In this sermon, the preacher begins by acknowledging that his plan may change as he allows God to lead the service. He shares a humorous anecdote about being mistaken for being hard of hearing. The preacher encourages the congregation to come and meet with the Lord, promising to preach from the same book and about the same Jesus as their pastor. He invites them to witness God's mighty works and emphasizes the importance of prayer. The sermon concludes with a closing song and a reminder to see the king. The preacher then introduces the message from Ephesians 6:18, expressing his belief that God wants to do a greater work in the church and starting with an elementary but necessary topic.

Tonight, it's good to be here. And I trust that we'll have a great time with the Lord. I know the Lord's willing. Amen. You do know how to say amen. I hope I don't have to ask for them too often. But it is good to be here. And I'm looking forward to these days. This has been a rich experience tonight. To sense the presence of the Lord in your midst. And I'm looking forward to just starting off where He is. Rather than trying to start off where He's not. And so I want to get in and cooperate with Him. Don't you? I really do. And I believe the Lord has really impressed me. Tonight, to just share something out of my heart. In a way that will, I believe, fit right into the area of where you are. And where you need to fortify yourselves. And where you need to discover yourselves. And where you need to cooperate with the Lord yourselves. To accomplish God's end. And I understand that accomplishing God's end is what this is all about. What God wants is what we want. Amen? Now, I wish I could give you some systematic plan. But about the time I get up here and tell you what I'd like to do, God will change it. So all I can tell you is you just come. And we'll meet with the Lord. Amen. Thank you. You're slow. If you don't say amen for me, I'll have to do it myself. I usually give you a little time, and this is the clue. Right here. Somewhere a few weeks ago, I was being used by videotape in a seminary as some kind of preacher. I don't know. I think a preacher. I should say illiterate, but one that illustrated, a great illustrator. That's what it was. And the professor said, you know, Brother Beasley was extremely ill. And I guess it left him hard of hearing. Because he's always holding his hand up to his ear like that. One of the boys in the class knew me real well. And he said to his professor, he's not hard of hearing, so there's just nothing to hear. And he's wanting a response. So, you know, I have my own personal way of presenting the truth. And it'll take you a couple of days to get used to me. But I promise you I'll preach the same old book and the same Jesus that your pastor preaches. And you'll get used to me in a couple of days. And we're going to see God do some great and mighty things. And if you don't believe that, you just come. And if you want to miss out on it, that's your problem. We're going to pray for you and see God move mightily in these days. Back about 26 years ago, I walked into a pastor's study. And I could see all of my faults, my shortcomings, my problems, all of them. And I mean I was discouraged. And being a boy with dyslexia, problem with dyslexia, do any of you know what that is? A few of you. It's where you see words like was and saw. You see backwards. A visual perception problem. And I was a terribly confused boy. But I loved Jesus. And I was saved and called to preach. And got ready to get married. But the devil was really fighting me. And I walked in to talk to my pastor. And I said to him, I said, I just don't know. I said, there's so much lacking in my life. There's a deficiency in me. And he said, you know, Manly, he said, whatever that deficiency is, whatever you lack in your life, if you will learn how to go to God in prayer, prayer will make up the difference. Brother, I'll tell you, my whole heart was set on fire by that statement. My whole heart was set on fire. I went out of there a changed fellow. You know, I've been changed ever since. I knew that day, and I know today, I run into a lot of people a lot smarter than I am. But I'll tell you one thing, friend. I've never run into anyone that could pray any better than I could. Amen. Well, I appreciate that. Amen. And I've discovered, brother, that I've run into a lot of people that had more on the ball as far as this old world's goods and things, intellect and all that is concerned. But I've never met any one, brother and sister, that could get to God any better, any quicker, not good. And that goes for you. Amen. Amen. I'm not going to stick it up there unless I want you to say amen. There's a verse in the book of Ephesians, the sixth chapter, just that introduced the message tonight. And I'll do a little teaching, but basically exhorting here tonight, because I believe this is what God really wants me to say to you. And I want to say to you tonight, as I come to you, I sense. Now, listen to me carefully, because you'll realize that God really tells me, shows me some things sometimes. And I believe that God is not only doing a great work in this church, but he wants to lay a broader foundation that he might do a greater work in this church. And I believe that this week the Lord wants me to start out in an area that I feel is so elementary but so necessary. And yet, you don't want to say that it's elementary. It's only elementary in that it comes on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 series. That's the way it's elementary. It's not elementary in that it's insignificant or it's simple. The seventeenth verse of the sixth chapter of the book of Ephesians says, Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Now, this verse says praying always with all kinds of prayer. All kinds of prayer. Now, when you think about prayer, how many different kinds of prayer do you think about? Can you think about? As I have studied the Bible through the years, I've run into about five different types of prayer. Now, you could spread these five types into seven different types, but I think as I mention them you realize that many of them can be fused together very easily. The first kind of thing that we want to say about prayer is to come to a definition of prayer that defines all the different kinds of prayer. Now, listen to me carefully. I believe that prayer is communion. Now, communion is not only you talking to someone, but it's someone talking back to you. There is a communion set up. And I believe that prayer in the Bible is communion. When men prayed in the Bible, they had communion with God. Their prayers not only affected God, but their prayers affected man. And their prayers not only affected God and man, but their prayers affected the devil. Now, believing that prayer is communion, let me just say that there are several different kinds of prayer. One is confession. It's the first kind of prayer that I can think about. And confession is saying what God says about a thing. The basis of confession is honesty. One time I was in a meeting, and you need to pray for me tonight. I'll just stop and say this, because I got so much that I could say, and there's such a free spirit and good spirit here that I might be preaching at midnight. And, you know, I don't want to keep you too long. I want to keep you long enough, but I don't want to keep you too long, because you have to go to work tonight, and I want you back tomorrow night. And so you pray for me that I'll know how to pace myself. Anyway, this meeting I was in, there was a deacon walked in one night, and walked up to the pulpit and said, Pastor, I would like to confess tonight before the church. The pastor said, well, you know, the only sins that need to be confessed to the church are sins that affected the church, and you have sinned to the degree that the church is affected. He said, I'm a deacon in this church, I'm a leader in this church, and I have committed a sin that's affected this church, and I need to confess to that degree. And so the pastor said, well, brother, what do you think you need to confess? He said, I need to confess murder. Well, Lord, I was standing there, and that pastor turned about three different colors, and I turned a couple myself, and I couldn't believe it. Here's a man saying he wanted to confess murder. And so we let him. At the right time in the meeting, we let him. And you know what he did? That day he'd had a run-in with a man that had been antagonizing him for about six months, and he had actually so resented that man and hated that man that he had picked up a straight razor, he was the owner of a barber shop, a barber, and he picked up a straight razor and headed for that man and told that man, said, if you don't get out of here, I'll kill you. And the Holy Spirit showed that man that hate was murder. And that man needed to confess murder. Well, I learned something from that deacon that night. Now, that's prayer. Confession is prayer. Now, not only is there confession, but there's petition. Petition is asking God for something. The basis of petition is a desire or a need. You have a need or you have a desire. You ought to write out your desires, and you ought to write out your needs, and you petition God for these needs and desires. Not only is there petition, but there's thanksgiving, praise, adoration. We call this thanksgiving. We call it praise. We call it adoration. All three of those to me is the same thing. The basis of praise is recognizing God for who He is and what He's doing. When you see God as Lord, brother, you bow down wherever you are and whoever you are, and you praise Him when you see Him as Lord. I mean, when you see that He's in charge of the living and He's in charge of the dead, you praise Him as Lord. When you see, friends, that He's in charge of the good and He's in charge of the bad, you praise Him as Lord. The basis of praise is recognizing God for who He is and what He's doing. Now, the next type of prayer is intercession. Intercession is, the basis for intercession is recognition, identification, and participation. You look to the life of the Lord Jesus. He recognized our need as sinners. He identified Himself with us as sinners. And He participated in the debt for us as sinners that we might have eternal life. Jesus was the great intercessor. I think a story that illustrates the definition of an intercessor better than anything I know of is the story that I learned from a man that I knew that gave his life for his neighbor. The pastor was baptizing this man's son on Wednesday night. The pastor was standing in the baptistry and asked the congregation before him from the baptistry, How many of you have a prayer request tonight? And this man, Henry Russell, stood up and said, I do, Pastor. He'd just baptized Henry Russell's son. The pastor stopped Henry Russell and said, Henry, do not make a prayer request unless you are willing to be the means by which that request is answered. Henry Russell said, Sir, if it takes my life to see my neighbor saved, I want to see my neighbor saved, I willingly give my life. And in less than a week, Henry Russell was dead, but his neighbor was saved. Now, never pray a prayer unless you're willing to be the means by which that prayer is answered. That's intercession. Now, there's another type of prayer. Are you familiar with this next type that I'm going to share with you? There's another type of prayer. I call it the spoken word of faith. Now, I'm going to give you the chapter and verse for this particular kind of prayer, because this is a little new to us traditional Baptists. And so, it's the spoken word of faith, Mark 11, 22, 23, and 24. Say unto this mountain, Be thou removed whatsoever thou sayest, and doubt not, it shall what? Shall come to pass. Now, I call this the spoken word of faith. This is another type of confession. This is saying what God says. Now, this is a form of prayer. It's declaring what God declares. It really is. God declares in his word that Satan is a defeated foe. And a child of God discovers that Satan is a defeated foe. So, the basis, and then stands up and declares Satan is a defeated foe. The basis of this prayer, the spoken word of faith, is the rhema of God, is the word of God, the quickened, personalized word of God. God's word being made real to you for a given situation. And when that word is given to you for a given situation, you can stand up and declare that revival is now. John is being saved now. Mary is being saved now. Bill is being saved now. God's glory is here now. You can stand up and declare it so when it's not so, in order for it to be so, because God says it's so. And when you say it's so, it is so. And I'll tell you, beloved, that's another type of prayer. Now, prayer is communion. And to me, no one has ever prayed really about an issue to have the answer in their hands or in their heart. Now, if I could get this across to you, I believe God would do some unusual things this week. As I came to this service tonight, I planned to go a different direction all day. But when I got in my room and got along, the Lord said, I want you to just simply talk to those people about praying. And I tell you, this revolutionized my life about twenty-something years ago. When I discovered that real, genuine prayer was communion. And it wasn't just talking to God, but it was God talking to me. And when I talked to God and God talked to me, there was communion in my life. I had an answer from God. I mean, God really spoke to me. He spoke to me in my hand by giving me the answer in my hand. Or He spoke to me by giving me the answer in my heart. Do you know the difference? Now, when I talk about God answering and giving you the answer in your hand, I'm talking about like the crowd that prayed for Peter to be released from jail. They prayed for Peter to be released from jail. And their faith was quite faulty, wasn't it? Because, brother, they were shocked when he was at the gate. Amen. That's encouraging to a bunch of doubting Thomases. But I want you to know, they still had enough faith to pray, blessed God. Amen. They came and prayed. And they were there praying. Amen. And there Peter was at the gate. Now, that's what you call getting the answer in your hand. Amen. I remember one time, boy, I was... Now and then, you know, I get stirred up, man, and just wax heavy. You know, I mean, just poured on. And, man, back in my younger days, I could preach for an hour and a half and never catch a breath. And I mean, you know, just go at it. You've seen the kind. And I thought the louder you hollered, the better the sermon was. And so I was preaching like that. And I made the statement that, blessed God, you'd never prayed until you had the answer in your hand or in your heart. So a little old girl came up to me after the service. And she said, Brother Manley, she said, I heard you tonight. And I thought, you know, how you talk. I thought, yeah, I know you did. You sat there and counted your toes while I preached. Thought about how wonderful it was going to be to get out of here and go get you a moth or something like that. And so I just said, yeah, I understand it. She said, no, preacher. She said, Brother Manley. She said, I heard you tonight. She said, I have a boyfriend that's lost without Jesus. And she said, I heard you say that you should pray until you have the answer in your hand or in your heart. And she said, I want to see my boyfriend saved. And she said, I'd like to get you to pray with me. Now, I still thought she was just playing the game. I thought, yes, you want me to go and stay up all night praying for that boy to get saved while you go out here and play. I said, well, young lady, I just don't think I could accommodate, you know, you to praying for your boyfriend. I said, it wouldn't look right for me and you to stay down here at the church and pray until we got an answer in our hands or in our heart. She said, well, you know, I've thought about that. And she said, I've talked with my mother, and she said she'd stay with us. Did you know, I'm going to make a long story short. Do you know what that girl did? She backed me right into the corner where there was nothing left for me to do but pray. I told the pastor what was going on. He said, well, I'm going to take some people home, then I'll be back. That girl, that mother, and myself got on our knees and started praying. And brother, when you think you'll have to spend the whole night praying for something, I'll guarantee you'll get down to business. And we got down to business. I mean, we got down to business. And I'm sure that we had not prayed 10, 15 minutes. And I heard someone come in the door. And the next thing I knew, someone was calling my name, Mr. Beasley, tapping me on the shoulder. And I looked around, and it was that young man. And he said, Preacher, I was sitting home. I stayed out of church tonight because I just flat was afraid to come. But he said, I got under such conviction I couldn't stand it. He said, I've come. Could you tell me how to be safe? Now, friends, that's what you call getting it in your hand. Amen. Well, what do you mean, Preacher, when you say get the answer in your heart? Well, when you get the answer in your heart, it means that the Holy Spirit witnesses to your spirit in your heart that the thing that you have been asking God for has been granted. Has been granted. And you have such assurance that you thank God for it and praise God as if it's already so. Now, everything that you and I ask God, go to God in prayer for, we should stay with the Lord till we have the answer in our hands or in our heart. I remember a man that I wanted to be saved so bad. I wanted him saved so bad. I finally ran across 1 John 5, 14 and 15. This is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. And you know, this we do know, that if he hears us, we have the petition we desire of him. And I knew it was God's will to save this man. I knew it was. I knew it was because Jesus paid for him at Calvary. I knew it was God's will to save him because God put a burden on my heart to get him saved. And I just knew that that was the nature of God to save that man. And I knew that God was hearing me when I prayed. But I just couldn't believe that that man was being saved. So I went to the woods and I got down and I meant business with God. And before I left those woods, I had an assurance in my heart that that man was good as saved. You know what I did? I went to that man, I put my arms around him and said, I love you and I want you to know something. If you died today, God would resurrect you from the dead to save you. You can't go to hell. Did you know for the next nine months I had lunch with that man every Sunday? And did you know every Sunday I'd say, I love you and you can't go to hell? Because Jesus has given me your life. And that man got saved after nine months. That man was my daddy. Yes sir. Yes sirree, brother. I want you to know something, friend. You can have the answer in your hand or you can have the answer in your heart. Yes sir. Prayer has so much power. Did you know prayer has so much power that prayer can do anything God can do? When God laid out the plan to release God upon man, He taught man to pray. He said pray. Did you know prayer can get anything done God can get done? Nothing else can. Nothing else in this world can do that. But I want you to know prayer can. Anything God Himself can do, God Himself can do. In Atlanta, Georgia, did you know just a little old saint, man or woman, boy or girl, on their knees could get the same identical thing done? Yes sir. I mean, brother, what a blessing. What a thrill. What a privilege. What a joy just to be able to know that my dear friend's prayer tonight is so powerful that prayer can do anything in this world God can do. Anything God in this world can do for your city, prayer can do the same thing. God has appointed prayer to be the means by which God is released and His mighty power, and His mighty, mighty power. What? I remember some years ago, I remember that the Lord was just teaching me how powerful prayer was. And I needed to go to Austin, Texas, from Beaumont, Texas. I checked with the airport, and they had no planes flying. Checked no trains, no way to get to Austin. A man, the Lord had impressed me to call a man that had a private plane. I called him. He said that he would call his pilot, and the pilot would call me. And the pilot called me after a while and said, Preacher, I can't fly you to Austin because the weather's so bad. There's no way you can get to Austin. So I said, Well, Gerald, why don't you meet me at the airport for a cup of coffee? I lived about 15 minutes away from the airport, and he did too. So I got off the phone to Gerald, and I called the man that I knew that could pray. And I said, Ray, God wants me in Austin, in the United States. There is a cloud covering about 200 feet off the ground, and I can't get to Austin. And so we started praying. About the time I hung the phone up from talking to Ray, there was a knock at my door, front door. And I went, and there was a preacher. And I let him in, and I told him what I was praying for. And I said, I'm praying that God will change the course of the universe to get me to Austin, Texas, by in the morning. We went to the airport. About 30 minutes had passed since we prayed, and we met Gerald. I said, Gerald, would you go up and check with the weather bureau and see if the weather's changed in the last 30 minutes? He said, Preacher, I'm not stupid. He said, I have to fly out of here every day. And he said, I talk to these men every day. And he said it's stupid to go and ask them if the weather's changed in the last 30 minutes. He said, I won't do it. I said, God just brought it all out. I said, well, let me tell you something, Gerald. We prayed that God will change the course of the universe. We prayed about 30 minutes ago, would you go and see if God's done something? He said, since you put it like that, I'll go. He walked up there, went upstairs in this tower, came down in about 15 minutes, tears just springing down his face. What's wrong, Gerald? He said, listen, they said about 30 minutes ago, a wind came in from the northwest that's coming across the United States that's changing the weather so fast that before we can get our clothes and get in an airplane, you can fly to Austin, Texas. Beloved, we got in that airplane, flew to Austin, Texas. It took us several hours to get to Austin, Texas from Beaumont, and it took him 55 minutes to fly back because he was flying into that wind going and flying with it coming back. I mean, Fred, it was something else. It was beautiful. What I'm saying to you tonight is this. I got up and preached that next morning, and nine souls walked down that aisle. Got up and preached that night. I forgot how many. Ninety-eight souls walked the aisles in that church that week, and they only had 49 members. I mean, you're talking about revival. I mean, God came in mighty, mighty, mighty power. Now, let me do something. Let me challenge you in the name of Jesus tonight. Now, I've done what God wanted me to do. Let me challenge you in the name of Jesus to take every item you are praying about tonight and stay with God in these prayer meetings this week until you get the answer in your hand or you get the answer in your heart. Would you do that? Would you do that? Would you bow your heads with me, please? Let me ask you this. Do you have a friend here tonight that's not saved, that's in the building, that's never been born of the Spirit of God, and you're praying that Jesus is saved of him? Would you step up your hand if you have a friend here tonight that you're praying for, that you're praying that the Lord Jesus will save? Let me ask you this, dear child of God. If the Lord has talked to your heart tonight, are you sensitive enough to just be honest about your condition, and you'll let Jesus have his way in your heart? Are you broken enough over your sin that you realize you haven't been praying as you should, and you'll just get that heart right with the Lord? Why don't you tonight, as this invitation is given, make a covenant with the Lord right here in this service tonight that you're going to pray like God wants you to pray. Would you do that? And then let me say this to you. If you're here tonight, and you're not a saved person, you've never been born of the Spirit of God, you've never been washed in the blood of the Lamb, and you're a miserable person, and you know you're a sinner, and you want Jesus to save you, would you slip up your hand, just slip it up, and just say, Pray for me, Preacher. I'm not saved. I've never been born of the Spirit. I've never been to Jesus. I've never been washed in the blood. I want Him to save me. Would you slip up your hand? We're going to stand for a word of prayer, and we're going to ask you to respond to the invitation, whether you're saved or whether you're lost. If God's dealt with your heart tonight in this simple devotional message, that I believe it's what God wanted me to bring, I believe it is, we're going to ask you to respond. Would you stand? Brother Marion prepares to sing. Lord Jesus, honor Yourself. Honor Yourself here tonight. Lord, You're here. I know You're here. Lord, honor Yourself by giving Your people wisdom in Jesus' name. As the choir sings and you continue to pray, would you come? Would you? Let me say this to you about the strategy of Satan. The strategy of Satan is to first keep you from seeing you have a need. And then if he lets you see you have a need, then he wants you to rationalize your way into not making a commitment that will lead you in to a definite experience with God. He just wants you to be passive, apathetic, hoping that someone else will pay the price for your children, hoping someone else will pray for that condition you have need of, an answer for, and so on. So I pray tonight that God's Spirit will just give you wisdom. Wisdom. I'm really not trying to get people down the aisle unless God has dealt with you, but I believe He's dealt with multitudes of people tonight. I believe if He had His way, there would be this many people in prayer meeting tomorrow night. You know? Just one more stanzas of an invitation, that's all. Unless there is an unusual move towards God. There's a couple of things that I feel impressed to ask you to do concerning the services the rest of the week, and particularly relating to prayer as Brother Manley has expressed to us tonight. I don't believe that God's going to do any more for us than we are willing to pray for specifically. Now, all of us know people who are lost, and all of us know people who are out of fellowship with the Lord, and all of us know people who need the ministry of this church in their lives. And tonight when you go home, I want you to find a few minutes to get alone with God, and ask Him to bring to your mind anybody that you need to contact, anybody that you need to help, somebody that you may need to go work for or babysit for while they come to church tomorrow night. Just ask the Lord to give you an understanding of what He wants you to do, and then go out and be about doing what God asks you to do. It may be to go next door and speak to your neighbor and ask them to come. It may be to get on the telephone and call someone and ask them to come. Whatever God asks, you do it. That's the first thing. And then the second thing is, I want you to pray continuously, asking the Lord to save souls during this week. Now, it may not be that you may not know the person or persons or people that God wants to save, but God will answer your prayer even though you don't know who you're praying for. He'll hear you, and He'll answer you. So, it all centers around prayer. We want you to pray much, and we want you to come and be present. Bring with you those who need to be saved or who need to get their hearts right with the Lord. Now, after our benediction tonight, downstairs in the Fellowship Hall, which is here to my left, we've got this bookstore set up. Brother Manley's books are down there and some tapes. Much of what you've heard him say tonight about prayer is found in one of two workbooks, number one or number two, that are related to faith. Those books are available for you. We'll have people down there to wait on you, serve you as you go. And then our youth has a supplement to that part of the bookstore with many books that have been selected and brought down for the purpose of you getting them. And some of the profits that will be made from those will go for their trips this summer, one mission trip to Nassau and the other a retreat down to Daytona. So, you just go down and browse. Now, it will only be open after each service. It will not be open before or during any of the services. Also in the morning, ten o'clock, here in the auditorium, we'll have service. Brother Marion will be singing, Brother Manley will be preaching, and you'll be present. We hope and pray. Prayer in the morning at nine-thirty and prayer tomorrow evening at seven. That's probably the most important part of all the service. That stand be dismissed. Brother, lead us in a closing chorus, our closing song of rejoicing. Very soon we're going to see the King.