Brother Gary Sunday Morning 10/7/12
Praying in all seasons means praying always. We are taught to supplicate in all
seasons: Praying that God would hold
back the evil and that God would bring good.
‘Praying always in all seasons’ means
persevering in prayer. If there
ever was a time when we needed to pray for each other it is now. We need to pray in all seasons.
Noah prayed and worshipped.
God spoke to his heart. Sometimes
we hear an audible voice saying, “Lovest thou me more than these?” Sometimes we hear the heart of God beating to
us, “Do you love me more than anything else?”
Gen 8:18 And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his
wife, and his sons' wives with him:
Gen 8:19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every
fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the
earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
Gen 8:20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and
took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings
on the altar.
Gen 8:21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again
curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again
smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not
cease.
When Noah worshiped, God smelled a sweet savor. Does our praise show God how much we
appreciate what He has done for us. May
God help us that we will offer up praise to God that will be a sweet smelling
savor to Him.
God spoke to Noah’s heart.
He had something in His heart towards man. God made covenant that He would never destroy
the world again by a flood. I ask myself
and I ask this audience, “Will you covenant with God?” God knows us and knows that even though youth
would have evil imaginations in His heart God said that he would not destroy
mankind by a flood again.
God said that there would be seasons, the season of summer
where things are growing, the season of fall when comes the harvest, the season
where it is cold. There is the day
season and the night season. You may
realize that you have been in the day season various times in your life. Also you would realize that you have been in
the night season different times in your life.
There will be the seasons literally as long as time
remains. I also want to bring that God
has ordained not only the literal seasons, but also the seasons of life. Every one of us had a beginning of the season
of our life when our parents were involved and God was involved. We didn’t have anything to do with that
season of our life. We were carried in
the womb for about 9 months. That is to
be a good season for the mother, for the father, and for the child.
God has ordained that in every season and in every purpose
that some things of great beauty and worth are to be enjoyed. You may have the question of, “How could
anything be made beautiful of the life of sin, the season of rebellion and
wasting?” The eternal God has a way of taking
what we look back to with such abhorrence and grief and because of the blood of
Jesus blotting out our transgressions and sin it becomes beautiful because of
the cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ.
He has made everything beautiful in His time.
Ecc 3:1 To every thing
there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
The eternal God is the one that set this up. The activities and seasons of life are
ordained of God.
Ecc 3:2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time
to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is
planted;
We were each born at the appointed time. We don’t know the exact time we will die, but
there is a right time to die ordained of God.
We can identify with harvest time.
The pepper plants produced in their season and then they will be taken
up by their roots and will never produce again.
They will go back to organic matter of whatever kind.
You may have planted seeds in your life or there may be a
thought seed that has been planted in your life that God says, “That needs to
be taken up, that has no place in your life.
Ecc 3:3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to
break down, and a time to build up;
Ecc 3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time
to mourn, and a time to dance;
There is a time to weep, may God help us to find that season
and weep when that time is.
There is a time to rejoice.
May God help us to know how to enjoy life and what God has given to us
so liberally. There is a time to
rejoice.
In our busy schedule, we need to take time to not only mourn
but to enjoy the good things of life and the blessings of life.
Ecc 3:5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to
gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing;
Ecc 3:6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to
keep, and a time to cast away;
When it is time to take a loss then take it. We have to take some losses in order to hold
our testimony. There is a time to get
and there is a time to lose. God will
help you. You cannot keep everything. We must give up things that we really like
sometimes. There are some things that
you need to keep. We need God to help us
to know these things.
Ecc 3:7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to
keep silence, and a time to speak;
We need help to know when to rend: when to step away from
some things.
Ecc 3:8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of
war, and a time of peace.
There are many seasons of life. You and I don’t choose the season that we are
in. God chooses the season that we are
in and we get the good from the season if we let God have His way.
Ecc 3:9 What profit hath he that worketh in that
wherein he laboureth?
Ecc 3:10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given
to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
Life, work, labor, difficulty…, they are all designed to
change our dependence from self and others to bring one to total dependence on
Christ and His church. None of us, other
than a mother, knows very much about travail.
Solomon said that he had seen the travail that God had given to
men.
The difficulties of life: life has lots of
difficulties. The most wonderful season
of your life, of a child’s life has some difficulty in it. You and I would never have an appreciation
for an individual making a child’s life difficult. We would feel strongly that a child should
not be made fun of. Children ought to
have an excellent atmosphere to be educated in.
This is in the bar that we raise; it is not in the reality of life.
I see children that don’t have a mother or a father that
cares about them. This should never
be. Everywhere you look, I see heartache
and sorrow. Whether it is your personal
difficulty in life or your work and labor, you see it and you suffer. Your heart is broken and you identify with
it.
When you know someone is hurt you immediately want to run to
their rescue. You and I as humans cannot
supply answer to the need they are travailing for. They need God.
There is good that can be gained out of travail when we
realize that God has designed this to be exercised in me to bring out the
beauty that He wants to show.
Ecc 3:11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in
their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the
beginning to the end.
He has set eternity in their heart. Whatever people are facing that is what it
may take to bring light to them. A
difficult situation is God working in people to show them that there is an
eternity. If we get very
earthbound then
our entire energies will be used on those things that are tangible and on
relationships that feed us.
These are to be appreciated, but as difficulties come into
our lives, for every individual that is honest to you and talks to you, not
very much time would pass until you find that difficulty will come. Not everything is just fine 365 days of the
year. For the successful people in
Sanders County things are a long ways from just perfect.
God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. God deals to every man a measure of
faith. God has emphatically said to you
and me to pray in all seasons. Prayer
changes us. We know how powerful prayer
is. We each were a sinner that got
converted. There is no way to be
converted or sanctified but by prayer.
I understand the blood cleansing and the living sacrifice,
but it is by prayer that you are sanctified.
Pray when you are gathering stones.
Pray when you take losses, pray when you have an unexpected financial benefit.
As we travel the uphill trail of life, there are many things
that we could stumble on. There are many
opportunities to lose our vision. There
is only one thing to do as you feel that you are losing your vision, and that
is to pray. God help me to hold on until
I regain my vision.
Prayer changes hardness to tenderness. We live in a world that will make you hard
and harsh. You will feel things that you
should just let go yet you will say things that would have been better to have
left unsaid.
God allows the seasons of life to bring us to the place
where our greatest concerns and desires are not the tangible or comforts. But our greatest concerns and cares are the
souls of men. The times that we live in
will leave us battered by the injustices of life and being misunderstood. The enemy will allow something to begin to
grow and an independence that we allow to grow to help us protect
ourselves.
Preservation is a natural tendency of life. When we are misunderstood and are dealt with
unjustly in the misunderstanding, then we are tempted to step into a realm of
being independent. The only way out of
that independence is to pray your way out.
Prayer brings an utter dependence on Christ and on His church. We need Christ and we need His church.
When things are going well in our lives, thank God for those
seasons. We think, “Everything is going
all right and I am pretty independent.”
Ecclesiastics tells us that there will be times of gains and of
losses. I’m not going to tell you what
your gains or losses will be. If we will
allow God to help us, we need to pray in all seasons that there will be such a
dependency on God and His church that we will not feel that we will be
independent and don’t need anybody or God.
Prayer adds strength to faith. If there ever was an hour that we needed the
strength of God to carry the burdens it is today. You can add virtue, moral excellence and
strength to your life through prayer.
There is something beautiful about God adding strength to your life.
This week I felt overwhelmed by the challenges that I was
facing. I got up early to pray before
God. God spoke to my heart, “I can do
all things through God which strengthens me.”
You may feel that you cannot get all together that you need
to get together. You may feel that it is
too big for you. If you are wise enough
to see this, God will come to your rescue.
Prayer brings God’s concerns to you and you can carry His
burden. They that know their God shall
be strong and do exploits. There is a
God in heaven that when you pray in all seasons He has definite exploits that
he wants to lay in your heart that no one can do like He will qualify you to do
it.
We are blessed to be able to come before God, pray in all
seasons, and commit everything to God.
To absolve ourselves from any kind of independence and say, “God I need
you, if you have an exploit that you need me to carry, if you will grant unto
me a knowledge of the burden that you would have me to carry, I will have
strength and be able to accomplish just what you would have me to do.”
When Christ speaks to us, we become His ambassador. When you are communing with God, when you
have become engaged in the machinery and workings of God and He pours into your
soul, a conviction or challenge: They
that know their God shall be strong and do exploits. There is nothing impossible with God.
God designed that by prayer, travail, obedience, and
conviction that all things become beautiful.
It is beautiful how God invites sinners. God can make something beautiful out of what
we can do nothing with. He makes
beautiful what we had destroyed and messed up.
Is there someone in this audience that would like to
covenant with God, “I will pray in all seasons?” Is there a couple, (marriage is under attack,
homes are under an attack), a husband and a wife that would covenant, “I’m
going to pray in all seasons.” Is there
a step deeper with God, “I’m going to pray in all seasons?”
What will come out of the difficulty of your life? God never designed travail to destroy. He designed that out of that travail
something very beautiful would come. I
know a God that ever challenges us, “Deeper, higher, grow.”
I’m a grandparent and I leave this with you this morning and
you keep it before me, “Grandpa Kelly, don’t expect 10 cents worth of praying
to do a $1,000,000 job.” We have many
people in Montana that are praying not even dime store praying and are
expecting a $1,000,000 result.
You take your dimes to the store and you cannot buy very
much with a dime. God is real. God loves us and He said, “Pray in all
seasons.” If we want to see backsliders
convicted and converted, let’s not think that 10 cents worth of praying will
make that happen.
How many deacons and helpers in this audience will covenant
to pray in all seasons? You hold the keys.
I have the key to my closet of prayer
and you have the key to your closet of prayer.
Brother Peters had this testimony: He went to the house to
pray, started the fire and left it wide open.
Sister Peters became concerned.
The fire got hotter and hotter; the chimney turned red; brother Peters
kept right on praying.
How much do you need an answer from God? Can God sober up an alcoholic? Can the heart of God speak so that an
alcoholic can hear? Can the heart of God
speak so that someone on drugs can hear?
Can the heart of God speak to a young person that is throwing away their
life for pleasure?
Sister Marlene used to sing, “A moment of pleasure for a
lifetime of sorrow.” A young person may
not listen to me because I am old, but I can pray. Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire.
Is your heart crying out to God, “I want a communion with
God?” Prayer can be a tear. Prayer is the simplest form of a child’s
words. It is marvelous that these elder
men in their nineties and eighties can say, “God remember souls.”
These mothers are praying for wayward sons and
daughters. Who will covenant with God to
pray in all seasons? This year I will be
66. I wonder if I will covenant with God
to pray in all seasons in the next 35 days until my birthday. No one is forcing you to pray and I cannot
preach you into praying.
Prayer is that simplest form of word that reaches up to
God.
Thank you, pray for me.
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