Brother Gary Wednesday Evening 1/27/16

Brother Gary Wednesday Evening 1/27/16

As we entered into the New Year one of the desires expressed as the church is to study and pray more.  Truth has a way of opening more and more. 

Mat 6:6  But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

It is vital that we pray and that we grasp what it means to pray.  Praying first means to worship God.  Telling God all your needs is really not prayer.  There is more to prayer than just telling God how much people need Him.  Worshipping God! 

It is there we supplicate.  Once we have entered into divine worship and shut the door, we behold His majesty.   He has an abundance to supply with, copious.  When we are worshipping, we see God so capable, so great, and so mighty.

God supplies that need and yet He still has just as much as He had before.  When you and I give something to someone unless God gives it back, we are human and it is gone.  It is not so with God.

When we enter the closet, the goal is to pray.  When the door is shut, you will know it.  No one here tonight wants to just be religious.  We want to know God.  We want to know how to pray.  We want to know that we have the door shut.

Pray to the Father that sees in secret:  it is marvelous that God sees in secret.  You can pray when it is not convenient to be where you like to pray.  Brother Maconahae taught that when you wake up in the morning, then roll out on your knees.  The emphasis was to get to prayer as soon as you could.

Get the door shut; turn off all the voices.  The voice of my mind! You can shut your phone off, but there is nothing so precious as getting into the closet.  There is nothing so precious as having God meet with us.  If we are going to accomplish the mission of the church this year, it will be because this pastor learns better how to shut the door, how to pray better, and we learn better how to agree in prayer.

To turn off the voices:  we have probably 24 months’ work to get done in the next 11.  We need to ask God to help us prioritize what to get done so that we can serve Him and serve our generation according to the will of God.

The closet door is shut when we come into the presence of God.

Psa 96:6  Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

When that door is shut I believe that the honor and majesty of God is right there with me. 

The grandeur of God!  Life has afforded me to be able to see some of the most beautiful sights that are in the world.  We have seen elk, deer and we have been to mountain lakes.  Nothing compares to the grandeur of God. 

This God that is holy, just, and all knowing.  Think with me of the grandeur!

Someone was telling me that the specialists cannot give them a diagnoses on what is the matter with them.  We are able to go into the presence of one that knows everything!

He knows all that you children are trying to learn in school.  God knows everything.  With all your knowledge it is just a tiny bit compared to the knowledge of God.

You have the ability for something a whole lot more than all of that.  Sister Sue is going to sing “No Regrets” Sunday morning.  We have something: seeing His honor, how great He is and then His majesty! The splendor of God, the majesty!

Think of God being in Far Rockaway New York and He is here.  The greatness of God!

His magnificence.  God taught my father how to repair a muffler when he didn’t have money to buy one.  The magnificence of God! 

Think of the songs that we have in these hymnals.  Our heart leapt when Sister Alice requested, “I am His Child.”  It was written by Sister Brooks about 100 years ago. 

Psa 65:4  Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

God is omnipotent.  The bible says, “And He made the stars.”  The thought of strength is His force.  Think of Godly sorrow that works conviction.  Think of the value a husband and wife have in agreement of prayer.  Think of the saints and the value you have in agreeing in prayer. 

The Kelly children can meet in the hall of the school and have an agreement of prayer.  God hears the heart.  Isn’t that wonderful?

We don’t have to naturally be together to have an agreement in prayer.  You can call and whomever you call can say, “I will agree in prayer right now.” 

Think of the force!  Do you want to see people delivered and religious spirits bound so people can be freed?  Find someone to agree in prayer. 

There is nowhere to end on the thought of beauty.  I have never left the closet after having met with God without beauty.  You always leave there with beauty. 

I had a phone call from someone that wanted to vent.  When someone is hurt and they trust you so much that they share that pain with you, what are you going to do?  Are you going to get an attitude toward the one that did them wrong?  Find a closet and get the door shut.  You can leave there without a bad attitude.

Mount Zion is beautiful for situation.  Think of Moses: He wrote the Psalm, “Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us.” 

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.

Right now we are in a season where God may have to use some very strong forces for people to humble under the mighty hand of God.  It is marvelous that if people will turn and repent then God will Himself repent and say, “I will make something beautiful of your life and not destroy you.”

God took a terrible situation and turned it around when Brother Hall found a gospel trumpet and got saved.  He was convicted of murder and was in prison.  God freed him and he went back and told his testimony in the prisons.

The power of agreeing in prayer:

Mat 18:19  Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

Here we see two in agreement in prayer for one thing.  Everyone in this audience appreciates the Spirit of God that was here last Sunday.  Let’s specifically seek an agreement in prayer.  Agree in prayer for stronger conviction.  Agree in prayer for the bands of wickedness to be broken.  Agree in prayer for a quickening. 

The best of a Sunday school lesson will do nothing for the soul that is unquickened.  You might be really concerned about someone.  You don’t have to tell who you are agreeing in prayer with who you are praying for.  You can ask for them to agree with an unspoken prayer request for a quickening.

If souls begin to drift and they are not quickened then soon there becomes a callous.  When minds begin to turn God off and think more about what the flesh and the world has to offer, we can watch and see them drift, but there is something that we can do.

As a church let’s have an agreement of prayer.  I may have cancer; I probably will never be diagnosed if I do have cancer.  If I was so sick tonight, if this were my last message, I would call for an agreement of prayer. 

The Bible says, “Two.”

I want everyone that is saved to agree in prayer.  When I get to go see Jerry, I don’t want to go without an agreement of prayer.  I called on Sister Vi’s neighbor Amy.  I plan to go back next Saturday.  Please agree in prayer.  Think of how that tough life could change.  Think of the beauty and all of her past going. 

If we can see the magnificence of God!  The precious teachers!  I read an account of where a young man read Psalms 19, “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord” and conviction began to grip his soul. 

You say, “I am an independent man.”  I am too until I have something too heavy that I need to lift.  Most of us are not asking Sister Alice many questions, but we know that she has two or three sons in serious trouble.  Are we not going to ask someone to help us bear this burden? 

We are so blessed.  Where two or three are gathered in His name, “I will be there in the midst of them.”

Mat 18:20  For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Isn’t that awesome?  We can talk until daylight tomorrow morning of how sad we are because of things that have happened here, there, or somewhere else.  We have something better to do.  We can pray.  We can seek God.  We can agree in prayer.