importance of prayer. We proved it right over here a couple weeks ago, right? We all we all uh we believe in prayer, we know how to pray. We got the template down. I think most of us in here are seasons Christians and we got it. We can pray. Know how to do that. But I think what Jesus is wanting to teach us today is how to pray and not give up. Because I think he's trying to teach us that in the near future, in our chapter 19, things might not be as peachy keen as it's been. It might not be as easy as it's been. There might be a lot of doubt out there. There might we don't know what's gonna happen next month. We don't have no what's gonna happen tomorrow. This afternoon. Uh, you know, I think that that's what Jesus is teaching us today through this parable, this classroom, this sample of the summiton church of God, I think that's what he's teaching us. And he's teaching us that for a reason. Like I told y'all when I started this thing, I really believe this was for all for a reason. It was for us. And it's not just a cool thing to talk about on a Sunday morning, it was for a reason. And and I think that it's it's all coming together, it's all falling into place with this prayer meeting starting tomorrow night. And uh the the uh the burden that was put on Sarah for this whole prayer meeting is starting to come to a fruition, and God is setting us up to be the persistent prayers in this body. The people that are willing to come up here every Monday night, even though nothing's happened. I'm not, I God forbid this happens, okay? But but but I'm saying I just feel like God's setting us up. I think y'all know where I'm coming from, okay? And He wants to teach us something through this, and I just hope we're all ready for it and uh prepare ourselves for tomorrow night because I think it's the beginning of something big. Um, you know, I uh growing up in the church, it's like you start a prayer meeting and you're like, well, when's this gonna end? That's the question we all ask in the back of our mind, right? You know, how long is this gonna go on? You know, we're gonna do this three weeks, six weeks, ten years, how long is it? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But but uh I think that it's the beginning of something huge, not only for this class, but for this church, and not only for this church, for this community. Because guess what? There's a whole lot of folks out there that ain't got no hope, and they don't even know how to get to the courthouse. We need to teach them how to get to the courthouse. I'm blaming the house on stop.