Maturity No.7 Handling Prayer

We have had need to comment on many occasion on the honesty of the Word of God. Its central characters, with of course the glorious exception of our Lord Jesus Christ, are accurately painted with all their mistakes. The Lord Jesus had no mistakes.

There was no need of any embellishing, any touching up of His personality. He remained absolutely consistent, absolutely pure. But here it seems to me in the 26th chapter of Matthew's Gospel is described an incident which three disciples looking back on it would have felt extremely embarrassed about.

I remind you of the context. Here is our blessed Lord and He is coming to the end of His spiritual journey on this earth. The scene is set for His arrest, for His mock trials, and ultimately for His diabolical death.

And before He hands Himself over to His enemies, He moves into Gethsemane. That lovely garden just over the brook Kidron, opposite the golden gate of Jerusalem. Gethsemane for the Saviour becomes indeed the garden of prayer.

He has His colleagues alongside Him, but He causes several of them to remain at the periphery of the garden and only three go on into the heart of the place. And then you remember how He says to Peter, James, and John, will you stay here and watch for an hour or so, while I go a little further into the interior of the garden and intercede. And the very context indicates that that charge that He gives them to watch is not just to be on guard in case the Roman soldiers push their way through the foliage and in an unexpected fashion they disturb Jesus, but rather to be on guard prayerfully, bringing the whole situation that confronts them and confronts Jesus to the Heavenly Father in prayer.

So He makes the request. Watch and pray. And you recall how He comes back on three occasions and finds the disciples doing anything else but being alert and in a state of intercession.

And so with an implied rebuke, He puts the question to them, could you men not keep watch with me for one hour? Three times He finds them dilatory in the area of prayer. I want to take that question and use it as a lever, and also as a measure this evening. A lever to stimulate your interest and to ensure that the challenge of prayer is one that is hitting you right now as I try to bring this word which is heavy on my heart.

And a ruler, because against this text you can measure your own maturity. The question is not what spiritual experiences do you boast? How many meetings have you attended? What amount of finance do you donate to the kingdom of God? The question is more searching than that, and perhaps more important than any of those examples if given in interrogatory fashion. It simply says this, could you watch with me for one hour? I personalize it.

And I ask you, forget about yesterday and the day before, and last week and last month. I ask you about today. Unfortunately we've still got a few hours to go.

How do you respond to this particular text? Have you kept watch for a period of time? Have you in any sense indicated to Almighty God your maturity in the discipline of prayer? It's very interesting, as I remarked earlier, that the chapter in Ephesians where Paul petitions the Christians there to make their goal a similar maturity to that of the Lord Jesus, he prefaces his plea with a great example of intercessory and worshipful prayer. The Apostle Paul has combined that wonderful experience where the discipline of prayer and the challenge to the disciplines of prayer has become a sheer delight, and for him prayer is as natural as breathing. Now there's a paradox involved in prayer.

Let me use a very mundane example to indicate what I'm trying to get at, but don't push my example too far. Examples always fall short. Jogging is very good for you.

I went running this morning for about three miles, and afterwards I felt good because I'd run. I had the benefits, and in the actual process of running it's no longer any major effort. What's the problem? When the alarm goes at six, getting out of the bed and into attraction.

That's the great difficulty, and it's so easy to turn over, go back to sleep, wake at seven, and I've missed it. There's a paradox, you see, in getting help through physical activity. It's good when you've done it, but doing it, oh that's rather a different story.

So in prayer. Here is the hymn writer summing up the paradox. Oh the pure delight of a single hour that before thy throne I spend, when I kneel in prayer and with thee, O God, I come as friend with friend.

Now that's accurate. So also is the opposite. What various hindrances we meet in coming to the mercy seat, yet who that knows the worth of prayer, but wishes to be often there.

But there are hindrances. Prayer is a delight and a discipline, and you've got to get through the discipline to enter into the area of the delight. So far, so good.

You see what I'm trying to get at this evening. It's bridging, if you like, the gap between our knowledge of the delight of prayer and our day-by-day discipline to get us into a prayerful habit, so that then we can move into the experience where we delight ourselves and benefit ourselves from the practice of intercession. Listen to a man who you might conceivably have heard me quote before, Charles Spurgeon.

Prayer is the slender nerve that moveth the muscles of omnipotence. Let's try again. Prayer is the slender nerve that moveth the muscles of omnipotence.

And anything that will stop you by the devil interfering in that awful, awesome task of pulling or moving the muscles of omnipotence, he will try and effect. That's why prayer, though academically we know it is a delight, experimentally becomes so difficult because of the hindrances that crop up and the excuses that we buy that cause us to go through a prayerless day, week, month, or maybe even longer. Let's come back to the context of Matthew 26 and I'll lift out some principles which you won't find in these already published notes, but will be there when I redraft them.

Let's think first of all in terms of the period of prayer. Listen again to our Lord Jesus, verse 40. Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour? I do believe in setting myself spiritual goals.

It's not always that I attain them, very often I fall short. But as in a professional career you may have goals which are honorable to set, so spiritually speaking it's good to have objectives, targets to aim for. Now let's take this 24 hour period, one day.

How many minutes of that day do you think we ought to spend in prayer? Now I'm not pushing this too far and I'm not wanting to become legalistic, but it does seem to me very interesting that the Savior's comment to the disciples by way of a rebuke indicates a time. Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour? Jesus elsewhere reminds us that there are 24 hours in the day. He speaks of the time of darkness and also the time of light.

The context is different, but why I refer to that is this, that Jesus was very concerned and a study of his own life reveals it in extracting all the potential from one day that it contained. If it is right as I believe it is to tithe my money and then give love gifts to the Lord, so surely it is right, again without being arithmetic or about this or legalistic, to think in terms of tithing the day. You say, are you really suggesting that 60 minutes in one day I ought to give over to devotions? Well, unblushingly, yes I am suggesting that you should be making that your goal.

Now listen, there's all the difference between a goal and achieving it. And it may well be that that goal at the moment is too difficult for you to attain to, although I logically doubt whether it is. But set yourself a lesser time.

Think in terms of 10 minutes to start with if you don't have a daily quiet time or 20 minutes and increase it. And hope that in God's grace, ere long, you'll get through the 60 minute barrier. And come to that sweet experience that Paul and many of the spiritual giants in history and lesser known mortals whose names were never recorded, are on the printed page.

When prayer becomes so much a delight, so much part and parcel of you, that in one sense you never really stop praying because you're always in contact with God. And whether you're licking an envelope down in the office, whether you're steering your car, whether you're driving the dishes, whether you're drying the dishes, or whether you're looking after the children, you can be in close contact with the living God. It is amazing what we can give our time for and to if we want.

I read some incredible statistics which have gone right out of my mind so I can't share them, as to the time that children in London, if they continue watching the television at the rate they do, will spend in the whole period of their life on this earth in front of the goggle box. There are not many of us who, if we linked together all the bits of spare time, quote and unquote, that we have in a day, could not ultimately give one hour to the Lord, either in broken segments or in one huge whole. So our Savior says to these disciples, could you not watch with me for one hour? And I stress from that, not wishing to push the context, as I say, too far, that the period of prayer and how long we spend in intercession each day is a challenge that's embedded within the text.

But then there's something else here. There is the whole privilege of cooperating with Jesus. Could you not keep watch with me for one hour? What had the Lord been engaged in doing? Well, I've already spelt out the scenery.

It's dark, apart from the light that comes from the full moon at Passover time, and let's imagine that we are there and we're peering just between the olive groves and our eyes alight upon the silhouetted form of the Lord Jesus Christ. What's He doing? He's praying. He's praying about all that is in front of Him.

He's praying about the responsibilities that are His, and the consequences of doing the Father's will, and the possibility as His humanity surfaces to the top of His consciousness, the possibility of maybe another way. He's engaged, and that's the point I want to make, in prayer. And that's precisely what He asked the disciples to cooperate with Him in.

Alright, another point. What's Jesus doing at the moment? You remember the address I tried to preach on Sunday evening? Our Lord Jesus, the right hand man of God. There were many texts which had time not run out on me.

I would have liked to have directed the congregation to from the New Testament, which says that when Jesus burst through into heaven again and took up His place at the right hand of the Majesty on high, then He starts to engage in a holy intercession, which lasts for the extent of the church era He ever lives. To make intercession for us. That's what the writer of Hebrews says, and Paul agrees in Romans, and I think it's the last few verses of chapter 8. So the Lord Jesus Christ offers the privilege to the disciples at a very decisive time of praying alongside Him.

And it was Jesus who said in Luke's Gospel, and is it chapter 11, men ought always to pray. And He told in the selfsame chapter the parable of the friend at midnight who is embarrassed because someone turns up outside his house and needs hospitality. And he's got no bread, so he knocks next door on the neighbor's house and asks if he can have some loaves.

And he keeps on going until he gets what he requires. And Jesus is setting up again the principle that in the kingdom and extending the kingdom of God, the verb to ask is very important. In the Psalms it says of the Lord Jesus, or to the Lord Jesus by the Father, ask of me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance.

And John says we have not because we ask not. Whether we like it or otherwise, progress in the kingdom comes through asking, petitionary prayer. And that's the example that Jesus sets in the garden, offers the privilege to the disciples and by extension to ourselves.

Prayer is the one prime eternal condition by which the Father is pledged to put the Son in possession of the world. Christ prays now through his people, says E. M. Bounds in a marvelous book which I had with me a few moments ago called The Purpose of Prayer. Well, let's move on.

Here is our Savior with the disciples. Would you not, could you not watch with me one hour? He sets a time of prayer. We've not forced that too much.

We've indicated that he's asked them to cooperate with himself because that's precisely what he has been doing. But there's something else here that's necessary for us to grasp in our own handling of prayer and that is the gravity of the hour. Look at verse 38.

Here's a very interesting comment, almost unique in Scripture. Jesus reveals his psychological condition, his state of heart to the disciples. Then he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow.

To the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. You need to read those words again and again.

They're like an ocean. They're fathomless. The depths there are unsearchable.

My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. If you were to read on to the parallel account in Luke's Gospel, you will discover that the Gospel there uses a verb, which if memory serves me right, is only used twice in Scripture to describe the state of the Lord Jesus. The verb, again I'm quoting from memory, which is always a bit precarious, from the Greek is son agonizo.

And the idea, as the last word might have indicated, is an agony. Stretching one's soul out because one is so het up. One is so tense.

If you want an illustration which gets across the force of that Greek word, you think of Les Stride's violin and the string over the bridge. It's taught. It can't take that much more strain or it will snap.

Now that's what Jesus is saying to the disciples about the condition of his soul at that moment. It's overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Why? Well because of the gravity of the hour.

The Lord knows what's in the future. He knows how important the next few hours and days are. And it's at that time in history when he asked the disciples to get alongside him in prayer.

And what about today? Is not the hour extremely grave? I was reading in Psalm 11 earlier today, when the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? And I think of the foundations of our own country, and I would argue possibly the foundations of Western civilization are in jeopardy. And there are some bankers who are predicting economic chaos if something remarkable doesn't happen in world banking at the moment. Well what can the righteous do when the foundations are being destroyed? They can do just this.

They can pray. There's a story told by a Dr. Parks Tadman of a man called Horace Bushnell, who was suffering from an incurable disease. On one occasion his friend Joseph Twitchell went to visit him.

Bushnell was a great, great man of God and intercessor. They went for a walk and they sat together under the starry sky. And as I say Bushnell was dying.

And Twitchell said, one of us ought to pray you know. And Bushnell agreed that he would do so. He began.

He fell prostrate on the ground and buried his faith, says Twitchell later on, in the earth. He poured out his heart, said his friend, until I was afraid to stretch out my hand in the darkness lest I should touch God. One can be so caught up in the purposes of God in prayer that the power is a felt power and one knows that the kingdom is being advanced because of the intercessory poise that you have adopted.

Oh for prayers like that. Oh for people who have such a heart's desire for God as that. Recognizing the gravity of the hour and touching the Lord because prayer does change situations.

Prayer opened the Red Sea, brought water from the rock, bread from heaven. Prayer fetched fire down from heaven on Elijah's watered wrench sacrifice, overthrew Sennacherib's army, healed the sick, raised the dead. And it's prayer that we need to engage in, my dear Christian friend, in these days when the foundations are being destroyed, this is what the righteous can do.

But then it was not just for that hour, as our Lord anticipates his arrest and his death, that the disciples are to pray with him over. There's also, it seems to me, some personal benefit that he underlines will be theirs if they engage in prayer. He tells them in the 38th verse, stay here and keep watch with me.

And then in the 41st verse when he comes back and admonishes them, he says, watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. Philip Henry says, the best way to fight against sin is to fight it on our knees. You remember the 31st verse of that chapter begins the account of our Lord predicting the desertion on the part of his disciples when he is arrested.

And it's Peter, along with the others who say, no you've got it wrong, we will not deny you. But Jesus knew that they would deny, that they would desert him. And one of the factors, if you can work this out from a human point of view, which contributed to the desertion of the disciples, the desertion of Jesus by the disciples, was their prayerlessness.

They needed to pray lest they fell into temptation, into the temptation of fear, into the temptation of being over alarmed because of the importance of what was happening. There are personal benefits that accrue to the man, to the woman who engages in prayer, who spends time before the Word of God and takes what he learns as fuel and uses it on the altar of intercession. Campbell Morgan said, my brothers see to it that when morning breaks you go to God for sustenance, for your spiritual life.

It is the man fed by God spiritually and physically who is likely to overcome in the hour of temptation. Do you know how George Muller used to pray? He started off with his Bible open, a few seconds of prayer, and then he was into the Word. And there along he felt the Word was challenging him and convicting him.

So he stopped and he confessed his sin and then he read again and he discovered that the Word of God was enlarging his faith and his understanding of the greatness of God. So he started to talk to the Lord about his orphan boys and their tremendous needs there in the city of Bristol. And he prayed as though the Bible was God's checkbook replete with promises.

And he pointed out to the Lord what he had said and asked him to redeem his word. Prayer and the study of Scripture, you see, are two sides of the same coin. They're interlinked.

And he prays well, who studies well, and enables Scripture to be his stimulus. There are personal benefits that accrue to us when we pray. But there are hindrances, hindrances to prayer.

And that's what our Lord identifies here on the part of the disciples. You remember that quotation I gave you from, who was it, William Cooper's hymn, what various hindrances we meet? Well what hindered the disciples? Jesus analyzes their condition and he identifies it. The Spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

That was the obstacle for the disciples. Now you interpret that word body in any way that fits your situation. It could be sheer tiredness.

Though my wife was pointing out an article in the Women's Weekly the other day, so it must be right, that most of us have far more sleep than we actually need. And it would be a good investment to buy a rude-sounding alarm clock that would shake us at six o'clock and wake us from our slumber, so we might engage in more prayer. What is it that hinders us from prayer? Sleep, maybe.

But you know, we're not hindered from having a good meal simply because we've overslept. We feed, we wash, we dress, we attend, thank God, to personal disciplines. And there are some aspects of our normal daily routine and we would never think in terms of vaulting over them.

But none is so important as that of prayer. What is it that addicts itself to you that causes you sometimes to be very spartan in the amount of time you give to Almighty God? Add up, those of you with televisions, 95% of us, how much time have we spent just this week watching the television? Some will suffer from the same addiction of myself, as far as books are concerned. How many hours have we given to newspapers, to magazines, and to non- spiritual books, compared with how much time we have given to prayer? I'm not saying that the obstacles are illegitimate, they only become illegitimate when they prevent us from being on our knees before the Lord.

This wasn't a night for anybody to sleep. This was the most important, or one of the most important nights that human history would ever record. When the Son of Man dices with death, when in the balance is the salvation of millions of people.

Obviously the disciples weren't to grasp all that, they didn't have that much intuition. In fact, in some senses they were like us, very dull spiritually. But they should have known by what Jesus said, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, that something remarkable was afoot.

And it wasn't a time for men to sleep. And sometimes it's not a time for men to eat, or watch television, or 101 legitimate occupations in many senses. Sometimes it's time to pray.

This is a tragic chapter. It finishes up with the failure of Peter, but don't emphasize Peter's failure without recognizing that the other eleven, including Judas, failed miserably also. But do you remember how when you move into the Acts of the Apostles, after Peter's Pentecostal experience, he has begun to grasp fully the lesson on how to handle prayer, and has developed a mature attitude as to what is unimportant and what is important for him.

In the sixth chapter of Acts, they select the deacons, you remember, these seven men who will look after administration and finance and ensure that the widows are well cared for. Now we're not told who is the spokesman of the disciples who makes the pronouncement, but probably it was Peter. And we find in verse three this comment of Acts 6, brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.

We will turn this responsibility of looking after tables, etc., to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word. Peter, the apostolic college, learned the lesson. Prayer is fundamental to the advance of the kingdom and where other activities can be passed on as far as Peter and the eleven were concerned, then they were to be delegated because the priority of prayer was burning in the heart of the leader, Fisherman Peter.

A story is told of Oliver Cromwell, who was once looking at the statues of famous men, and Cromwell said to a colleague standing by, make mine kneeling, for thus I came to glory. Make my statue in the posture of prayer, for through intercessory prayer I came to glory. Whatever you think of Cromwell, at least I accept that as a parable and as a lesson for you and for me.

There's no way to glory, there's no way to spiritual maturity apart from prayer, consistent prayer. It's not adding up the number of meetings or conventions or books that you read. It's in prayer together and often on our own and there you measure your maturity or your lack of it.

Could you not keep watch with me for one hour? It seems to me that that's a text that should constantly be in our minds, goading us, correcting us, encouraging us to realize that in the sweet ministry of handling prayer, we are working alongside Jesus Christ and pushing forward the borders of the kingdom and hastening the day of the return of the King. Now you may feel that it's a miracle there are five minutes left. It's not, because I want to show you, just in passing, a little diagram that might be of help to us and I'll have it reproduced in the notes that eventually are written up of this Bible study.

We can keep the tape going as it will still have some significance for friends who study, by the way, of this tape. Please don't let anyone else know, outside the tab and those who listen to our tapes, that Sargent is recommending evangelical prayer wheels. A prayer wheel is something that the Tibetan or the Nepali peasant uses to help him, her, pray to their pagan god.

But it seems to me that if you think of prayer in terms of a circle and that circle split into certain segments, it's perhaps easier for us to grasp the challenge and the structure that our prayer time can have. So it becomes a little easier for us to sustain than it has heretofore. You could suggest, although I'm not necessarily claiming it must be so, that the circle stands for a period of one hour.

It could be for half an hour, could be for 20 minutes or for 10 minutes. This circle can be like a balloon. You can blow it as big as you want or keep it as small as fits your requirement.

And as a prayer wheel, it circles round. The various segments indicate specific topics in which we can engage or specific features that we can engage in, in the area of our quiet time. Number one, let's just raise this a little bit.

Number one, the circle is starting here. I'm suggesting stands for that period of worship which we should engage in at the beginning of our intercessory time. Now, those of you who are going to accuse me of legalism, I'm not saying you've got to adopt this structure.

I'm saying it's helpful to me and I pass it on to you. A few moments of worship, of remembering who God is, extending our minds. You say, I don't always feel like worshipping when I engage in prayer.

Well, that may be the case. Why not use a hymn book or a chorus book or if you've got a tape recorder, put on a worshipful chorus which will help you to feel the presence of God. You say that's psychology.

Well, you tell the Prophet Elijah that it was psychology because he asked for someone with a guitar to come and play him a spiritual song centuries ago. If you don't believe it, then check the book of Kings. It helps us to be in a condition where we are sensitive to the presence of the Lord God.

And then I suggest that number two stands for our time of Bible reading. Our time of Bible reading because our devotional hour also involves coming before Scripture and I've given that a fair segment, a fair piece of this circle because it's God's Word which we should be reading. If you read it like I read it, then you'll read it with a pencil or in my case a yellow pen in hand and you will mark off if you don't mind making a mark on your Bible specific verses that appeal and speak to you.

When you've had your chapter or two chapters or five chapters, whatever, of Bible reading, don't close your Bible. Number three refers to eating and listening. What do I mean by eating the Word of God? Well digesting that little piece or those portions which really hit you with a full force.

I was into Matthew's Gospel this morning and a verse really seized hold on me which I might even preach on on Sunday morning. The disciples of John, after John had been beheaded, then they came and told Jesus. And when I reflected on that verse it just opened itself up in front of me.

To come to tell Jesus He's always available to share human tragedy and there's every situation that we can bring to Him. Well that was part of my eating and listening this morning. And thank God for the good nourishment.

I had a great menu earlier today. And then reading God's Word very often brings us, and I put this to number four, to a state of confession. We recognize that there are things that are wrong in our own lives.

And so we spend some moments analyzing our attitudes, analyzing any aspect of our life which may be unchristian and we confess it before the Lord. And then I've listed number five round here as personal goals. What do I want to achieve for God today? Here it's a Sunday.

I'm going along to the tabernacle. I'm a youth leader or I'm an older person. What is my goal? To lead a young person to the Lord Jesus in the former instance.

In the latter instance, to pray that I might minister to someone, perhaps just in a fellowship fashion, or intercede sensitively, whoever is doing the preaching, so that we shall know the power of God resting upon us. Each day should bring its own particular personal goals which we can set for ourselves. Then I put down for number six, family and friends.

Do you let a day pass? Those of you who've got parents still alive or sons or daughters or sisters or brothers, when you don't bring them before the Lord, shame on you if that is the case. They are your relations, blood relations. Let's bring our families to the Lord and our close friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.

And then you will notice on number seven, I've given quite a large chunk to what I call mission reading. I have a file, a personal file of letters that come my way from brothers and sisters who I love in the Lord. I can't possibly remember everything that they say in terms of prayer requests and so I'll read through a particular letter.

I'll go through it paragraph by paragraph and bring these issues before God in prayer. Take a mission magazine, always chock-a-block full of information which you can then turn into number eight, missionary intercession. We should all be praying for the advance of the kingdom.

And then number nine, a personal prayer list of many people who you want to see, one for the kingdom of God, your colleague at work, your neighbor next door. Ensure that you've got these listed somewhere so that you can claim them as part of those for whom the Lord Jesus Christ died. And then I've put down number ten, taking us back right to the beginning again, worship.

You start with worship. The prayer wheel comes right round. I got the arrows in the wrong direction.

Prayer wheel comes right round to number ten, worshipping the Lord again, thanking Him for all that He has done for you. Now whether it's ten minutes or half an hour or an hour. You see if you organize your prayer life you can't possibly run out of things to say.

The problem is that in this structure it's just too big. And as I say some of you may feel that it's too structured, it's too clinical, it's too academic. Well okay, that's fair enough, fair comment.

Maybe you don't need this method. But there are some of us who need to have a tidy approach to a prayer life. You may have broken right through the one hour barrier.

You may have made prayer so much part of your day that you don't need a method. But here is the evangelical prayer wheel, if you please, that I'm recommending here at the Tabernacle. You won't find it written anywhere else.

It's entirely my own musings. And here of course is the major thing, if I can just get it on the outline. Three D's.

How to keep your prayer life. By experience, by attending meetings, by going to conventions, no. They may help to some degree.

But your daily dogged discipline, working at it. Sometimes the last thing on God's earth that I want to do is pray. I don't understand that.

Because when I'm in prayer, I enjoy it. But there are all these obstacles, you see. Sometimes I feel that I'm one of the biggest targets of the devil.

But I'm sure I'm no bigger, no larger a target than anyone else. It's just these hindrances that he puts in my way. And the depressed spirit that sometimes falls over one.

You have to fight against this and come with the three D's. The daily dogged discipline and engaging in intercession. Oh, but you say it's all right for you.

You only work one day a week on a Sunday and the other six days you've got it free. As far as I'm concerned, I catch the six o'clock train to London every day. What time do I have for prayer? Now where in God's Bible does it say that the British Railway Institution is not a fit institution for you to pray in? In fact, perhaps if more of us prayed when we were on British Rail, some of their problems might be resolved.

Some of you say, well it's all right for you. You're married. But as George Verver once said to me, you don't know how blessed you are not having any children.

You don't know what it's like for a mother with a couple of children to look after as soon as six o'clock dawns or even earlier. They're up and about and there's no time for me to pray. John Wesley's mother, what's her name? Susanna? Nineteen children.

Will everyone who's had nineteen children please stand up in the congregation here and we'll exempt you from the next comment. Nineteen children and she still spent time for prayer. You say you haven't got privacy.

Neither had she. Do you know what she used to do? I'm not recommending it. She used to put her apron over her head.

And when the kids saw that mother's apron was over her head, they didn't contact her or disturb her until she was through. And it was Susanna Wesley's prayers that got John and Charles moving evangelistically in this country and in the States. Maybe you can't take an hour in one day.

Maybe it's got to be a period of two or three segments of ten minutes. Maybe there are other facets of prayer that I've missed out that you need to incorporate. That's all right.

Absolute flexibility. But work at your prayer over against the challenge of this text. Could you men and women not keep watch with me? Could you not link hands with the intercessor in heaven for one hour in a day, advancing the kingdom and reaping personal benefits as a result? Amen.