The Prayers of Three Worlds for You

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Preached Sunday morning, February 21, 2021, at West Valley Pentecostals — a service Copeland had not planned to preach. He had come to California as a guest on the church's missions trip to Ensenada; the church he was scheduled for that morning had cancelled after a fire, and Pastor Allard, having spent three days with him in Mexico, invited the young evangelist to take his liberty instead. With no week of study behind the message, he read three texts and laid out his subject: there are prayers being prayed for you from three worlds.

The first world is this one — the church on earth. From Acts 12:5, Peter in prison and prayer made without ceasing of the church unto God for him, he builds the case that prayer is the most powerful thing God has put in human hands: not a cute five-minute prayer but a church united that prays until something changes, that prays a hole in the sky. Prayer, he insists, is not built on feeling — you pray when you don't feel like it, through dry seasons, because relationship and commitment carry what mood cannot — and its reach is intercessory: Nineveh reprieved, judgment withheld, the vineyard dresser pleading one more year for the barren tree. Somebody is praying for every person in the room — pastor, pastor's wife, faithful saints — and those prayers are eternal things: he tells of Granny Jackson of Silsbee, Texas, who raised her hand for her lost children and grandchildren at every service she ever attended, died without seeing one of them saved, and whose family came weeping to the altar at her own funeral, every one of them eventually receiving the Holy Ghost. Her lips stopped moving; her prayers did not die.

The second world is heaven. From John 17:20 — Jesus praying not for the disciples alone but for all who would believe on him through their word — he argues that this Sunday-morning congregation is itself an answered prayer two thousand years old, that heaven is leaned over the edge of this service, and that there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner who repents. The third world is hell. From Luke 16, read entire, the rich man lifts up his eyes in torment and becomes an intercessor too late, begging Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers. Copeland walks the room to the mouth of hell: people there are praying now, with memory intact — remembering services, warnings, and Sunday mornings just like this one — and their prayers cannot do anything anymore. Korah, Saul, David, and Achan stand as proof that what one person does reaches the people around him.

He closes with the warning turned personal: don't wait until it is too late for your prayers to make a difference. The prayers of this world may not have moved you yet, and the prayers of the departed may not have reached you — but let today be the day you get it right with God, as heads bow and the church turns the house into a house of prayer.