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  THE POWER OF TRAVAILING PRAYER
  by Mark Greening
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of prayer, focusing on
the need to humble ourselves, seek God's grace, and pray with a contrite
heart. It highlights the power of travailing prayer, where believers
weep and intercede fervently for the lost and for revival. The message
encourages a deep, heartfelt connection with God, seeking His mercy,
compassion, and guidance in prayer.

Duration: 1:12:05

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of prayer, focusing on the need to
humble ourselves, seek God's grace, and pray with a contrite heart. It
highlights the power of travailing prayer, where believers weep and
intercede fervently for the lost and for revival. The message encourages
a deep, heartfelt connection with God, seeking His mercy, compassion,
and guidance in prayer.

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CONTENT
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If I don't care, why should God? That is a question that goes through my
mind very often when it comes to prayer and praying for the lost and
praying for revival. With respect to prayer, very often we have not
because we ask not, and sometimes we ask not because we really don't
believe God will give us what we ask of Him. When I struggle like this,
it is nothing short of spiritual apathy and this attitude is an offense
to our loving God because what I'm really saying is I don't believe God
will act and answer my prayers.

You see, that was the mindset of the Israelites in Zephaniah 1.12 where
we read, at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish
those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think
the Lord will do nothing either good or bad. That's an amazing attitude
in light of the fact that God says that the effectual, fervent prayers
of righteous men and women availeth much. That is a promise, brothers
and sisters.

It is one of the 7,487 promises in the Bible. Now I remember hearing
that statistic years ago and I wondered what the source was and I
discovered that Time Magazine ran an article on that back in 1957, the
year I was born. And they ran an article on a man by the name of Everett
Storms from Kitchener, Ontario.

He was a school teacher and after reading the Bible for 27 years, he
decided to embark on this task, this formidable task of determining how
many times God promised something to us and he came up with a total
after 18 months of 7,487 promises and as the scripture says, let God be
true and every man a liar. Do you believe that God can answer your
prayers? We often think that for God to begin hearing and answering
prayers personally or corporately for revival and for salvation, that it
takes a group or a congregation or concerts of prayers carefully
scheduled and organized and orchestrated across the nation. That is not
necessarily the case.

In Ezekiel 22, 30, God says, I looked for a man among them who would
build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land
so I would not have to destroy it but I found none. The Lord is telling
us here that the prayers of one man, one woman, one young person are so
important to Him. They are so important to Him that the fate of the
whole nation could have been averted by the prayers of just one person.

The question I want to answer this morning and ask as well for each one
of us is what kind of prayer is a prayer that availeth much according to
James 5, 16? What kind of prayers will change people? Other brothers and
sisters in Christ who are struggling with a besetting sin. Those who are
struggling with blind spots and rebellion, the lost around us. What kind
of prayers avail much? James says the effectual fervent prayers.

Those are the kind of prayers that avail much. That takes into account
prevailing prayer. We're all familiar with prevailing prayer.

But have you ever considered or do you know about the power of
travailing prayer? This morning I would like to talk on travailing
prayer. To define travailing prayer, I would like to describe it as the
definition, it is an expression of the grief of the heart of God. In
Romans 8, 26 we read, In the same way the Spirit helps us in our
weakness, we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit
Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

And just as the Holy Spirit uses our mouths to witness on His behalf,
and just as He uses our hands to serve on His behalf, so He uses our
hearts and emotions to grieve and weep and plead on His behalf as well.
Years ago I read about people travailing in prayer, but over the past 18
years, the Lord has allowed me to witness and experience this phenomenon
amongst individuals as well as in larger groups. And the effects of this
kind of prayer have been nothing less than remarkable.

In a few minutes I'd like to recount to you some of the stories of
travailing prayer and the power therein. But before I do that, I want to
lay a scriptural basis for travailing prayer so that you understand that
I'm not promoting some new technique or methodology or fleshly effort to
accomplish the things of the Spirit of God. Then I want to conclude with
an encouragement from the Word of God as to how to prepare for this type
of ministry in our own lives and in the lives of our churches.

In Scripture, the word travail is used to liken the anguish of
childbearing to the anguish of prayer over the burdens of God,
specifically for the souls of the lost. This principle comes through in
Isaiah 66 where we read that as soon as Zion travailed, she brought
forth her children. Now I was present for the birth of my two boys, and
I can assure you that children are not born naturally without pain.

And if this is true in the natural realm, should we expect less in the
spiritual realm? Is it possible to see happen in the spiritual realm
what is impossible in the natural? Can spiritual children be born
without soul travail? If we can weep for a loved one who has died and
gone to be with the Lord, should we not much more weep for a lost soul,
a precious soul, a priceless soul, who will be soon crossing into
eternal torment where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth
and the worm dieth not? Is it not better to weep and travail for a
season than for others to weep and wail for eternity? Ecclesiastes 3,
verse 4 talks about a time to weep and a time to mourn. And if the harsh
reality of a soul entering the despair of darkness, of eternal torment,
if that is not a time to weep and mourn, I don't know what is. How
little of the Lord's compassion do we possess when we cannot even weep
for the lost.

But what joy follows those who have learned to weep over the things that
break the heart of God. Psalm 126, 5, we read, Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to
sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.

And according to this passage, tears are often the down payment on the
answers we seek from God. The first time ever I heard about prevailing
prayer was from a cassette tape a missionary from Operation Mobilization
gave me. It was a tape by Leonard Ravenhill.

And I remember a verse he quoted from Isaiah 30, verse 1, when Rachel
was pleading with Jacob. She was barren and she said these words to him.
She pled with him and she said, Give me children or I die.

If any of you have ever heard Leonard Ravenhill preach or you've
listened to him on sermonindex.net, you will know that his words have a
way of fastening themselves in your heart like barbs. And I never forgot
the way he pled, Give me children or I die. Not long after hearing that
message, I entered the pastorate.

And I'll never forget my board meeting, first board meeting, they
presented me with this big manual, a strategic planning manual that the
board had put together with great effort and pride. Contained therein
were all the things that we were telling God He was going to do for us
and through us. We had the audacity to tell God how many people He was
going to save each year over five years.

It was a marvel to men and angels alike. The problem was the committee
had failed to read Lamentations 3.17 where God says, Who can speak and
have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Despite all our good
intentions and wise planning, the Lord was not following our plan.
People were not coming to the Lord and our numbers weren't increasing.

And as elders, we became burdened. Burdened because we realized all of a
sudden that God's thoughts were not our thoughts and neither were His
ways our ways. Then we stumbled across that sobering truth of Jeremiah
8.20 where we read the harvest is past, the summer has ended and we are
not saved.

Since my people are crushed, I am crushed. I mourn and horror grips me.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is
there no healing for the wound of my people? Oh, that my head were a
spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears.

I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. Have you ever
wept for the lost? Can you weep in light of the message our brother
Edgar preached this morning in light of coming judgment? I remember when
that truth finally struck us as elders. First, we grieved and wept over
our own sin and then over the lost around us.

You know, I've been to many revival prayer meetings over the years, and
very often revival prayer meetings involve prayers that preach at others
instead of preaching to ourselves. Seth Joshua used to preach. He used
to preach, Oh Lord, bend us.

A young man by the name of Evan Roberts started praying that and got
convicted, and he stopped short and he said this, Oh Lord, no, bend me.
Judgment begins in the house of God. And first, God had to deal with me
as the pastor of that church.

He had to prepare my heart and break up the fallow ground. I remember
hearing one of these tapes, I think it was this OM missionary Mike Hack
who gave it to me. I remember hearing about General Booth.

He prayed this wonderful prayer. He says, Lord, I pray that all of my
elders would be dangled for one minute over the mouth of hell and they
would be so transformed by what they saw that they would never backslide
again. Well, I thought that was kind of an interesting illustration and
so I said to myself, Well, I'm going to modify that prayer.

I kind of like what Isaiah did, you know. He was there and saw the glory
of God. And so I said, Lord, I don't want to see hell.

I'd rather see the glory of God. And Lord, if I saw the glory of God, I
know I'd never backslide again. I'd be a changed man.

So Lord, would you show me your glory? Now, I wasn't looking for a
vision or an experience, folks. You have to understand, I just wanted
something. You know, some touch by God so that I could preach more
powerfully or something.

I don't know what I was looking for. God didn't answer my prayer and
didn't answer my prayer and days went by and a couple weeks went by and
I was minding my own business in my apartment, kneeling. I was all
alone.

And as I began to pray, and this happened. It doesn't happen that often,
but it was so clear in prayer. I just, I saw myself.

We used to have a country place in Vermont and I had the onerous task as
a teenager without seniority in the home of digging up the cesspool and
changing it. I want to tell you, that's no fun. That's not a fun task.

And I saw myself back there in Vermont in the middle of that cesspool
with my nose just above the sludge line. And it was as clear as I'm
looking at you today and I said, Oh God, what is this that I see? What
is this? And God spoke to my heart and He says, Mark, that's the way I
see your sin. And I said, surely not I. Surely that's not my sin, God.

Surely, Lord, that is the sin of the prostitutes and the drug dealers
down at King and Jameson in the Parkdale era of Toronto where I used to
lead teams to go and we would witness to them, take them out to coffee
and we'd hand out tracts and we'd share Christ with those souls. I said,
that's their sin. That's not my sin.

And I'll never forget what the Lord spoke to my heart. It was so clear.
He says, Mark, that is your sin.

And that's the way I see your sin. Because when those people sin, they
do what comes naturally. But when you sin, you sin against knowledge and
light.

Your sins are worse in my sight. Some of you have grown up in Christian
homes. Many of you, by God's grace, have been spared from many of the
big sins.

But I want to tell you something, brothers and sisters. When we have
grown up with the law, when we have grown up with the knowledge of right
and wrong, and when we sin against that, our sins are more grievous. We
can pray for the politicians.

We can pray for the abortionists. We can pray for all of the people all
around. But do you know, when they sin, they do what comes naturally.

But brothers and sisters in Christ, when we sin, we sin against
knowledge and light, and our sins are more grievous in God's sight. The
Lord shall we mark you have no right to preach at others and pray to
others and pray for them to be convicted when you are the man. For two
weeks, I wept over my sin.

I prayed every day that God would take my life. I had never seen my sin.
He reminded me as if it was some panoramic view of my life of every sin
I ever committed.

I didn't know how sinful I had been. I'll tell you the rest of the story
at the end of the message. But that's what God had to do to prepare me.

And then God started working on the elders' board. I'll never forget
another man, one of the funniest elders I ever knew. Great sense of
humor, but he loved the Lord at the same time we had lots of fun.

He was a controller of a company, an engineering company in Oakville,
where I live. And I've been sharing these truths. The Lord began
burdening us for revival and for the souls of the lost in our church.

You see, in our churches, you want to know why many of our churches
don't grow. That's because we're trying to preach to corpses to make
them dance. And it became very abundantly clear that if the sign of a
Christian is the fruit of the Spirit, then how many in our congregation
did not even know the Lord.

One day, I began praying, Oh Lord, you're breaking me, you're showing
me, but oh Lord, raise up. Leaders first to pray. One day I get a phone
call from this fellow elder.

Dave said to me, I didn't know who it was on the phone. All I could hear
was weeping and crying on the other end. And I said, who is this? He
says, it's Dave.

I said, Dave, what's wrong? Are you okay? He says, no, I'm not. I said,
where are you? He says, I'm at work. I said, what are you doing? He
says, I'm on my knees crying behind my desk.

I said, is the door to your office, you had a private office? I said,
are the doors shut so that no one sees you? He says, yeah, I shut them
first, but I can't get off my knees, I'm weeping. I said, what are you
crying over? He says, I'm crying over my sin. God has revealed my sin to
me.

I said, come, come, leave work early. Come, we'll come pray. He came to
my apartment that night, and we began to weep and pray, praying for the
lost in our community.

I remember that verse that says that God would turn the heavens to brass
and the ground to iron beneath our feet. And we said, Lord, just break
through. Rend the heavens and come down and begin to save in our area.

And we began to pray that God would burden the hearts of the men,
specifically the leaders in our church, to pray. We began not long after
that to experience the truth of Isaiah 66, as soon as Zion prevailed,
she brought forth her children. I'll never forget, it was December 31st,
1992, when the Lord began to save people in the most remarkable way.

Remarkable because we were not following any evangelistic technique. We
were not handing out tracts or doing anything according to a plan, let
alone that telephone book-sized strategic plan that was an abomination
to the Lord. We had stopped organizing, and we had started agonizing.

And God came. The first clue that God was visiting us was the fact that
there was this hunger, this unexplainable hunger for God amongst the
unsaved. I'll never forget, at the back of the church one Sunday after I
preached, this lady came up to me and she introduced herself to me.

I said, oh, I've never seen you before. Have you been to this church?
She says, no, I don't go to church. She says, I've never been here.

I said, why did you come this morning? She says, I have no idea. God
woke me up and told me to come. I took my Bible.

We sat down at a pew, and she came to Christ. People would have this
hunger. After the service, sometime a holy hush would come on the place.

No one would move. After a while, people would get up, they would come
and say that they were under conviction. It had nothing to do with our
preach.

I could have preached on anything. I could have preached on creation,
and people were getting convicted. It didn't matter what we said.

People were coming up and saying, God spoke to me about this. What was
it? It had nothing to do with my message. I remember we would open the
scriptures, and I would sit in front of people, and it usually took ten
minutes for people to get saved.

Thirty seconds for me to open the scriptures and let them read, and nine
and a half minutes of them travailing and weeping under conviction of
the Holy Spirit until they were saved. I never led anyone in a sinner's
prayer. God did it all.

There were no human fingerprints on what was taking place in those days.
People would hear about this. I remember there was one man in our
congregation who was friends with an NHL hockey player.

He played for the Boston Bruins. The man was unsaved, and he had gone to
psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors, and no one could help
him. So this man in our congregation called down to Boston, and he said,
Sean, come on up.

There's someone who can help you. And so one day I was at home, and all
of a sudden there's a knock at the door, and here this fellow shows up.
He filled the door.

He was a defenseman. And he says, I need help. Can you help me? I said,
what's your problem? He says, I'm going to go home and kill my father
and mother.

I'm going to kill my parents. I'm glad he said parents and not the
pastor. He stood there, and I thought, what am I going to do, Lord? So I
took him out to the picnic table in our backyard.

We had an open backyard into an open area, and I thought, he's big, but
I'm small and fast, and I'm going to run if he comes for me. My wife
quickly assessed the situation, and she went up. She's a prayer warrior.

She was praying for protection over me and our kids. And I said, Lord,
what am I going to give this fellow? I don't know what's wrong. No one
can help him.

And the Holy Spirit reminded me of something I read in my devotions in
the Book of Romans. To this day, I still can't remember what it was. I
remember in my doors reading, I said, that's a really obscure thought.

It was a random thought as far as I was concerned. And the Holy Spirit
said, you get him to read beginning at that verse. I thought to myself,
Lord, are you sure I'm listening to you? This is so random.

I don't know what was in that passage, but he began to read. Three
verses deep into the passage, he began weeping like a baby. He wept for
ten minutes, got up, saved.

He began praising God in terms that I've never heard an elder pray. He
began glorifying God. He stood up.

He gave me a big bear hug, left the home. I never saw him again for
three years. Three years later, Dick Sipley from Canadian Revival
Fellowship came to our church to preach.

And after Dick came to the back, this fellow approached me, and he said,
Mark, do you remember me? I said, no, I'm sorry, I don't remember you.
He says, I got saved at your picnic table three years ago. I said,
brother, what happened to you? He says, I left, and God began working in
me.

I went back to my church. I was discipled. He says, I'm graduating next
month from Bible college.

I'm going into the pastorate. We would open the Scriptures to people,
and scores of people, as they read the Scriptures, they would weep their
way into the kingdom with us saying nothing at all. Do you know that God
even saved people that didn't want to get saved? We think it's so hard
for people to get saved.

Do you know that God can save people who don't even want to get saved?
Isn't that what happened to the Apostle Paul on the roads of Damascus?
Was that just a coincidence? No, the church was travailing on behalf of
that man. Someone was praying for the Apostle Paul. They were travailing
for him, and God met him.

I remember this man. He had just become a Christian. They were refugees
from Vietnam.

They were Buddhists. He had come to the Lord, and his wife was
completely antagonistic to the Gospel. And so he said to me, Pastor, if
you talk to my wife, she will get saved.

And I said, I don't save anybody. I don't lead anybody to the Lord. I
will let them read Scripture.

I will pray with them. I will point them to Christ, but I don't lead
anyone to the Lord. He says, well, I want to get to you.

I said, okay, why don't you come over this Friday, bring your wife,
we'll have dinner at our house, and I'll talk to her. So this woman
came. She didn't want to be there.

You could see it all over her face. Probably I discerned with the gift
of discernment God gave me because she couldn't understand English. And
so I sat there, and here he is with his Vietnamese wife, and her English
was very halted, and she'd never learned French.

I understand some speak French, so I couldn't speak French to her. And
so I tried my best in English to communicate with her. And so I told her
the testimony of her husband, and I said, you know, your husband wanted
you to come hear something tonight, and I'm just going to tell you why
he's so excited and why his life changed.

And I told her the gospel through the context of her husband's
salvation. And at the end, I said to her, would you like to become a
Christian tonight? And she sat there, and she said, no. I said, do you
believe these things that I've shared with you tonight? She says, no.

That was the only English she said to me the whole night. So, flesh
gives birth to flesh, but spirit to spirit, you don't push these things.
You can't, don't make people read a sinner's prayer.

So we changed the subject, and 10 minutes later, she begins to cry.
She's crying at the dinner table. And I thought, oh no, she doesn't like
my wife's cooking.

And I looked at my wife, and I thought, what did you feed her? But it
tasted good. And she was just crying and crying and crying, and we
didn't say anything. We were used to this by now.

You see, people were praying for her even while we were witnessing. And
as she wept, her husband eventually started talking to her in
Vietnamese. And he looked at me, and with his heavy accent, he said,
Pastor, I have good news for you.

She's under conviction of the Holy Spirit. She's under conviction of the
Holy Spirit. We weren't even talking about anything at that point.

She wept for about 10 minutes, and she began praying in Vietnamese, and
tears of joy streaming down her face, and she came out a Christian. No
one knows how she got saved except by the power of God. She didn't
understand anything I said, but she heard the Holy Spirit speaking to
her, saying, why are you kicking against the goals? God did the most
remarkable things.

The people that were getting saved in this context, they just thought
this was normal. As a matter of fact, they read the book of Acts and
weren't surprised about anything. This was the normal Christian life.

I remember one man who was quite successful as a venture capitalist,
living for himself, very oppressed by the enemy. Any of you got
BlackBerrys? You know the BlackBerry phones? He was the one who
discovered them and invested in them. Successful businessman.

He told me one day, he says, oh, I'm a Christian. I said, oh, is that
so? What makes you think so? Well, he told me, well, I prayed a sinner's
prayer, blah, blah, blah, but we knew that there was no fruit in his
life, and so I said to him, brother, I said, or friend, I said, you
don't know the Lord yet. This is what it means to be a Christian.

He says, okay, then I want to get saved. So he came over to our
apartment, and for two hours, we travailed over his soul. Three of us
there, my wife had some other women travailing in another house, and he
was on the ground with his face to the floor, beating his fists on the
carpet, saying, Lord, deliver me.

Deliver me. Get this thing out of me. Deliver me.

And after two hours of travailing and seeking the Lord, he was saved. He
understood the power of God because he had been rescued from the
dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loved.
So he just understood God's power to save.

And one day, he and another man who had just been saved, this guy who
was a male model, we never thought he'd ever be saved because he had
such a struggle with women, but God saved him and delivered him. He's
celibate to this day, by the way. These two men were friends, and
they're saved and all excited in the Lord, and they're at Morley's
apartment, and Bill gets a phone call on his cell, and he says, hello.

And the fellow said, why did you call me? Bill says, I didn't call you.
Sorry, you must have, there must be a mistake. He hung up the cell.

He continued talking with Morley, and all of a sudden, he gets a phone
call again. He says, hello. The man said, why did you call me? You've
called me twice now.

Your telephone number of your cell is coming up on my call display. So
Bill said, I'm sorry, there must be a technological glitch. I did not
call you.

Goodbye. But when he said goodbye, he said, God bless you. Hung up.

A minute later, he got the third phone call from this man. This man said
to him, why do you keep calling me? Bill remembered the story of Samuel,
and he said to the man, realizing that this was divine appointment
because he did not call. This was of God.

He said, sir, I don't know you, but I am a Christian, and I want to ask
you a question. What were you doing when God called you? The man said,
if it wasn't for you calling me three times, I was trying to jump off my
balcony and commit suicide, and you interrupted me three times. Bill
says, where do you live? What is your name? He went with Morley.

The man came to Christ. You see, folks, as soon as Zion travailed, she
brought forth her children. There is power in travailing prayer.

Now before I go on with more firsthand stories that have happened
literally in the last three or four months because I've noticed over the
years, there's seasons of sowing and reaping, actually sowing and
weeping and reaping. I've seen three moves of God in this way. I believe
I would have seen more had there been humility and people believing the
promises of God.

But nevertheless, we're happy for what God has done and is doing. And so
I'd like to go to Scripture first before we continue on with stories and
see that travailing was normal. We don't have time to fully look into
this topic today, but for sake of time, we find that it was normal for
the Apostle Paul.

In Acts chapter 20, 17, we read, from Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for
the elders of the church. And when they arrived, he said to them, You
know how I lived the whole time I was with you from the first day I came
into the province of Asia, I served the Lord with great humility and
with tears. Most people think that they are serving God, and they only
think about serving God in terms of what they do in exercising their
gifts and talents and spending of their money.

But have you ever considered this morning that you can actually serve
God with your tears? Ignatius, one of the early church fathers who lived
at the turn of the first century, used to talk about the gift of tears.
In fact, he tells us that we should pray for this great gift, that our
hearts be so moved by God that we are moved to tears and that we grieve
over the things that grieve the heart of God. Then he tells us that when
he had no words to utter, he would only groan and weep when pleading
with God about the souls of the lost.

The Apostle Paul lived like this. He says that he lived with them for
years with tears. But he doesn't tell us what the weeping was about.

But I believe a clue is found in Galatians 4.19 where he said, My little
children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.
They were Christians, but they had fallen into legalism. I want to say
something, that legalism and traditionalism is deadly and dangerous
because it makes a person feel spiritual even when they're not.

I would rather deal with a drug addict with a prostitute than try to
convert a legalistic Christian who thinks they're saved. Because they
already got all the right answers. They have all the right theology.

These people, they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far
from me. Their rules are but what? Traditions taught by men. And so Paul
travailed in prayer because somehow these Christians, had they started
with grace, they were taught about grace, but they were going back to
the law.

Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't eat this.

Don't go here. Don't go there. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

They were acting out of duty instead of devotion. They were acting out
of compulsion instead of compassion. They were acting out of legalism
instead of love.

And he had to start travailing in prayer for them in order that the meek
and the mild and the loving Christ be formed in them. We often think of
travailing in prayer for revival and for the lost, but I want to say
this. We need to start travailing in our churches for one another and
for those who are bound by legalism and the things that keep them, the
besetting sins that so easily beset.

It was normal not only for the Apostle Paul, it was normal for the Lord
Jesus. And if it's true that we're to be imitators of Christ, then it is
true that one of the things we should imitate in this prayer life is how
he prayed. In Hebrews 5, 7, we're given a glimpse into how Jesus prayed.

We read, During the days of Jesus' life on earth, He offered up prayers
and petitions with loud cries and tears. Jesus Himself was a wonderful
example of travailing in prayer on behalf of others. Until recently, I
never noticed that in the story of Lazarus and his rising from the dead
that Jesus actually started to prevail before the miracle took place.

Starting in verse 32 of that chapter, we read this, Then when Mary was
come where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet saying unto
Him, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. When
Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews also weeping which came
with her, He groaned in the Spirit and was troubled and said, Where have
You laid Him? And they said to Him, Lord, come and see. And then we
read, Jesus wept again.

Here we learn that Jesus had such a burden over this situation that He
not only groaned, He actually wept. He wept tears, real tears. And He
wasn't crying, folks, because Lazarus was dead, because He knew He was
going to raise Him from the dead.

He was crying because His tears were showing the compassion for the
human race bound by the curse of death from which it could not loose
itself. He was crying because of the lostness and unbelief of others
around Him. And then in verse 38, we pick up the story, Jesus therefore
again, groaning in Himself, went to the grave.

And it was a cave and a stone lay across it. And Jesus said, Take the
stone away. And Martha, the sister of Him that was dead, said to Him,
Lord, by this time He smells.

For He had been dead four days. And Jesus said to her, Did I not tell
you that if you'd believe, you would see the glory of God? Notice that
Jesus was still in travail. Up until the point, He came to that tomb.

And in that state of mind, that travailing of spirit, He uttered the
command for Lazarus to come forth, and the miracle was accomplished. Of
course, the greatest travail of all time was the travail in the Garden
of Gethsemane before being crucified for the sins of the world. Luke 22,
44, we read, And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His
sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

And what was the result of His travail? We read about it in Isaiah 53,
11. He shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. Why? By
His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many.

And folks, it's not just the fact that Jesus died that saves people.
Have you ever thought of that? It's not just the fact that Jesus died
that saves people. It is the fact that He travailed in His soul, that
salvation has been brought to you and me and to those who will come to
know Him.

And in case we question this, the Lord reinforces this point in the next
verse in verse 12 of Isaiah 53. We read, And He bore the sin of many and
made intercession for the transgressors. Is it any wonder our
evangelistic techniques are so anemic? Is it any wonder that some of the
stats in our evangelistic crusades are that only 2% darken the door of a
church a year later after praying a sinner's prayer? Can spiritual birth
take place without travail when it does not happen physically in the
natural realm? The answer is no.

And as Christians, as pastors, as churches, we cannot minimize the
importance of travailing for the purposes of bringing about salvation to
the lost and revival amongst God's people. That is why we read in Joel
2.17, Let the priests... Do you know we are a royal priesthood, all of
us here today? You are a royal priesthood. I am a priest along with you,
according to 1 Peter 2.9. Let the priests who minister before the Lord
weep between the temple porch and the altar.

Let them say, Spare your people, O Lord. Over the past six months, the
Lord has in a new way impressed upon our church fellowship the
importance of travailing in prayer. I'd like to share with you some
recent stories.

There are so many that I would run out of time and I'm going to try to
keep to my time frame here. But the Lord began to burden first the
sister and then others in our church about the meaning of travailing
prayer. And in our prayer meetings, by the way, almost everyone who
comes on Sunday also comes to prayer meeting.

And sometimes more prayer is done on Sunday than on our Wednesday prayer
meeting because usually people don't leave until around 10 o'clock at
night. Now it's a little easier because we've started a new work and
we're meeting in a home. So I understand that the venue and the
logistics are a little different than when I had a church in a church
building.

But we began to travail and people began to travail in spirit and to
seriously seek the Lord. So God sends people into the most miraculous
way to be saved. One man by the name of Arium from Columbia, a Spanish-
speaking fellow, one day through an interesting set of circumstances he
shows up.

I preach the message. Then we go and we have potluck every Sunday. And
then all of the one and others, you know all the one and others in
Scripture, you know pray for one another, encourage one another, bear
one another, all the one and others, they wonderfully take place that I
don't have to orchestrate or organize it.

It just happens. And so he made his way over to me and he said, I have
some questions about this book. Can you tell me what it says? I shared
very simply the gospel with him.

And he looked at me and he said this. He said, I have been to mosques.
I've been to Hindu temples.

I've been to Buddhist temples. I have been to the Mormon temple. I have
been to the Jehovah Witness Hall.

I have been to many churches. I have been seeking for the truth for
years, but I want to tell you something, Mark. I don't even need to know
whether you're telling me the truth today because I can feel it in my
heart because of the love and what he was soon to realize was the power
of the Holy Spirit because of the prayers of people in another room
praying for him to get saved.

Is that not what Jesus said? By this shall all men know you are my
disciples. What, if you have love one for another? And that love is
never there unless there's the unity and the power of the Holy Spirit
present as well, brothers and sisters. And so I shared the gospel.

And of course, remember, I don't lead anyone to Christ. The Holy Spirit
does that. And he left, and that night, in the quietness of his own
room, he got saved.

Wonderfully saved. He was so excited that on prayer meeting, he didn't
know any different. You see, he hasn't been taught that you've got to
come to a church where it's seeker-sensitive or user-friendly.

By the way, stop being seeker-sensitive and user-friendly, won't you?
Jesus is the sensitive seeker. We don't have to be. We just have to love
people and speak the truth in love.

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. We
can have all the theology, but just make sure when we preach it, we have
love in our hearts. Or it'll take care of the rest.

So, of course, he had not read the church growth manuals, and so he
figured he'd bring his two unsaved brothers to Wednesday night prayer
meeting where we pray, and it's not an organ recital as our brother
shared the other night. We get down to brass tacks. We never know how
long we're going to pray.

We just let the Holy Spirit lead that. And he brings his two brothers,
and both of them, 19 and 20, they had demonic experiences when they were
younger. They told me that the devil had appeared to them and he had
marked their family, and their family had been involved with witchcraft
and all kinds of stuff in Columbia.

And so the younger brother began to pray. I mean, you can't even get
Christians to pray in a prayer meeting, and he's not as saved, and he's
oppressed, and he starts to pray, and his prayer was anything but
theological. It was actually heretical.

I had to stop him in the middle of his prayer. But I did it in love, and
I said, friend, you're here to learn. Just listen to the way we pray.

And under my breath, I'm thinking, stop praying to Harrison. That's
okay. You know, that really threw a wrench, because, you know, you talk
about grieve the Holy Spirit, I can really feel there's a spiritual
battle there, because when he was praying, it was a demonic type prayer.

It was very unsettling, to say the least. But I closed the prayer
meeting, and we had, by the way, the devotional we had read that night
was from 2 Chronicles 20, when Jehoshaphat had to go out and fight the
Ammonites and Moabites, and God said, the battle is not yours, it's the
Lord's. And so he sent out, remember, the singers went ahead of them to
give praise and thanks to the Lord, and when they got to the
battlefield, God had already taken care of the armies and defeated them
on their behalf, and all they did was sing.

That was devotional. And so I closed in prayer, and I said, Lord, what
the enemy has meant unto us for harm tonight, thinking of that
situation, you've meant unto us for good. Praise be the name of the
Lord.

So we had our snack, and there's an unspoken rule when I or anyone else
is witnessing to someone, people just break off, and they go into other
rooms, and they begin to seek the Lord and travail for the lost. So here
I am sitting with this young man, and as I'm sitting there, his face is
going into contortions. He was demonized, possessed, whatever you want
to call it.

We don't use techniques. It's just the word of God and prayer. Jesus
said, these kind come not out except by prayer.

And I'm sitting there for a half hour, and just giving scripture to this
kid was like using a pea shooter against a Sherman tank. Nothing was
working. I mean, he's bound by chains of iron.

His mind was bound. He was in torment. And about a half hour, I said,
Lord, I'm just going to shut this thing down.

He needs to hear more. You know, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by
the word. He needs to hear more of the word.

And the Holy Spirit says, Mark, don't leave. You wait this out. I
thought that was the flesh.

So I said, Lord, did you really tell me that? And the Lord lay in my
heart, don't you leave this room. You wait this out. Half hour goes by,
an hour goes by, an hour and a half goes by, an hour and 45 minutes, and
I'm looking out the glass windows, and I can see in the other room that
people are there travailing for this young man.

And all of a sudden, one of our new brothers, the new convert, who was a
Christian, but he wasn't born again, and then realized he needed to get
born again, and he got saved earlier this year, but the Spirit of the
Lord is on him, and he remembered the devotional that I shared in 2
Chronicles, and I could hear him singing. He began to sing, I love you,
Lord. And as soon as he got halfway through the first verse, the Spirit
of God descended on that young man, delivered him and saved him, and he
wept tears of joy and rejoiced in the Lord he was delivered.

Travailing prayer. His brother likewise was oppressed, but he was not
repentant, and I told him, you can't come back here anymore until you
repent of your sin and allow God to deliver you, and you come to faith
in Christ. I said, when you're ready, you come back, but not until then.

It's too unsettling. Very terrible. As a matter of fact, twice when he
came, our recording stopped, right in the middle, as soon as he walked
in.

Very demonic presence. A few weeks ago, that young man came back, but no
one saw him come in. He stayed in the hallway near their grandfather
clock, and no one saw him because I was teaching in our living room.

But one of the ladies in our church who travails in prayer, immediately
the Spirit of God told her, without her knowing, that man, you pray for
his salvation. You pray for Andres' salvation. She got up to leave, to
go up to the third floor to get alone to pray, and there he is in the
hallway, and she knew that it was the Spirit of God.

She went up, and she began to travail for him, and right after the
message, he came to me and says, I need to get right with God. I said,
where would you like to talk? He says, let's go down to the lake, Lake
Ontario. Let's go down.

I just want to be alone. So we went down, and while we went, all the
brothers and sisters, they began to weep for his soul. For two hours,
they wept for his soul, and after two hours, God saved him.

Right there on the park bench, saved him and delivered him. I said to
him, Andres, do you realize that we love you very much? There's other
brothers and sisters right now who are praying for you. They're your
family.

We love you. He says, let's go and see my brothers. By the way, he was a
semi-professional soccer player.

He was coming up to Toronto to work for, hopefully play for Toronto FC.
He says, our semi-professional in Columbia will kick you guys up here,
he said. He got saved, and God changed his plans, and now he wants to be
a medical doctor.

But you know, he came through the front door, and he saw everyone's
tears. People were still weeping as we walked in. Weeping.

His brothers weeping for him. Everyone embraced him. Hugged him.

Welcomed him into the family of God. And the travailing was over. You
know, the Lord says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will
not prevail against it.

When we stop trying to build the church, and let the Lord move in, He
does wonderful things. I remember our elders had a saying. It was coined
from Lee Trevino years ago.

Lee Trevino, I believe it was him, was teeing off. No sooner did he go
for his backswing, and a lightning bolt struck him, and he was knocked
unconscious, and was taken to the hospital. Afterwards, a reporter asked
him, he said, Mr. Trevino, what did you learn from this event? And he
said, I learned this, that when God wants to play through, you let him
play through.

I remember we used to pray that as elders. Lord, just help us to stay
out of the way. We're going to pray.

We don't want any human fingerprints on this. We're just going to stay
out of the way. But Lord, please play through.

And he did. How important is travailing in prayer for the souls of the
lost, and the complacency of Christians, and the church. It is so
important that God takes special note of those who travail.

This was true in Ezekiel's day, and it's true in our day as well. I'd
like to read for you from Ezekiel 9.4 where we read that the Lord said
to the man who was clothed in linen, He said, go throughout the city of
Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and
lament. And in the authorized version, it says literally, for those who
sigh and cry for those who sigh and cry over all the detestable things
that are done in it.

And as I listened, He said to the others, follow him through the city
and kill without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young
men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the
mark. Begin at My sanctuary.

So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple. How
important is it that we travail and seek God in prayer so important that
it is as it were that He puts a mark, an anointing. He gives us a
ministry.

I love what Psalm 126, 5 and 6 says. Those who sow in tears will reap
with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will
return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.

What are the steps if we are to become the kind of men and women whom
God is seeking to raise up to pray? First step is we must pray for God's
grace. Pray for the enablement of the Spirit of God by the grace of God
to empower us and enable us to pray. Jesus said, Without Me you can do
nothing.

It's not by might or by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord. Do you
know that I don't expect that this message will have any kind of effect
on anyone in this whole world if it's not for the Spirit of God and His
grace accompanying the Spirit of God to enable us to pray? Do you know
that? That's why I don't try to make anyone guilty and convict people. I
stopped trying to convict my congregation a long time ago.

I can't convict people. That's the role of the Holy Spirit. Pastors,
stop trying to... You can't be the Holy Spirit in the life of someone
else.

Father, you can't change your children or your wife. Wife, you can't
change your husband and your children. Why are you playing the Holy
Spirit in their lives? Surrender them to the Lord.

I love this verse in Zechariah 12.10. It became the cry of our church
where I saw the first move of God. God says, And I will pour out on the
house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a Spirit of grace and
supplication. And then they will look on Me, the one they have pierced,
and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child and grieve
bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

You know what we used to pray? I began praying, O Lord, descend upon my
leaders and the people, specifically the men of this church, that You
would fall upon them by Your Spirit of grace and supplication if You do
not give them the grace and the Holy Spirit to enable them to pray. They
will not pray. Oh, I remember, I used to try to be the Holy Spirit.

I remember preaching a sermon entitled, My house shall be called a house
of prayer. Boy, you could smell the fire and brimstone coming off that
message. We used to have eight people in our prayer meeting up until
that message, and I thought, now we're going to pack them out.

We're going to start selling tickets and be standing room only. Oh, it
was a wonderful message. And that Wednesday, I went there prepared for a
big crowd, and actually, the attendance did grow.

It went from eight to nine. One person. One poor, convicted, battered
soul.

And the next week, the conviction wore off and she didn't come back. We
were back to eight. But when we realized that this was a work of the
Holy Spirit and the grace of God, three of us as elders began praying.

Three months later, out of the clear blue, 17 men approached us in the
congregation under deep conviction of the Holy Spirit, and they said, we
want to pray like you men. We want to begin having cottage prayer
meetings like you elders do. How do we pray? And the Spirit of God
convicted and now we had 20 of us praying.

And then the wives came to us. This was shocking. The wives came, and I
thought these were the spiritual women in our church, and they said,
guess what? We want to start our own ladies' prayer meeting.

I said, why? They said, our husbands are leaving us in the dust
spiritually. Isn't that a great problem to have in a church when the men
leave their wives in the dust spiritually? And so the women began to
pray and began to travail too. And then three months later, God came and
began saving.

We saw 14 weeks without a break where God saved people every week in the
most remarkable ways. Most remarkable ways. And there were no human
fingerprints on anything.

First, we pray for God's Spirit and His grace. And then secondly,
realizing that He will give us His grace if we seek Him. That's what He
wants to do.

If God has given you grace to be saved, He will give you grace to be
sanctified. Part of the sanctification process is prayer. The second
step is to humble ourselves.

We heard this from our brother Roberts last night. 2 Chronicles 7.14.
It's the flagship verse for revival. If my people who are called by my
name will humble themselves and pray.

But I want to quote two other passages that will help us understand what
it means to humble ourselves. In Psalm 51.16, we read, You do not
delight in sacrifice or I would bring it. Folks, all the things that you
and I do, you know, all of your service and the gifts and talents and
money and everything else we do in church.

You know what? God doesn't delight in that alone. And He may not delight
in it at all. If our hearts are not right, He goes on and He says, this
is the right heart I accept.

You don't delight in these things, but the sacrifices of God, the things
He delights in, are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God,
You will not despise. Then Isaiah 57.15, For this is what the high and
lofty One says, He who lives forever, whose name is holy, I live in a
high and holy place, but also with Him who is contrite and lowly in
spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the
contrite. A broken and a contrite heart.

That's what it means to be humble. We ask for God's grace and His Holy
Spirit to touch us, and then we expect that God is going to help us to
be contrite and broken. We pray for tears to be able to weep over our
own sin.

You say, contrite and broken over what? Our sin. Remember, brothers and
sisters, when we sin, we sin against knowledge and light, and our sins
are greater than anyone else's. You see, we can criticize the adulterers
and the murderers out there, but if we lust and hate, right now, I'm
sitting with a room full of adulterers and murderers of whom I'm chief.

I've hated before. I've lusted before. Oh, don't say that from the
pulpit.

Everyone knows it's true, but don't say it. Maybe that's why in our
churches we don't have people getting real with the Lord and one another
because in the pulpit, we're afraid to be vulnerable before people. But
him who is without sin this morning cast the first Bible.

You know what I'm talking about. So that means a wonderful thing. Each
one of us has a wonderful testimony because God delivers us from these
things.

Amen? He delivers us. He delivers us. And that is what some of you were
the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians.

That is what you were. But you were washed. Amen? And then when we're
broken and contrite over our own sins, then we can break over the sins
of others and weep for them and see God move in their hearts.

I started telling you the story of what happened to me after two weeks
of weeping over my own sin. And then one night, I came home and I was
distraught. I said, Lord, you can never use me again.

The realization of my sin is overwhelming. And I got down on my knees
and I did a Bible roulette thing. You ever do Bible roulette? You just
kind of flip and point.

And I did that. I turned to Micah 7, verse 18. Who is a God like you who
pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of His
inheritance.

You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy. You will again
have compassion on us. You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all
our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

You will be true to Jacob and show mercy to Abraham as you pledged an
oath to our fathers in days long ago. And with that, the tears of
sadness turned to tears of joy as the love of God was shed abroad in my
heart according to Romans 5.5 by the Spirit of God. And I wept because I
now understood how much God loves us.

He's calling us to humble ourselves today not to come before an angry
God who's going to judge us. If He was that way, none of us would be
here this morning. He's slow to anger, abounding in mercy.

Moses wanted to hear the Lord. He goes up and he's going to get all the
laws, all the do's and don'ts so he can be a good Christian, right? And
God proclaims His name, the Lord, the Lord. The compassionate and
gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

That's who you come to today. Moses says, Oh God, if you don't go with
me, I won't go. I want to see your glory.

Cause your glory to come in front of me. And what did God say? Oh Moses,
you don't know what you're asking for. Just knowing my glory and my
holiness isn't going to get you anywhere.

You're going to feel like nothing. You're going to be less than nothing.
Moses, here's what I'm going to do.

And we read in the passage that God caused all His what? Goodness. His
goodness to pass in front of Him. When the kindness and love of God, our
Savior, appeared, He saved us.

Does that know what Scripture says? I want to say something to you
preachers. If we don't preach the love of God and balance the love of
God with His judgments, you're not going to see anyone come to the Lord.
You'll be so afraid of Him.

But God is a compassionate God. He knows and remembers that we are dust.
Henry Morehouse, the boy preacher, I believe he was 17.

He preached at Moody's Church, D.L. Moody's Church, for seven nights. He
preached on John 3, 16. Moody says he was so revolutionized by the love
of God, his ministry was never the same again.

You say, Mark, do you not preach hell? Do you not preach hell? I sure
do. But I speak the truth in love. And as our brother Edgar said this
morning, judgment is God's last way, His last way of averting us from
certain destruction.

But until then, He's extending His arms like the father of the prodigal
son. Every day He's there at the road looking to you. Will you come to
Him today? The Lord says this in Jeremiah 29 in closing.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper
you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you
will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You
will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.

And I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back
from captivity. Some of you are in captivity today and in bondage to
sin. And I want to tell you something.

We preach so often the ministry of Christ and the finished work of
Christ at the cross, and it stops there, but I want to tell you, with
the work of Christ comes not only forgiveness, but freedom on the other
side of the cross through the power of the Holy Spirit. I've mentioned
before and I'll say it again, the symbol of the Christian faith is not
just an empty cross, it is an empty tomb and an occupied throne. That
power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in
Christ when He raised Him from the dead.

We often talk about, I'm crucified with Christ. Don't. That's true.

But realize that He raised you for the power of sin and death through
the power of the Holy Spirit who now lives in you, if you believe. It is
for freedom that Christ has set you free. Galatians 5.1. Do not be
burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. What's the
truth? The truth is the power of God through the Holy Spirit will raise
you and by His grace will keep you. He began a good work and you will
carry it on to completion until the day of Christ.

How? Through the grace of God. So this morning, the Lord has spoken to
you. I trust that you will seek to get alone with Him.

You're welcome to pray at the front. It's lunchtime now and after this
message you're dismissed. But to get alone with the Lord and to seek
Him.

But I implore you by the grace and mercy and love of God, be reconciled
to Him. The Lord Jesus loves you. He loves you.

As Edgar said, how precious are your thoughts towards me. He thinks such
precious thoughts to you. If He wasn't, we wouldn't be here.

And He bids you come today. And ask Him, say, Lord, I have not prayed.
My heart's been cold.

Lord, I haven't even shed a tear. Not only for the loss, not even for my
own family. When was the last time when someone was taken in a sin?
Those of you who are spiritual, go and restore such a one in a spirit of
meekness.

Lest you also be tempted. You say, well, how am I going to be tempted
with their sin? I don't sin like that. You know, the temptation is not
the temptation for their sin.

It's a temptation of pride or arrogance or harshness. You know, the Lord
has done a work in your heart when you can kneel beside a brother and
sister who's fallen and struggling and you can hold them by the hand and
pray for them and weep over their sin. When you can get on your knees
and weep for the lost, when you can get on your knees and weep before
you preach, you will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with
all your heart and I will be found by you and I will bring you back from
captivity.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, without
these promises, the lies of the enemy are so great that we could never
think clear.

But you will know the truth and the truth will set you free and I pray,
Heavenly Father, that as Zechariah prayed that your spirit of grace and
supplication would fall today, now, on my brothers and sisters whom I
love in Christ. Would you please fall on them as you fell on us? You
have no favorite children. Fall on them, whether it's now, whether it's
in an hour, whether it's tonight, whether it's next week.

Fall on us. Oh, God, raise up a people of prayer. Raise us up to pray
and to travail in prayer for only then will we produce children,
spiritual children.

Thank you, Father, that this is your work, not ours, else we'd be proud.
We thank you. Without you, we could do nothing.

Thank you that you will give us this grace and your Holy Spirit to
accomplish what only you can accomplish for the honor and glory of your
name and for everlasting results. We pray these things in the name of
our wonderful Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Whoever lives to intercede
for us that he's praying for us now that we would submit to him.

We thank you, Heavenly Father, in the name of your Son. Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/qNk5TkbBVpI.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/mark-greening/the-power-of-travailing-prayer/
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