Prayer Of Victory

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing all right today? I trust so, bless your heart. I’ve just been praying that God might fill my heart and mind and voice and words with His love and His truth and His power. Some body’s hurting so bad this minute and you need somebody to express God’s love to you, oh I want to do that. God loves you and so do I. Somebody’s is perplexed and wondering what step to take, and you need guidance, and I want to assure you that, “If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally upbraided not, it shall be given”. God will guide you if you ask Him and trust Him. Someone is needing the strength just to live, you don’t know whether you can make it through the day. God will give you His strength, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall run and not faint”. Beloved, Jesus your blessed Lord is enough. You are complete in Him. That means He’s absolutely enough for you, in every situation of life. Trust Him, trust Him, trust Him today. Well, we’re looking at Mark chapter 9 and the disciples have just asked the Lord Jesus, “Why could not we cast him out?”, and He says, as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, “Because of your unbelief”. The what if syndrome, what if nothing happens. The refusal to commit yourself absolutely to the power of God, no matter what may happen.

Commitment, we’ll find some other reasons why they had difficulties as we on through this ninth chapter of Mark, but then He said in Mark 29, “This kind”, that means this kind of demon, “can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting”. Matthew also reports that same statement. There is a battle to be won, and it’s a spiritual battle. As you know, Paul says it as recorded in Ephesians 6, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”. Your battle is not with people, it’s with the, it’s with the evil forces of Satan, who for this brief time, has been given free reign in our world. He’s the Prince of the Power of the air, and so the only way to win that battle is not by human effort, but by seeking God, “Prayer and fasting”, Jesus said. Why did He add fasting? It is a certainty that if you will, if you will deny yourself either of food or sleep or any other normal activity, your perception of God will be sharpened, thereby because you’re paying more attention to Him of necessity.

I remember a letter that was read in my hearing some years ago, I’ve always remembered it, because it was the story of what happened to some dear missionaries who were aware of the fact that their work was really fruitless and things weren’t going well. As I recall, these were missionaries in some part of the great land of India, and they had a little chapel and they had services that were announced regularly, and they had some little smattering of people who came and attended, but things weren’t going well. Even the people who came to the services had refused to forsake their own ancient religions and although there were some professing Christians, they were not living for God, they were living in sin, and the missionaries themselves work at cross purposes. Resentments of various kinds had flared up between them and they weren’t doing well either. Finally, someone said let’s set aside a week to seek God. The thing the triggered this incidentally, was the arrival of a Christian sadhu, sadhu is the word for holy man in India, and this man had been converted and brought to Christ, and so now he was a Christian sadhu, and he came in their midst as a visitor and just shining for the Lord. He didn’t say much, he didn’t criticize anything or anybody, he was just full of the Spirit of God and in himself was a silent rebuke to their cold hearts, and that triggered some interest in spiritual renewal.

So, someone said, let’s set aside a week to seek God, so they did. They suspended all meetings. They told the postman, don’t deliver the mail, we’ll come for it when we when we’re ready. They didn’t want him ringing the bell, and the man who was writing this particular letter said, “I even let my watch run down because I found myself looking at my watch and thinking, isn’t it time to quit praying now and go to lunch?”, or whatever, and so they spent the days and the nights in prayer, seeking God. Fasting, missing meals, that sort of a thing. They had some food I take it, for a week of prayer, but they would miss some meals as well, fasting, praying, waiting on God, and as a result there came a time when they themselves knew, the missionaries themselves knew, that God had touched them. For one thing, that confessed their wrongs to each other and gotten things right between each other, and the spirit of the Lord had filled them, as they trusted Him by faith, now and when they came from the time of prayer, they found that their little chapel was full of people, and God was working. Fasting and prayer. The point of it is this. I am not advocating some wild eyed procedure, that may be harmful to you. That isn’t what we’re after. I asked friend of mine, “What is it about you? You seem to have some physical problems?”, “Well”, he said, “Goes back to the days when I thought I was supposed to be very holy and I engaged in a 40 day fast. I had no food at all, I lost”, I don’t know how many pounds he said, was very thin and ill I got through, I said, “Were you more spiritual?”, “No”, he said, “I wasn’t. I was just sick”. So, I’m not advocating something wild eyed and hysterical. I’m simply saying, if you lay aside anything including food or sleep or your relationships with each other, as husband-wife whatever, if you lay aside anything that is your normal routine in favor of seeking God, it is going to give God the Holy Spirit a chance to work in your life and work through your life, as you wait on God and pray. That’s why I was always in favor all-night prayer meetings when we were working in Youth for Christ. I would call for an all-night prayer meeting, we’d start right after the evening service, about what 10:30 in the evening, pray through until the morning hours, six or 6:30 in the morning. Oh, how God met us because there’s no telephone, there’s no interruption, you’re just seeking God, prayer and fasting.

Lay aside some portion of your normal routine. Try this for an example, miss your lunch hour. Eat a good breakfast, there’s no reason why you have to be grouchy all day, eat a good breakfast, but take what you would ordinarily use for your lunch hour and get on your knees and seek God. I can guarantee you two things. One, you’ll be blessed in your own soul, and you’ll have a good appetite for supper. Try a beginning of this principle in your own life. Try laying aside some special time to seek God, which displaces some ordinary routine, and you do so for His sake and His glory.

Well we come now to the battle that we have with the powers of evil. “This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting”. If you’re going to win the battle over Satan, you have to seek God. Eric Hutchings, my dear friend of many years, recently went to be with the Lord, he headed up an evangelistic team in Great Britain, one member of which was specially called of God it would seem, to engage in spiritual warfare for the deliverance of people who were under the domination of evil spirits. To be controlled by evil spirits is a fact all over our world, much more common than we ordinarily suppose, and so it was that when the our brother Hutchings and his team would move into some of the cities of Great Britain, or minister on the continent of Europe, or on occasions go down even to Australia, and so on, this one particular brother was used of God in confronting those evil spirits who were in charge of some unfortunate person, who had either deliberately toyed with the cult, or who for whatever reason was under the control of an evil spirit, and he would pray and seek God and would be used of God to deliver this person. Now, that happened time and time and time again, but here’s the interesting thing about him. Eric Hutchings told me that this man said, “I dare not go into battle with the forces of Satan unless I have spent time alone with the Lord in fasting and prayer”, he said, “I’ve learned to my sorrow that you cannot confront Satan without much prayer, without the touch of God upon you”, he said, “you will be defeated every time if you tried any other way”. There my friend is the voice of experience. Jesus our Lord said it. The experience of believers proves to be true. If you’re going to fight Satan, you have to have weapons big enough to defeat him, and that only comes as you seek God in prayer.

Do you really take prayer seriously? All of us pray when were in a jam and all of us pray when called upon to do so in some formal setting, but do take prayer seriously, where you’re depending on Almighty God to see you through the situations of everyday? I’ve told my students so often through the years, pray your way through the day, pray when you wake up, pray when you face your first class in the morning, pray when you face your first task in the morning, pray every time you turn the corner, so to speak, on the road of life, pray before you pick up the phone, you don’t know who’s there on there on the other end of the wire, pray before you open a letter, you don’t know if it’s a check or a bill, pray before you sign a contract, God has already read the fine print, the large print giveth, the fine print taketh away, someone has said, pray before you go on a date, pray before you take a job, pray before you quit a job, pray before you hire or fire or transfer or promote or demote anyone, pray your way through the day, pray before you open your mouth to answer quickly some statement. Open mouth, insert foot is the sad statement concerning many of us. Pray your way through the day. Take prayer seriously. You’re in a battle friend, your enemy has vowed to get you, and like some Khrushchev standing in an Iowa cornfield saying, “We will bury you”, Satan has vowed to get you. “Your adversary, the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”. You have an adversary, you have an enemy. He’s out to get you. Satan is not your friend. He’s out to deceive you, he’s out to ruin you and to pull down in the process, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, but greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world. You can trust your blessed Savior and the indwelling Holy Spirit and the promises of God, and the way to make it all real is by getting alone with God in prayer. Amen?

Dear Father today, may we be victorious over Satan and all of his hosts, because we have the good sense to seek Thy face and pray and be prepared for the spiritual battle, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!