Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of structured prayer in developing a deeper fellowship with God. He encourages believers to create personal prayer lists that focus on their inner lives, ministries, and social issues, asserting that having a structured approach leads to more focused and fruitful prayer. Bickle outlines ten specific prayers aimed at strengthening the inner man, highlighting the importance of asking for God's wisdom, love, and endurance. He stresses that prayer is not just about routine but about cultivating a relationship with God, which requires intentionality and a right understanding of God's character. Ultimately, Bickle calls for believers to actively engage in prayer to experience the fullness of God's presence and power in their lives.

Father, we thank you in the name of Jesus as we open our heart to you and we ask you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation to touch us even now. Amen. Well, on Sunday I spoke about a structure for our overall prayer life and I broke our prayer life down into several different areas, three main areas, and then broke it down to three areas for each of those areas and then three subunits for each one of those. And the point being is that I have found over the years that if I have a prayer list and a structure to my prayer life, I end up with focus. And if I have focus in my prayer, I end up praying a whole lot more. I want to say that to you again in paragraph A here. I want to recommend every one of you developing a personal prayer list, a prayer list for your personal life, a prayer list for people and places that you pray for, that's the second huge arena category, and the third would be for social issues, crisis or justice issues, etc. I don't want to go through all those three main categories of prayer right now, but I want to focus in on the personal life. But I want to leave you with this idea that if you will get a prayer list, as simple as that is, I have found most people never do it. But if you will do it, I want to guarantee you something. If you have a heart of prayer, if you have a sincere desire to pray and you'll work on your schedule, you will pray significantly more if you have a prayer list. Now I've been trying, I've been contending for prayer for 18, I'm 52, 34 years, 18 years old when I first started a prayer list. My leader told me to do that. I've had one ever since. And I have found that when people, and because I prayed all these years, certainly I could have prayed more, but you would think having done it for years and mostly hours a day for years, that I would maybe not need a prayer list. But having done it all these years, I say with greater conviction than ever, without that prayer list, I would have prayed significantly less. It's a prayer list in combination with a scheduled life where I actually schedule my prayer time. And then I have a structure in my prayer time that is scheduled, both things. I put it on the calendar. And when I come to the, before the Lord, I actually have some structure I'm following. Now, lest you be afraid that that would quench your heart, I leave my prayer list anytime I want to. And I leave it often. And then when I'm going through my prayer list, and I'm going to give you 10 specific prayers for your own personal life, for your inner man. And I not only leave my prayer list often, because I feel an inspiration, I omit various requests on a regular basis. Some days I spend a lot of time on request one or two, nothing on three and four, and the other day's opposite. And then on other occasions, I have here in paragraph A, I'll do something a little bit different. I want to encourage you to, I have paragraph A at the end, read, take you about an hour to do it, two hours if you do it slow or longer. Psalm 119 in a devotional way. What I mean is you pray it back to God. It is one of the most intensive chapters of scripture that would connect your heart to God. Psalm 119. I don't know what to do. Pray Psalm 119 or revel. I mean, uh, John 14, 15, 16, and 17, the same way, or I give what I consider to be seven prayers of the new Testament. But if I'm just not in the mood for my prayer list, you could go down these seven prayers because they're all the main prayers are covered in these seven. And so I just put them down there. But as a rule, as a rule, I would encourage you to start with a prayer list and to schedule your prayer time. Again, I don't keep my schedule a hundred percent and I don't stay on my prayer list. But with that schedule and with that prayer list, I find I'm a, you know, maybe 80, 85% focused. And that's a whole lot over the years compared to what would have happened if I would not have had that. And so I highly recommend that I've been teaching on prayer, you know, with energy for these 34 years that I've been really sick. I started when I was 18 years old in college, praying an hour a day with a prayer list and hating prayer, really hating it, but committed to it. And I've, by the grace of God, I've stayed with it all these years. And having had that experience and taught on it all these years, most people never maintain a prayer life. And it isn't because they don't love God. It's because prayer isn't scheduled in their weekly routine. Number one, very simple. Number two, when it is scheduled, they don't know what to do. They don't have a prayer list. They don't have any kind of structure. They get there and they just say, Holy Spirit, teach me, lead me. And the Holy Spirit might whisper, if we were on better talking terms, I would lead you better. He doesn't exactly say that, but if you read between the gaps, he'd say, I would lead you, but we don't. I'm not going to not lead you all day and then suddenly lead you now. So I found out I needed a little bit of jumpstart to get going. And I found out the third thing that helps is a right paradigm of God. God as a father, a tender father, and Jesus as a passionate bridegroom. Put it on your schedule, get a prayer list, have a right paradigm of God. And I tell you, a person with a heart for God, 10 years later, you'll look back and the majority of the time, 50, 60, 70, 80% of the time, you will be faithful to your prayer life. If you don't do that, 10 years will come and go. If you're normal, you'll look back with great pain over your lack of prayer in the last 10 years. And I've, again, been preaching on prayer for over 30 years and I've watched this. It is like clockwork. It's about 99% accurate, what I've just said, looking in hindsight of all these sincere people who can't manage it. They just can't manage to stay with it. I've heard this prayer, this for years, and it's just absolutely false. I've heard this as a pastor of a church and leading in prayer. Well, Mike, we're not like you. You're different. I go, no, I'm not different. I'm not different. Well, that's Mike. He does that. No, I have a schedule. I have a prayer list and I have a God that's smiling at me. You have a schedule. You have a prayer list and you have the image of a smiling God. You will be surprised how much you will pray in the next 10 years. You don't have those three things. Sincere as you want to be, you will look back in 10 years. If you're normal, you might be that exception and you will have pain 10 years later over the lack of prayer in your life. Okay. So let's move on now and get a little bit more structure. We're still in the review. So tonight we're going to look at 10 requests and we're not going to break them down in real great detail. They're pretty simple concepts, three main categories, paragraph B, the personal life. That's category number one. That's what we're going to look at tonight. People in places, and you can break this down any way you want and social issues. Number one under B under the personal life. When I pray for my personal life, I break it down into three areas, three areas, my inner life, my inner man. That's what we're going to talk about tonight. My ministry and the circumstances of my life, three distinct areas. Now they have a little overlap. Of course, my point isn't to be scientifically precise, but in the general, uh, when I pray for my personal life, three specific areas, my inner man, and that's what we're going to look at tonight. 10 area. We're going to look at 10 specific areas of that. My ministry. I want to see power and wisdom and fruitfulness. And then my circumstances. And you can, uh, look at the notes and look at more about that. Okay. Paragraph C I'm still on review from Sunday. When I think about all of these different categories of prayer, almost every prayer that I have prayed in 30 years, almost every prayer is one of three categories of three main prayer requests, gifts, fruit, or wisdom. And I, and I'm only saying that to you to help you organize your thinking. There's an occasional prayer that isn't one of those, but mostly it's gifts. And in other words, in the words gifts, I'm using in a generic sense, you're crying out for the power of God. But I'm thinking about the gifts of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit and the wisdom of the spirit, the power of God, the character of God and the mind of God. So the power of God, the character of God, or the mind of God gifts, fruit wisdom. Again, I'm just using those terms in the broadest sense, the power of God, the character of God, the mind of God, almost every prayer I've ever prayed. Almost the vast majority are in one of those three main categories. And so as, as we're approaching our prayer life, it helps you if you understand that because it gives you a little bit of focus. And again, with focus, you'll actually do it. You'll actually do it. I mean, how many times have I come to my prayer time? I'm talking about leader at IHOP, nine years, here we are. Plus, you know, the years I've had a prayer ministry before that, et cetera, et cetera, whatever. I come to IHOP, ready to go. I mean, if one guy ought to be prepared for a prayer meeting at IHOP, it's me, you know, 30 years later, leading in prayer ministry, I come, I go, oh no, I'm spiritually feel disconnected. Prayer feels boring. I don't want to do it. How many of you ever had that feeling? Well, there you have it. I have that feeling, but I'm not afraid of that feeling. In my early days, I was afraid of that feeling. That feeling created panic. Oh no, this is going to be more bitter than death. And it seemed that way for some time. I mean, it seemed bitter. I mean, prayer was, it wasn't just boring. It was oppressive. I mean, I could have handled boring. It was oppressive. It was worse than boring. But you think after some years that would go away. No, I'll come and I'll say, ah, it's two o'clock in the afternoon. I'll be up here in my prayer station behind this little window up here. Sometimes I'm out here. Mostly I'm up here for several reasons. And the main one is so I'm not distracted by everybody saying hi to me. That's really the main reason to be really honest. And so, and that way I get to talk to worship teams, et cetera, et cetera, and have a communication leadership team and still be in the prayer room. That's kind of cheating, isn't it? That I get to be up here and get to have my coffee. You guys don't get the coffee out there. I get the coffee up here a little bit unfair, but that's how it is for now. Okay. So I'll be up there two o'clock and I'll go, ah, two o'clock. Take a deep sigh. I don't feel like praying. I say, I'm not worried about that. I've been here thousands of times and it goes beyond. I don't feel like praying, but it's the time. And I'm going to stick with my time and I don't stick with a hundred percent, but mostly over the years. And you really will stick with it mostly. Then I go, now I've, I got it. I'm there. I've showed up. I'm sitting in the chair. Now I get the next problem. I mean, I know the Bible a little bit over the years of teaching. I go, I don't know what to pray. I am completely blank. God, I know lots of Bible verses. Oh, come on. I could, Lord touch me. I go blank. See if I ever go blank in a prayer meeting blank. Lord, I know there's lots of great verses. I really love. I can't think of one. I'm not joking. That sounds cute. Like, oh, he's really not. I really mean that. I look at my prayer list. I go, oh, of course my favorite verse. And I look at the next one. Oh, of course. I love this one. I've prayed it for years. I can't think of any of them when I start, not every time, but sometimes it's really true. Even though I've gone over them for years, I just go, uh, I'll just go blank. But I find a prayer list helps me when I don't have any special inspiration. Now, when I have the inspiration, I go with it. I just follow the inspiration, but many times I don't start with inspiration and I get it in the process of my prayer list. And then I leave my prayer list. I just goodbye. And I go wherever my heart goes. And when the inspiration leaves, I come back to the prayer list. And I found that I can, it's easy, not always exciting, but it's not confusing to pray for a couple hours. I mean, again, it's not always exciting. It may be boring, but it's not confusing. I know what to pray. I have something to focus on. But in the early days, it was boring, upgraded to oppressive. And I was confused. I had no idea what to say. And I was condemned, oppressed, confused, condemned. My spirit feels heavy. My mind is blank. And I feel like running from God instead of running to God. Does anybody have any relationship at all to what I'm talking about? God has an answer to this confused, I mean, oppressed, confused, and condemned. And I start many prayer meetings not feeling a thing. It's like Smith Wigglesworth, the famous healing evangelist in the 30s and 40s says, I begin in the flesh and I end in the spirit. He was one of the most powerfully anointed men for several decades in healing and power. He said, I begin with no feeling. And after a while, the feeling comes. He was talking about his prayer life with God. I begin in the flesh, I end in the spirit. What he meant is I began without inspiration. And in the course of time, inspiration often comes. And I find that with the prayer list, I began, I feel nothing, not necessarily oppressed, but a little bit just disconnected. Call it dull. If you don't want to say bored into oppressed, but I know what bored means spiritually. And I know what oppressed means too. But let's just say dull, just kind of passive, ambivalent. It's my prayer time. It's two o'clock. Ah, Lord, I shouldn't say, uh, you know, I am the director of IHOP. I should say, wow. Ah, two o'clock. My brain is blank. I don't feel anything, but here's what I have over some of those that are younger. I've done it a thousands of times and it works. The inspiration comes, the focus gets sharp. And then after it's over, I go, yes, I'm so glad I did it. And I feel God smiling at me. I go, yes, yes, yes. I'm so glad I did it. A prayer life is good. A prayer life is critical to get it scheduled, to have a prayer list. So you're focused when you're at your scheduled time and you have a right paradigm of God. So you have an open spirit to God instead of a closed condemned spirit while you're talking to him. Okay. Let's look at paragraph B, I mean, paragraph D, the acronym fellowship. That's, we're going to look at it's 10 letters fellowship. I want to give you a simple acronym to work off of now, the 10 prayer requests for your inner life. And you could make it 12 or whatever number you want. But I find that most of the subjects in the new Testament are covered in these 10. There might be one that escapes this list, but not very many. I can't think of any. They take the whole, the, uh, requests of gifts, fruit and wisdom and combine them together because there's so much overlap so much. When we're praying for our inner life, we're praying for the power, the gift dimension, the power dimension, and the character, which is fruit and the wisdom or the insight, the mind of God, the three of them overlap so much. It's hard to divide them. When you're talking about your inner life, it's a little bit easier when you're talking about your ministry or circumstances or praying for people or places or social issues. Our call is a call to fellowship. John said it truly. Our fellowship was with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ, Philippians two, Paul talked about fellowship with the spirit. So we fellowship with God, the father, the son, and the spirit. We have fellowship. So I'm using the acronym, uh, from the word fellowship. Okay. Let's go to, uh, Roman numeral two, Roman numeral two fellowship, 10 prayers for strength in my inner man. Now the premier prayer is the prayer for strength, for power to hit our inner man. Now, does it mean it's a surge of power? That's discernible every time because the Holy spirit power can touch your inner man in a way you discern it and you discern it by your tenderized or you have zeal tenderized. You know, you know that, that, that feeling of being loved and being in love with God, zeal, that strength in your spirit that makes you want to stand up and, and confront the things that are wrong and to go hard after what God is going hard after at zeal. Anyway, the, uh, when the inner man has strength on it, there's a, sometimes you feel it in an overt way. Sometimes you don't feel it at all, but the operation of the Holy spirit's power is still working in you. It's like the patient who gets an x-ray, you know, they could say to the doctor, I don't feel anything. The doctor says, don't worry. It's, it's still worked. It's still work or they may, uh, you know, get some kind of like chemotherapy or something. And that moment I didn't feel, I didn't feel very much. Is it working? And the doctor says, it's working. Well, when we're before the Holy spirit, sometimes you'll feel it. Many times you won't. Sometimes the power will be, uh, manifest in tenderness that not necessarily, not necessarily that's released that minute, but in the next days and weeks, that tenderness will be expressed or zeal or insight. You know, it takes God to know God. It takes power to actually understand God's heart, takes the power of the Holy spirit. So when do you understand the Bible a little bit, when you feel his presence a little bit, when you've got a desire for repentance and a desire for righteousness, beloved, that's not the work of the flesh. That's the work of the Holy spirit in your human spirit. So don't think of power in your spirit as something that's always a mountaintop experience. Sometimes, you know, it's like some medical treatments. I use the chemotherapy, uh, uh, uh, uh, illustration it's making its impact. It's destroying the negative, but it's not, uh, you're not feeling it. And, uh, so that's often how it works with the Holy spirit. Okay. So there's 10 requests or prayers for the release of strength in some facet of strength in our inner man for, you know, which is our, our, uh, mind, emotion and will in our spirit. Okay. First one F for fellowship. First one, fear of God. We pray that for the release of the fear of God. Now, wherever God promises something in the word of God, if he promises something, it's meant to be turned into believing prayer. A promise of God is not a guarantee. It's an invitation to partner with God in believing prayer. And if you take a promise and turn it into believing prayer, I would rather say, believing, persevering prayer. Well, there's three words I've used over the years. Holy believing, persevering prayer. That's the condition that the Bible talks about. Holy believing, persevering prayer. When God gives a promise, it is not a guarantee. Most of God's promises are not guarantee in terms of the release of them in our individual life. In this age, they are promises that have conditions. I'm talking about the promise of God in terms of our experience in this age, God promises us things as morning and believers is I'll do this for you, but you have to come before me in believing prayer. Believing, persevering prayer. Holy believing, persevering prayer is what the Bible makes clear is the condition. So, a promise is an invitation to partnership. It is not a guarantee that you will experience something in this age. Now, the age to come, you know, we have promises now for the age to come that are going to happen. I mean, the new heavens and the new earth are going to come. The second coming is going to happen. The devil is going to be thrown into the lake of fire. I mean, many, many things are guaranteed in that sense. But I'm talking about in terms of our personal experience in this life, a promise often, many of them, there are some exceptions. Most of them are invitations to partnership based on holy believing, persevering prayer. And if we will do it, if we'll press into God, he will give us more. If we don't press in, he starves us out of our lethargy by holding his resource back. He's not saying I'm mad at you. He's saying I'm so zealous to wake you up that I can't wake you up by the notion of partnering with me, the vision of partnering with me. I'll wake you up by starving you out by not releasing my hand on you to wake you up because I want you to talk to me because I want this thing in relationship. And so, when paragraph A, we're going to the fear of God, when the scripture says in Jeremiah 32, I will put my fear in their heart. What that tells us is that God, the fear of God is supernaturally imparted into the human spirit by the activity of the Holy Spirit. And it can be increased if we ask. The fear of God is supernaturally imparted. It's the work of the spirit in the human spirit. The fear of God is. We can ask for the fear of God and receive a greater measure. David prayed or the psalmist prayed in Psalm 86. He goes, unite my heart to fear your name. In other words, unite my heart to your heart. Unite my heart to your word. Unite my heart to you so that I would fear you. And so, if we ask for the fear of God, we will increase, not necessarily in a week, but over months and years, you will clearly increase the fear of God if you ask for it on a regular basis. Number two, E for endurance. Endurance. The word endurance in the New Testament is often the word patience. When the Bible talks about patience in one of the apostolic prayers, this is one of Paul's prayers here in Colossians 1. When Paul prays for patience, he's not talking that we about being more to having better listening skills in a relationship. He's not talking about impatience in terms of personal interactions, although that's certainly a biblical thing to grow in. He's talking about endurance, not quitting. And it takes supernatural grace to not quit. Most believers, I'm assuming, rarely ever pray that perseverance, or using the word here, endurance, they never pray for it. They complain about not having it, but they never pray for it. The Lord says, I told you I would give it to you. Why don't you ask me for it? Well, I'm just, you know, just so weighed down. Ask me. I will put energy in your spirit so you don't quit. It's the work of God not to quit. It's not a personality trait. Some of the most zealous people in the natural are the biggest quitters. They really are. They talk loud and they quit fast. So don't think of zeal as a personality trait. This perseverance is a work of the Spirit if we ask for it. Now, we don't want to quit in the mundane. We don't want to quit in difficult circumstances. The ministry's not working well, or real hard things in your life. Or we don't want to quit. We don't want to draw back on truth, what it's going to cost us in terms of resistance and persecution. And endurance means all three, but the setting of which Paul normally prays, it has its primary application in not quitting in the fear of man and the fear of persecution. It's paying the price, but it also equips us in the mundane as well as the difficult circumstances. So we pray there. I give you several prayers there. Paragraph C, the third one, love, L. There's many Bible verses where we're promised to experience more of God's love. And there's many prayers in the New Testament that actually Paul or Jesus prayed for love to be released. Love is released in proportion, not only proportion to prayer, but there is a relationship to the amount of time we pray for love to increase. Lord says, I'll give you more. If you can't live without it, I will give it to you. But if you can't live without it, ask me, because you don't have it on your own. I have it, but I'm waiting for you to ask me. As I mentioned Sunday, and I spent a lot of time on it, you have not because you ask not, James 4.2. The Lord says, if you don't have, and you don't ask, you're going to continue not to have. But I really will give it to you. Now when I think of love in the Bible, I think of fourfold love. Love in the scripture is fourfold. When we pray for love to be poured into the heart, or we pray to be energized or strengthened to grow in love, to abound in love, it's four things. Four things. Number one, when I say, Lord, I want love to abound, I'm saying I want the revelation of your love. I want more insight into how you feel about me. Lord says, ask for it. Number two, I want an impartation, a love back to God. You know, it takes God to love God, right? We don't love God because we have an extrovert personality. I mean, you know, I meet guys with an extrovert personality. They don't love God because they have an extrovert personality, because they have a big personality. Somebody loves God because the Holy Spirit's moving on their spirit. The quietest personality can have the most fierce love for God, and the greatest passion. So we love, it takes God to love God, and God says, I will help you love me if you ask me. Now asking is not all that we do, but I assure you this, if you ask to grow in love, you will cooperate in the other areas. You'll, you know, you may start asking to grow in love, and sooner or later, that desire will get a hold of you to grow in love for God. I'm talking about love for Jesus. You'll start adding a fasting day, and all of a sudden, before long, a little, you know, time goes by, you're adding a second fasting day, and then you're turning off the TV to read the Bible a little bit more, to talk to Jesus. You pray for it, it will actually get a hold of you and lead you into the place where love will grow in you. Praying for love is not the whole condition of growing in love, but you pray for love, many other dominoes start going down. You begin to pray that you would love Him back, but it's not enough for God to love us and us to love God. There's two more dimensions. We love ourself. We love ourself in the love of God, and we love ourself for God's sake. I mean, you are God's very favorite person, and for anybody to be against you, the Lord says, I don't like it, even if it's you that's against you. I'm not joking, and I'm not even joking about you being God's favorite person, because as the passages say here in John 17 and John 15, and we speak on them all the time here, Jesus said that He loved us the way the Father loved Him in John 15, 9, right here in the notes. Jesus loves us in the way the Father loves Him. Can you fathom? I mean, the way the Father feels about Jesus, that's how Jesus feels about you. And by virtue of God loving us the way God loves God, God loves us the way God loves God. He says it several times in the New Testament. By virtue of that, every one of us have the right and the boldness, if we'll take it, to stand before God as His favorite, because God doesn't diminish in any other relationship when He focuses His heart upon you. So with His infinite capacity, He can have a billion favorite ones. It's real, and He wants us to love ourselves like He loves us. Again, the Lord doesn't want anybody coming against you, not even you coming against you. You don't even have the right to defame who you are in His sight. You might think you do, because, hey, I'm the leader over my own spirit. No, it's not exactly. I bought you. You're mine. You must agree with it. I say, you know, the woman said, you know, Lord, I've been praying that I would love my neighbor as I love myself, and I don't know what the problem is. And she testified, the Lord spoke to her and said, that is the problem. You do love your neighbor as you love yourself. You hate yourself. That's why you hate your neighbor. That's true. We have a lot more negative emotions towards people, because we have negative emotions towards ourself. And Jesus said, you will love your neighbor in the overflow of how you love me. And, of course, that comes in the overflow of loving God, and that comes in the overflow of God loving us. And, of course, then the fourth love is love for others, both believers and unbelievers. We can pray that love would increase. Now, one of my favorite prophecies in the whole Bible is right here in Matthew 22. It is a prophecy, not just a commandment. Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart. He wasn't only exhorting them. He was prophesying to them. He was quoting, I don't have it on the notes, Deuteronomy 30, verse 6, where Moses said, in the last day, God will touch their hearts and they will love God with all of their heart by the power of the Spirit. And Jesus was standing before Israel, quoting Deuteronomy 30, verse 6, and He was prophesying in Matthew 22. That was His final message to the nation of Israel. This was the final time He stood before them. Matthew 22, 37, and He quoted Deuteronomy 30, verse 6. You will love me. You will love me. My Father has promised that there would be a people that would love me with all of their heart. So Jesus was actually prophesying, not just exhorting. There's an exhorting dimension to it, but it's a prophecy. And then Jesus prayed it in John 17. Look at verse 26. He said, Father, I'm just go to verse 26 in the passage there, just for the time sake. He goes, Father, I've declared to them your name. Jesus is praying. And I will continue to declare your name. Why? So that the love with which you love me will be supernaturally imparted into their spirit. Can you imagine loving Jesus the way the Father loves Jesus? Jesus said, Father, the way you love me, they will love me this way. I mean, talking about confidence. Jesus, do you know what kind of condition your people are in? He says, yes. But I know where this thing is going. I know where it's going. And they will love me, Father, in the same intensity that you love me, because it will be your impartation in them. And beloved, we can begin to ask for it right now. We can pray like Jesus has prayed. Jesus prayed that Mike Bickle would love Jesus like the Father loves Jesus. Well, if Jesus has faith for me, I'm jumping into this thing in agreement. If he's prophesying over me in Matthew 22, I will love the Lord your God. He's prophesying over you and he's praying for you. Well, let's jump into this thing and go for it. It says in Romans 5, 5, love's poured out. Philippians 1, love abounds. It's poured. There's a spiritual, a Holy Spirit action where the love of God has increased. Again, you don't feel it. You don't like pray for one hour and you have one hour's worth of feeling every time. It doesn't work that way. You'll pray for one hour and sometimes feel nothing. But a day or two or a month later, you'll have a surge of tenderness and emotion towards the God, towards the Lord. Or you'll pray and you will feel it. One day much, the next day a small measure. You can't quite tell because the action of the Spirit is working in a way we can't discern. We can't always measure it. Matter of fact, we usually can't. But the love is still growing in our hearts. Paul prayed in Ephesians 3 that we would be able to comprehend the love of God. Do you pray this for your life and for your loved ones? Well, you can. If you pray it, you'll get more. If you don't pray it, the Lord still loves you, but your experience will come up deficient as compared to what he desired for you. Okay, let's go to paragraph D. Prayer number four. It's L again. The two L's are my favorite, by the way. I love the two L's. Light and love. Lord, increase the light of your glory. The light, the light of your countenance. You know, I don't have the verse here. I should have it in the notes. Number six, verse 24 to 26. Number six. It's where God told Moses. Number six, verse 24 to 26. He goes, you go tell the people this. Pray this over them. Bless them is the same as praying over them. Proclaim it over them and pray that the light of God's countenance would shine on him. Beloved, there's many dimensions of God's light, but that's the realm of the glory of God, the light of God. God is light. We want the light of his countenance. There's many light of your countenance prayers in the Bible. We want to ask God to release divine encounters, his glory, the realm of light. Light isn't just bright. Light is, I don't know how to say it, but light is weighty with power. It's not just, I mean, the glory of God is thick, not just bright. It's weighty. There's substance to the light of God, to the glory, the Shekinah glory of God. We want to enter into the Shekinah glory realm. We want to touch it a little bit in this age. Of course, we don't touch it a lot, but we just want to touch it more. So I asked the Lord for divine encounters. I want the realm of light, the realm of your glory. I want the light of your countenance shining on me. I want to see your glory. I want dreams, visions. I want to see angels. Open the eyes so I see the angelic realm. I want to see the realm of divine light. At the top of page three, paragraph E, oh, this is not a small one. The one thing, life focus. I tell you, I need, I come back to this time and time again. Again, you might think, you know, my assignment from the Lord and my leadership is at IHOP. But I tell you, there's, being at IHOP, I'm talking to so many of you that are new here, it is not like a guaranteed thing to stay focused on the Lord. You can get at IHOP, there's so much work and there's so much business and so much coming and going. I've found, you know, I pastored 25 years, a couple thousand member church for the most of that before I came to IHOP. IHOP is harder to have a prayer life than it was then. There's so much going on, so many people, so many activities, so many open doors, so many dynamics that I'm saying in the nine years I've been there, Lord, it is harder to be a man of one thing than it was before in the 25 years I pastored before IHOP started. And so I find that I constantly, you cannot skip this prayer in your personal life. I constantly, I mean, it must happen every couple of weeks, every couple of months, a couple of weeks on the, you know, that's, you know, anywhere from several weeks to several months, I have to have a re-signing up to be a man of one thing. And what I mean by a man of one thing that I'm talking about, spending time with God is prioritized in my schedule. I mean, yes, I love the Lord the whole way through and, you know, you love the Lord through all the seasons. I'm not talking about loving the Lord or longing for Him. I'm talking about stopping several weeks or several months and saying, oh no, it's happening again. It's in the responsibilities of life and the cares of life. I don't want to make it all noble, like everything I do is, you know, divine responsibility. I don't mean it that way. Just the cares of life and the responsibility, the good ones or the bad ones of life, they encroached again upon my schedule in a way that was out of the will of God. And the Lord says, I've called you to be a man of one thing. I find I have to constantly, every several weeks to every several months, somewhere in that time frame, couple of the handful of times every year, it is I'm under conviction to line up again. Beloved, you won't wake up one day and have this on automatic pilot. It says here in Luke 10, verse 42, the Lord spoke to Martha about her little sister, Mary. The one thing is needed. Mary chose it and you will need to choose it over and over and over, you know, five or six times a year. Sometimes I don't mean that casual choice. I mean, I have to sit down and say, ah, it's happening again. I can't believe it. And I hop it's hard to be a man of one thing. King David, he said this one thing. I seek it. I go after it. I seek this lifestyle. This lifestyle will not chase you down. You will seek it. I mean, I look at this room and I can imagine the number of stories. I mean, of, of heroic commitment to the Lord that are represented in this room. How many of you in this room? I'm sure it's the vast majority of 90% plus, if not more have been seeking at a very costly way to be in a place to be a man or a woman of one thing. I mean, the economic changes you had to make to be sitting in this room. I mean, I don't even mean all of you that are permanent here, though. I mean, uh, they're even a program. Some of you visiting the economic changes you had to embrace to change your lifestyle, the people that are mad at you, you know, the ministries that are prophesying against you. I mean, just the whole bit, you know, you know, sister, so-and-so and brothers, so-and-so that had the dream that warned you. I mean, we all have them. I have dozens of warning dreams, just dozens. If you do, I have Ichabod, you know? No, I mean it. I've had them for years. I get dreams from people every single week. Bad, bad, bad things are going to happen if you keep doing this. And I have dreams for people. Good, good, good things are going to happen if you keep doing this. And I said, Lord, I'm going by your word. I'm just going by your word. But I'm just saying is you having being a man or woman of one thing won't fall into your lap one day. You are seeking it. And this room, I can tell you this room is full of people seeking this ardently and you're doing it. So you know what I mean by this, but it won't just happen one day. David went out of his way. I mean, it was a burden in the flesh. I'm talking about in terms of the responsibility with other people, the opinions of others to be a man of one thing. It will be costly relationally. It will be costly economically. It will be costly in other ways as well. Okay, number six, which is a W. Top of page three. We're near the top of page three. Walking worthy. This is the whole cry for purity. There's a whole lot on this one. This is the one is, you know, my favorite are the two L's. I want to enter into the love of God and the light of his glory. I want the realm of light. I want that weighty, powerful light that has fragrance and weight, this kind of glory. I want to live in that realm. But the area that's most challenging are these next five. These next five are really challenging. Number one, walking in the glory. I mean, walking worthy and purity. Interesting passage here. Second Thessalonians one, Paul prays a prayer that I've rarely ever heard prayed ever. And I never hear it taught on. But Paul made this huge point about this. He said, we pray always for you always. Anything that Paul prayed always for needs to be on the top of your list. He said, he said, we pray always this one request. What might that be? Anything that Paul always prayed for needs to be at the top of your list. And here's what he prayed. It's a confusing idea to Christians, 21st century Christian Christians in the West. It's just a confusing idea. It's a very clear biblical ideas, but it's confusing. Paul prayed that God would count us worthy of our calling and that we would enter into the fulfill all of the good purpose of God. All the good pleasure of God means the fullness of the calling. And the implication is people don't enter into all of their calling in this age or the age to come. That's the implication. And so what we've focused on, which is very worthy to, I mean, very good to focus on is the gift of being worthy because of the gift of righteousness. We are worthy for God's acceptance. The day we're born again, it's a free gift. You can't do anything to earn it. But then from that day forward, we never ever earned God's acceptance ever. It's free forever, but God demands that we respond at a certain level of maturity in order to be prepared to enter into the divine purpose that he has for us. So God loves everybody with equal intensity and it's free, but everyone is not prepared to enter into their purpose in God and many people don't. So Paul was praying that people would live in such a way that God would look at their life and say, they are responding to me in such diligence and faithfulness. They are worthy, put the word in this other word, prepared. They are prepared to enter into everything I've ordained for them in this age, as well as in the age to come. Now we all have resurrected bodies in the age to come. We're all in the eternal city. That's free, but we have all different kinds of experiences once we're in the eternal city in terms of different dimensions of the glory of God. And Paul said, the one prayer I always pray for you is the grace of God would energize you to wake you up, to motivate you and keep you focused, so that when God evaluates you in this age and the age to come, He sees in you a response that was worthy of the calling He gave you. The assignment is what it means. It means a ministry calling. It's worthy of assignment. He's not talking about worthy of eternal life. He's talking about worthy of our ministry assignment. Now it's interesting in Luke chapter 21, Jesus prayed the same thing. So Jesus and Paul, really good theology, but you never hear this in the church in the west ever. You just never hear it. You never hear somebody praying always to be counted worthy. It's an unthinkable idea in this time of history because we've put all of the weight of our idea of worthiness on the gift of worthiness, which is a very important doctrine. Very, you can't exaggerate it, but you can't exaggerate it. It's bigger than we think, but to confuse it with the God looking at us and esteeming us as being diligent and faithful so that we're prepared to enter into our divine assignment is a very different concept. Jesus prayed in Luke 21 verse 36. He's talking about, well, let's just read it. Verse 34, let your hearts be weighed down with carousing, that's the whole party spirit, with drunkenness, with the cares of life, that's the whole money and honor thing, that the day will come on you unexpectedly. We're talking about the end time scenario. It will come on as a snare on the whole earth. Everybody, this snare will come on and most will not be ready. Verse 36, but if you will pray always that you would be counted worthy, you would be counted worthy to escape these things and to stand in victory before the Son of God. Now, what some people would do is they would read this, I think it's really a wrong interpretation, to be taken away suddenly by the rapture. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about pray always. He's praying the same prayer that Paul later prayed, that we would be counted worthy or faithful and prepared before the Lord to escape the carousing and the drunkenness and the snare coming on the earth so that we stand with no compromise in our testimony. That's what he's talking about. So, are you a person who always prays these two prayers? Jesus said always pray it and Paul said, I got it. I will always pray it. Beloved, this needs to be top of the list. Top of the list. And it's talking about living in an abandonment to the Holy Spirit or to the Word of God, just obeying the leadership of Jesus. And so we pray, Lord, keep us from taking the grace of God in vain. That's right there in 1 Corinthians 6, when Paul talked about, he says, oh, don't take the grace of God in vain. Lord, let me lay hold of the fullness. I don't want to waste one dimension of the power you've invested in my life. I don't want to waste one of it. I'm using the word waste, quote unquote. Lord, the grace you've given me, the power that you've invested in my life, I don't want to waste any of it by disregarding the invitation of the grace of God. But I tell you, it will take prayer in order to enter into the greater dimensions of this ability to walk worthy or prepared before the Lord. Now, there's different ways that Paul prays this, and you can read it here. I want to point out Psalm 19, verse 12. In Psalm 19, verse 12, David prayed, he says, cleanse me from my secret faults. Cleanse me from my secret faults. And one guy would read that and say, ah, Lord, cleanse me from the sins before I get caught. That's not what he's praying. I mean, that's a good prayer. Anytime you pray, cleanse me, you're in the right direction. He's not saying, cleanse me before I get caught. Help me quick. He's saying, cleanse me from my unperceived sins, the sins I'm partaking of, the pride in my spirit I don't see, the compromise I'm living in, the things that they're secret from him. He goes, I can't see them. Let me see them. Great prayer. Psalm 19, verse 12. Okay, let's see. Where are we going now? We're going to Father, number one. Father, I set my heart to obey you in my war against the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. We're in the bottom of page three. And the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. We're in a war, it says in Peter. Beloved, I want to encourage everyone. Men, I'm talking to you, but women, let's just include everyone. Job made a covenant with his eyes that he would not look on anything that was immoral. Anything that, no, let's say different, anything that incited immorality in him. Let's put it that way. He said, I made a covenant with my eyes. Beloved, we are in a time of history. We absolutely must make this covenant. And if you make it and break it, don't quit, call it sin, declare war on it, repent and make the covenant again, push, delete and run into the heart of God with full confidence. If you sin and genuinely repent of it, you can have confidence as you're running in the heart of God. You're declaring war on it, you can have confidence. His heart is for you in your journey to overcome that sin. Okay, paragraph G. Now it's, again, we're picking up, it's like, it's number seven. Okay, number six was walking worthy. Now we're top of page four. Now we're talking, it's, I mean, these last five are tough ones. There's a couple of them are at least anyway, speech, speech. David prayed this, Psalm 141, set a guard, set a guard over my mouth. Keep watch. There is no way you can guard your own lips sufficiently. You must ask for the Holy Spirit's help literally daily, literally, literally daily. And I certainly have a lot to grow in this area, but Psalm 141, verse three has been a prayer I have prayed for many years, many years. I do not have confidence in my ability to remember or pay attention. The human spirit is so full of energy, negative energy, as well as positive energy when the Holy Spirit's touching us. I mean, so much activity in our human spirit. I said, Lord, there's not a chance. Even if I want to keep watch, even if I want to set a guard over my lips, I don't have enough insight and I can't stay focused enough to pay attention. I'm going to be right in the middle of a slander. I'm going to be right in the middle of a complaint. I'm going to be right in the middle of a boast and right in the middle of it. I'm going to go, oh, I did it again. I can't, I can't stay on top of this. And David says, I got it. That's why I asked the Holy Spirit. I charge you, I urge you, ask the Lord to set a guard, set a guard over your mouth. Keep watch, invoke the Spirit's presence to remind you, to check you, to convict you, to cleanse you, to empower you, invite the Spirit's check. That's what he's doing. David did it again in Psalm 19. Let the words of my mouth be pleasing, acceptable. Let the words of my mouth, he was asking for help. Asking for help. You bridle your tongue, James 3 says, all of the passions of your body will follow suit. If you can bridle your tongue, the kind of reality with the Holy Spirit it takes to bridle your tongue, all of your other appetites will come under the order of the Holy Spirit if your tongue does. That's what James is teaching. He says your whole body, all your appetites will come under divine order if you can get your tongue under order. Put all of your energy on your tongue coming under the order of the Holy Spirit. It will have so many, it will affect your eating, it will affect what you eat, drink, and what you do with your body if your tongue gets bridled. Significantly greater ability to walk under the Holy Spirit's leadership in the other areas of your life. Huge area right here. Okay, we're on a kind of a three negative hit here. Now the next one's humility. These are my three tough ones, you know, walking worthy, bridling my speech, and humility. These are the three where you kind of really, Lord, I'm in this thing for real when you hit, you know, number six, seven, and eight. And humility. Jesus said that humility, the humble, were the greatest. And the only time Jesus ever described himself with a characteristic, he did it right here in Matthew 11, the only time he ever described himself, he called himself lowly or meek or humble. It's the same word. He never said, I am loving. He is loving. He never said, I am wise. Very wise. He never said all kinds of things that were true. But the only time with his own lips, he described his character, his personality. He said, I'm humble. And then he said, learn from me. This is the most elusive part of our quest for inner man to be strengthened. I mean, it's right up there equal with the tongue. Pride. Jesus said, learn from me. Invoke the presence of the spirit to teach you meekness. And put on your seatbelt, because he will talk to you about meekness if you want him to. I mean, this is a really intense prayer. Lord, teach me from your own life. Oh, Lord, Lord, be gentle. But teach me from your own experience. I mean, be gentle on me, Lord. Teach me from your experience humility. The Lord says, do you mean it? Yes. I will tell you things to do then. And, you know, I've found sometimes when people get into this and they pray that for the first month or two, they go on a big show about confessing to everybody how proud they are. So they're in a big show and drawing attention to themselves. Don't don't do that. You can tell when somebody like I've talked to this over the years and for a few months in the church, you know, there are certain kind of personalities confessing to everybody their pride. You know, they're just everyone's saying, hey, Dodge so-and-so, he's gonna be telling you about his pride again. And so don't make a big fanfare about your humility when you're trying to humble yourself. Just better yet, let them not know for sure. Just go for it. Just do it and just do it before the eyes of God. Anyway, this is a tough one. Okay, now we're out of the the real tough space. Number six, seven, and eight. Now we're back to nine. This is good intimacy. This affectionate experience of God's heart. Now this is like the glory of God, but this is I'm talking about tender affection, but it produces zeal. It produces loyalty. It produces a fiery zeal and loyalty for Jesus to be near him, to be pleasing to him. And so we're asking the Lord to reveal himself as the Father and his Son as Bridegroom, Bridegroom King. And we don't pick between the two, you know, because we focus on Jesus the Bridegroom a lot here at IHOP. So people say, oh, I'm really into Jesus the Bridegroom. We'll never understand the Bridegroom more than we understand the Father. And so we need to go in both directions here. And so we're asking the Lord for insight on that. And a prayer that I've loved over the years, John 2, 17, it's been on my prayer list since, you know, whatever, 19, 20 years old. I don't know when I put it on there, but all these years, John 2, verse 17, I've asked for zeal to consume me. Lord, consume me. Well, most of these prayers, I'd say the vast majority have been on my prayer list for 30 years. And because I think they're the best ones in the Bible. I mean, there's a couple others that would rival these, but hey, I just go with the same prayers. They'll stick for years and years and years. Ask the Lord, John 2, 17, say, Lord, consume me with zeal. Consume me with zeal for your house. I was 19, 20, 21 years old, praying this every day. You know, I've missed those days where I missed, but, you know, it was on my prayer list. And somebody, I don't know how I even got it on there, but I got it on there somehow, and zeal for your house. And so all through my 20s and all through my 30s. Now, I don't even like prayer in my 20s. I really don't in my early 20s. I knew I had to be a man of prayer. I prayed every day, but I didn't like it. It was the dreadful hour to me. I went, oh, it's the hour of prayer. I had no direction. I had it on my schedule, but I had no direction. I didn't know what to pray, and I felt condemned. But I'm praying this by rote, just wrote zeal for your house. Consume me. Now, I don't like prayer. The Lord's smiling, and he says, the boy's going to lead a house of prayer. He has no idea how much zeal is going to get on him. I just prayed this every day. Lord, zeal for your house. I didn't know the house of God was a house of prayer. I had no idea what I was walking into. I mean, I was before the lion himself asking for him to roar. And so, I have a little humor and tenderness in this because I remember how much I disdained prayer. And now that I know what this verse means, it's zeal for the house of prayer. I had no idea. For years, I prayed this, and the Lord was smiling the whole time saying, I'm going to surprise you when I answer this prayer. Okay, the final one, not a small one at all. Huge one. Huge one. I'm assuming most believers don't pray any of these except for maybe love. Lord, show me love and show me your glory. Maybe a little one or two here or there. Most believers I have known as I've interacted with them over the years, fervent ones, just kind of like pray in tongues and say, Lord, break in glory. Anything specific? Yeah, just give it to me all. Give it all to me. Anything else specific? Just glory. Just the fullness. Beloved, you can't stay locked in for several hours in that kind of the whole bed, the whole nine yards. Then some, Lord. I mean, they're excited for fullness, but they don't ever get specific. It's not really believing prayer because it's not focused. Because believing prayer has to be focused to be believing. Well, like what? Just to break into everything, everything Paul had. Beloved, the Bible gave us these prayers as a roadmap, as an instruction, and as an encouragement to our focus and our faith, which are the same thing, actually, because faith is really focused with confidence and perseverance. If you have faith, you have focus, you have confidence, and you have perseverance. If any of those three are lacking, faith is deficient in that area that you're praying for. It has focus, it has confidence, and it has perseverance. That's when faith is working in your spirit. But anyway, this is a huge one. I'll end with this. The prayer for peace and joy and peace are so intertwined, I put them together. Most, or I don't know about most, much of our sin grows in the soil of fear. Much, I don't know about most, but a lot of the sin we get entangled in, it grows in the soil of fear, and peace is the supernatural answer, if we'd ask for it. I mean, I'm not just talking about the phobias, you know, the hundred categories of phobias. Peace is supernatural. It guards the heart from phobias. Peace is bigger than phobias, but it's supernatural. Jealousies. Jealousies are, the soil of jealousy is fear. Bitterness, slander, rejection, the fear of being left alone, the fear of being poor, going without. So much of sin, it grows in the soil of fear. It's not that the guy says, I just want to disobey God, I don't care. He's just so gripped with fear of being alone, or being without, or somebody getting more, or nobody caring. And then they slander, and then their spirit gets quenched, and they get concerned, and say things wrong, and then they feel bad again. Then it goes on and on. I know the story because I've lived the story. I didn't read this in a book. This is my story. I know about this. And the Lord says, ask for peace. Do you ever ask to abound? I mean, abound in peace and hope. Abound in it. I never thought about it. Well, go for it. Go for it. Let's go for this thing. Amen. Let's stand.