This sermon emphasizes the power and importance of calling on the name of the Lord in times of trouble and need. It recounts personal experiences and biblical principles that highlight the transformative impact of earnest prayer and calling out to God. The speaker shares how prayer and calling on God led to miraculous interventions and transformations in challenging situations, emphasizing the need for a deep, consistent, and faith-filled prayer life.

It's a day that has everlasting effect on our planet and in the world to come. You don't need to turn to it because you can almost memorize it, it's so short. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, we read in the 25th verse, And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and named him Seth. For God had appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed. And as for Seth, to him also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. Here's the verse. And then, somewhere in there, on some day, at some hour, at some point, men and women began to call on the name of the Lord. That has had a profounder effect on our world than any other thing you can imagine. Men, at some given moment, began to call out to God. Now, the Bible tells us, as you know, that Cain slew Abel, and now Cain and his seed, independent of God, self-sufficient, we can do it, build a name for ourselves, we can maneuver through life without God. That ungodly seed was about to dominate. So God raised up a godly seed through the line of Seth, and Seth gave birth to Enosh, and then some revelation came. There were no Bibles, no churches, no choirs, no media, no verses to stand on, no Hebrew and Greek to study, nothing. Except there was a God who was the creator, and somehow it dawned by revelation on people that when you're in trouble, there's a God that if you call out to Him, He'll answer you. He'll intervene in your situation. That it either happened maybe when a child got sick, because you know how that affects a parent, or it happened maybe when the rains weren't coming down and weren't plenteous and the crops were threatened, that men began to get this instinct that they only knew there was a creator God, there was a creator God, but now they learned that this creator God was also a God who heard and who responded when, and only when, you cried out to Him. So somehow at that moment, men begin to call on the name of the Lord, and it's affected the rest of history, and it's a theme that starts there and runs through the whole Bible and ends up in revelation. The word there for call is a word that means to cry out, to treat in treat, to call out to, to beseech, to beg, to plead, to call out with all of your heart. And then the word developed another meaning, which means in the same tone and the same thread, to praise, to worship, to extol with your lips, to exalt, to honor, to celebrate, to commemorate. And then it began to have a meaning also to tell abroad and to call out, to communicate with another person, to tell somebody else. So the first people who were ever God's people in the Bible were not called Christians or Jews. The first people that ever belonged to God were called those who call on the name of God. The whole seed of everything that we're doing here today began with people calling on God. And then as God responded, they would begin to praise God. The same mouth and heart that cried out to Him and called on Him for help, when God answered that cry, they would begin then to extol and to honor and to praise God with all of their heart. And then they began to go to other people and say, have you heard about the God who answers when you call on Him? What are you talking about? We just know there's probably a Creator. No, no, the Creator is a God that when you call out to Him, He doesn't turn a deaf ear. In fact, His ear is always open to our cry. And it doesn't matter what your problem is or what you're facing in your church or in your family. God is a God who's always saying throughout the Bible, call upon Me. He's entreating us to entreat Him. Call upon Me and I will answer you. And I'll show you great and mighty things which you've never even imagined. It's never even got into your head what God can do. Now that was the mark. Forget now your American system of Christianity. Forget what you were born and raised. Because a lot of that has meat, but there's some bones in it. And if we just follow and keep punching in what we learned and what people tell us is in the cutting edge, which is not always so. It's not on the cutting edge. Some of it is just silliness. But if we go back to the Bible, we find out that the first thing that God ever had with people, the first relationship was, call on Me and I'll help you. And when you don't know what to do, I'll tell you what to do. And when you're ready to throw up your hands, don't. Throw them up to Me and put your voice behind it too. And I'll come and I'll help you. That's how religion began. And God's never changed. You change, maybe I change, but denominations might change. God has never changed. And we can create and stir and redefine all we want. God will never change. He's not a man that He should change like that. So the relationship He had there was this calling out to God. And you follow through the patriarchs. They built altars and Abraham called on God. Isaac built an altar. He called out to God. Jacob, long before Moses got the worship system of the tabernacle and received the law, men were calling out to God. When Abraham went down to Egypt unwisely, he runs back to that altar at Bethel where he first called upon the Lord. That's the way it is when we backslide and we get away from the ministry that God wants us. You always have to get back to that altar where you started calling out to God. How many know what I'm talking about? Say amen. That's where we all go back. And this became, by the way, the earmark and the sign of God's people. Moses in his great sermon in the book of Deuteronomy says this about the people of Israel. He's getting ready for Joshua to take over as a leader. And he's enjoining the people to remember how special they are. And listen what he says. He says, and who else of all the people in the world have a God that draws near to them when they call upon? He says, who of all the other people? They might have better chariots. Israel wasn't allowed to have chariots. They might have better weaponry. But he says to all the people, forget the Amorites. You don't have to worry about the Jebusites because who has a God like unto our God that draws near to us when we call upon him? When we call upon him, how many have found that? God draws near to you whenever you call upon him. You might be a mess in your walk with God, but there's something about God here when he hears that cry. Boom, he goes. So Satan's whole device with us. Don't call. Don't cry. Be clever. Organize. Plan a lot. Depend on talent. Get that computer on. But how many know, how many know if we're going to do spiritual warfare, the devil doesn't care about computers. What he gets afraid of is when we lift up our hearts and begin to call out to God. God, you're going to help me. God, you absolutely are going to help me. And that was, that was the sign of Israel. That was the absolute sign of Israel. Who has a God like unto our God who draws near to us? Only when, notice, when we call upon him. All bets are off if we don't call on him. There's not a promise in the Bible for if you don't call on God, if I forget God. You can't stand on those promises without calling on God. This is not a mental exercise. It's about this. Sukkot haso, in your heart, going out to God. And remember, this, this was the way the prophets operated. Remember when Elijah said his big thing with King Ahab? He said, look, get all your prophets of Baal. You think Baal is bad? Bring, bring all the prophets of Baal. Get them all over here. And I'll stand over here. I'm all alone. There's nobody left. Get all 450 prophets, right? And here's what. Lay out the sacrifices. And in the end, he poured water on the sacrifices of his. And he said, listen, you call out to Baal as long as you want. And whatever God answers when we call, that'll be God. He said, call, go ahead and call. And they started early in the morning calling. And they cried, oh Baal, which tells us what calling is about. It's not some mental exercise. It's about your whole being. You will call upon me and I will answer you when you call upon me with all of your heart, when you seek for me with all of your heart. So they're calling, oh Baal, oh Baal. Nothing's happening. And around noontime, he even gets a little humorous. And he says, call louder. He's out of town or he's busy. He's working on work, you know. And they call and they call and they call. And what was the proof that God was God? What was the proof? Because Elijah said, now God, you've been calling. You prophets of Baal, watch. You call nothing because it's dead. There's no ear to Baal. He can't answer. But now watch what happens when I call to my God. Oh God, hear my prayer. And the fire came from heaven. And the fire came from heaven. That was the sign. That was always the sign that God hears when you cry. He has to. Otherwise, throw away the book. Nothing's true if that's not true. Now, nobody developed this, of course, greater than David, who was a man way ahead of his time. David lived in the New Testament with his heart. His body was in the Old Testament. And we read Psalm 4, 3. Listen to this Psalm 4, 3. But know this, the Lord has set apart for himself. Him who is godly, the Lord will hear when I call. That was David's whole posture to battle everything. That was an instinct in Israel. Doesn't matter what the opposing armies have. If we call out to God, God gives us the victory. If we backslide and don't call, then we can be knocked out by 200 soldiers. That was the whole life of the nation of Israel. And David said, the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. Who are the godly? The Lord will hear when I call. David said, you can chase me. You can persecute me. You can do anything you want. But when I call to God, you're in trouble. Because the Lord will hear when I call to him. The Lord will hear when I call to him. He developed that even further. In fact, the Bible tells us that the definition of evildoers, Psalm 14, 4, workers of iniquity, evildoers, who do not call upon the Lord. They will not call upon the Lord. That's the definition of the ungodly. They'll do a lot of things, but they will not humble themselves, recognize God's omnipotence, and they won't call upon God. And David says, they're the evildoers in the land. They won't call upon God. And then further, as you know, we could pick them so many places. Psalm 50, verse 15, repeated over and over in the Bible, call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will honor me. God says, I want praise from your life. But the only way fresh praise will come is if you keep calling upon me in days of trouble. And when you forget to call upon me, I'll just send some trouble to remind you how smart you really are. How many honestly have had that happen in your own life? You start to backslide a little bit. You get a little cocky. We think we can handle everything. And God says, trouble. Please send some trouble. Trouble. And how many know in the same day you can go from thinking you're as bad as can be to, oh God, help me, Lord. Oh God, have mercy on me. Help me, Lord. Come on, how many know what I'm talking about? Say amen. Because notice what the intimation is that until the day of trouble came, David didn't call upon the Lord. In the day of trouble, I called upon the Lord and he heard me and he delivered me. In the day of trouble, I called upon him. Trouble is one of God's greatest servants, isn't it? Because it reminds us how much we need the Lord. Is there something about us that gets away from this calling thing? You know, we just want to carry on without this childlike helplessness. But God won't have it any other way. In fact, revival has everything to do about this. And you don't go by any definition of revival that anybody tells you in the revisionists of the modern church era. Listen to Psalm 80, verse 18. Revive us, oh Lord, and we will call upon your name. That's the sign of revival. When people aren't calling on God's name, I wouldn't care what else was going on. It's not revival. The thing about revival, whether you study the great awakening, the second great awakening, the Welsh revival, what happened at Azusa's Tree is men got sick and tired of the status quo, men and women and leaders, and they began to call on God and they were insistent. And that prayer begot revival, which begot more prayer. Because revival, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of prayer. When we're full of the Holy Spirit, truly, how many know that's the spirit of prayer? You feel the need of God everywhere you turn. You're driving in a car and your spirit starts going up to God with needs and petitions and intercessions. And when our heart gets cold, prayer becomes strange and we try to teach it. Symposium, seven ways to a better prayer life, but none of that's going to happen until God comes. How many know what I'm talking about? When God comes, God births the spirit of prayer, for we know not how we ought to pray, but the Holy Spirit helps us. And the sign of revival always is that. If we're prayerless, we're not revived. If our churches don't pray and the people don't have an appetite for God, what does it matter how many you're running? How would that impress God? Or your carpet or your lights or anything else? God's only had one kind of people who called upon the Lord. He's rich in mercy to everyone who what? Calls upon. That's Old Testament, New Testament, nothing's changed. You can't update it. God's not adapting it to our culture. We adapt ourselves to God. He's abounding in mercy and grace to everyone who calls upon him. And that's why the church was born, obviously with all that, guess where the church was born? In a prayer meeting. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? The church was born not in a teaching session. The church was born in a prayer meeting. Why? Because God's never going to change. Go back and tarry in Jerusalem and keep calling on me and waiting between the calling and throw in some thanksgiving and praise in there. And then I'm going to fill you and equip you and you'll find out that the church was born in a prayer meeting. What does that say about our churches when God had the church born in a prayer meeting and we don't even have prayer meeting? And doesn't anybody beside myself get embarrassed when you hear religious leaders talk about no prayer in schools? What a joke. Isn't anybody embarrassed when you don't even have a prayer meeting in the church? Why should they have it in the schools? I don't even understand that. You would think somebody would say just out of humility, time out. Let's pray. They didn't have prayer in the Roman schools. They didn't care what Nero was doing. Who cares what Caligula was doing and Emperor Claudius? Let them do whatever they're going to do. And who cares about secular humanism or new age? How could the demons stop God? How can anybody stop God when God's people pray and call out upon his name? Impossible. It's impossible. I'll tell you what. That embarrasses me. I'm telling you, I'm a Christian, but I'm embarrassed when I hear these so-called leaders. Lambasts, you know, President Clinton and the liberals and all. Who cares what they do? What's that got to do with me? Let the church be the church, and then I don't care what they do. You don't see Paul wringing his hands and saying in the New Testament, what are we going to do? Caligula's a transvestite. He's dressing up as a woman, and I don't know. What are we going to do? How are we going to do this? You know what it is? Listen, we're playing games with ourselves. No, I'm serious. We're playing games with ourselves. We're trying to divert attention away from this weak area of our own church life. We're trying to put the spotlight over there on the world. I don't see any of that in the New Testament. I read the New Testament constantly. I try to never be six feet away from a New Testament in my life, and I read it every moment I can to get the breath of the New Testament in me. You don't find any hand wringing about what's going on in Rome, and they passed this bad law. Who cares? Let them do what they want. How could that stop God if God was let loose in the church? How could that possibly stop God? I hear New Age and demons and all this fiction about their demons. Who cares what the demons are doing? But I'm embarrassed when you hear people say there's no prayer in schools. That embarrasses me. When I talk to pastor after pastor, and they tell me privately, oh, Pastor Simba, don't tell anybody about it. I couldn't have a prayer meeting in my church. I'd be embarrassed. One twentieth of the crowd would come. Unless somebody's teaching or singing or carrying on or entertaining, because preaching can become just a form of entertaining. Just a shtick. It's just more mental truth, and nobody's acting on it. I want to raise a couple questions to all of us, because, you know, when we stand at the judgment seat of Christ, God's not going to ask you what your peers thought of you, or if you were on the cutting edge of what some magazine said was what God was doing. I don't go by any of that. I try to stick with this book. And this book says this. Listen, listen. I'm not trying to be humorous. When I stand before Jesus, He's not going to ask me these questions. He's going to ask me, did I continue on in the line of men and women who called upon God? God showed me on a boat in Florida, maybe I'll talk about that in this afternoon session, that if my wife and I would lead the people to call on God, and we had less than a hundred then, that number one, every sermon that I would need to preach, which I was insecure about, I've never been trained. I'm not an orator. He would take care of. Number two, we would have enough money to live and pay the bills in the church, which was touch and go with us for years. I made $3,800 the first year in the ministry, $5,500 the second year. We took second jobs. We're in a ghetto. First offering I ever collected as a pastor, $85 morning tithes and offerings. But if we would lead them to call on God, He would take care of the sermons and the money, and we'd never be in a building large enough to contain all the people that God would send in, just in answer to people calling on His name. So when I stand before God, and you stand before God, I want to ask you, why is that? Why can't we have prayer meetings? They've canceled the Sunday night service. Now the prayer meeting, prayer meeting, that went out with high button shoes. Nobody's going to come to pray. Why? Because they're glued to television. Hey, they're glued to the television, and they're watching channels. And don't give me any other story. I've traveled all over, and I know this world just like you do. They're watching television or sports. They're wedded to it. In fact, you can't even get them for a long Sunday service. I go places. You got 18 minutes. You got to get them out of here. We got to get them out by 5 after 12, or else they'll walk out. They're football game time. Well, what is that? It's not Christianity. I don't care what doctrine you're teaching. That's not Christianity. That cannot be the religion of the Bible. And why would God send people like that to heaven? Listen, there's no... I'm being very serious. I think Brother Hayford... No, he's not a legalist. I'm not a legalist either, but I want to ask you a question. If the people in my church don't want to be around God's presence, and they don't love God's presence, why would they go to heaven? It would ruin everything for them. There's nothing... Listen, in heaven, there's nothing but God. If you don't enjoy His presence, and you don't love to call upon Him and worship Him, I don't care what doctrine you have in your head. You're not the believers that they have in the New Testament. Listen, the revisionists... Let me close. The revisionists are not in Washington. They're in the church growth movement. They've revised what a church is. The Bible tells me they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, and in the fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayer. They did that by instinct. The church is a spiritual organism with spiritual instincts. And if in your church and mine, they don't have those instincts, you don't have a church just because you can get them for an hour on Sunday morning, you know, by doing market research. That doesn't make it a church. It's not a church. It's not a church. I challenge anybody to show me from the Bible that's a church. It's not a church. It's a bunch of people in a building on a Sunday morning. But the church of Jesus Christ is a spiritual organism full of the Holy Ghost, and joy, and loving God's presence, and waiting for His Son to return. And this is serious because, you know, this American system, you can get by being just... You can retire as a minister and get by in the American system. You can build a huge church without the Holy Spirit a thousand miles from your place. We fine-tune church growth down to a... almost a terrible age. But people who call on God. We have a prayer band in our church. They started all-night prayer meetings on Friday night years ago. Then this godly pastor, who Brother Hayford, I would love for him to meet him. This associate of mine, he started every night from 11 until 6 in the morning. Now it's 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, there's a band of people in the church praying. I'm not talking about something at home where they pray, I should pray. I'm talking about in the building, no matter what the emergency is. If you have a problem and you handed me a little note today, I'll take it home. They'll pray for 30 days, morning, noon, and night for that request. Well, Brother Ware said to me one day, Pastor Simba, you know, we're not getting through. You're doing good on Sundays, but we need more conviction. We need more conviction of sin. I said, I know, I feel it, Brother. No, I'm talking serious. We're in New York City now. We're going to have a dozen people HIV positive every meeting. Crack addicts, we got 150 homeless people brought in every single Sunday night. We just baptized a woman who's raising nine children in a shelter by herself. You're not going to do this with mirrors. It's God or bus. It's God or it's not going to happen. But that's the way it ought to be. Amen? Amen. So he started a prayer. He said he has to this day, he has 40 people locked in a room. They pray from 1045 to 130. Morning service is over. They start at 315 through six something. The afternoon service. Then we have a night service. They start praying at 715. And sometimes I leave at 10 o'clock, 1030, the building. I hear them still pray. God help them, protect them, help them. God send the glory, send the presence of God in the meetings. So you might visit our church and the Lord might really be there and you might really be blessed and you might think it has something to do with me or Carol. No. Maybe it's just those people praying. And on Tuesday night, of course, which is our main service, we have standing room only using the lobby and every folding chair we can get just for the prayer meeting. No choir, no guest speaker, nothing. Just Jesus. But if they don't come for that, then what kind of church am I pastoring? If they don't come just for Jesus, what am I into? The second Sunday that they started, or whether it was the first Sunday, they started this heavy prayer for me. I was ready to go out to the afternoon service and I was in my office and at that time they were praying above me and through the transom, I heard this noise and I heard people as they were praying, they were calling on God. They were, and I heard them, some of them starting to just pound the chairs that they were kneeling at and saying, God, protect them, help them, Lord, protect them. And suddenly when I heard protect, and help, my heart began to beat and I began to just get lost in the spirit and calling on God. And I said, something's gonna happen, something's gonna go on. Because the way they were praying, it wasn't born of anything but the Spirit. I get through with the afternoon service, standing room only, choir behind me, and I get through preaching and for some reason, I closed my eyes to conclude my point on the love of God I was preaching. And as I closed my eyes, but I'm not praying, I never do that. A guy, a Jewish guy, stands up in the back row and draws a .45 on me, loaded, and has it pointed toward me in his hand, walks out of the aisle, the pew, comes down the aisle with the gun drawn on me, but the ushers, it's too late by the time they see him, other people thought I was praying, they were intending what I was saying and now it's too late, he's approaching the platform and my eyes are closed, my wife was playing behind me and screamed twice my name, Jim, Jim, but I didn't hear her because I was lost and he came up right on the platform and you know, everyone sees it but me. And, but he didn't mean to hurt me. He was under such conviction, he was planning to hurt someone after the meeting and he had just stopped by providentially in the service and he got so convicted of the hate in his heart and that gun that he just said, I gotta give it up and he was slightly unbalanced in his mind but with this gun drawn on me, he walked up and he threw it on the pulpit with my, and I was standing here with my eyes closed and suddenly I hear a crash, my heart almost stopped, I turned, there's a gun on my pulpit. This is the truth, my wife will bear witness to this and I saw the gun and he started to run off and the only instinct I had was to chase him and to run after him and tell him, no, it's okay and I started to run after him, imagine first time visitors in our church, you're watching this and I ran after him and I said, no, no and he ran off the side of the pulpit down the aisle and I yelled, no, it's okay, it's okay and he just fell in the heap and began to weep and the ushers got on top of him and began to pray for him and I went back and as God is my witness, I held the gun, not knowing it was loaded, I held the gun up and I said, look what the love of God can make you give up and suddenly from all over the building, people began to just race to the altar. We baptized like 20, 25 people just from that meeting, just from that service of something God did but I remembered before the meeting, people were down there saying, protect him, watch over him, bring conviction. You know, if my eyes would have been open, I might have, fear might have hit me, I might have reacted wrong, he was loose in his mind, he might have just pulled the trigger. How wonderful. You know, my wife, all day though, she was different and the next morning because she saw it all and the next morning, we were having coffee and she was feeling terrible and she said, is that the way it's going to happen? Is that the way we're going to go out? Is, no, I'm dead serious, I'm dead serious, I don't mean this as a joke. She said, is this the way it's going to end first? Somebody, there's no protection, you know how you get fear in you, you get negative, you mean somebody can just walk up and just take you out like that in the meeting, there's no security, we're with, I said, Carol, they couldn't, they came, she said, no, but I saw it, she turned white with fright because she saw the guy coming, she saw it, I didn't see it. I mean, the guy was right next to me with a gun and I said, but Carol, and all week long, fear was on, oppressive fear because we're not out in the suburbs, we're in a ghetto and that Friday night, she went to quiet practice and she began to leave, but they have a half hour, hour of prayer before they ever sing a note and as they were waiting on God, as they were calling on God, the Holy Spirit spoke to one of the choir members, walked over, took the mic and said, you know what, God just showed me, we got to call on God for Carol and they began to pray and all that fear lifted, just went off of her, again, he's a rewarder of them who call upon him, who diligently seek him. The final note on this though, there's still lessons, a lot of lessons to be learned that I felt impressed this morning in prayer that I should just share this in closing and I won't abbreviate it, but I want to end on this note because I feel there's a divine reason for me to say this, it's hard for me to say this because I don't like to go into this, but I want to talk about it for a moment. You can preach about prayer, you can talk about it, you can give it, you know, mouth it and yeah, we need to pray, God can do anything, but then sometimes to teach your lessons, God lets you hit real close and our first girl, Chrissy, was a model child growing up around the age of 16, she started to get away from us and I wasn't that wise, I was too occupied with the church and things and pressures and we're starting other churches, we've started 18 churches out of our church and you're trying to help them and they need support and money and we don't have much and whatever and carol, Radio City Music Hall and albums and projects and my daughter not only got away from us, she got away from God and eventually over two and a half years, horror, nightmare, dark tunnel with no light at the end. She left our house and my oldest girl was not in the house, I don't know where she was at midnight and how God got me through that period, I'm just thinking now, all the times I got that car on Sunday morning and drove to the church and wept from the driveway to the door of the church, I was weeping, saying, God, I don't want to make myself the center of attraction, these people going through such problems, I'm there for them, I'll give my life for them if need be, but God, please my Chrissy, God, my Chrissy, my wife had surgery then, got discouraged and was saying, look, the devil came and told her, look, fine, you want to influence people, you want to start churches and do all this good stuff, fine, but I'm going to have your children, I'm going to have all three, I got the first one, I'm coming for the next two and my wife one day just told me unilaterally, listen, I'm leaving, you want to stay, you can stay, but I'm taking my two children out, you can't raise them here, we can't live here and I said, Carol, we can't just do that, you just can't unilaterally take off without knowing what God wants you to do, but she was just down, had surgery, a lot of problems, but it was in the middle of that as God brought her out that he gave her a song that's touched so many people around the country, he's been faithful, so faithful to me that God, even when you can't pray, God is something to carry you through, well, toward the end of this, when Chrissy was really out there, now look, I'm like a lot of you, I'm a leader type, you talk, you yell, you scream, you maneuver, you try to change it through money, you know, you just, you just work at it, but every time I touched it, she got worse, my wife will tell you, toward the end of this period, right around Thanksgiving time, God spoke to me and said, stop crying, stop screaming, stop talking to other people, don't talk to anyone and don't see your daughter again until I change it, but just call on me, you've preached it, now do it, do it, and I cut off saying my daughter, she'd become a mother by then and we were in trouble sitting and around November, I made a covenant with God, God, you will do this and when you do it, everywhere you send me, I'll tell everyone what you did, just an answer to prayer, November, December, January went through of that year, February came, this is about six years ago now and we were in a Tuesday night prayer meeting, but I had such, I, you know, you never learn how to pray except by praying, all the talk in the seminars, they just help a little bit, but you only learn the secrets of praying by praying, nobody can tell you, it's something you learn instinctively by the Holy Ghost and in this Tuesday night prayer meeting, a note was sent up to me by a girl who can hear from God, strange note, while we were all waiting on God and praising God out loud, this note came and said, I feel you're supposed to stop the service right now and pray for your daughter, Chris, the church knew, the leadership knew in a vague way that we were hurting, I said, God, is this really you? I felt after a while that it was the Lord, I was careful, I waited for the right moment, I said, look, I'm calling one of my associate pastors up here, church stand, hold hands, balcony, the whole downstairs, this is Tuesday night, close thing to heaven, that I experienced in my life every week and I said, look, my daughter is out of it, she thinks up is down and down is up, she thinks right is wrong and wrong is right, but I know God's hand is on her, but right now, she's just out there, I said, he's going to pray and would you pray? And what ensued was him praying, I just stood behind him with my hands on his back, my tear ducts had run dry, but I called out to God the best I knew, but the church turned into a labor room, have you ever been to where women give birth? It's not pretty, but it works, there was a groaning, there was a calling out to God, there was a sense, if I could say it, of Satan, you will not have her, you will not have her, she's coming back, Carol, my brother, could you just go to the piano, please? And I need thee, oh, I need thee, and I was overwhelmed, it literally almost knocked me over, the force of the calling on God, oh, my goodness, I came home that night and I said to my wife, she was sitting at the table, I said, Carol, it's over, she said, what's over? I said, it's over with Christy, she said, how do you know? I said, Christy, Carol, if there's a God in heaven, it's over, you had experienced what I saw, and what I felt, for the very first principle, when you call, I will answer, in your day of trouble, don't get clever, call, call, don't try to work it out, you can't, it's too big, call, I'll help you, just about the very next morning, Sammy and Jenny were with me, our dear friends, the pastor in Florida, they had been involved in this praying, and helping, I was shaving, my wife burst to the bathroom door, she says, go downstairs, Christy's here, I said, Christy's here, I hadn't seen her in months, she said, I'll hold the baby, just go down, I said, but Carol, she said, just go down, I wiped off the shave foam, I went down the stairs, I can still see myself now, heart pounding, I went in, and there was my daughter, on the kitchen floor, crawling on her hands and knees, just weeping, and I went, not knowing what was happening, and she had been so deceptive, and hard for so long, I said, Christy, and she grabbed my pants leg, and she said, daddy, I've sinned against God, daddy, I've sinned against myself, I've sinned against you and mommy, but daddy, who prayed for me last night, daddy, who prayed for me last night, daddy, and she drew herself up, she grabbed me, she said, who prayed, I said, well, we've been praying, but somebody, we really prayed, she said, daddy, in the middle of the night, God woke me up out of my sleep, and showed me just heading toward this, this abyss, and there was no bottom to it, and then at the same time, that I was so frightened and alarmed, and I saw what I was doing, he put his arms around me and said, but I still love you, daddy, who was praying, tell me the truth, daddy, who was praying, because God came to me in the middle of the night, and I looked at her eyes, and she was the daughter we had raised, and she was the child I knew, she has since led the music program at a Bible school for three or four years now, she's married, her husband's a pastor in the Midwest, she's written songs, she directs a choir, just like her mother, doesn't know what she's doing, just keeps doing it, just can't read, can't write, just putting it out for the glory of God, you know what some of you here, your sons and daughters are not the way you dedicated them to be, and you know what, why don't you stop pledging, they're not doing well spiritually, they're all wrapped up in this world, or maybe it's a grandson or granddaughter, one of your own, your own spouse, one of your own parents, and you know what we do, we talk about this stuff, and sometimes we get so discouraged because they don't change, we let go of the horns of the altar, we stop calling on God, we stop with that urgency of, oh God, you're going to turn this around, let's pray together.