Prayer Regulated by The Word of God

Review of Personal Disciplines and Introduction to Prayer

0:04 Since we do have a number of visitors with us, for your benefit particularly, I'll just review briefly what we've been covering in these past, I think, nine or ten weeks. We call this our Adult Christian Education Forum, which indicates that the nature of the class is not that of strict lecture method, but we do enter into discussion together and share, one with another, our own insights from the Word of God. And for the past number of weeks, we have been considering together the very practical area of the Christian and his personal disciplines of the means of grace, that is, secret, private prayer and the study of the Word of God. And thus far, we have concluded from the scriptures in our discussion together that these disciplines are essential. They are laid. They are laid upon us by the scriptures.

1:02 We've tried to glean principles to guide us individually as to when we should exercise ourselves in these disciplines, how much time we should give to these disciplines. And then we've concluded that the basic ingredients are preparation, the reading and meditation of the Word of God, and then the engagement in prayer. And we concluded last week our study of how to study the scriptures, for our own edification. And we came up with these various lines of thought, that the Word of God should be read systematically.

1:39 The Word of God should be read dependently, that is, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit for his illuminating ministry. Thirdly, the scriptures should be read inquisitively, with an active mind. And then the scriptures should be read meditatively. And we had several profitable weeks on the whole subject of meditation, coming to the conclusion that scriptural meditation is that conscious, volitional exercise of the mind, with reference to God's revealed truth, as that truth relates to us in our own life situation.

2:16 Now we're through with our study of how to read the Word of God. This was not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, since our purpose was not to be exhausted, but simply to give some of the broad principles that would guide us to the Word of God. And this is what we have learned from our personal study of the scriptures. And now we come this morning to the broad subject of personal, or private, prayer.

Purpose and Scope of the Study on Prayer

2:40 And again, let me remind you that the purpose of our class is not to give an exhaustive theology of prayer. The Bible does give us what we might call a theology of prayer. That is, teaching concerning the whole nature of prayer, the object of prayer, the various ingredients of true prayer. And this could well become the subject of a year or two of study in a class of this nature.

3:06 But our concern is basically simply to touch upon some of the elementary principles, and for two reasons. Number one, we have a number of babes in Christ in our congregation, a number who are relatively new to the Christian faith, who have, in God's grace, been brought to a knowledge of Christ in the past year or two or three, many of whom have had no previous acquaintance with biblical Christianity, coming from raw American pagan homes, or from homes where there was decadent religion. But there was no example of true prayer. There is nothing to which one can refer as far as background and childhood experience.

3:49 And so for the sake of the many babes in Christ, we do want to give some of the basic, the most elementary principles, that should guide us in our secret prayer. To be too extensive, to be too comprehensive, would swallow up the babes and make them discouraged. And so for their sake, we must give that which is fitting for their present spiritual condition. And then secondly, we want to be engaged in the broad principles, rather than being exhausted, because the mature saints have found to their shame that their failures are often with the most fundamental issues of the Christian life. We need, in the words of Peter, to be reminded again and again and again of first principles, or to use the words of the writer to Hebrews, we need to learn again what be the first principles of the oracles of Christ. And so, assuming that we, as God's people, share the struggles of God's people, in other ages and in other places, it is for our benefit that we go back to these first principles. So much then for what we propose to do, as we come now to this broad area of secret prayer, we are not to be exhausted, we are going to catch the main threads,

The Central Question: Should Prayer Be Regulated by Scripture?

5:15 the major strong strands of emphasis in the word of God. All right, now I'll throw out a question, which I trust will begin our discussion together. And the question is this, should we be self-consciously concerned with whether or not our prayers are regulated by the scriptures? Now let me explain my question, let me exegete my question.

5:42 Now no one would say that biblical prayer, or I should say that legitimate Christian prayer, is detached from the directives of scripture. Everyone would agree that all praying that is acceptable to God, must in some way be within the framework of what the scriptures tell us is legitimate prayer. But now my question is this, should we be self-consciously concerned with having our prayers regulated by the word of God? In other words, when we pray, should there be some present awareness of this issue?

6:23 Is my praying according to the scriptures? Or should I simply do what comes naturally when I am praying? Now that's my question, and I'm not going to give you the answer. So the question's in your lap for you to respond to.

Biblical Grounds for Scripturally Regulated Prayer: Confidence and Command

6:42 And if you're going to respond, be prepared to back up your response with some scriptural assertions. All right, Eugene? Well, we are to pray accordingly to the scriptures, because according to 1 John, chapter 5 and verse 14, it tells us, and this is the confidence which we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. In other words, we have confidence that God will hear us if we do it according to his will.

7:20 And I take this will to be the scriptures. All right, so what you're saying is that unless I am self-consciously concerned, that my prayers are conformed to the revealed will of God, I cannot pray with confidence. That's right. All right.

7:37 Let's put down then as... All right, Paul?

7:45 McCoy, you have your hand raised. Verse 6. Well, 13 is the Lord teaching how to pray. And then verse 9 is that after this manner, therefore pray ye.

8:03 So there is a definite manner in which we have to pray. All right, so could you frame that then, in terms of a statement of response to my question? Should we be self-consciously concerned with having our prayers regulated by the word of God? Eugenius said yes, and his reason has been, because only in this way can we pray with confidence that we are heard.

8:30 Your answer is yes, because... All right, we have an explicit commandment from our Lord in Matthew chapter 6, beginning with verse 9, or verse 5, but then the command comes, comes in verse 9, after this manner, therefore pray ye.

8:52 So here is an explicit commandment given by our Lord, the verse again, verse 9, indicating that our prayers are to be conformed to a certain pattern. And if we claim to be Christ's disciples, what did he say? If ye love me, he will what? Keep my commandments.

9:16 Ye are my friends, if ye do, whatsoever I command you. Indicating then, if my discipleship is not manifested in my prayer closet, there is something very defective in it. It is not enough that I pray. I must be concerned, self-consciously concerned, as to whether or not my prayers conform to the pattern of the word of God.

9:41 Now it's amazing how many Christians have no problem with this in other areas of life. If I were to ask, should you as a Christian father, be self-consciously concerned that your activities as a father are conformed to the revealed will of God, every Christian father would answer without any hesitation, what? Yes. And to that end, you seek to study the portions of the word of God which speak to you as a father, as a husband, you wives.

10:07 But it's amazing how we somehow cordon off, insulate this area of prayer, and we feel, well that's too sacred and too holy a thing, to be conscious of anything other than my communion with God. But that's not so. Here we have an explicit command from our Lord, after this manner therefore, pray ye. Alright?

Biblical Grounds for Scripturally Regulated Prayer: Indwelling Sin and Word-Saturated Hearts

10:30 Other responses to that question? Alright, Ralph? And then we'll go back to you, Pete. Alright, in other words, do we leave our indwelling corruption outside the door of the prayer closet? Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was some kind of a box there, into which you could deposit all your remaining corruption when you go to pray? And this is called the flesh deposit box. And you just leave the flesh there, and then you go in and pray.

11:36 But as Ralph has pointed out, James is assuming that the Christian in his most holy exercises of prayer is still very much plagued by his remaining corruption. He asks, he says, but he says, you ask that you may consume it upon your lust. You mean it's possible for carnal lust to be dictating my prayers, instead of the holy, revealed will of God? That's exactly what James is saying.

12:08 So, could we answer, Ralph, put your answer in this way, that we must be self-consciously concerned about having our prayers regulated by the word of God, not only because it's the ground of confidence in prayer, it's obedience to the explicit command, but because of the ever-present problem of indwelling sin. Isn't that the thing out of which James' exhortation grows? It's the reality of that problem of indwelling sin, which is not suspended simply because we are praying, any more than it's suspended simply because you're listening to a sermon, or involved in a class like this. If we could project on a screen this morning, just for five minutes, all of the actings of indwelling sin that are going on right here in this building right now, we'd all be filled with blushing, because sin is active, even in a Christian assembly. When the word is taught and preached, sin is active when the Christian is present in the secret place of prayer. In fact, according to Romans 7, perhaps there are a few places where it's more active. For when I would do good, the apostle says, evil is present with me.

13:21 I find then a law in my members warring against the law of my mind. All right? James 4, and that was verse 4, was it not? Pardon?

13:34 Was it verse 4? Verse 3. Okay. All right.

13:38 Pete, what were you going to say?

13:56 All right, so here we have not only an explicit commandment, as in Matthew 6, to conform our prayers to a certain pattern, but here we have an explicit promise that as our prayers are the result of the word dwelling in us, we have confidence that we are heard. All right? John 15 and verse 7. In a sense, this is sort of a first cousin of this, isn't it?

14:24 It's only as the word dwells in us that we're confident that we're praying according to the will of God. We'll list it separately, but really it's a first cousin, if not a blood brother. All right? Someone else had his hand raised.

Biblical Grounds for Scripturally Regulated Prayer: Directives for Various Prayer Facets

14:37 Yes? Ephesians gives a command to not be foolish, but to know what the will of God is. And then later it kind of gives exhortations how to even praise God when you rejoice. 19, after verse 18, it says, you're not going to be drunk with wine, for that it keeps you patient, but be filled with the Spirit.

15:03 And then it gives you an exhortation as how to express that in praise to God. All right, so, excuse me, so what is the point we're making now? That there are instructions even in praise as how to give glory to God, and also even in mourning. Because in James it says, to draw near to God as He will draw near to you.

15:28 And it says, be miserable, mourn and weep, and let your laughter be turned into mourning. All right? Or into gloom. So there's a certain even structure on how to present yourself in a certain space of being before the Lord.

15:50 All right, if we represent the whole gamut, the whole spectrum of the various aspects of biblical prayer by this circle cut up into these pieces like a pie, what you're saying is that even the various facets of prayer, such as praise, holy mourning, joy in the Lord, God even gives specific directives as to how these things are to be expressed in the life of the Christian. And these passages clearly teach that. Be filled with the Spirit, and you have these five participles that follow, speaking one to another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your heart unto the Lord, etc. All right?

16:35 I'll not bother to write all the rest of these. That was Ephesians 5, 18 and following. And then James chapter, what was it? James chapter 4 and 5.

16:47 All right, James 4 and verse 5. All right? Someone else had his hand, or someone else had her hand raised. Did I see someone else?

The Spirit, the Word, and Conscious Activity in Prayer

16:55 Yes, Priscilla? When you say, as Paul said, for we do not know how to pray as we should, even the Apostle Paul admitted that in ourselves, we don't know how. So, for instruction, we must listen to the Word. All right, but now, suppose someone took that very verse and turned it back on you and said, ah, but Paul says, the answer to our ignorance is the Holy Spirit.

17:20 We know not how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself maketh intercession. So, since the Holy Ghost is present in me to help me in my weakness, I don't need to be self-consciously concerned. I just trust the Holy Spirit to guide me in my prayer. Well, if we might pray a prayer, we don't know how to pray as we should.

17:54 All right, we come back to that great principle we emphasize over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseum, but it's for your well-being that we emphasize it. The Spirit has not been given to cancel either the objective guidelines of the Word or the conscious activity of the saint. Now, if you get hold of that thing and constantly come back to it, it'll save you from errors on the left hand and on the right. The Spirit has not been given to negate, to cancel the necessity of the objective standard of the Word or the conscious activity of the believer. Rather, the Spirit has been given to give us understanding of the objective standard, the standard of the Word, to give us inward power to obey that standard and to quicken us to perform the kind of conscious activities that will conform to the Word. That's why you have that wonderful fusion in Philippians chapter 2, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do. So, when we try to bring together

19:20 the Romans 8, 26, and 7 with a passage such as Matthew 6, 9, 1 John 5, John 15, 7, there's no contradiction here. There's a wonderful synthesis, a wonderful fusion, an interpenetration of the two things, so that I must not expect the Spirit to assist me in my praying in such a way as to make me indifferent to the Word written or indifferent to the conscious disciplines and actings of my own mind. The wonderful comfort is that when I'm doing all of this, I still feel so helpless in my praying. And though I've been active in my renewed mind and careful to observe the objective standard of the Word, there's still many times when I must confess I know not how to pray. What is my comfort so that I'm not swallowed up with discouragement? My comfort is that in the deep recesses of the heart, the Holy Spirit, who's come to indwell me, Himself frames those petitions that are the fruit of His own intention and His own goals and purposes in us, and God the Father understands fully the mind of the Spirit and those things that I cannot articulate, He articulates, and the knowledge of God is perfect of those things,

20:47 and it's my consolation that in the midst of times of what to me is confusion, I don't know whether I should ask God to deliver me from a certain thing or whether I need to pray for grace to embrace it. I see in the Scriptures that sometimes God rebukes people for their little faith and He did not many mighty works because of their unbelief. Well, is this problem there as a monument to my unbelief? Or is it there as a monument of God's loving discipline and I'm not to pray for its removal, but I'm supposed to bow to it for my sanctification?

21:20 You ever have that problem? The confusion. We know not how to pray as we ought. Well, our comfort is that God knows precisely what He has intended in those situations, so that there is no contradiction between the Spirit, the Word, and the activity of the Christian.

21:38 They all coalesce. They all flow together, and one must never be detached from the other. You get the person who simply says, I'm all for the objective Word. Scripture, Scriptures, and no place for the Holy Ghost.

21:54 Well, you have a lifeless, a dead form of orthodoxy. It's not true orthodoxy. It's simply a form of godliness. Or you get the person who says, it must be my activity, but he wrenches it loose from the Word or from dependence upon the Spirit.

22:10 There's something subnormal. It must be the three working in fusion. All right? Yes, Jeanne?

Biblical Examples and Explicit Commands for Regulated Prayer

22:50 All right, so we have then an answer to the question, should we be self-consciously concerned that our prayers are regulated by the Word? We have a broad area of biblical data concerning what we might call examples of godly prayer, in which those who prayed were self-consciously aware of what God had already spoken, and that became the basis upon which they pleaded with God. You have those great prayer chapters. One of them is being expounded to us.

23:22 Sunday nights, Nehemiah 1. Then you have Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, and Daniel 9. You can remember the three 9s, three great prayers in the Old Testament. And they're just permeated with this self-consciousness on the part of the servants of God that God had spoken something.

23:42 And therefore, in their pleading, they are reminding God of what He has said. This was a self-conscious spiritual activity conforming their prayers to the pattern cut by the Word of God. All right, Louise? And then add to Matthew 6, 9, an example of a specific commandment from our Lord to pray in such a way.

24:26 Luke chapter 11. Remember what the setting of Luke 11 was? The disciples came to the Lord with what specific concern? Look at it in verse 1.

24:37 Luke 11, verse 1. Bud? Yes, they heard Him praying, and hearing their Lord pray, apparently, if we rightly read the whole mood of the passage, and it came to pass as He was praying in a certain place, that when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray. Apparently, overhearing their Lord praying, they were conscious that they really didn't know how to pray.

25:15 As they heard Him in His loving communion with the Father, in praise and intercession, and whatever, whatever other disciplines of prayer our Lord engaged in, they said, Lord, teach us to pray. Now, how did the Lord respond to that? Did He say, well, prayer is so purely a matter of the Holy Spirit, just go into your closet and turn yourself loose and do what comes naturally? No, the Lord didn't do that.

25:41 He gave them then explicit instructions, beginning with verse 2, as to the broad areas in the content of their praying, the matters for which they ought to be concerned in their prayers, and He said unto them, when ye pray, say, that is, be concerned with these following issues, and we'll not go into them, simply to mention that's what our Lord does, and then in verse 5 and following, He tells them the manner in which they are to pray, and He gives the illustration of the friend who went to his friend at midnight, and by his shameless insistence, obtained what he desired. So here we have from the lips of our Lord, explicit directives concerning the matter of our praying, and the manner of our praying. And therefore, if we are His disciples, we must be self-consciously concerned to see whether or not the matter, the substance of our prayers, is warranted from our Lord's teaching. And if the manner in which I am praying conforms to my Lord's teaching. All right?

26:58 Someone else had his hand raised. Yes, John? Before you go on, back in that passage here, I'm not sure why you didn't read the latter part, but I think it's significant. The Lord teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.

27:11 All right. And John was the greatest man that lived according to Jesus. Under the Old Covenant, all right. Good, good point.

27:17 This is no new thing. The people of God in all ages, have needed instruction concerning prayer. Very good. And, yes, Evelyn.

Praying in Faith and the Fusion of Spirit and Word

27:49 Yes. All right, you see the problem? Well, there are certain things I can pray in faith. Can I not pray, Father, You have loved me from eternity in Christ, in mercy and grace You've redeemed me.

28:07 Therefore, I know that You do all things well. Lord, I don't know how to pray about this specific thing. But from the depths of my heart, I embrace whatever Your will is, Thy will be done. Now, isn't that a positive petition?

28:24 Not just some kind of stoical acquiescence. Well, God's sovereign and is losing business fighting a God like that. So, go ahead, Lord, do what You want. No, no.

28:34 That's not what we're talking about. But from the heart, embracing His will as good, acceptable and perfect. Well, you see, I can pray that in faith. Lord, Thy will be done.

28:46 Give me a heart that lovingly embraces every dispensation of Your will toward me. And though in this given situation I don't know what that will is, Lord, I know it's good. And I pray that You will grant me the grace to embrace it. You see?

29:02 So that praying in faith does not mean that I must of necessity have a clear understanding of the will of God in every given case, A, B, C, D. All right? Does that speak to the issue? All right?

29:17 Yes, Paul? Well, that's a good point. Say that again, will you, Paul? Turn up the volume about half way again.

29:39 All right? We'll talk about prayer being a matter. You cannot perform right things without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. And it says in the New Testament that when you pray in the Holy Ghost, how can you think to have the assistance and the enablement of the Holy Spirit without whether it's more or less the Lord's?

29:48 And you see, here we come back to that fusion of the Spirit and the Word. And the point that Paul is making is an excellent point. He says, You know, when you pray in the Holy Spirit, you pray in the Holy Spirit, you pray in the Holy Spirit, you pray in the Holy Spirit, you pray in the Holy Spirit, you pray in the Holy Spirit, you pray in the Holy Spirit. But you see, here we come back to that fusion of the Spirit and the Word, and the point that Paul is making is an excellent point.

The Spirit's Incarnations and the Danger of Fanaticism

30:07 We say, All right, the Spirit has been given to assist us in prayer, we're commanded, not only in Jude 20, but also in Ephesians 6, 19, to pray with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, praying in the Holy Ghost, Jude verse 20, I think you mentioned. Now, Paul's point is this, How can I, unless I'm guilty, either of gross ignorance or unspeakable audacity think that the Spirit of God will assist me as the promised aid in prayer when I am deliberately ignoring what the same Spirit has written in the Holy Scriptures. You see, that's why true biblical Christianity will never set up any kind of opposition between the Spirit and the Word. There were two great, once for all, historical acts of the Holy Spirit, apart from physical creation. One was the enfleshment of the Son of God.

31:08 The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee. Therefore, that holy thing which is begotten of thee shall be called the Son of God. Now, the second great, if I may use inverted commas, quotes, incarnation of the Spirit is the written Word. All Scripture is breathed out of God.

31:30 Holy men spake as they were carried along by the Spirit. So if we have the enfleshment of the God-man, Christ Jesus, as the one great historical work of the Spirit, and the enfleshment of God's mind in His Holy Word, then no subsequent ministry of the Holy Spirit will be able to do that. It will ever downgrade this or this. So the great test of the Spirit's ministry is always what assessment does it give to Christ?

32:09 What place does it give to the Word of God? You see?

32:15 Because the Spirit in His ongoing work hears the enfleshment of the Son of God, let's call that the incarnation, and then over a long period of time, a period of 1,500 years, the enfleshment of God's mind in the Scriptures, that work was completed in the final book of the New Testament, the book of the Revelation. Now then, whatever the Spirit of God does in history, until the Lord comes back, whether that's two years, ten years, or two millennia away, we don't know, He will never, in this point of history, undermine, negate, overlook, contradict His two-year-old history. great historical works of the incarnation of the Son of God and the incarnation of the mind of God. And that follows through at every single point. Now do you see then the travesty of those who claim to have such a measure of the Spirit that they no longer need the Word to guide them when they pray? Let me give you a case in point.

33:20 I remember talking to a man who told me of how his prayer time used to be struggle. Of how intercession used to be labor. But he said since I received the baptism with the gift of tongues he said I can pray sometimes now for two or three hours and I just have the most wonderful time. He said I don't have a clue what I'm praying but he said prayer is such a delight now. I just can pray on and on and on and on and on if I'm praying in tongues.

33:51 Now should I deny that he found great delight in staying on his knees and babbling in tongues for two or three hours? No, that would be to accuse him of being a liar and there was no grounds to say to the man you're lying. You don't enjoy speaking in tongues. He was obviously quite enthused. But it didn't trouble me at all to say to him there's something defective with your praying. Will Almighty God command you in His Word after this manner pray ye and then send His Spirit to cause you to cancel out that directive? Will an apostle say and this I pray and we have the apostolic, the record of the apostolic prayers which show the centrality of the conscious understanding of the believer this I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in all knowledge and discernment that God will give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him all of this emphasis. Will He give us that as the pattern of our praying and then come

34:53 and give as an expression of the will of God this experience that lifts you above any concern that you be consciously conformed to the Word of God? I have no problem saying that whatever you have, I'm not going to say it's demonic experience all I can say is it is sub-biblical. You say well that's not very kind you don't make friends that way. Well is it true? Is it true?

35:19 That's the issue. Is it true? Now we may say it kindly, say it sweetly but ultimately we come back to the issue is it true? And so we dare not relinquish this principle. The moment we do then we've opened the door for every single form of fanaticism and remember some of us had a taste of it here a couple of years ago when those three women showed up at a prayer meeting, remember? Some of you were here and maybe I ought to relate that experience briefly for the benefit of some of the others of you. On our Wednesday night we have an open situation for prayer and three women came in I've never seen them before rather matriarchal looking souls and they took their place in the pew then when we opened up for prayer one of them let in quote prayer. Well she wasn't praying what she was doing she was bragging and she said I thank you father that for three years I and my two sisters in the Lord have fasted and prayed every for what 14 years I think

36:15 for 14 years we fasted and prayed every Monday for revival and we thank you for the wonderful things you've done she was just bragging on about herself fully convinced she was sent with the spirit in here to impart some blessing to us you see as we found out later that in going around to all the evangelical churches in the area convinced the spirit of God is leading them you see well then it became obvious that this was a dissident note and I sat up here in the front row with my eyes open saying Lord wind her down and shut her up under my breath just asking the Lord to just put the kabbosh on that well she stopped her praying and lo and behold before any of our people could pray where they had this pre-planned I don't know her her uh comrade began to pray and it was the same business for I said Lord what can we do this is obviously out of order the spirit of God is grieved you could sense the spirit of prayer gone so I did the only thing an elder present would have to do I had to stand and right in the middle of her prayer say ma'am she kept praying right on I said ma'am and I got her attention I said you're out of order said you're not praying you're bragging you're not addressing God you're addressing these people and they're not and this is a meeting convened to seek God's face and the Lord just gave the words in keeping with biblical principles and we rebuked her and then we went back to prayer and as someone so quaintly said

37:43 the next brother who prayed wooed the spirit back into the prayer room and they left well what was the problem and I use this just to illustrate this principle well you see these women had fallen into the trap of believing they could be under certain impulses of prayer and they could be spirit that we're totally detached from the clear teaching of the word of God. See? And once you do that, you've opened the door for the worst kind of fanaticism, and it's not insincere people who become fanatics. It's sincere people who become fanatics. Insincere people may become hypocrites, but they generally don't become fanatics. Because, you see, the hypocrite is concerned with the preservation of his reputation. Fanatics usually aren't. They'll sacrifice reputation and everything for their cause. Don't you think that's a

38:36 valid distinction? The hypocrite, he calculates. I'll do thus and thus to give this impression to gain acceptance, but not the fanatic. He becomes so consumed with a certain perspective that everything goes in the pursuit of that perspective. He doesn't care if his reputation goes, other people's feelings, etc. So you see why it's so important that earnest, sincere Christians get hold of this principle. If they don't, the hypocrite is a fanatic. So the door is wide open for fanaticism. Yes, Mr. Dixon.

Testing the Spirits and the Fruitfulness of Understanding

39:13 All right, so John is saying we test the Spirit by the objected standard of what they say about Jesus Christ. Yes, this is an excellent biblical passage, undergirding.

39:31 Yes, George.

39:43 Well, I would turn, as I did this individual, and I turned him to the Scriptures and said, well, if what you claim is, you say to me, when Paul said, I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all, and I simply humbly acknowledge that I have what Paul had. I said, but wait a minute now, is that how Paul used, assuming, I will assume for the sake of argument that what you have is what Paul had. Did he use it the way you used it? And then I turn him to the epistles where Paul says, I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, and this I pray. And I said, now look at what he says he prays. And not only was he self-consciously aware of what he was praying, those prayers represent the most profound, lofty thoughts stretched to the limit, the powers of our rational faculties fully and concentratingly employed, if I may use that word. So that's how I answered him, George. I said, now if this is

40:57 your predominant experience, I said, now I'm not going to say if, you know, as an exception this or that happens, but if you say that's your basic pattern, I say that you've gone beyond the apostle. In claiming to have what he had, you're certainly not using it the way he did. And that's the way I tried to answer. That's the way I tried to answer that individual, George. Yes, Chris?

41:16 In 1 Corinthians 15, he says, what is the outcome? There's a praise of the Spirit.

41:27 Right. Yeah, this is a classic passage on it, where Paul says, I am not concerned for some kind of spiritual thumb-sucking. You know, I feel great. I don't know what's going on, but I feel great.

41:39 Well, you see, that's what this becomes. He said, no, I want my understanding to be fruitful, both in my praise and also in my petitioning, in my intercession. Yes, Gene? Yeah. Well, I think, Gene, and I've been studying that passage this week, it would demand going into the entire context, and I don't think it would be apropos to do so now. Maybe further down the line, when we come to some of the specifics, we will, all right? Because I think it has a very strong contextual implication in the whole setting of we that are in this tabernacle do groan, we're in this mixed state, we have the earnest of the Spirit, we know that all things are working together for good. God's purpose is to do good.

42:28 God's purpose is to do good. God's purpose is to do good. God's purpose is to do good. God's purpose is to make us like Christ, but often in that whole ballpark of concern, we know not how to pray as we ought, and the Spirit helps our infirmity, and so we'll, I think, deal with that passage further on down the line.

Distinguishing Continuous Prayer from Specific Prayer Engagements

42:41 All right, any more suggestions now as to why you would answer the initial question in the affirmative? Before you remember, back 40 minutes ago, that's where we started with the question, should the Christian be self-consciously concerned that he or she had a God-like nature to who he really was? Yes, Bob? All right, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, and the question is, pray continually or pray without ceasing.

43:22 We touched on it, I think, just briefly last week, Bob, that there are various dimensions of prayer. We might say there is the maintenance of the spirit of prayer, the attitude of prayer, the disposition of...

43:40 communion with the Lord, that at any moment our hearts can be lifted up to Him.

43:46 I think, in the original, isn't the verb there, adiolitos?

43:51 Do you have your... Is it without...

43:56 Pray without ceasing? Well, it's an adverb, aditua. I thought it was just the verb. But it isn't.

44:05 It has an adverb. Yeah. Yes. Well, he's obviously not saying be engaged in conscious intercession continually.

44:12 If anyone prayed without ceasing, he was our Lord, right? And yet it says, when he ceased praying, his disciples said unto him. Well, he certainly did not cease from the attitude of prayer, but he ceased from specific engagement in a specific kind of prayer. So we're dealing now, not with the maintenance of the general spirit and attitude of prayer, or what we might call the habit of prayer, but more specifically with those specific definitive periods in which we are engaged in prayer in one of its dimensions as we'll touch on in confession, intercession, supplication, et cetera.

Conclusion and Next Steps

44:50 Okay? All right. Anyone else now? We've got two minutes remaining.

44:54 Any other reasons as to why a Christian should self-consciously be concerned with having his prayers conform to the Word of God?

45:07 All right. I think we've given all the major biblical reasons. Now, your question to think on when you're taking the 803 into New York or riding down Bloomfield Avenue and there's not much traffic. Don't think about this when there's a lot of traffic or you'll get your fender bumped.

45:22 I'd like you to think on this second question and it is this. What are the various kinds of prayer that the Word of God enjoins the Christian to engage in? What are the various kinds of prayer?

45:40 The pie is prayer. What are the slices? All right? You come prepared to slice up the pie next week when we gather.

45:47 All right? Let us look to God now in prayer together.