======================================================================== HOUSE OF PRAYER - PART 7 by Jim Cymbala ======================================================================== Summary: Jim Cymbala emphasizes the transformative power of prayer in overcoming life's challenges and sustaining faith through difficult times. Duration: 5:15 Topics: "Prayer Life", "Spiritual Warfare" Scripture References: Philippians 4:6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon emphasizes the power of prayer in overcoming challenges and spiritual battles. It shares personal experiences of facing trials, including a daughter straying from God, but finding strength and grace through prayer. The importance of a dedicated prayer life and the impact of intercessory prayer are highlighted, showing how God's intervention can bring hope and stability in the midst of turmoil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We found if you can beat the devil on the prayer meeting night, you'll beat him on every other level. And that's the way it is in our personal lives. If you can beat the enemy in prayer, you can beat him on every level. You will read the word. There's grace flowing through your life. You have an appetite for the things of God. So from me standing in front of two people on a Tuesday night, I used to do that. First offering I took on a Sunday was $85, tithes and offerings, and I had a daughter named Chrissy. It was about a year old. My wife took a second job. I took a second job. But the people began to pray. But in closing, let me just tell you the last some of the last lessons I've learned about this wonderful truth, because I'm not trying to preach down to anyone. I'm preaching to myself as I'm talking to you about eight or nine years ago. My daughter who is here today. She got away from us. She got away from not only us, she got away from God. She got away from our house. And my wife and I went through a two and a half year long nightmare that I don't want to go into. But I promise God, as I was getting at the end of it, that as he brought me through it, that wherever I got a chance, I promise God, no matter how hard it would be, as he's my witness today, no matter how hard it would be, I would tell people what God does and answer the prayer. You know what the feeling is not to know where your daughter is with that? She grew up as a model child. I have two other children. Chrissy's now 25. I have a daughter, 21, and a boy, 18. But at that time, Chrissy was about 17, 18. And it was, I'm talking nightmare. I'm talking about getting in my car and leaving my house to go to the church in the inner city where, where I'm going to face, you know, 10 new people who visit who are HIV positive and a battered woman and no need family units and everything discombobulated, and I don't want to be the focus. I'm supposed to be there, Carol and I, to minister to them, but I'm crying from the minute I leave my door to the church and saying, God, my heart is broken. My nerves are shot. I've screamed, begged, pleaded, try to use money, reasoned, cried, and she's getting worse. She's not getting better. And how am I going to minister? And we're starting other churches and renting Radio City Musical and starting new churches in the city and going to South America and Carol's writing songs and making albums. But nobody knows, or very few people know, that we're hanging by a thread, my friend, by a thread. And all the times I drove and cried out to God coming in and saying, God, please, just get me through these three meetings. We have 11, 3.30, and 7.30 services each, about two hours long or more. And I'm just saying, God, please, just get me through another Sunday. And God would just lift me, and I would have the grace to get through and minister to people, even though inside I was so, so just shaking. And I learned that when you pray, God comes. I learned that when you have no logical way to stand, God somehow, when you pray, gives you fresh feet and a fresh foundation. We have a prayer band in our church. It's more important ministry than the 240-voice Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. There's a prayer band that not only prays through each service, about 20 of them pray through each service on Sunday while I'm preaching and ministering there in a room locked away praying, but now they pray for several years now. From 2 in the afternoon till 6 in the morning, there's, in the church, there's people praying every seven days a week, 2 in the afternoon till 6 in the morning. If any of you have some need, you can just mail it to our church. Someone will pray for it 3 in the morning. It's an amazing thing how God honors that. Well, they began to pray for me, and as God is my witness, I would sense myself at night sometimes or shaving in the morning. I would feel God's grace just come underneath me and begin to steady me and hold my emotions, and I hadn't even been thinking about God, and I would say, Lord, what is this that's just come into my life? Somebody's praying for you. Somebody's praying for you. These people would be praying for me. God bless them. Then my wife got ill. Had to have a hysterectomy and the hormonal imbalance that she ended up with. My daughter's out of the house. The other two children, I'm doing the best I can. And now my wife is not talking just about leaving New York, which she wanted to, because the enemy had told her, fine, start your churches and influence people for Christ, but I'm going to have all your children. I've got one, and I'm coming for the other two. And my wife believed it and told me, you can leave with me or you can stay, but I'm leaving. Because he already has Chrissy, and I'm not losing my other two kids enough with this. We can do this. The atmosphere in the city, New York. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/wUueaFHLm_8.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/jim-cymbala/house-of-prayer-part-7/ ========================================================================