

                             PRAYER
                          The Last Days
                       Newsletter/June 1982

                       By Leonard Ravenhill
                       THE GOSPEL OF PRAYER

There's  nothing  more   transfigering than prayer. People often say, "Why do
you insist  on  prayer  so  much?" The answer is very  simple - because Jesus
did. You could change the title of the Gospel  according  to  St. Luke to the
Gospel of Prayer. It's the prayer life of Jesus.   The  other evangelists say
that  Jesus was  in the Jordan and the Spirit descended on Him as a dove-Luke
says it was while  He was praying that the Spirit descended on Him. The other
evangelists  say  that  Jesus chose 12 disciples -  Luke says it was after He
spent a  night in prayer that He chose 12  disciples.   The other evangelists
say  that  Jesus  died on a cross-Luke says that even when He was dying Jesus
was  praying  for those who persecuted Him.   The other evangelists say Jesus
went   on  a   mount   and   He    was transfigured-Luke says it was while He
was praying  that He was transfigured. There's  nothing   more  transfiguring
than prayer.

The scriptures  say that the disciples went to bed, but Jesus went to pray as
was the custom.   It was His custom to pray.  Now Jesus was the Son of God-He
was    definitely   anointed  for  his ministry.   If  Jesus  needed all that
time in prayer,  don't  you and I need time in prayer? If  Jesus needed it in
every crisis,  don't you and I need it in every crisis?

The     story   goes   that  a group of tourists    visiting   a picturesque
village  saw  an  old  man sitting by a fence.   In  a  rather patronizing
way, one  of  the  visitors asked, "Were any great   men   born  in  this
village?" Without    looking   up   the old  man replied,     "No,  only
babies."   The greatest   men   were  once babies. The greatest  saints  were
once toddlers in the things of the Spirit.  C. H. Spurgeon was converted at
the age of  14. When he was 19 they built him a tabernacle  seating   5,000
which  he packed  twice a day-that's 10,000. How?  He  waited  on  God.  He
got alone with God. He studied...and he prayed.


        DESPERATE PRAYER
God   makes  all  His  best  people  in loneliness.     Do  you  know  what
the secret  of  praying  is?    Praying  in secret.   "But  you,  when you
pray, go into  your  inner  room,  and  when you have shut your door...
"(Matt. 6:6) You can't  show  off  when  the door's shut and nobody's there.
You can't display your  gifts.   You  can impress others, but you can't
impress God.

I  Samuel  1:1-15  gives  an account of the  yearly  trip Elkanah and his
wife, Hannah,  made  to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice  to  the  Lord.
During this time,  Hannah  had been distressed that she  was not able to bear
a son for her husband.    This  passage  of Scripture gives   quite  a
descriptive account of her   time  in  prayer  concerning  the bareness   of
her  womb.  It says that Hannah wept.  More  than this, she wept until  she
was sore. She poured out her soul  before  the  Lord.  Her heart was grieving;
she   was  bitter  of  soul, provoked,   and  of  a sorrowful spirit.  Now
that's  a  pretty  good  list  of affilictions  -  sorrow,  hardship  and
everything  else   that  came upon this woman.     But  the  key  to  the
whole situation  is  that  she  was a praying woman.   In  verse  20 it says
that she reaped her reward.

"Wherefore   it  came to pass, when the time  was  come  about after Hannah
had conceived,  that  she  bare  a son, and called  his  name  Samuel,
saying, "Because I have asked him of the Lord." Now  I say  very often-and
people don't like  it  -  that  God  doesn't  answer prayer.   He  answers
desperate prayer!  Your   prayer  life  denotes  how  much dependability  you
have  on  your  own ability,    and   how  much  you really believe   in
your heart when you sing, "Nothing   in  my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross
I cling ..." The more self -  confidence  you  have,  the less you pray.   The
less  self - confidence you have, the more you have to pray.  What  does  the
Scripture  say? It says that  God  takes  the  lowly, the things that  are
not.           Paul says in I Corinthians  1:28  that  God  takes  the
things    that   are  not  to  bring  to nothing  the  things   that are, so
that no  flesh should glory  in  His pesence.  We need a bunch of "are nots"
today.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE POOR

Prayer  is   the   language  of the poor.  Over  and  over  again David, the
King of Israel,  says,  "Bow  down  thine  ear, O
Lord,  hear  me:    for  I  am  poor  and needy." (Psalm 86:1)

And  do  you  remember that one of the greatest   psalms  he   wrote says,
"This poor  man  cried,  and  the  Lord   heard him..." (Psalm 34:6)
The   apostle  Paul  overwhelms  me  with his   spirituality,   his pedigree,
his colossal   intellect.    Yet he says that he's  very   conscious  that
when   he's weak,    he   is  strong.  He  was always trying  to  prove   to
himself  and   to others that he was a nobody.  True prayer is a two-way
communication. I speak to God and God speaks to me. I don't know how the
Spirit makes communication-or why God needs me to pray - but that's how God
works.
       "GET UP AND PRAY!"
One day I was at a confererence with Dr. Raymond Edmond of Wheaton College,
one of the greatest Christian educators in this country. He told us of an
experience he had while he was in Uruguay as a missionary. He hadn't been
there long before he was sick and dying. He was so near death that they had
already dug his grave. He had great beads of sweat on his brow and there was a
death rattle in his throat. But suddenly he sat straight up in bed and said to
his wife, "Bring me my clothes!" Nobody knew what had happened.  Many years
later he was retelling the story in Boston. Afterward, a little old lady with
a small dog-eared, beaten-up book, approached him and asked, "What day did you
say you were dying? What time was it in Uruguay?  What time would it be in
Boston?" When he answered her, her wrinkled face lit up. Pointing to her book,
she said,"There it is, you see? At 2 a.m.  God said get up and pray-the
devil's trying to kill Raymond Edmond in Uruguay." And she'd gotten up and
prayed.  Duncan Campbell told the story of hearing a farmer in his field who
was praying. He was praying about Greece.  Afterward, he asked him why he was
praying. The man said, "I don't know.  I had a burden in the spirit and God
said,'You pray, there's someone in Greece that is in a bad situation.' I
prayed until I got a release." Two or three years later the farmer was in a
meeting listening to a missionary. The man described a time when he was
working in Greece. He had been in serious trouble. The time? Two or
three years ago. The men compared notes and discovered that it was the
very same day that God had burdened a farmer, on a little island off the
coast of Scotland, to pray for a man in Greece whose name he didn't even
know.

It may seem the Lord gives you strange things. I don't care. If the Lord
tells you something, carry on with what the Lord tells you.  "WHO SHALL ASCEND
TO THE HILL OF THE LORD?"

There's another experience Duncan Campbell told about when he was working in
Scotland.  "I couldn't preach," he said. "I couldn't get through to God. The
heavens were solid. It was as though there was a 10 ft. ceiling of steel."
So he quit trying to preach. He asked a young man named John Cameron to
pray. The boy stood up and said, "What's the use of praying if we're not right
right with God? He quoted the 24th Psalm, "Who shall ascend to the hill of the
Lord?" You can't approach God unless your hands are clean, which means your
relationships with others are clean and your heart is clean. "Who shall ascend
to the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart ..." (Psalm
24:3-4)

After the boy recited Psalm 24 he began to pray. He prayed 10, 15, 20 minutes.
Then he suddenly said, "Excuse me, Lord, while I resist the devil." He turned
around and began to tell the devil where to go and how to get there. He fought
for all he was worth. You talk about having on the armor of God and resisting
the devil!  When he finished resisting the devil, he finished his prayer. He
prayed for 45 minutes! When he finished praying it was just as though God had
pulled a little switch in heaven. The Spirit of God came down on that church,
that community, on the dance hall at the other end of town and the tavern on
this end of town. Revival was born in that prayer!  At the end of Malachi it
says, "The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly (that's the word I like, suddenly)
come to his temple." (Mal. 3:1) Remember a bunch of men that had been waiting
in the upper room? Suddenly the Holy Spirit came on them in that room.

There's a date in history that I love very much. It was Wednesday, August
13,1737. A little group of people in Moravia were waiting in a prayer
meeting. At 11:00 suddenly the Holy Spirit came. Do you know what happened?
The prayer meeting that began at 11:00 lasted 100 years!  That's right. That
prayer room was not empty for a century! It's the longest prayer among men and
women that I know of. Even children six and seven years old travailed in
prayer for countries the mame of which they couldn't even spell.
WHY WE DON'T HAVE REVIVAL In an old town in Ireland they'll show you with
reverence a place where four young men met night after night after night
praying for revival. In Wales, there's a place in the hills where three or
four young men only 18 or 19 years old met and prayed night after night. They
wouldn't let God go; they would not take no for an answer. As far as humanly
possible they prayed a revival into birth. If you're thinking of revival at
your church without any inconvenience, forget it. Revival costs a lot.
I can give you one simple reason why we don't have revival in America.
Because we're content to live without it. We're not seeking God-we're
seeking miracles, we're seeking big crusades, we're seeking blessings. In
Numbers 11, Moses said to God, "You're asking me to carry a burden I can't
handle. Do something or kill me!" Do you think it's time we changed Patrick
Henry's prayer from, Give me liberty or give me death," to "Give me revival
or let me die"?

In the 30th chapter of Genesis, Rachael goes to Jacob and throws herself down
in despair. She says, "Give me children or I die." Are you willing to throw
yourself down before God to seek the spiritual birth of spiritual children in
our country?  People say, "I'm filled with the Holy Soirit." If the coming of
the Spirit didn't revolutionize your prayer life, you'd better check on it.
I'm not so sure you got what God wanted you get.  We've said that prayer
changes things.  No! Prayer doesn't change things.  Prayer changes people and
they change things. We all want Gabriel to do the job. God says do it
yourself-with My sufficiency and My strength.  We need to get like this woman,
Hannah. What did she do? she wept, she was grieved, she said she had a
complaint, she fasted-and she prayed.  Jesus, the anointed of God, made
prayer His custom. Paul, with his background and intellect, depended on
prayer because he said he was weak.  David, the king, called himself a poor
man and cried to the lord. Hannah prayed for a son and gave birth to a
prophet. The prayers of a handful of young men sparked revival.  There's
nothing more transfiguring than prayer.

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