Sins of Laodicea - Part 5

I guess you will. What a day it's going to be. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? But then he says, to him that overcometh, to him that overcometh, will I grant a suit with me on my throat. Oh, you don't have a king in America. I wonder, God blesses you, you don't have a king. Don't get angry now. Doesn't the scripture say, what, you have to do what? Do something and honor the king? That shows his mercy that he honors America and you don't have a king. But apart from that. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on... Who sits on the throne at the side of the king? The queen. Who is the queen? The bride. I believe the only people that make up the bride of Jesus Christ are the overcomers. Overcome the world, overcome the flesh, overcome the devil, overcome discouragement, overcome every crazy thing that pulls other people down. And because of the indwelling irresistible power of the Holy Ghost, we can be more than conquerors. Not just conquerors. I'm going to preach on that one Sunday morning. I won't tell you which Sunday morning, but I'll preach on it one Sunday morning. I've got to preach the Sunday after Easter. Then David's preaching next week. We're going to alternate so you can always stay away when I'm preaching. Keep a good record. But if you do, I'll be at your house the next day, I'll tell you that. Even if I have to get a chauffeur to drive me around. No, only those who overcome are going to sit with him on his throne. I'm going to condense it to this one thing I reckoned with this morning about prayer. Prayer is the most difficult task in the world. The condition is laid down in Psalm 15. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands. And clean hands is our business relationship with the world. If you've got dirty hands, you've no chance of your prayer being answered. You sabotage. Don't blame the devil. Don't blame somebody else. Blame yourself. You sabotage it by disobedience. You sabotage it by shady business deals. You sabotage it by wrong attitudes to other people. God is demanding clean hands, my relationship, and a pure heart, my relationship to God. The thing that came to me, Dale, this morning early was this. God Almighty runs the universe. I don't know what the world looks like to him. I remember flying up from Australia once. It was the clearest day I'd ever flown, and I could actually see the circle of the earth. I'm sure of that. I looked at that, and I thought, there's God. He sits on the circle of the earth. He's the high and lofty one inhabiting eternity. What must the world be like to him? How small is it? And yet he looks down from heaven on a world about as big as my thumbnail, so to speak, and yet he sees a man praying. This fire-breathing Pharisee. He'd torn families up. He admits that. He'd driven people to prison. He was blazing mad with holy anger. And you think God doesn't make a man a new creature? How do you get that man was setting himself on his own confession? I was a blasphemer. I was a murderer. I did every evil thing to wreck the church of Jesus Christ. And then he writes, I may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if I have no love, and God changed him for a man who's fiery with hatred to love, which is stronger than death, to love, which is a fire, and is the strongest fire in the world. But there he is. He's crumbled up on the Damascus road. And God in eternity stops creation as it were, and he says, look, there is a man praying. I don't find him saying after that, there's a man doing miracles. There's a man raising the dead. There's a man in prison singing his praises to me. He says, there is a man. And he got my ear because he's praying. I'll tell you who pray. Poor people pray. Not socially poor, the poor in spirit. The psalmist says this, poor man. How could he be a poor man? He has a standing army. He's at the top of the charts with his songs, writing the greatest hymns ever written, the psalms. And yet he bows before God and says, this poor man cried. Or he says, bow down thine ear and hear me. I'm poor and needy. Only the poor have access to the throne of God. You can stink in your riches if you like. And I'm not talking about material riches. I'm talking about the arrogance many people have about their gifts in the spirit. You go and come to a banquet, a breakfast, a supper or something. There's a man with a word of knowledge. Of course, if the poor guy only has the word of God, he's hardly worth listening to. But he has a word of knowledge. Or this man did this. When God found him, he was broke and he's prospered. And look where he... I've never found a man, and I went to a full gospel businessman in Minneapolis for years. Every Saturday morning they had it. You talk about praying. Do you know who prayed in our group in the little house there? David Duplessis. What was the other fellow? Harold Bredesen. A man that's done very much in this country, whose name escapes me for the moment. About six of us. I'm not against tongues. But you know what? I only remember one Saturday when anybody prayed in tongues. But I'll tell you what, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. They prayed until it seemed to me the whole ground was moving. I felt, Lord, let me make a leap into eternity. Get hold of the horns of the altar. Put one hand on the horns of the altar and on this poor stinking world in which I live, and bankrupt church. God listens to praying men. I'm glad you pray well, Fredo, and your dear wife. He could tell you some answers to prayer. When we get to heaven, we're going to be embarrassed with how little we've received of our inheritance in Jesus Christ. God gave us Jesus Christ, and if this doesn't blow your mind, what will? And with him, he has freely given us all things. There's no reason why we should ever doubt. There's no reason why we should ever fail. There's no reason why we should step back from some super task God puts in front of us. He delights in our success in the Spirit. This man was the greatest preacher that ever lived, I think, the Apostle Paul, after Jesus. God never said, Behold, he preacheth. He never said, Behold, he prophesieth. He never said, Behold, he raised the dead again. Behold, there's pandemonium in hell. Why? Because he cast demons out of a woman. I've said it before, let me say it again, because some of you haven't been here before. I think the greatest honor ever paid to any human being outside of Jesus would pay to the Apostle Paul. When one day some men tried to drive a demon out of a man, and the demon in the man said, Listen, Jesus we know, and Paul we know. In God's name, do you know anything greater than that? I would be like, I'd rather be on the devil's list of most wanted men in America than any honor the world could give me. You couldn't, you could give me all the banks in the world. They wouldn't satisfy me. Whisper in my ear that Satan has moved you up. He says, you're getting to be dangerous to his kingdom. He says, you're spoiling his plans. You're thwarting his purposes. You're pulling down his strongholds. We're not pulling things out. We're building pretty little churches and little rooms for people to sit around. People say, Well, if you're praying the Holy Ghost, you're praying tongues. You couldn't prove that with all the religion you have in the world, all the Greek. Praying in the Holy Ghost is praying God's mind, with God's strength, with God's wisdom, with God's love. If you tell me you have to pray in tongues, tell me how did Wesley shake the world and never spoke in tongues? How did Phineas shake the world? How did Judson go to Burma, one of the hardest countries, and see revival? How did he stay on his faith for seven years and never see a convert and not get discouraged? Because he was looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher. There was freedom in his life. This precious brother, what God has begun in Venezuela is going to finish. I don't care how big it's been, it's only the beginning.