The Power of Prayer

All of us know that one of the most important components of our relationship with God is prayer. I'm often asked by new people all the time, how do I pray? I receive phone calls from people that aren't part of our congregation. It's interesting, I'll get phone calls from people who watched a Beyond Today program. I've been asked at times, I need you to tell me how to pray. I don't know how to pray. What components? How does God expect me to react? Sometimes I find out they either had no religious background, or their religious background was a very... Their prayers were simply a ceremony. They would go to church on Sunday, and there was a ceremony in which people prayed, but they actually never prayed personally throughout the rest of the week. And that ritual didn't mean anything. But you know, even people who have followed God for many, many years can sometimes struggle with prayer. How do I pray? I've actually had people say, I don't know, I think I've told God everything I can ever say. I don't know what else to say anymore. I don't know what to say to God. I don't know what to tell God. People struggle with prayer. How do I relate to God? So it's not something that's just for new people, for young people. Everybody, at one time or another, struggles with prayer. Sometimes it's a matter of... There are days where you just feel you can't connect to God. Sometimes it's physically, you feel bad, you're sick or whatever, and it's hard to connect to God. Sometimes you're emotionally upset. Sometimes it's just you can't clear your thoughts. You know, you ever have... Mr. Isaac was talking about worry. You can be so trapped in worry and concerns that you can't even connect to God. It's like, I don't even want to say. Well, in this very personal interaction we have with God, there are certain instructions in the Bible about how to pray. Jesus gave what we call the Lord's Prayer, which really is a model prayer. There's... We could go to all kinds of instructions on how to pray. But what I did in this sermon 10 years ago was I simply went through a number of prayers in the Bible. And I said, well, let's look at some people and their prayers and what was the result of the prayer and how they prayed, and what was their reaction to God's answer. And let's look at the practical side of literal prayer with real people. So that's what I want to do today. I'm going to go through another set of examples in the Bible of a literal prayer given by a real person for a real reason and what that person experienced in that prayer and what we learned. So there's things we can learn from every one of these prayers. These aren't the same prayers I gave 10 years ago. They were a different set because I always intended to give a part two of different prayers in the Bible. So the first one I want to look at that we can learn something from is in 1 Samuel chapter 1.

Hannah, to me, is one of the fascinating characters in the Bible because of what she went through and because of what she prayed and because of how God responded to her prayer and how she responded to God. It's a very fascinating story that takes two chapters to tell. And, of course, her son Samuel is the one that gets all the notice here. But the first two chapters of Samuel isn't about Samuel. It's about her. It's about his mother. And in her relationship with God, Hannah was married to a man who had two wives. And she was the favorite wife of the man she married, but the other woman had children and she could not have children. And it just bothered her. It was a burden upon her. In fact, in verse 6 it says, and her rival also provoked her severely to make her miserable because the Lord had chosen her womb. And so she couldn't have children. And the other wife, and this is, you know, it's amazing to me that every, every single example of polygamy in the Old Testament is a bad example. You start to think that maybe God's trying to tell us something. With every example, the bad example. So here we have this woman that is just, it says she's miserable. Her husband loves her, but she has no children. This other wife continues to have children. And they lived in a society where a woman's value many times was determined by how many children she had. So this is a, this is a grievous thing. This woman is miserable. She's hurt. She feels like that life has deprived her of something.

So she goes to God. Let's go in verse, verse 8 here. Okay. Now her husband says to her, Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart grieved? And then typical, typical male response, you know, she's getting to the place where this grief is so great. She can't even eat. And her response is, am I not better to you than 10 sons? You know, hey, you got me. What's the problem here? And I'm your man. You know, I love you.

And you know, this, this, he doesn't even understand. So now we have another problem she's going through. Not only is she grieving, her husband does not understand.

So the person she's closest to doesn't understand her. So Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting in the scene by the doorpost of the tabernacle of the Lord. And she was in bitterness of soul and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. Now there's a lot of words here that are used to try to describe the turmoil this woman is in. I mean, she's in bitterness of soul. She's weeping in anguish. She just stopped weeping. She just, she's broken down. This is a broken person who goes to God as a broken person and says, there's this big void in my life.

So she made a vow and said, O Lord of Hosts, if you indeed look on the infliction of your maidservant and remember me, and not forget your maidservant, who will give your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no raiser shall come upon his head. Now she didn't ask for a female. This is very interesting. She asked for a male for a reason, because if you give me a male, I will give this to you and he can serve you in a way that a female cannot. He can serve you as a priest. He can serve you as a judge. He can serve you however you want, but he will be yours and he will serve you. I will give him to you if you will give me this blessing. Now you think, okay, well that's good. Now Hannah, you know, we know the story while she received the blessing, but it wasn't that easy. It was incredibly complicated. She was bitter. She was hurt. She was in anguish. Her husband did not understand her. Then notice what happens next. And it happened as she continued praying before the Lord. Then Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah spoke in her heart, oh, to her lips moved. And her voice was not heard. Now have you ever done that where maybe you're praying and you find that your lips are moving? You're not talking out loud, but because you're so intense into your prayer. Sometimes you speak out loud, you know, if you're alone and you're praying, but she's just intense. She's at the tabernacle. Here's the high priest. Here's the man who's considered the most important person in society in relationship with God. He's the only man that could go into the Holy of Holies on the day of Atonement. This man holds a very special place in society as a special man of God. And he sees her doing this and he misinterprets what's happening. Now you talk about adding insult to injury.

And so it says here, now he had a smoke in her heart only, but her voice was not heard in the last part of verse 13. Therefore, Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, how long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you. Now this is what a lot of people would have done at this point. You know, God, I'm fed up with this. First of all, I can't have children like other women. Secondly, my husband doesn't understand me. And now the priest thinks I'm drunk and he's making a false accusation. I'm fed up with this. I'm out of here. You really aren't God. I can't worship you. I mean, you think about what she could have done and what actually most people would have done at this point. She's praying. She's pouring her heart out, which tells us something about prayer, by the way. God expects you to give all that you have in prayer. But everything that's happening is not what she expected. She prays and she's getting punished. She's getting accused of something that's not true by the person that's the most respected person in the nation.

Verse 15, But Hannah answered and said, No, my Lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I am drunk neither wine or intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Did I consider your maidservant a wicked woman? For out of the abundance of my complaint and grief, I have spoken until now. And Eli said that go in peace, because God won't answer your prayer. When you read the rest of the story, he did answer her prayer.

Look at verse well, I just expect I just I won't read all this, but he did answer the prayer and she had a son. Now, Hannah now, Hannah now goes in the God and gives another prayer. And this prayer is recorded in the Scripture. If you look at the first verse of chapter two of Samuel, verse two, it says, and Hannah prayed and said, and we have this remarkable prayer.

If you get a chance, read this whole prayer of Hannah. See, Samuel one and two is about Hannah. It's not about Samuel. And her prayer is recorded in the Bible. It's a great prayer. And I'm not going to go through all of it, but I want you to notice the first two verses.

Hannah has a child that she is now though promised. Think about now she starts thinking about the promise. I have given this baby to God. He's not mine. I will not get to raise this child. Now she could have become bitter over this too. Well, God, now you really put another curse on me. I finally have a baby and I won't get to raise this child because this child is given to you. But notice what it says.

My heart rejoices in the Lord. My horn is exalted in the Lord. I smile at my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. Now that's really important when you understand the story. He says, I look at the other wife and I simply smile because it is God who gave me my child. It is God who gave me something special. No one, verse 2, is holy like the Lord, for there is none beside you, nor is there any rock like our God.

What makes Hannah so amazing is that in spite of her anguish and depression and grief, in spite of not being understood by her husband, in spite of being misjudged by the high priest, Hannah continued her faith and prayer to God. Those things never sidetracked her from who she was in her relationship with God. And when God finally gave her a son, she willingly gave Samuel to God. She willingly gave him up. What was that like as a mother?

Well, let's look at the second chapter here, verse 18. But Samuel ministered before the Lord even as a child. After he no longer was breastfeeding, after he was weaned, he was taken by his mother to the tabernacle. And she gave this child to Eli and said, this child is dedicated to God. And this is the most exciting thing it ever had in my life, that my child gets to be dedicated to God.

But that's a price to pay, isn't it? That's a mother. That's a very, very emotional price to pay. But he said she rejoiced in doing it. This story is very, very important for us to understand how we cannot let circumstances in life and other people sidetrack us from the purpose that God gives to our lives. Because both circumstances and other people sidetrack us all the time. If we're zeroed in in our relationship with God, other people can never sidetrack you from where you're supposed to be.

But we spend much of our lives running around, being affected by everybody else. Hannah is an incredible example of a person that would not let that happen. Look at verse 19. Moreover, his mother used to make him a little robe. It doesn't say robe, it says little robe. It's a little guy, okay? It's a little kid, a little guy. Make him a little robe and bring it to him year by year when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.

And Eli would bless Al-Qaeda and his wife and say, The Lord give you descendants from this woman for the Lord that was given to the Lord, that they would go on to their own house. And the Lord visited Hannah so that she conceived of three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, the child's Samuel grew before the Lord. You know, every year when she came up, the robe was a little bigger.

But think about what she could say, I missed out on. I missed out on him losing his baby teeth. I missed out on him doing this, I missed out on him doing that. But that's not how Hannah saw this. She prayed and made a commitment to God, and she considered it an honor to fulfill her commitment to God. And the result is we have Samuel, one of the greatest spiritual leaders in the history of Israel.

God did a great work through that man because of the prayer of Hannah. So what do we learn a little bit from Hannah here? Well, one, humbly worshiping God helps us not be offended by other people. She wasn't offended by her husband. I mean, she had five more children probably. She wasn't offended by her husband, and she wasn't offended by Eli, which most people would have been offended by both. She wasn't. God was the center of her life, and she knew that sometimes human beings would not understand.

Sometimes human beings will misjudge, even with the best of intentions. Her husband's statement is the best of intentions. I love you, I adore you. It even says he gave her a double portion. I give you so much more than my other wife. I do everything for you. Is it my love enough?

Is it my love enough? And, you know, I can imagine her reply, I love you too, but you just don't understand. She just don't understand. There's a void in my life you don't understand, because you have children through this woman, and I have no child, a child of my own.

So, humbly worship God will help you not be offended by other people. A second point we learned from Hannah is that effective prayer requires that we make commitments to God. I'm not saying we all should go make a vow and, you know, offer our child, or, you know, to God, or something like that. I'm saying every time you pray, you're asking God for things, but you're making commitments. You know, every time you say, and you pray in the name of Jesus Christ, you're making a commitment.

We're making a commitment to obey. We're making a commitment to be dedicated to God. So, effective prayer requires commitments. And if we're not careful, what we'll do is we'll get so selfish in our prayers that we'll start to resent our commitments. God, I asked you for more money, and, you know, what happened was they increased my hours at work.

I wanted more money without the work. I want the benefit without a commitment. And we begin to resent sometimes our obedience to God, or the way He blesses us, or His responses, because we forget our commitments. We have to have such faith in His goodness, such faith in His goodness, that we rejoice in our commitments. Hannah rejoiced in her commitment. Her prayer that is recorded for us to read thousands of years later is, I'm happy. And I go, yeah, there's times when I miss Samuel, but I know probably one of the pilgrim feasts, you know, either it was either the Passover time or probably the Feast of Tabernacle's time. We go up to Shiloh, and when we go, and I go to the Tabernacle, and I get to spend some time with my boy, I rejoice. Yeah, I miss him. But thank God. What a viewpoint. She stayed loyal to her commitments and rejoiced in her commitments. And Hannah is a great example for all of us. Okay, a second example of prayer. So you can see the examples sometimes contain elements that are so human that, you know, we can go to the model of prayer and give some understanding of how to pray, but it's the examples that give us the human element. Let's look at another one in Proverbs 30. Proverbs 30 was written by Agar. Agar. We're not sure who Agar is.

Well, he's a sort of Jacob, but I don't know who Jacob is, so that doesn't help at all. Okay. But Agar wrote what we know as Proverbs 30, and he actually has a prayer that he does here. Let's start at verse 7. He says, Two things I request of you. Two things that he asked God. Deprive thee not before I die. So in my lifetime, there's two things I really want for you. Now, think about it. If God said, okay, come to me and make the list, number one and number two, of what you want in your life, that when you die, you look back and say, God gave me two things. What would they be? Well, what I really want is an outstanding husband. What I really want is a successful career. What I really want... think about how you would answer, maybe, those two things. Two things. What did Agar ask God? The first was very interesting. Verse 8, Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Remove falsehood and lies far from me. What's interesting about this phrase is that you can't tell in the Hebrew whether it means keep lying, lying, false accusations from against me, or keep me from having falsehoods. I would guess that means probably it means both.

What he's saying is, let me have a clear conscience that I do not believe falsehoods. Now you think about, okay, I'm going to ask God for two things, and the first thing I'm going to ask Him is, would you make sure I don't have false thoughts? That's where I'm going to start in my life. Wow! I was going to pray for children. I was going to pray for, right? Fill in the mic. First of all, what I want, Father, is You help me in my thoughts, that there is no falsehood in me. Now I think one of the greatest things we have to deal with as Christians is what I call intellectual dishonesty. We're honest in what we say, we're honest in what we do, but inside our own heads, we're not honest, because we're not honest with ourselves. We can always justify that we did something wrong. We can always give a reason why. So we justify ourselves in our own minds, intellectually dishonest, although we may be honest with others. And here's a man that says, do not let me be dishonest with myself. What was the last time you prayed that?

Well, you got on your knees and said, okay, I'm going to ask you two things. The first thing I want from you, Father, is please don't deprive me of this while I'm still alive. Help me to be absolutely honest with myself and protect me from false accusations. Interesting prayer, isn't it? It's not where most of us start. This is why anger's prayer is in the Bible. God said, boy, keep that one in there. Now that's a good prayer.

Help me to be honest with myself.

Help me to be able to explore my own motives, my own thoughts, so I'm honest with myself. I have to tell you, folks, that when you go pray that prayer and you get an answer to that one, it's going to be tough. That's not an easy thing to deal with. That's a tough one because God's going to make us be honest with ourselves. And that's not easy. The second thing he asked for is the second part of verse 8. Give me neither poverty nor riches. What are you doing? Neither poverty or help me be sort of lower middle class. I mean, that's what he's asking for? Boy, that's not the American dream, is it? This guy sure wasn't part of the American dream. But his reasons are fascinating. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allocated or allotted to me. I mean, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is the Lord? He says, you know, if I get too rich, I will probably be really proud of my riches and really proud that I did all this work and really proud of what I have. And he says, I'll forget you. So don't give me too much so I don't forget you. I've wondered how much can I get before I forgot God? Maybe God take me right up to the edge, you know? Maybe like a millionaire. Not a billionaire, just maybe a billionaire. See, that's all we think. Well, this was a pure, honest prayer. When he said, help me not have any falsehoods, then the next thing you praise for is pure honesty. I mean, it just comes out of who he is. But don't give me too many riches. If you give me too much, I will forget you. If you give me too much, I will give up your ways. If you give me too much, I will become dishonest. If you give me too much, I will give up the Sabbath. If you give me too much, I will worship those things. And those things will be so important that I will not follow you. If you give me too much, it may break up my marriage. If you give me too much, so don't give me that much. Don't let me have that much. And then the second part of this request, He says, but don't let me be poor and in poverty either, because the same thing can happen. I'll become obsessed with what I don't have. And if I'm obsessed with what I don't have, I can be dishonest. I can give up following you. I can give up relationships. I can steal. I can do all kinds of things because I'm too poor. He says, so don't give me either of those extremes. Instead, let me have enough that my life is good, but also leave me dependent on you. Have you ever prayed that prayer? That's a tough one. It's best to go ask for intellectual honesty first.

Let me have no falsehoods in my own mind.

When I think of Agra's prayer, let me have just enough. It reminds me of an old story I read about a woman who was always complaining about she didn't make enough money. She didn't make enough money. She didn't make enough money. And she couldn't buy this. She couldn't buy that. So she goes to her employer one day and she says, you know what? I don't make enough money and you're underpaying me. And I just my life is just miserable because of that. He said, well, you're a good worker. He says, how much more do you want? She said, I want $40 more a week. So he went and did a review of her work and came back and said, you're worth $40 more a week. No problem. This week, starting this week, you're going to get $40 more a week. And she was ecstatic. She started thinking about the person she was going to buy. She started thinking about, you know, wow, I can do a lot with just $40 that I didn't have before. And then she thought, wait a minute. He said it was a good worker. I should have asked for $80. And immediately, she was miserable again. She was right back where she was. Now the $40 is a curse. Now the $40 is, well, that just means they don't appreciate me. It's what she asked for. I should have asked for $80. And a different approach to life when we go and say, don't give me too much so that I get lost in what I have, in my boats, in my cars, in my things. But don't put me in poverty either. But put me where I can serve you best. Agar's Prayer. So we have two lessons we learned from his prayer. One, in your prayers, you should ask God to give you a clear conscience from falsehoods and lies, and to protect your reputation from falsehoods and lies. Ask for both. But to ask for your relief to be clear of falsehoods and lies, then ask God to help you have that intellectual honesty. And secondly, seek for God to give you enough blessings so that you aren't living in poverty and become dishonest, but not so much that you rely on your riches without Him. Two real important points of prayer. Once again, the human element in prayer.

I have so many examples I'm trying to figure which ones to do and which not to do here. Let's go to 2 Kings. This one's interesting. 2 Kings, verse 6.

I had never thought of this one before quite this way until this week when I was going through this.

I have to read a little bit here to give you the background, so we're going to read sort of a long passage here, but I want to give you the background of what's happening. Syria and Israel are at odds with each other, and the Syrian king is trying to bait the Israel's king into a war. So he's trying to start a war.

And so what we have here, verse 8. Now, the king of Syria was making war against Israel, and he consulted with his servants, saying, My camp will be in such and such a place. In other words, I'm going to go into Israel, and I'm going to set up camp here, and they're going to say, Well, they invaded our country. We have to go fight them. So we're going to fight them on our ground. He sort of picked the ground. I know exactly where we're going to be. This is where we can beat them. So we're going to just show up, and we're going to camp there and say, Come get us. Israelites can't ignore us. They have to come fight. Verse 9. And the man of God said to the king of Israel, So, Elisha literally sends a message to the king of Israel and says, He's trying to bait you, so don't even go there.

Then the king of Israel sent someone to the place in which the man of God told him, and thus he warned him, and he was watchful. They're not just once, but twice. So the Syrian king is sitting there, time goes by, the guys are getting sort of restless. I mean, you don't want an army marching to war and then having it camped for long periods of time. Discipline breaks down, you know, everybody gets bored. And it just goes on and on. Twice now, he shows up, and twice the Israelite king refuses to come, because Elisha keeps telling them this. Then one of the servants, well, verse 11, Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was greatly troubled by this thing, and he called these servants and said to them, We do not show me which of us is for the king of Israel. He says, Who keeps telling the king of Israel I'm here? I keep coming down, you know, we can set up an ambush from here, we can... And he keeps not showing up. Twice, there has to be a spy. So I'm going to figure out who the spy is, and I'm going to, you know, torture the spy. But we're going to find out who the spy is here that keeps warning Israel when I keep coming into the land. And one of his servants said, Not my Lord, O king, but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel. He tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom. He says, There's no secrets. The God of Israel tells Elisha, and he goes and tells the king, and there's nothing we can do about it. So he said, Go and see where he is, and I may send and get him. And it was said to him, Surely he is a Dothan. Therefore he said, Horses and chariots and a great army there, and they came by night and surrounded the city. Now, this army comes here for one reason, to get Elisha.

Syrian king said, Go get him, bring him here, because I can't have him telling my plans, king all the time. Now, you think he'd be a little afraid when he realizes what his advisor said. Okay, realize you say anything, and the God of Israel tells Elisha. You think he'd be a little afraid of the God of Israel? He's a very stubborn man, a very arrogant man.

Verse 15, And when the servants of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army surrounding the city with horses and chariots, and his servants said to him, Alas, my master, what shall we do? You know, they're going to be siege of the city, and they've come after you. And he answered, Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them. Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray, open the eyes that he may see. The Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, so we've got two prayers here. Now, I want to show you the result of the prayers, where God did, but I want to show you Elisha's response to what God did, because it's not just the prayer, it's God's response and Elisha's response. Now, the first thing you pray is, God, show him who's out here, and the man sees spiritual armies of angels protecting them. Elisha knew they were there. The young man says, do you see that? Elisha says, yeah.

So this is a great miracle that takes place because of this simple prayer. Then, this next prayer is interesting. You think what he could have prayed. God, just why don't you cause all of them to drop over dead? Snakes would be a nice thing. An earthquake. We haven't had an earthquake in this part of Israel for decades. It would be nice to have an earthquake. I mean, just wipe these people out. What Elisha does here is, I think Elisha has a sense of humor. This is just a thinking process. It's very unique.

So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, Strike these people, I pray, with blindness. And he struck them with blindness, according to the word of Elisha. So Elisha goes out to the leaders of this army where they're all blind. And he says, This is not the way, nor is this the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man who you seek. All these blind people, he says, Come here. Get me your leaders, get me your leaders. You can imagine what the chaos is. Everybody's blind. And he gets, okay, listen, you're really not seeking me. You're seeking somebody else. So just follow me, and I'll show you what to do. He takes them to Samaria. Now, Samaria is the capital of Israel. It's where the Israeli army is. And he marches them into the middle of the city.

Verse 20, and it was that when he came to Samaria, and Elisha said, Lord, open their eyes of these men that they may see, and the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw that they were inside Samaria. That's not where you want to be. You've just marched your army, a blind man, into the middle of the other army, which now surrounds you, inside the walls. You can't even get out, and suddenly you can see. This is a strategically, tactically, it's a real bad place for our army to be there. Now, when the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, so, okay, we see that these prayers are answered, but I want you to notice something else. Elisha had just had God answer his prayers in a dramatic way. What is Elisha's response? The king of Israel said to them, he saw them, and he said to Elisha, my father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them? He says it twice. I imagine this is not like, well, what should I do? Kill them? I imagine this is like, should we kill them? Should we kill them? I mean, this is like, let's cut their throats. We can wipe out a whole contingent of the Syrian army. There's nothing they can do. They're all, you know, they don't have their weapons anymore. I'm sure that when he marched them in, they no longer had their weapons. They had been blind. He took everything away from them, marched them in. They're now just totally helpless men. Verse 22, but he answered, he shall not kill them. Would you kill those whom you have taken captive with your sword and your bow? Set food and water before them that they may eat and drink and go to their master. He said, whoa, whoa, whoa. He said, do you think it is right to kill people who have surrendered to you? Well, of course not. I mean, that's, you know, then why are you willing to kill these men? In spite of the great miracle and response to his prayer, Elisha did not become arrogant. He did not seek vengeance. He sought justice. I mean, if God had just done that for us, wouldn't it be like, yeah, let's kill them, and then let's go kill all the rest of them. And he says, whoa, it is not proper to kill unarmed men. An ethical response, which is the opposite of where most people would go to that kind of answered prayer. The exact opposite. In fact, he says the Feasal, and what he says in verse 23, and he prepared, this is what the king did, he prepared a great feast for them. And after they ate and drank, he sent them away, and they went to their master.

He said, go tell them you found Elisha. But where's your chariots? Where's your horses? Where's your armor? Well, that's the really strange part. If you can imagine giving this report, you send out an army, they come back, no casualties. They don't have horses, they don't have their chariots, they don't have their armor. And they march in, okay, give me a report here. Well, we found Elisha, and we all got blinded, and then he marched us into the middle of Samaria, and the king was there, and he gave us a big feast, and then they let us go.

What was the result of this? The end part of verse 23. So the bands of Syrian raiders came no more into the land of Israel. This was enough. If they could blind us and give it back, the God of Israel could blind us and keep us blind.

Now, I tell this story, you know, we use this, we tell this for, you know, there's a lot of lessons in this story, but I want to zero in on the prayer and his response.

It is not the typical human response, just like Hannah was not the typical human response. Agar was not the typical human response. Elisha is not the typical human response. No. Just because God has done this does not mean now we can act with vengeance. In other words, if God told them to kill them, they would have killed them, but it's not what God told them to do.

So what do we learn from this? We learn that we must not, well, we must be careful not to take pride in God's answers to our prayer so that we become self-righteous and presumptuous in our behavior. We must be careful not to take pride in God's answers to prayer so that we become self-righteous and presumptuous in our behavior. Luke 17. Another example here. Luke 17.

Well-known story about Jesus. Now, it happened that he went to Jerusalem, and he passed through the midst of Samaria in Galilee, and he entered a certain village. There he met him ten men who were lepers who stood afar off. Of course, leprosy was considered such a contagious disease. Some leprosy is not contagious. Some of it is, and that's the society. Just because of the health conditions, a person with leprosy almost never got better, at least certain kinds, and it became very contagious. And it was a horrible disease. It killed the person by having them rot away an inch at a time. Literally. Their skin, their muscles, their organs, everything was rot. It was a horrible way to die, and it could take years. So when you were a leper, you had to stay out of society. So there's ten men together, because you would find another leper to be with. Nobody else would be around you, and they're off by themselves. And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. A type of prayer. Go to God for us. Intercede for us. Pray for us. Intercessory prayer is another interesting topic.

Verse 14, So when he saw them, he said to them, Go, show yourselves to the priest. And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. Because the priest had to declare whether someone was clean from leprosy or not. So he says, Go obey the law now. Go to the priest and have them declare whether you're clean or not. And as they're traveling, they watch themselves heal. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned. He goes back to Jesus Christ. And with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. He wasn't a Jew. Samaritans, of course, were despised in the Jewish world because the Samaritans weren't really Israelites. They'd been brought in by the Babylonians or Assyrians as different people by the Assyrians, and they mixed in with the Israelite population. And they actually had a different form of worship. They worshiped the God of Israel, but it was with all kinds of different pagan ideas, and they wouldn't go to the temple in Jerusalem. So they were considered sort of like the poor stepchildren, not really part of us, but sort of like us. And they were really looked down upon in society. Of course, the Samaritans considered the Jews to be inferior, but they had the true religion. So when he says this is a Samaritan, he's making an important point. This is a despised person in the Jewish society that he was in, because they weren't in Samaria at the time.

Well, he was passing through Samaria and Galilee, so he was traveling when this came up. But the important thing is that the others were not Samaritans. So Jesus says in verse 17, He answered and said, Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this forner? And He said to him, Arise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. What's the point here? We can get caught up so much in the day-to-day activities that concerns the worries of our lives. That God's involved in your life every day. Oh, He might not cleanse you of leprosy today, but I guarantee you He's doing something in your life today. And we forget to simply go glorify God. We forget to go praise God. We forget to go thank God. We forget to go tell God how wonderful He is in our lives. Not because God needs our praise. His ego doesn't need our praise. But it helps us remember the greatness of God. The more you remember, the more I remember, the greatness of God, the more we're zeroed in on His power and His glory, the more we're zeroed in on who He is and who Jesus Christ is, the more we glorify Him, our lives change.

Our lives change because we recognize who we are in relationship to God. And our help comes from God. This is what makes the Psalm so amazing.

I didn't figure that out until I was in my late 40s, early 50s. How helpful those Psalms are in prayer.

You'll find a Psalm in there that expresses almost anything you're going through. And you can take that Psalm and you can read it, and then you can learn to put that into your own words. This is how I feel, God. Or, this is what I want. And you can cry out to God, create a clean heart, like David said. Or, where is your justice? Or, why am I suffering? Or, why have I forgotten you? Or, where is my help? Or, sometimes there are Psalms where he just said, let me write down all the great things I can think about you. When was the last time you went to God for the sole purpose of glorifying God? I want to pray right now for a few minutes, God, just to tell you how wonderful you are in my life, and thank you for being who you are, and thank you for the calling you gave me. Thank Him for the very privilege you and I have to go before His throne, because that is not a right. That is a privilege. You and I have no inherent right to go before the throne of God. You and I have no inherent right to eternal life. It is a privilege. It is an honor given to us by the grace and love of God.

How fast do we dance before God says you're a good dancer?

Think about that. How good do I have to be before God says you're a good dancer? Well, let's break that down. How good do we have to be before He allows us to come into His presence? How fast can you dance? It's a privilege.

Everything God gives us, He gives us because of who He is, not because of who we are. What was the last time you went to thank Him for that? A glorified God. Jesus says, but there were ten of you God healed. Only one came back and glorified God in His prayer, in His thanks.

The unusual response. Hannah's response was not the usual. Agar's response was not the usual. Elijah's response was not the usual. This one leper's response was not the usual. But in all of these cases, there was something special between that person and God. There was something special, the relationship between that person and God, that others around them did not... They may have worshiped God, they may have tried to keep His commandments, but they did not have that connection that these had. That's why Jesus even says to this man, He tells him, it is your faith that it's made this possible.

There's a lot of other prayers. I have enough to go on here for an hour, or an hour more. So guess what? One of these days, we'll do a part three. Of course, maybe you have to go back and do part one, since it was 10 years ago, before I do part three. But one of these days, I'll go through a whole other set of prayers where we can sort through those prayers, we can look at what they say, we can look at people's responses, we can look at God's response. And in doing so, you will be able to better understand how God responds to you on this personal level. It's personal. The God, the Creator of the universe, when you come before Him, you have to realize, He says, come here, child.

That's a privilege. We never, none of us show up and say, hey, God, I have an appointment, but we only have a half hour. I have another appointment I need to get to. You did make an appointment with God. You're only there because God says, come here, child. And you get to do that. What is your response? Remember, from Hannah, we learn to humbly worship God so that it will help us not be offended by others. And two effective prayers require we make commitments and we be joyful in those commitments. It requires obedience and we find joy and happiness at that obedience. From anger, we learned that in your prayers you should ask God to clean your conscience of falsehoods and lies and to protect your reputation from falsehoods and lies. And two, the state that God will give you enough blessings so that you aren't living in poverty and become dishonest, but not so much that you rely on your riches and forget Him. From Elisha, we learned that when justice seems delayed, remember, God offers mercy first.

And that we cannot become prideful in an answered prayer so that it wrongly affects our behavior. From the lepers, we learned, never forget to be thankful for God, or to God, for what He does. Always be in a state of thankfulness. When you struggle with prayer, search the Psalms. Another thing you can do is search the prayers. There are scores of prayers in the Bible. Some of them are little prayers. One sentence of prayers. Search the prayers. Find those real people and real situations of what they said to God and how God responded. Now, you'll see, as you do, how that power of prayer in God's interaction changed those people's lives. And remember, the same power of prayer is given to you to change your life.