Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of using biblical prayers in the prayer movement, sharing his personal journey of discovering their value during his early prayer meetings. He highlights that many prayer gatherings often neglect to pray the Bible, focusing instead on personal thoughts or exhortations. Bickle explains that biblical prayers are not only the language of God's heart but also transform our own hearts and thoughts, fostering unity and faith within the church. He encourages young leaders to recognize the importance of praying the prayers of the Bible, as they are guaranteed to be answered and are essential for the church's revival and growth.

We're here, session eight on growing in prayer, the value of using biblical prayers. Now this seems so obvious that it's important to use biblical prayers, but it's not so obvious in the prayer movement. Meaning I remember one time, I remember going to many prayer meetings over the years where the Bible was not actually prayed. People prayed visions, they prayed dreams, they prayed just what came to their mind, but they didn't actually pray the Bible. And I started praying the Bible not out of a deep devotion to the Bible, though I was devoted, because I started praying the Bible because I called prayer meetings. I remember it so well. I was 23 years old, I was pastoring, and the Lord spoke to me clearly about being an intercessor. I had no idea what an intercessor was, honestly. I didn't really know, I'd never been to intercessory prayer meetings, praying for revival, never been to one that I could remember before that. But I got up and declared to everyone, I'm an intercessor. They went, wow, cool. They said, what does that mean? I said, not exactly sure, I know it's prayer, I get that, but I don't really know much about it. But I remember, I announced, we're gonna start prayer meetings. It was May, 1979. I remember it very clearly, long time ago. I said, I'm gonna be doing these prayer meetings until I meet the Lord. And by the grace of the Lord, he's helped me to stay with that since that day. But my point being, I said, we're gonna have prayer meetings, and we're gonna start tomorrow or this week or something like that. And so a few guys came and they said, how do we do it? I said, I don't know. I've never actually been to a prayer meeting for revival. I don't know what you do. So what I did is I wrote down the prayers of the Bible because I didn't know what else to do in the prayer meeting. So I made a little Xerox copy. We had Xerox back in those days, photocopy, and we passed them out to a few guys, and we prayed, we just read the prayers. Pretty boring prayer meeting, but we had something to say because I was kind of terrified that we'd get in the meeting and nobody would know what to say. So I kind of accidentally stumbled into this and as the years unfolded, I found out that was a total gift of God to stumble into that. I didn't do it out of some strategic way. I did it out of desperation because we had prayer meetings every day and I didn't know what we were going to do in the prayer meetings. I mean, what we were gonna pray for. So we just prayed again. There's about 30 prayers in the New Testament, counting some doxologies, and we just prayed them. We just said them one by one and prayed them again and said them again and again. It was pretty flat, pretty boring, but at least we had something to pray. Then over the years, I began to understand the value of biblical prayers. There's a lot of values. We're gonna highlight three or four of them tonight. Then I became very accustomed to it and really comfortable with it because it became the language of my heart because the biblical prayers, they're the language of God's heart. But as I said them over the months and years, they became the language of my heart and they changed how I thought and how I felt and how I expressed myself even before God. That wasn't my goal, but that was a fruit. That was kind of just a byproduct of it. But then over the years, I would go to other prayer meetings and find out how little, just friends just here and there, and how little the Bible was prayed. Then it struck me. I go, this is not as common as I was hoping. Then a lot of prayer meetings, I talk to them, why don't you pray the Bible? They think, well, we don't wanna really be legalistic and pray the Bible. I go, I don't really think of the Bible, praying the Bible as legalistic. I heard one prophetic man. He had a, Lord gave him a word once, and he said, the chariot that the Holy Spirit rides best in is called the Word of God. I thought that was such a great word picture. The chariot the Holy Spirit rides best in is called the Word of God. Then I remember one time, this was a really, really marked me. This was only about, I mean, it's about 20 years ago, and it's somewhere in the early 90s. I went to a group of about, it was a conference, but it was all guys and gals who had full-time prophetic ministries, and they mostly talked on prayer, prophetic prayer, that kind of thing. And I read most all of them, about 30 of them, I think, 30, 40 of them, and most of them had written books on prayer. And the leader of the meeting, he was hosting a discussion, and I raised my hand. I said, I wanna ask a question. I said, where is the place, I was talking to the main leader, his household name, the body of Christ, I won't mention his name. I said, where is the place of praying the prayers of the Bible? And I meant the apostolic prayers, the prayers of the apostles. Although the biblical prayers, there's more than just the New Testament prayers from the apostles. I go, where's the place of praying what the apostles prayed? This man, who had written quite a few books on prayer and was hosting this couple day, it was a conference, but it was more of a leader's kind of time to talk and share and connect, and they were planning how to get prayer going across the nations, et cetera. And he said, that is a really good question. He goes, I don't recall, this is the top guy, I don't recall hearing a prayer from one of the apostles in any prayer meeting I've ever been in. And he said, I can see, as I say that, that's really not good. That's not a good thing. And they looked in the room, these 30, 40 leaders, he says, how many of you use the prayers of the apostles as one of your primary theologies and approaches of praying for revival? And very few responded positively, but this guy was being really, I mean, he was really showing good leadership, in my opinion. He said, I think we need to commit ourselves to start praying the prayers of the apostles from the New Testament on a regular basis. But the point I'm making is that though I stumbled into it purely accidental, I wasn't some passionate, I love the word, though I did love the word, but that's not what was happening. I was desperate. I called prayer meetings and didn't know what to pray in the prayer meetings, and so I kind of did it out of desperation, and then I grew to love it later. But as, the reason I'm saying this is though many of you are young and you're beginning your early in your Christian life and you're getting prepared for ministry, don't take it for granted, this is my point, don't take it for granted that praying the prayers of the Bible is something that everybody thinks is normal and is a good idea. And so my point being is that as you go forth in other places, that might be a point that you will need to dust off some of these notes or make your own and approach the subject of why it's important to pray the prayers of the Bible. That this is a topic that's not just for you because if you've been here for even a few months or a few years, that's what we do, and you might just think, well, that's normal, that's what we do, but I want you to feel the importance of being equipped to be able to articulate this, particularly as you go forth in leadership in ministry so you can help other people see the benefit of this because it's not accepted or it's not something that's obvious everywhere, I'll say it that way. I've never met anybody who's against it, but it's just not something that's in place and so it takes a little bit of intentionality as you go forth in the days to come to establish this value and this reality where you go. Paragraph A, and I won't go through all the notes as you know, when I pray, when I intercede, in a prayer meeting, I almost always use, if not always, probably always, but there might be one exception, I use the prayers from the Bible. That's not the same thing as using a Bible verse. See, some people use a Bible verse, that's not exactly what I mean, meaning they'll say, you know, the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the pure in heart, for they'll see God, so they give, they close their eyes and they give an exhortation in the prayer room with their eyes closed on purity. Well Lord, you said the pure in heart, now if they don't become pure, you know that they're gonna get in a mess and they just, they preach for a while. And they're not, they're praying a Bible verse, but they're actually preaching with their eyes closed. So I've encouraged people over the years, I said the best way to kill a prayer meeting is to have preaching prayers in the prayer meeting where people are giving exhortations to people with their eyes closed. I go, it's better in a prayer room, let's talk to God about people, and then in ministry, let's talk to people about God. And of course we can mix those two together, but what you don't wanna do is have a exhortation to righteousness in the form of a prayer. That's not, again, I've been to a lot of prayer meetings over 40 years, and that's one of the clearest ways to get a prayer room really boring, is one by one, people get up and they give their exhortation with their eyes closed, but what I encourage them to do is pray the prayers of the Bible, and that steers them away from preaching prayers, because they're actually talking to God, and the people in the room will far more, are far more likely to talk to God if they're talking to God than just to listen to their exhortation, and it's far more edifying. Now when I talk about the prayers of the apostolic prayers, I'm talking about the prayers that the Holy Spirit gave the apostles. Now the chief apostle is Jesus. He's called the chief apostle, so even his prayer I consider as apostolic prayers. Paragraph B, these prayers are a valuable gift. Again, there's about 30 of them, and I have them, by the way, we have this four-page document on the website, but we added another six or, about six or eight more pages to this. So if you go to the website, you won't see a four-page document. It'll be like a 12-page document, because I have a lot of prayer lists, and even applications of how to pray, language to pray, so I give you a lot of kind of beginner's guides if this is new to you. Like, well, how do you pray it this way, and how do you pray that verse, and what's that verse about? So I have a whole lot of examples of how to do this, about six to eight pages of it. So you got four pages in your hands, but again, on the website, it'll be like 12 pages approximately. The apostolic prayers are a valuable gift, because these are the prayers that burned in God's heart. These were burning in his heart, and he gave them to the Holy Spirit to give to the church. And because God never changes, they're still burning in his heart. I assure you that when he gave Paul to pray for the spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge of him, that prayer's still burning on his heart right now. I mean, this is an absolute 100%. God will answer that prayer. It's exactly what he wants to be prayed in the church. It's the language of his heart, and over time, it becomes the language of our heart. Paragraph C, these prayers are guaranteed. They're guaranteed to be answered. It's like a check that needs a cosigner. Prayers are like a check that need a cosigner. We need a cosigner in heaven and one on the earth, but beloved, every one of the prayers in the New Testament, they've already been signed in heaven, waiting for you to sign it on the earth, using that analogy. Those prayers are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago, because God never changes. This is what's in his heart. This is the will of God for the church. This is what the Holy Spirit is emphasizing, what is in those prayers. Again, they steer us away from a context where preaching prayers dominate. That's one thing I'm really blessed about. I rarely hear preaching prayers in the prayer room, and that's because people are praying biblical prayers. It's hard to preach those. It's a lot easier to pray them to God than it is to preach them to people, and that's just a real blessing, because again, the room can identify and be in unity far more when the prayers are God-ward, because they're biblical prayers, instead of man-ward as preaching exhortations. Roman numeral two, the prayers of the apostles, number one, they're God-centered. They're God-centered. Every one of the prayers of the New Testament are actually to God, meaning they're not to the devil. A lot of folks, their primary focus of prayer is their focus is to the devil, and I believe there is a place to take authority over the devil in a person's life, but the primary focus of all the prayers in the New Testament, I mean the focus, is to God. That's not an accident, and so that's something we need to pay attention to. If our prayers are mostly to the devil, talking to him, and I think there is a time to do that, but particularly in the Bible, in the New Testament, Jesus spoke to a spirit when the spirit was related to a person, meaning when the spirit was dwelling in the person, or the spirit had a human being, an individual captive, he rebuked that spirit, and that individual was set free. We don't find any examples in the New Testament where Jesus or the apostles talked to the demons in the sky, disembodied demonic powers, meaning principalities and powers. You never find any of the apostles addressing a demon spirit that isn't directly related to an individual. Now, I'm not saying that you can't do that. I've done that a time or two here or there, but it's not the model of the New Testament. I think it's something that can be done and should be done in unique situations, and I don't wanna go into that right now, but I'm just saying that the primary focus, I mean, the focus of Jesus and the apostles are prayers to God, not prayers to the devil telling him to do this or to do that, and again, the main exception is when there's a demon spirit in an individual or entrapping, in tormenting an individual, that demon was directly addressed when it was related to an individual, which is different than a demon principality, which there are demonic principalities and powers over cities and nations, but we address the prayer to God as a rule, and God shines the light of his countenance, he extends his hand, he breaks in in power, releases the wind of the spirit, and we talk to him, and demonic powers are disrupted and dislodged and disturbed by the wind and breakthrough in the light of God's countenance in answer to our prayers. Paragraph B, all the prayers of Jesus were directed to the father, he taught the disciples to pray our father who art in heaven, to pray their prayers to the father, and all the apostles directed their prayers to the father, every single one of them. I just think that's worthy to note. Even in the great warfare epistle, which is the epistle to Ephesians, the book of Ephesians is called the warfare epistle, those three prayers are all to the father, even in that great warfare epistle. Again, I think there's a time, I think it's rare, there are occasions to address a demonic power, I'm talking about a power and principality, but it's not the norm, it's not the routine everyday way that I believe the New Testament presents how a prayer meeting should go forward. Romans number three, the apostolic prayers, again, I'm thinking the 30 of them, counting the doxologies, they are positive, this is not a small point. When you study those or just observe them, these 30 prayers are, this is how they are designed, they are for the impartation of something good, not the removal of something bad. It's really important, I'm gonna say it again, the prayers of the New Testament are for the impartation of that which is good, not the removal of that which is bad as a rule. For example, Paul prays for love to abound, he doesn't ever pray for the removal of hatred, you never see a biblical prayer, Lord we just, I ask you to remove hatred out of the church, you don't ever find that, I think it's okay to pray that, I don't think the Lord looks at that and says, that's non-biblical, forget it, no, God is so gracious. I mean, he is so gracious, and when we come before him, we come not, we come before the throne of grace, not the throne of literary accuracy, it's not, we have to be accurate, that's not, he's so gracious and so tender, but we wanna be instructed by the word, not as a negative instruction, like oh, okay, Lord, there's a reason you laid it out the way you laid it out. Another example, Paul prayed for the impartation of unity, several times, he never prayed against division, ever. I mean, in terms of the Bible, in terms of what's recorded in the Bible. Again, I'm not against that, but as a rule, that's why we pray for the impartation of unity. He prayed for peace to increase, you don't find any biblical prayers for fear to be removed, because when peace increases, fear goes, when unity is imparted, division goes, when love is abounding, hatred goes, even the area of sin, you don't find any New Testament prayers against sin, you find them for the impartation of holiness or purity or love. Paul prays, Lord, release holiness in the church at Thessalonica. He could have said, Lord, deal with the sin in the city of Thessalonica, he didn't, he prayed it positively. Paragraph B, I believe there's a reason for that. And again, God will answer the other ones. He is so kind, He is so generous, but if we understand the biblical pattern, then it's easier to cooperate with it. We go, oh, I didn't realize that. Okay, there you have it, it's right there in the Bible. Here's why, paragraph B, I believe that one reason that God established positive prayers as the norm, because it enhances love and unity in the church. Negative prayers don't always have a negative impact, that would be an exaggerated statement, but I've heard negative prayers over the years, plenty of times over the years. And the guy gets up and he says, Lord, I just, you know, the sin of the church, they're just so compromising and the leaders are just so controlling and so full of this and so full of that. And the guy just goes on and on. And folks in the prayer meeting, well, they're like, you know, I don't agree with him exactly. I think their sin is this, not that. And the guy gets a little bit, his tone gets intense and harsh and angry. And he kind of gets, the more angry, the more he prays. Now, I mean, he's railing, you know, he's kind of like shaking them over hell on a rotten stick, you know, just kind of hoping, just really going for it, you know. And what happens is the prayer that's meant to build up the church, I've found this many times over the years, there's division and annoyance. And there's, the people even in the room get stirred up against the person praying, go, who is he to say that? How does he know? And, you know, he's like that too. And the Lord doesn't want any of that attitude in the prayer room. So he goes, let me just correct it. I'm a father. I know what I'm doing, the Lord speaking. I'll just have you pray for the impartation of purity instead of praying against sin, instead of praying against hatred, pray for love. And so, because at first I didn't do that. I just prayed whatever came. I had those Bible verses, and I found the positive Bible verses going against my grain. I wanted to vent and rail a little bit, you know, kind of get it off my chest. But I found out, because I didn't know what to do in a prayer meeting, that when I prayed these positive prayers in those early days in 79 and 80 and 81, it was reforming my heart and it was annoying me because my propensity was the negative. And I couldn't find any venting prayers anywhere in the New Testament. You know, for those churches down the road that were doing this and that. I find in paragraph C that the Lord as a father, he designed it this way because it actually healed my heart towards the church by praying positive for the church. And I didn't even mean that to happen. I wasn't even aiming for that. I was just trying to get through a prayer meeting. You know, and I just used the prayers that were there. It ended up changing the whole tone and tenor of my inner man over time. So positive prayers bring unity in the prayer room. And positive prayers bring healing to the negative emotions that people have, naturally have against parts of the church. If you've been in the church long enough, some part of the church has bruised you or offended you. Just hang in there for a while. Somebody in the church is gonna do something really that's gonna unsettle you. But the Lord doesn't want us going there. He does not want us camping there. He wants us going in the opposite spirit of that. Top of page two. So I noticed in my own life, I developed mercy by praying positively for the church. The church that was annoying me, different parts, I had to pray biblical prayers, and it directed my heart into a tone of mercy and kindness. And it actually changed my heart. It really did. Because at first it was, again, I thought, man, is there any venting prayers? Is there any prayers that really gets down to it and says it like it is? I mean, I just wanna be honest, Lord. Lord says, well, I'm honest. I'm the Lord God, I am truth. And I don't want those prayers in my Bible. I want the different prayers. You see them through the New Testament. Now you see the Old Testament, the prayers against the enemies of God's people, the political enemies that were oppressing, that's a different subject for a different day. I'm talking about the prayers of the New Testament for the spirit of revival and for the lost to come in, those kinds of things. Paragraph E, another benefit of positive prayers, they help you to operate in faith. You know, I'll call them the negative prayers, the venting prayers, the get-it-off-your-chest prayers, the let-em-have-it-like-they-deserve-it prayers. They don't build your faith up. They don't bring unity in the room. They create a negative attitude, not every time, but they certainly do over time. If there's a whole lot of them, I've seen a lot of prayer rooms, they tried to make it, and that was one of the main reasons they went into discouragement and despair was just the whole atmosphere of the prayer room was not in a biblical posture. And when I've told that to various prayer leaders, they went, wow, that's interesting. I never even thought of biblical prayers. That's an interesting idea. And again, I didn't stumble into them out of some great insight. It was purely out of desperation. I didn't know what to do, because I called the prayer meetings daily before I ever went to one. I mean, that's not the best way to do it. It's better to kind of do something for a while before you announce it. Well, if you pray the positive prayers of the apostles, it actually creates faith for the intercessor and the people that are agreeing with that prayer in the room. The apostolic prayers provide good theology for a victorious church. I've had people ask me over the years, why do you believe in a victorious church? I said, look at the prayers of Jesus and the apostles. They have to be answered. They're given by the Holy Spirit. The church is gonna be full of glory. It has to be. That prayer burns in the Father's heart. The Spirit put it in the Word. It's been prayed for 2,000 years. I promise you that prayer's gonna be answered. There's not one of those prayers that's gonna fall to the ground, one of those biblical New Testament prayers. So my theology on a victorious church, my theology on revival is partially rooted in the prayers of the New Testament. The prayers themselves create some of the theology for revival and victory. Before the Lord returns, the church will walk in power, love and unity in a greater measure. The church is walking in power right now. It's just a, it's not a measure we're content with, but it's a measure we're grateful for that measure, but we want a greater measure. There's gonna be an increase of purity, of power, of unity because it's in the biblical prayers. Paragraph F. So I sum it up here. The apostolic prayers, they facilitate unity. They impact our emotions with love. They build our faith. Again, it becomes kind of an accidental hindrance against preaching prayers. I mean, the prayers where the guy closes his eyes and just preaches for 10 or 12 minutes. His favorite exhortation. The father is the quote, unquote, quote, great psychologist. And I mean that in the most positive sense. He understands the human makeup. He says, I'm gonna put prayers in that help you guys like each other. I'm gonna put prayers in. When you pray it, after the meeting, you actually have a good spirit towards each other instead of against each other. God will answer the other ones. But as a father, he leads his family strategically this way. And so as young leaders and those that are going to be leaders, I just encourage you to get familiar with these ideas and these verses and wherever you go, establish prayer rooms that are based on the New Testament model of prayer. Roman numeral four. The apostolic prayers are usually for the church. That's another thing that surprised me over the years to recognize that. I mean, I prayed these prayers for a few years without even identifying these characteristics. I just prayed them because they were the only prayers I had in the Bible. And then after a while, I began to understand that almost every one of the prayers are for the church. They're not for the lost. The Lord doesn't mind you praying for the lost, and I pray for the lost often. But the prayers in the New Testament are not for the lost, actually. They're not for the transformation of society. Though God is committed to winning the lost and to releasing elements of transformation in this age and then in fully when the Lord returns in the age to come. So he's not against them, and it's okay to pray those kind of prayers, but to me, I think it's significant to note that the New Testament prayers aren't focused in that direction. The only prayer for the lost in the New Testament is Romans 10, verse one, where it's praying for the Israel to be saved. And again, as an intercessor, I do pray for the lost regularly. But I understand, I mean, it is biblical, one verse is enough, but you don't find out of the 30, you know, I'm saying 30 because you can add up the doxologies in different ways, but approximately 30 prayers of the New Testament, it's interesting that almost every one of them are for the church. So I begin to ask the question, why? Paragraph B, why are the vast majority, I mean like 98% of them or whatever the number is, why are they for the strengthening of the church? And I believe the answer is that God's primary strategy for winning the lost is through anointing the church. When God sees, like I'm believing God for several hundred thousand new converts in the Kansas City area. I have a word of the Lord about that, over 300,000, I won't take one soul less than 300,000. And I believe it's gonna be more than that. But I have a clear word from the Lord to believe God for 300,000, I mean, people in sin right now coming to the Lord. But the way that the 300,000 are gonna come to the Lord is through the church walking in the anointing. The key to the harvest isn't just them getting saved in a vacuum, the key to the harvest is the church walking in the anointing of God. The church walking in power, the church being revived. When the church is revived, the lost gets saved and the society gets transformed in a measure. And again, it won't be fully transformed until after the Lord gets here, but there's a lot of transformation yet to experience in various parts of the world. There'll be some parts of the world where transformation will go far beyond other parts of the world. And we don't know which parts, but we know there's a lot of great victories to be had, even in society. Church, if the church is revived, walking in power, the lost will get saved for sure and they'll come in in large numbers. Paragraph C, we see this principle in Acts chapter 19. Now Acts chapter 19 is that, I mean, the largest church in the New Testament time was the church at Ephesus, which is modern day Turkey today. It was a city, Ephesus, the third largest city in the world at that time. It was kind of like the New York City of today. It was the third largest city in the world. It was in what is Turkey today, right above Israel, by the top, you know, the Mediterranean Sea, if you're not good with geography. And what happened, I mean, it was the most powerful demonstration and the largest numbers coming in. I mean, there was a lot of power in Jerusalem. I'm not comparing those two, but it was remarkable. Paul preached with such power. Look what it says. All who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord. My goodness, the word of the Lord grew mighty. The word of the Lord prevailed. I mean, the word of God, can you imagine saying the word of God prevailed in New York City, the third largest city in the world? Or maybe it's not now, but it used to be, but just take a major city. The word of God prevailed in Ephesus? That is a huge statement. And the way the word of God prevailed was by the church being anointed. Paul was anointed, but it wasn't just Paul. This is far beyond Paul. Paul was the principal preacher at the beginning of this revival, but for all of Asia to hear the word of God and for the word of God to prevail, I mean, with the communication systems and the transportation systems of that day, for all of Asia to hear the word of God, there were thousands of preachers going around walking in the power of God. I mean, Paul didn't get on the internet and reach all of Asia or get on the train and go to the other side of that province where Turkey, I mean, where Ephesus was. So God's strategy to win Asia, all of Asia, was for God's servants to walk in the anointing, for the church to be revived in power. I don't know how many preachers there were, but there had to be multitudes. Again, they didn't have internet, they didn't have television, they didn't have cars, they didn't have trains, and for the word to get that widespread to where the Holy Spirit says the word of God prevailed in Ephesus and then throughout Asia, that's a remarkable, remarkable description of revival. Paragraph E, when the church is anointed, when the pulpits are anointed, I mean, at a greater measure, when the worship teams are anointed, when the word of God is going out of weak and broken people in a larger, in a greater measure of power, the church gets revived. Leonard Ravenhill, who was one of the great, I mean, well-known prayer warriors of the 20th century, he went to be with the Lord a few years ago, wrote quite a few classic books on prayer, and one of his famous statements was, unction in the pulpit, action in the pews. He said that many, many times. I got to know Leonard Ravenhill at the end of his life when I was still some years ago, and he was one of my heroes. I mean, here's one of the great intercessors in our nation in this day, and he said, he was so big on that, he goes, you get the pulpits anointed. He goes, the pews, the people will get, they'll shake off compromise, they'll walk in the power of God. He goes, the problem is the unanointed preaching and singing of the word. You get those two on fire, the masses in the church will get on fire, and then the greater masses in society will come to the Lord. He goes, focus on getting the word of God going forth, whether they preach it or sing it. When it comes forth in greater power, everything else, the domino effect will come into place, and history bears that up. When God puts his anointing on the word, whether it's spoken, whether it's sang or today, very powerfully would be drama in media, all those avenues to where the word of God publicly is presented. And again, the drama media dimension is a very, very, very significant one as well. Top of page three. I wanna encourage people, this is something I've really had energy about for 30 plus years at this point, pray for the whole city. I've been praying for Kansas City in daily prayer meetings for the 32 years I've been in this city. And I don't think I've ever prayed for Kansas City without saying this phrase, maybe once or twice, but probably not. I always say, Lord, and the thousand congregations in your church in this city, meaning don't get locked in on praying for your ministry and your church. I've had folks come and say, let's pray for revival at IHOP. I go, well, okay, okay, but not really. Let's pray for revival in the family of God in our city. I go, God won't forget IHOP. I promise you, He won't forget IHOP. Let's see a revival in our church. Let's see a revival in our ministry. Let's see a revival in our school. I go, no, no, let's go better than that. Let's see revival in the family of God in the area. And I promise you, God won't forget to touch us. And the reason that's important, I've been with folks over the years, and they get real locked into revival in their church, their ministry, and they end up getting parochial. They end up getting us for and no more. And they get real excited if things get a little lively in the room they're at, the sanctuary they're at, and the rest of the body of Christ in their own city is not doing well, but they're excited. I go, how can we be excited if things are a little bit lively in one room when there's a, I mean, I'm talking about like a church sanctuary, when there's a thousand in the city that aren't being touched? I would encourage you that when you pray, the prayers of the Bible, pray for the city. Pray for the church, the body of Christ in the city. We get a revival in the city, and the revival we're believing for isn't for the power of God to hit this congregation and everybody come to our congregation. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking for an awakening, like a third great awakening in America. And as it sweeps across our city, it will be in hundreds of places. Baptists, Methodists, whoever calls on the name of the Lord, they'll speak and sing the word of God. Media, and the word of God will go like an arrow, like fire, and it will go forth in the north, the south, the east, the west, the midtown, the inner city, the rural areas. The city will be abuzz with the gospel. It won't be about people jamming in one building. You know, we could get, you know, we can cram 2,000 people in this building, and if we do it like 20 nights in a row, 2,000 people, and then we get 3,000, I think, man, revival hit. The Lord says, are you kidding? There's three million people in the whole area here. Get 3,000 in your building? I'm saying, Lord, do something in our city, all around. Do it in the cities of America. Do it in the nation cities of the earth. But I mean, it's good, I think, to focus on a city, but don't focus in a parochial way on your little portion of the city. Pray for your city, pray for other cities. When I pray for Chicago, when I pray for Hong Kong, when I pray for Seoul, Korea, I'm praying for the congregations of the Lord, the name of Jesus in the city, the family of God, not just for one congregation. And I believe that that is the model of the New Testament. Paragraph H, the Lord loves the whole church. He loves every denomination, every congregation that names his name in the truth. Everybody has weakness, everybody has seasons of struggle. He wants his people to love the whole church. Now, I know that's a simple statement, but that's a very important statement. We wanna see him move in all the congregations in this city and region. We wanna see him do it in the cities of our nation and the cities of the world. I don't mean just our nation, we're not just into America. We're not just into Kansas City. But when you pray for your city, I wanna urge you, get the big vision, the big picture. It's more than jamming this building out for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 days in a row when the most of the city doesn't even know we're meeting. We wanna see hundreds of buildings jammed out. That's what happened in the first and second great awakening. Thousands of buildings were full and overflowing, scores of preachers, unknown preachers everywhere, because the word of God was prevailing in that geographic area. That's the revival that we're aiming for. And I'll take anything he'll give, less than that, but I'm never gonna be content. I'll be grateful and say, thank you, Lord, but I want more. I want more, and when I contend for revival, I'm always praying for the family of God. I mean, they're all born-again believers in the same family. In the resurrection, we'll be best friends forever. All of us will know each other. Let's contend for the purpose of God in our city. Paragraph J, God's divine strategy is for us to pray for the church, because we'll end up loving the church if we pray for the church. We'll end up loving it, because it's easy to love the lost in a city, because you don't know them. You know a few of them, but the lost is an unnamed, it's masses, it's the lost. It's really easy to love them, because they're not bugging you. I mean, those 10 are, but the church, you're all around it. I'm like, oh, the church, and they go to that congregation, they bug me too, and that leader, ah, that church. The glorious lost. I tell you, they're not any nicer. So we get this idea, we love the lost, but we're bored with the church. The Lord says, no, no, no, you're disconnecting from reality. Pray for the church, because you'll fall in love with the church that you know. You know their faces and names, and they're easy to annoy you. You'll love them, and I'll reach the lost through you guys together, walking in unity and love. The Lord's the great strategist. I mean, he leads our prayers right through the church, so while we're laboring for the harvest, we love the church. The church is his family. Paragraph K, he's a brilliant strategist. I mean, this is all, we pray to God, we pray positive biblical prayers, we pray for the church. We're not limited to that, but that's the New Testament model. Let's look at Roman numeral five. The focus of our intercession. And again, I'll just cover a little bit of this. The focus of our intercession, Jesus exhorted us to pray for that God would, the Father would give us the Holy Spirit. Now, this is a very important prayer, to give us the Holy Spirit, because paragraph B, every born-again believer has the Holy Spirit. So I've had people say, Lord, give us the Holy Spirit. What that verse means in a New Testament context is give us a greater measure of the Spirit that we already have. The reason this is important, people that pray, Lord, give us the Spirit, they're using Luke 11, the very words of Jesus, but again, in the New Testament context, we have the Spirit as born-again believers. We're asking for a greater measure. That's the key phrase, a greater measure. Because if we're praying for the Spirit in the absolute sense, it's though we're standing before God as people who don't have the Holy Spirit, and the word of the Holy Spirit say, hey, what about me and you? I'm with you. But that means nothing right now till you have a great revival. So we don't want to minimize the presence of the Spirit. We want to engage with Him. We want to be grateful for His presence. We want to be active in our faith that He's with us now. We just want a greater measure. So when folks come and say, Lord, we're in the heavens, and come down and send your Spirit, I'll whisper to some of them, if they're leaders, of course, if they're leaders, they already know this. I'll say, no, pray for a greater measure. Thank Him for the measure we walk in and ask for a greater measure. Go, well, why does it make much difference? I go, yeah, it really does, because it will keep you in a posture of faith. It will keep you in faith that the Spirit is in our midst now. It will keep you in gratitude that the Spirit's moving and we're saying, thank you. We just want a greater measure. Paragraph C, the Bible has many references to greater grace. See, we have grace, and we've had the fullness of graces available to us through the blood of Jesus and His cross, but I want to experience a greater measure of it. I want to experience more of that which is freely and fully available to me. Top of page four. This is so simple that I'll just take a minute on this. Then I'm gonna ask you to, we're gonna take about five minutes in groups of five or six. We'll put the clock on and go five minutes. What is one idea here, because I want you to say it with your mouth, because it does something in your heart if you say it with your mouth, and I want others to hear you, just what is one point here that challenges you, that inspires you, something you want to do about some verse that you, some principle that was presented here? So just go around the group and take 30, 40 seconds each and say what it is and why it is, 30, 40 seconds, and then we'll do that for about five minutes and then go right to the coffee break. Roman numeral six, top of page four. Now when I think of prayer, I have three prayer themes that I've used this, again, 30 plus years, these three prayer themes, and I use these to help focus my prayer time. And when I identified these prayer themes, they're all through the New Testament, so I mean, they're everywhere, but when I identified them, then it helped me focus when I was praying for someone. And the three basic prayer themes of which all the biblical prayers actually are in line with one of these three. All the prayers are, all the promises are in line with these three. That is the prayer for the gifts of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, and the wisdom of the Spirit. Every promise you have, every prayer you'll pray from the Bible expresses one of those three main categories of divine activity, gifts, fruit, and wisdom. And the reason this helps me focus when I'm praying for a friend, when I pray for my family, when I pray for friends, when I pray for, like I pray for Alan Hood. He's someone on my prayer list that I pray for him and his family. I pray gifts, fruit, and wisdom for him and his family. I go down and I speak it over him. You know, we pray for, a mandate we have as a spiritual family is for the city of Cairo. And the main ministry God has assigned us to as an IHOP ministry is for YWAM. When I pray for the leaders of YWAM, I pray gifts, fruit, and wisdom. And any of the prayers of the New Testament, again, we've got them all listed here on this larger document. When you go to the website, you got four pages here, but go on the website, it'll be 12 pages about. And I give you a bunch of these prayers. When I pray for YWAM, when I pray for Cairo, when I pray for my sons, my grandchildren, my wife, anybody, it's gifts, fruit, and wisdom. If I use any of those 30 biblical prayers, it's really praying for one of those three things. And so knowing that helps me articulate and focus it in a way that really gets my heart engaged in faith. Paragraph B, when we pray for the gifts of the Spirit, it's that supernatural power dimension, whether it's favor, provision, protection, that's the power realm breaking in. So I associate that with the gifts of the Spirit. Whether it's even favor and protection, that's the power realm of God setting things into motion. When I pray for the fruit of the Spirit, what we're praying for is godly character in their life. Now paragraph D, the way that I have found to pray for the fruit of the Spirit in someone's life, instead of going, Lord, I ask you, fill them with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, patience, self-control, instead of going down the nine fruit of the Spirit, which I think it's okay to do that for sure, but when I pray for the fruit of the Spirit in someone's life, typically I pray for the spirit of conviction to touch them. Right here in paragraph D, John 16, Jesus said, when the Spirit comes, he'll convict. If I say, Lord, I want you to touch Lorne Cunningham and YWAM, him and Darlene are the leaders of YWAM, I pray for them, I ask for the spirit of conviction and the spirit of revelation of God. Lord, release a greater reality of the conviction of the Spirit and the revelation of the beauty of Jesus because that produces in the heart godly character, produces humility, it produces the fear of God, it produces all kinds of good character traits. And one reason you do that, you don't wanna be in a prayer meeting praying for a family member or friend and praying their negative character traits. Oh, Lord, we just take authority over lost and bitterness and they're so angry, like, ah, like, don't go there. Ask for the spirit of conviction, ask for the spirit of the fear of the Lord, which is the same thing as the spirit of conviction, but conviction means the Word as powerfully touches their heart. Spirit of conviction or the spirit of revelation touches their heart, they'll walk in godliness. And so when I'm in praying publicly, I pray those prayers, I'm actually praying for godly character in the church, it's what I'm praying for. And then paragraph E would be the wisdom of the Spirit and that's pretty obvious, this insight into God's plans, God's will, insight into the Word, just the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. So I just offer those three prayer themes just as kind of a focus. So when I'm praying for an individual or a city or a nation, those three prayer themes, and I pick one of those 30 prayers of the New Testament, or I pick several of them, and I pray along those lines. And so that's just some tracks to run on. Amen, let's stand. I'm gonna encourage you, we're gonna take, again, just five minutes, we'll put the clock on, I wanna encourage you to get in groups of three to five, five, six, whatever, just everyone stand if you would, just turn around, the folks right behind you, there's the group right there, and here's the question, what is one theme, one principle that either challenged you, inspired you, something you're gonna be committed to in a new way? We'll do this for five minutes, and we'll take 15 minutes on a coffee break. So we'll put the clock up there, five minutes. And if you're not by a group, just walk up to a group, just walk up to any group. Hello, didn't see you.