Before the Light Goes Out, God Calls

I have a message tonight that is more than a message. It's something that is very, very deep in my heart. It's something I believe God has planted there.

It's something that speaks to this generation and something that speaks to you. It's about a prayer meeting. It's a prayer meeting with just one person involved.

You know, the Bible says where two or more are gathered, I'm there in the midst. Well, in this case, the second one had to be Jesus because there was only one person other than him in this prayer meeting. The prayer meeting was not somebody that was enabled by a great amount of faith.

It was a lady who was broken. She was bruised. She was disappointed.

She was empty. She felt unfulfilled. She felt like the deepest desire of her heart had never been met, the deepest meaning of her life had never been realized.

As a matter of fact, her prayer was at the place where it no longer had any words. All she could do was move her lips, but she couldn't even bring herself to actually utter speech. I don't know if you've ever been there, but it's a place that some of us get to from time to time where your prayers don't have any words anymore.

Nevertheless, it was a prayer meeting that changed a nation for an entire generation. God heard her even though her words were not audible. God heard her.

God answered her. And out of a wordless prayer, a voice was born that governed the nation for 40 years. We're going to take a look at this.

We're going to start with 1 Samuel 3 and then go backwards from there. Father, thank you, Lord, for the unlocking of incredible truth. For when we look in your word, we see your character.

We see the history of how you deal with individuals and with nations. It helps us to understand something about our present situation and perhaps the hope that we have for the future. I believe, Jesus Christ, you are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

I believe it. The word of God says it, but I've come to believe it in my heart. Lord, what you've done in the past, what we've sung about, the things we've talked about, what Pastor Tim spoke about tonight, Lord, you're still God.

You still hear our prayer and you still answer us when we look empty, we feel discouraged, defeated, whatever the situation is. When it looks hopeless, God, you come. And you can do something so exceedingly above and beyond anything we can even ask or thank that we stand back in utter amazement and say that only God could have done this.

I pray tonight, Lord Jesus Christ, that you would speak. You would speak authoritatively. You would speak divinely into every heart, every mind, every person, every life, everyone who's listening in the sanctuary online.

God Almighty, take us out of the littleness of human thought and bring us into the understanding of the divine. Open your word to our hearts, God. Give me the ability to speak this, Lord.

I recognize that without the anointing, the words I speak will fall to the earth. But God, your words are eternal. Your words have the weight to create, the power to create, the power to calm the storm and the power to enable somebody like Peter to walk on water.

Lord, you have power that we've not understood in this generation yet. But the day is coming. The day is on the way when you're going to take your right hand out of your bosom one more time and show us your power before you come to get us.

We thank you for it and we give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. The message is called, Before the Light Goes Out, God Calls.

Before the Light Goes Out, God Calls. 1 Samuel 3, beginning at verse 1 to verse 4. Now the boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli. So we're starting at the end.

We're going to go back to the beginning. But this young boy is the answer to that wordless prayer that was prayed in the temple by a lady who felt defeated and empty, whose name was Hannah. This boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli.

And the word of the Lord was rare in those days. There was no widespread revelation. In other words, there were thoughts about God being spoken.

There were scriptures, no doubt, being read. But the word of God, actually God speaking, was rare. It was probably boring, in a sense, in the presence of whatever kind of worship times that they had or times of reading scripture in those days.

And there was no real heartfelt revelation of the character of God, the will of God, the ways of God, and the word of God. And it came to pass at this time while Eli was lying down in his place, and when his eyes had begun to grow so dim that he could not see, and before the lamp of God went out in the tabernacle of the Lord. Now this is what I'm speaking specifically about in our generation because we are in a dangerous moment in our society today where the lamp of God is going out.

Society is turning dark. There's no real widespread revelation. There's no soul-piercing word being preached in many churches today.

There are few, and there are still some. Thank God for them. But in many cases, it's just facts, stories, motivational speaking.

There's really nothing of God that is able to transform and bring us out of the natural and into the supernatural life that God has for those who turn to him through Jesus Christ. And before the lamp of God went out in the tabernacle of the Lord where the ark of God was, and while Samuel was lying down, the Lord called Samuel, and he answered, Here I am. Before the light goes out, God calls.

It was a season of serious spiritual decline in the nation. The people, there was no widespread revelation. The word of God and the will of God was unknown to many of the people.

And Proverbs 29, 18 says, Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint. As in our day, we are watching now the people casting off moral restraint. It's getting to the point where it's alarming how we are celebrating evil as somehow it's victorious or some kind of virtue in this generation.

Those who had inherited the calling to spiritually lead the people were corrupt. It says in 1 Samuel 2 and verse 12, The sons of Eli were corrupt. They did not know the Lord.

1 Samuel 2, verse 16 tells us they were greedy and self-focused. It says, If a man said to him, They should really burn the fat first, and you may take as much as your heart desires, he would answer him and say, No, but you must give it now, and if not, we will take it by force. So they were not giving the revelation of God to the people.

They were using the people of God for their own gain, whether it's the gain of fame. In this case, it was just the acquisition of money, of goods. They were corrupt.

They were greedy. They were self-focused. They were immoral.

Eli was very old, verse 22, And he heard everything his sons did to all Israel, how they lay with the women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the meeting. These men are at the door, in a sense, where people are coming into the presence of God and they're looking for vulnerable women to have sexual relationships with. This is the priesthood, folks.

We're not talking about somebody outside that is obviously living in this kind of a lifestyle. These are people dressed in garments who say, We are the called of God to bring the service and revelation of God to the people. But they're corrupt.

They're greedy. They're self-focused. They're immoral.

In 1 Samuel 2, verse 25, it says, They were unable to hear. They could not be reached. If one sins against another, God will judge him.

But if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him? Nevertheless, they did not heed the voice of their father because the Lord desired to kill them. In other words, he was going to bring their ministries to an end. He was going to destroy their influence over the people.

God had, in a sense, looked upon their rule and their kingdom and numbered it and said, It's over. It's finished. Their writing was on the wall.

You're not going to. There's a point. There's a line that God draws himself.

And he says, he declares himself to be a father of the fatherless, the husband to the widow. He declares himself to be a righteous God. And when people abuse their position in God, and have gotten to the point where they're no longer able to hear, God says, I'm going to remove them.

Now, I think the most tragic of all is that intercessory prayer had been so absent for so long that it was unrecognizable to those who are in spiritual authority. Religion can get like that. Religion can get to the point where prayer is not even recognized.

There's a woman comes into the temple. Her heart is broken. Only God can meet the need in her life now.

She's so discouraged. Her adversary, the scripture says, is mocking her barrenness. She's empty.

She wants a child more than anything in this world. And she comes to the altar and she's starting to pray before the Lord. In 1 Samuel 1, verse 12, it says it happened as she continued praying before the Lord that Eli, who was supposed to be the high priest of the nation, and he looked upon, he watched her mouth, and it says, Now Hannah spoke in her heart, and only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard.

Therefore Eli thought that she was drunk. It had been so long since he had seen somebody in genuine anguish before God, in genuine intercession. It was so foreign to this religious environment in this particular day of incredible decline that he couldn't recognize prayer.

You know, a lot of churches don't recognize the need to pray anymore. There's so many places without prayer meetings. One particular denomination, one of the leaders told me, the leader actually of the denomination, he said, I forget the statistics, but he said, We have something like 53,000 churches across America, and he said, I've been able to identify something like 12 to 26, I think it was, prayer meetings.

In 53,000 churches, 12 prayer meetings, or if it happened to be 20, it was in that range, between 12 and 26 prayer meetings. Intercessory prayer is gone. What happened to us if we don't recognize the need to pray anymore? Did we get so smart we don't need God? Did we get so smug we don't need God? What did we do? Did we get so blessed we forgot God? You know, in one of the books of the Old Testament, the Lord Himself says, Where have I failed you? He says.

That you have walked away from me. What did I do that you found iniquity in me? You look back in the history of even our nation, and you see how good God's been to the nation, and we responded in a sense by taking the knowledge of Him away from our children. Now we sexualize our children.

Now we confuse them about their genders. Now we tell them there is no God. Now we forbid them to pray, and wonder why we're in such spiritual decline.

But you see, this story is not about that. I'm painting a picture of the mountain of hopelessness that was there. But everything was about to change.

And it was not somebody coming in who was mighty, not somebody who was of royal birth, not somebody who was noble, not somebody who had a plan, not somebody who had access to power, not somebody who was politically connected. It was a woman who was empty. A woman who came in, she went to the altar in that temple, and she said, God, only you can give me life.

Only you can give me the deepest desire of my heart. And God, if you will, in verse 11, it says she made a vow and said, O Lord of hosts, if you will look on my affliction, on the affliction of your maidservant and remember me, and not forget your maidservant, but will give your maidservant a male child, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head. Here's what she was saying, God, if you will birth something in me, if you will birth something through me, if you will do something in this empty life, if you will do something miraculous, something I know I don't have the power to do, I'm barren, I can't bear a child.

If you will do this for me, I will not keep it for myself, but I will dedicate it to you and give it to your purposes all the days of its life. That's where spiritual awakening comes, is when a people like you and I come to the place of desperation and say, God, I don't have what it takes. I need more than what I have.

I need life that I don't possess. I need strength that only you can give me. I need wisdom that can only come from God.

But oh God, if you will do this in my life, I will give it to you all of my days and I will dedicate it to you for the service of your house and for your kingdom. She had no idea that through this prayer, a voice, the prophet Samuel was going to be born and his voice guided the nation. People feared him.

When he would come into town, the scripture says, the people would tremble when he came into town. They would say, have you come peaceably? Because they knew his speech had the power to do things that would make crooked things straight and bring lofty things down. God gave him the ability to govern an entire nation for 40 years.

And that ability was born out of a prayer that came from the heart of a woman who was just desperate. You see, don't write yourself off because you're empty. Don't write yourself off because you feel weak.

Don't write yourself off tonight because you feel you have nothing to offer. If that's who you are tonight, you're a prime candidate for God to do something through your life that's going to bring his name to glory in this generation. You're not full of yourself.

People who are full of themselves can't make a difference because they're just, all they can do is regurgitate their own ideas. But people who have a supernatural encounter with God, when God births something in our lives, when God gives us giftings of the spirit, he puts things there that weren't there before. That's what he did.

She came in empty. And God put something in her life that wasn't there before. And not just, she would have been satisfied with just a child.

But God says, I'm going to do more because of your prayer than just give you a child. That's as wonderful as that is. I'm going to give you a child that has a voice that's going to guide the nation out of this spiritual abyss and into right living.

And there will be a revelation of God one more time for 40 years in the nation. The prophet Samuel, arguably, is one of the greatest judges, one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament. And she dedicated this gift from God to the service of God.

Now, here's where our prayers begin to take on some weight, may I put it that way, is when we pray and say, God, if you'll put something in my life, I'm not going to just take it home and use it for myself. It must have been hard for her. Can you just imagine? Your deepest longing of your heart is for this child.

And God grants it and gives you a child. But you remember that I promised to give this back to God. The scripture says she took the little boy home.

She didn't take him home, but she went home, she gave birth to this baby boy, and she weaned him. And some say that was anywhere from 2 1⁄2 to 4 years old. And then she brought him back to the house of God.

She said, Lord, I made a vow. I promised you that if you would do something in my life and through my life, I would give it to you for the service of your house and for your glory. And how difficult that must have been because the situation she brought her child into was still as backslidden as it was when she went to the altar.

Eli was still there. Hophni and Phinehas and all of this crop ministry is still there. And yet she brings the most precious thing that she's ever had in her lifetime into this environment and dedicates it to God.

This is not an easy season. I'm going to speak to the students that are here today. This is not an easy season that you've been born into.

But you have been born into this season for a divine reason. You've been born into this season because God's going to do something in your life, for real, in every one of your lives if you want it. He's going to do something that's going to bring his name to glory again in this generation.

You may not. Maybe somebody here may affect the nation. I pray to God there will be somebody here that actually will be the next great evangelist.

I don't know. There's going to be somebody here that's going to make a large difference, but all of us will make a difference somehow. We'll make a difference in our families.

That's a good place to start. We'll make a difference in our neighborhoods, in the building we live in, on the job that we attend. We'll make a difference in our community, make a difference in our town, but we will make a difference.

God will give us a voice, and our voice will speak. In the days of Eli, there was no open revelation of God. That means God is not being displayed as God.

May I put it that way? Through anybody's life. But suddenly, there's people around that are so transformed, so changed. They have a new song, a new step.

They have new life. They have a new voice. They can honestly say, the person I used to be died, and a new person was born.

I shared this before, but years ago, somebody was kind enough to give me a picture of what I looked like. We lost everything when our house burned down a lot of years ago, but somebody gave me a picture of what I looked like before I got saved. I was a cop, and I was in uniform, and I looked into those eyes, and you know what I said when I looked at the picture? Thank you, Jesus, that that man died.

That man was scary. Thank you, Jesus, that that man died, and a new man was born by the Spirit of God. Thank you, Lord, that you took that empty life, and you put, you took that empty person, and you put a new life inside this body.

You gave me a new voice. You gave me new hands. You gave me a new heart.

You gave me new eyes. You gave me a new mind. You gave me abilities that I didn't have and wouldn't have had without you, and God, you gave me the ability to get out of my seat one day and give it to you for your kingdom's sake and for your glory's sake.

The miracle of new birth happened. She dedicated this little boy to the service of God, and he's in the temple, and he's just doing what he does. I don't know what he was doing.

He was only a little kid. He probably not that much, opening the door, closing the door, doing different things. There's no widespread revelation going on.

Eli is just so backslidden and old, and he can't spiritually see, and now he can hardly physically see as well. And the lamp of God, which was never supposed to go out, was in danger of going out in the tabernacle. But listen to me.

Jesus Christ will never leave himself without a testimony. I don't care how bad it gets in society. He will never leave himself without a testimony.

He will never let the voices of the ungodly prevail. He will still do what he always does. He's God.

And before the lamp of God went out, Samuel was lying down one night. He wasn't even at an altar. Probably didn't even know realistically who God was.

I'm sure his mother talked to him about the miracles, but he probably never experienced it. And while he was lying down, the Lord called him, Samuel, by name. He didn't recognize who was calling him.

He thought it was Eli, and he went back twice, and he said, do you call me? Eli says, no, I didn't call you. He says, go lie down again. And the Lord yet called again, Samuel.

So he rose and got up and went back to Eli and said, here I am, you called me. And he said, I didn't call you, my son, lie down again. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time.

He rose and went to Eli, and he said, here I am, for you did call me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the boy. And Eli said to Samuel, go lie down, and it shall be, if he calls you, you must say, speak, Lord, for your servant hears.

So Samuel went and lay down in his place, and the Lord came and stood by him again. Hallelujah. I'm so thankful that he doesn't just call once and leave if we don't hear him.

He calls again, and he calls again, and he calls again. And I love the fact that it says he stood by him and called, as at other times. And Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears.

Then the Lord said to Samuel, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. Before the lamp went out, God called once again a new voice, a new revelation, a fresh revelation of who God is and what God does. And all it required of Samuel is to say, here I am.

Here I am, your servant. Speak to me, for your servant hears you. And he became a voice that guided the nation for 40 years.

And so that's where it all begins. So I speak tonight to people online who are empty. I speak to those who are depressed, discouraged.

You've tried to bring forth life. You can't bring forth life. You've tried to change.

You can't change. You've tried to do things that you thought you should do, and you can't do them. And you're part of this prayer meeting tonight or tomorrow, whatever your time zone is.

And you're listening to these words, and you're even wondering why you're here. Why did you even bother tuning in to this prayer meeting? Your prayers are so faint that you can barely get beyond a whisper, if you can even get that out. And the only thing that you've been able to pray for the last season is, Jesus, help me.

You don't know what else to pray. You don't know how else to pray. But tonight God calls you, not just to salvation.

That's what we're going to talk about in a minute. But he calls you to something that will bring his name to glory. He calls you to let him be God in your life, and to do through you what only God can do, to show that God is still alive.

He still redeems. He still saves. He still loves.

He still has a plan for every person that ever was created in his image. It begins tonight by acknowledging that you need him as Lord and Savior. You can't save yourself.

You can't change yourself. You've tried. It's failed.

You've come to the end. Your prayers are like Hannah. They're just a whisper in the dust, if even that.

You have little or no faith, and you know it. But you're here anyway in this prayer meeting. Tonight, I challenge you, just open your heart.

That's all you've got to do, just open your heart. The scripture says at the end of her prayer, she went home and she believed and she was no more sad. She believed that God was going to give her life.

She believed that her cry had been answered. So tonight I want you to do the same thing. Just open your heart to God.

Open your heart to the promise that if you'll cry out to him, he will cleanse you of everything that has separated you from him. The Bible calls that sin. He will bring you back to himself again in a living relationship, and he will give you life, new life.

The scripture says if anyone is in Christ, they become a new creation. The old things in your life will lose their hold, and all things in your life will become new. And believe that God sent his son to die on a cross to pay the price for your sins.

And just confess him with your mouth. You don't have to understand it all. Just say, Jesus, from this day forward, you are the Lord of my life.

And I believe that you're going to do something in my life that's going to bring your name to glory. Let's pray this prayer together for the sake of those that are going to pray it online this evening. Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for loving me.

Thank you for coming to get me. And when nobody else could, you heard my cry, and you know the brokenness of my heart. I'm opening my heart to you tonight, and I'm asking you to come into my life, forgive me of all the wrong I've done, and be the Lord of my life from this day forward.

Thank you for calling me. I feel such hope in my heart. I'm not going to go to sleep discouraged tonight.

The Bible says that Hannah went home, and she believed. So I believe tonight. Jesus Christ, you are the son of God.

You died for my sin. And on the third day, by the power of God, you were raised from the dead as proof to me that I too will be raised out of death and brought into the life of God. I believe that I am forgiven tonight.

I believe that I'm a child of God, and I believe that heaven is my eternal home. And I also believe that from this day forward, you will use my life for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen and amen and amen.

Praise God. Father, I do pray for those who prayed that prayer tonight, many for the first time. God Almighty, I'm asking you to seal that decision in their hearts.

Let none turn back. Scripture says Hannah went home and believed and was encouraged and was no more sad. And God, you did so much more for her than she could even think you were going to do.

She just wanted a boy. You wanted a voice. Oh, God, you want so much more for us than we want for ourselves.

We want to just be free from something. You want us to set thousands of others free. God, would you take us beyond the limitations of our own minds? Would you take us beyond, God, our... Lord, we struggle to believe beyond what we can think or feel or see.

God, would you take us beyond that and bring us to the place where we truly believe that you are God and that nothing is impossible for you? Lord Jesus Christ, even in this sanctuary tonight, as well as online, you are raising up a new generation before the lamp goes out. You're raising a new generation of young people that all you want to hear from them is, Here I am. Your servant hears you, God.

Speak to me. Here I am. Lead us, guide us, empower us.

Take us, Lord, where we need to go and make us into what we need to be and give us what we need to possess to get there and to have something to say when we do arrive. God, thank you for these evidences of Scripture, Lord, because your ways don't change. You are still God and you don't change.

Before the lamp goes out, in this generation we're living in now, Jesus Christ, raise up another voice. Raise up thousands of voices. Raise up your voice through a body of believers that will stand in the marketplace.

They will stand in the workplace. They will stand in whatever environment they're in. And you will speak through us, God, to this generation.

And our lives will be a testimony because we can say what we could not do, you did for us. What we could not perform, you performed through us. What we could not possess, you gave to us.

And we gave it back to you for your glory. We thank you for it and we praise you tonight. In Jesus' name.