A Great God

Saul of Tarsus oh yes that was great but why did God have to get a no-name man to do it you've never heard of him before greatest convert one that make the greatest impact in the world wouldn't it have been nice to had a high named preacher tenth chapter holy ghost outpouring on some Gentiles because here was a man hungry for God I won't probably have time to get to it someone just pause right now to talk a little bit there are plenty of carnitas and a pollicis and Lydia's waiting at this juncture I'm not sure whether to blame them more for not having full truth or blameless more heavily for not being there with it I'm sorry that for every a policy we haven't furnished an Aquila and Priscilla I'm sorry the triggerman that cornea is fasting and praying for a touch of God that there hasn't been somebody somewhere to hear the voice of God I repent god I probably should have gone a lot more places ministered to a lot more people to have chapter these are Pentecost trying to pray trying to get together on one subject getting peer out of prison there's a Pentecostal and when they pray they don't believe it I mean or something happens they don't believe it Pentecostal we can't even decide whether we're coming or going sometime yeah he's the door oh you're crazy Jeff on the language you're crazy Jeff you've got your own way if I tried to pre-select that man it'd be it'd be tough I'd they had called me on the carpet some of that before daylight probably but you you get by with it you survive it been times I've wondered you would what you have I could get on his but right now I probably won't I'll save that the later it take too long a message for him right now praise God so the twelfth chapter you see it what kind of revival would you expect to come to Jerusalem much any other city with that kind of divided praying they just banned it could pray one fell out of jail and then didn't believe their prayer when it happened let me tell you something else on this subject and then this is going to sound disjointed but I've just got to throw it in here sometime even find scriptures look like the writers just totally leave a particular theme maybe incidents that are following sequentially and as if to say man this is too good to forget too good to leave out I'm just going to insert this here and I've seen some little person I wonder how that doesn't seem to fit in this context I'm going to encourage everybody here to believe in your prayer now I'm talking about your long prayers your short prayers I'm talking about your good prayers in your we press I reviewed something again this morning I wish you turn over there brother Anthony you're a good reader and read that eighth chapter of Revelation and look at that it starts down about the second the third verse and another angel I want you to listen to this I'm not going to take time to develop this and I'm not going in into eschatology I'm talking about a principle you eight verse I think the eighth chapter of Revelation and you read that good loud you got your mind start with that came and stood you've got to listen to this let me make another commenter to one another angels at the altar at the altar having a golden censer having a golden censer was given unto Him much incense you should offer it with prayers of all saying I want you to notice another angel standing with the altar who has been given incense that he should offer to offer it up with the prayers of the Saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne which is before the throne the core for God now you'll notice another statement in the next verse it's important to put that looks of the

incense which came with the prayers of the Saints ascended up before God out of the Angels hand and you notice what he did then sending something back down to the earth that got the world's attention and the angel took the censer and filled it with fire of the altar and cast it into the earth and there were voices and thunderings and lightnings and the earth did clang yeah thank you I'm telling you God has a way of getting the world's attention now what he's trying to tell us here you send up your good prayers you send up your weak prayers you send up your crippled prayers and that angel is going to any incense that's all you've shouted long enough now chose you you can't shout long you just take it easy I don't I don't care if you're just kind of like a tea kettle sitting there with the lid just kind of bouncing up and down like that you may have to do it kind of quietly for a little bit but if you want to explode you have to that's alright too but I want you to see it now when I say something Dawg you mom's here this morning now sometimes we preachers have got lots of hours in the day we don't have to work eight hours out on some other project we can preach a sense of condemnation upon you but trying to make you feel just say anywhere close to God you've got to pray two or three or four hours a day but I'm going to tell you when you're wiping the noses of kiddos and ministering to your sick children and feeding those babies and keeping your home that's a ministry I said that's a ministry and listen listen wait a minute let your teakettle just kind of ball a little bit there let it just jump up down let it dance a little bit I'm going to tell you something else God can take one of those five-minute prayers that you pray and maybe make it as beneficial I'm more important than the three-hour when I might pray and let me tell you something else I went down the list this morning and asked the question I would imagine most everybody here would say their areas of weakness with me that need to be corrected to be greatly used of God let me tell you something you'll never feel like you prayed enough I'm here my dear sister the best a man can and feel like I need to enter perpetual travail I say my god I know that's not the way it's supposed to be even our dear sisters only have a few hours of that and they have nine months of joy there's other love a lot of other exciting things in the process I want you to understand what I'm trying to sing God just wants us to have a good balance a whole lot of our time in the prayer chamber needs to be joyously worshiping hilariously experiencing his beautiful present praises holding the hanging there doesn't need to be intercession there does need to be prevailed but all my friend if you're just learned to walk with God I've learned some of this experience Lee some of it I didn't even know before I remember once I needed to pray and it was a four-hour prayer and three hours and a half of it I prayed like I was up against a brick wall it seemed to be the kind of praying that wouldn't constitute any good for anybody finally maybe right at the close I got a little little breath would you believe as a result of that one prayer I begin to see things in full I look back in as a matter of fact it was after that that the scripture jumped out at me god I couldn't understand why presenting that prayer seemed so crippled and so often we come out of fear frustration confusion distraction disruptions then I tell you what I noticed I noticed after that that prayer good came from it sometime you need to pray all night some of the best prayers I ever prayed we're about three minutes long because I didn't have to pray through to get in his presence I woke up an expression I woke up talking to him he was there he was there praise God oh you'll never feel like you fasted enough fast seven days and the devil make you feel like a hypocrite because you didn't fast in try to ruin the good case to your first meal sometimes you just have to get smart with him put him in his place well brothers Jerry Osmond you remember him don't you brother Mannion and he was he could have you bursting you sad bursting asides as it were one minute and weeping the next and I heard him say one day and he was trying to trust God for just a healing of flu or a real bad coughing got prayed for and he he just wouldn't take it by faith and rejoice

and praise God for it lovely he started coughing real bad Devon said see you're not healed he's a devil you shut up I'll call when I get ready oh so he said you just got to kind of get smart with it just put him in his place just don't pay any attention to him I'm telling your friend if you love God let me just tell you something in a world like America with 25 million they tell us homosexuals and lesbians in a world where filth and blasphemy is the major part of the average conversation every time God hears his name called in feeble little voice penetrates that's coming from a context of purity and holiness no wonder God said fine only ten righteous people in the whole wicked cities of Sodom tomorrow I'll put up with their morality they're blasting their filth just to hear a little trickle coming up through the atmosphere from an honest earnest sincere soul on the other end of them the New Testament puts lot in a category of being a just manner righteous man there was a lot to be desired but by contrast and comparison he stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries I wonder what God thinks about what's happening in Alexandria today but then I wonder what he's going to think about it when we get away from here having heard messages on love and purity and holiness and all these things all of which are extremely important to us and then in this imagery thing here we see the idea of our being able to see God purely and clearly so we can be made in His image now we've been given the Ministry of reconciliation just a little bit further with the other line of thinking on down through the book of Acts you come to the nineteenth chapter you'll see some other interesting things but nothing really that phenomenal 19th chapter it's not the whole church again it's one man with a burning heart and he gets a little group together to somehow join him in prayer and worship and teaching in two short years the world's largest continent was evangelized total unselfishness from the thirteenth chapter of Acts you see it clearly Paul Barnabas making an appearance with their ministry they go excuse me they go to the synagogue kind of a neutral ground wonder if there's any room on neutral ground press I wonder if any of us would know how to handle it Minister of reconciliation you'd be surprised how hungry they are out there you say this has been a big cop-out for us that they don't hear what we've been saying it's a cop out in this regard because when we're blasting the living daylights out of them we lose some of our own condemnation we lose our sense of conviction by distraction and because of our own approach in certain areas where in most of us had we not been able to build something by reactionary processes would have had nothing to have offered be something if we could lose that suppose it just were to happen that your church and you as a pastor became totally disinterested as much as you would is looking from the vantage point of where Christ looked or he said I'm no longer a part of it he was really and truly he was making a point for us here I'm no longer in the world I wish we could get to the place I'm no longer affected personal ambition personal self aggrandizement so what if we did it this way we lose our sense of strong desire to simply build individual churches to fill our coffers by gathering up whomsoever we

may from various quarters what would it be like if you pastors were willing to shoulder this kind of responsibility of becoming a very strong impacting influence on your community and working so unselfishly that you would develop satellites here there and yonder I could envision some of you preachers with 12 satellites churches all around who not as you suppose in every case no hunger for God no dedication no concern we should not continue remaining ignorance on this subject oh but you say their safety and security and isolationism I'm not sure we walk in jeopardy every hour we linger in that position there's no way to fulfill the Great Commission and anybody that's got one eye on half sense that looks at our situation knows full well that we're not fulfilling the Great Commission like we ought to I preach them too many churches where there are no outsiders they've still got their place to get together their fellowship all I'm not fighting any of that time for other things but the big thing it doesn't matter if they had maybe a couple of hundred earlier down to one hundred they still got enough pay the bill still they got enough to think how good fellowship enjoy each other preachers got a pulpit wish to preach and then of course the forks folks just lapse into a state we're really all about how they want to hear some good preaching and if if the preacher will bring him somebody new every once a while that can say it a little differently let him look for a different set of terminology let him let him employ something that will captivate the attention of the people listen to his metaphors listen listen to his hyperbole listen to his allegories listen to the way he says it what we've been hearing over and over they safely I want you to listen to me now what do you think what you can even think in this thing what would it be like now what will happen as if this is what I think if we continue to think in terms that we're going to build big churches and a great part of that will be by postulating what will happen in many cases will be that you'll go into a church and there will be a one or two individuals in that church that will become so hungry for God they'll immediately be ready to join your church now you ought to get them baptized quickly as you can you ought to get them filled to hold go as quickly as you can but then you see you go in and get one or two or three of them then everybody in the church including the pastor they all put up their defenses and then they start the big fight but let's say you're going there totally unselfishly I've been seeing this in part of my imagery lately driving down the road seeing a marquee up over a church close to the road denominational Church but a big sign Pentecostal preacher from Alexandra Lake Charles hear their young will be here to preach first Sunday and the Pentecostal singers will be here to teach us how to worship for in a survey of Minnesota recently and ninety percent of the respondents most of whom were Catholic and Lutheran said we want a free free or form of worship did you realize it's predicted that in Brazil and Chile and all the African countries south of the Sahara within the next decade or so will be some kind of Pentecostal you say Oh some kind of Pentecostal how many of them will be our kind and by what can we make that determination I'll tell you if somebody else picks up on the message and goes they're probably going to listen to whoever gets there just go ahead and settle on your leaves and rest on your laurels and stay home and fuss about what somebody else is doing well god help us then in our reactionary procedure but times we feel that the best way to get a following for ourselves is tear down everybody else sometimes preachers get that idea when they're taking a church destroy the image of the former pastor you know so the following will join closer to you and then try to destroy the image of everybody else why don't we wake up and exercise a little good judgment instead of blasting the daylights out of fellas like that Billy Graham's making some people think about God why don't we pick up on that they're thinking about God they're thinking about prayer he's

introduced something about righteousness where's the Pentecostal there to pick up the apalis and the cornelius and the Lydia that's praying by the riverside you better pray for me folks I'm not about to go out anywhere I want you to understand I come through I have come through more than most of you to get to this point when I became so convicted of baptism in Jesus name I felt in my spirit I'd be totally lost if I didn't do it 48 years ago I was rebaptised in Jesus beautiful name but I'm going to tell you something else talking about this imagery thing God took me on one of my trips when I was and I don't even like to talk about the suffering aspect some of you know I've had it rough but I tell you God's made up to me so beautifully I wouldn't go back where I was before God's talked to mr. through some things he's pulled some strings listen he took me along and showed me things in my life and experiences in the past he painted pictures I'm in silhouette he was kind to me that day because I needed caressing I needed to be petted he took me through some of the beautiful scenes he told me how well he thought of what I'd done in that condition then he caught me when I was strengthened feeling better and he started showing some other things I always wanted to think we were so right in every area this considerate or language factor see I took like many of you some of those strong scriptures if somebody comes preaching something else they didn't be accursed most of us interpret that if somebody comes preaching anything else go cursing and to my amazement that wasn't in there I'm going to let him make his determination if he moves into an accursed position I'm gonna hope I can rescue him but if I can I'm not going to be the judge of the matter praise God forever and then you see it is a fact I think we'll all admit to it most of the time when we talk in terms of obedience to the gospel we're simply talking about the initiation gospel acts 2:38 mighty God in Christ he worked my motor over everything that's in that New Testaments gospel to you and what constitutes your biggest hurdle right now you didn't face that one earlier years ago I faced us when baptism in Jesus name I fought my way through Devils to get to it that's not the big thing with me and I've done that see we can relax now and blast everybody else because they hadn't handled hurdle number two very well but here we are standing before hurdle number five whatever that picked our particular hurdle maybe for you that keeps you from that apostolic productivity see I'm gonna tell you if you ever get the place where the tension of the gospel is not always pulling on ya you have to get to the place where you're real comfortable totally comfortable you're in jeopardy why would Paul say after visits with angels and converting cities and turning the world upside down and having revival like you wouldn't imagine why would he say what I want now is to know him let me know him in the power of his resurrection Fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death raise your right hand and talk to him whatever