Prevailing Prayer, The Example of Hannah

My name's Dan Beiser. I've set this call for a solemn assembly up. I pastor two churches, one here in West Virginia, one at Fox's Hall of Baptist Church over in Romney, West Virginia, and then here at Kaiser, we have a house church. We just call it Kaiser Church. And so, the Lord has laid on me for these years prayer conferences and to prevail in prayer. A number of years ago, we did Broken Before the Throne. Many of the speakers this weekend was a part of that first one and those experiences that we did, Brother Sammy Tippett and Brother John McGregor. And so, we're glad to have them to be back a part of this time. So, welcome to those. Continue to pray. And as the word is brought, again, we want to bring the word and proclamation, and then we want to give you prayer points that you can write down and continue to pray so that we might prevail. Satisfied with nothing less than to prevail in prayer. All right? So, 1 Samuel chapter 1. Now, there was a certain man of remote Zothan of Mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Toad, the son of Zuth, and Epithet. And he had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah. The name of the other was Paniah. And Paniah had children, but Hannah had no children. And this man went up out of the city, yearly worshiped and sacrificed unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophnah, Phinehas, the priest of the Lord, they were there. And when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Paniah his wife and to all her sons and daughters portions. But unto Hannah, he gave a worthy portion, for he loved him. But the Lord had shut up her womb. And her adversary also provoked her sword, for to make her pray, because the Lord had shut up her womb. And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her. Therefore, she wept, and she did not eat. Then said Elkanah her husband to her, Hannah, why weepest thou? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart grieved? Am not I better to you than ten sons? So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh. And after they had drunk, now Eli the priest sat upon a seat by a post at the temple of the Lord. She was in bitterness of soul. She prayed unto the Lord and wept sore. She vowed a vow and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy handmaid and remember me, not forget thy handmaid, but will give unto thy handmaid a man child, that I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life. And there shall no razor come upon his head. And it came to pass, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli marked her mouth. Now Hannah, she spake in her heart, only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli thought that she had been drunken. Eli said unto her, how long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine for me. Hannah answered and said, no, my Lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I've drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thy handmaid for a daughter of Balaam, for out of the abundance of my complaint and the grief have I spoken hitherto. Then Eli answered and said, go in peace, and the God of Israel grant to you thy petition that you have asked of him. And she said, let thy handmaid find grace in thy sight. And the woman went her way and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad. And so they rose up in the morning early, worshipped before the Lord, and they returned. And they came to the house to Ramah, and Elkanah knew Hannah, his wife, and the Lord remembered her. I want to begin this introductory session for our weekend with this example of the scripture of prevailing. This is the emphasis. What did they do? How did they come before the Lord and make their request that God not just hear their request, because God listens to us. Many of you have been praying for a long time for revival. You've been praying a long time for the lost souls of your family and your friends. You've been praying for the nation that would be a turnaround. And literally, quite literally, what we have seen is none of those things happen. Our nation has gotten worse. The church has become less holy and more with lacking of power of the Holy Spirit. And there is evidence today in the stats that there are few that are coming to Christ in the United States. We rejoice in other countries, but what we're hearing about in that 1040 window in places of China where the church is growing by leaps and bounds, it's like the book of Acts, that was daily added to the church, such as should be saved. And we rejoice with that. But in our place, in our position here in the United States, we've got to ask ourselves what's going on. I mean, as I was preparing for this weekend, trying to get the scriptures laid out, one of the things that we shared of prevailing again is the most obvious, which is over in the book of Genesis, where Jacob wrestled with the angel and he prevailed with God. And he had that statement said about him. He not only prevailed with God, he prevailed with men. What a great statement. So we took that verse and we used it as our theme for this weekend. But again, it is a call for a solemn assembly. Solemn assembly is to deal with what's wrong, to fix it, and to plead with God to make the wrongs right. So again, we're rejoicing for what's coming next month, but before we ever get there, if we get there, because things are happening so fast right now, is that we wanted this weekend to saturate the very atmosphere of the things of church gatherings, of you as brothers and sisters in Christ, what's happening on the streets of our cities, what's going on in the homes, and what's happening in the minds and the hearts of men and women. There's great eve that is happening. We have a victory. We have a power in the name of Christ that can overcome all that. But again, it is that our iniquities and sins have pushed him that again, he has withdrawn himself in the fullness that we so desperately need. We want to get back to that. So when I've read this account, the Lord led me back here. I love this account, but the Lord led me back here to go back over this and I read back down through it several times. And every time I read it, there was another phrase saying, oh, that's what we need. Oh, that's what we got to have. That's what must be in my life. And the scrutiny begins with me as an individual. And so again, I'm presenting to you what the Lord has said to me for this time. And so I'm going to bring a word here for the next 45 minutes or so, a sermon. And then I have these prayer points that I want to give to you to ask of you that you would pray in agreement with me for these things. So let's begin here as we see. Now again, as I just got done saying here is that the reason of a call for a solemn assembly is to find over in the book of Joel chapter one and chapter two, something's wrong. And there is descriptive things that happen there in the book of Joel that he says, there is a calamity upon the land that again, God has sent a family. The drought has come and the crops have been burned up. The enemy has come. There's an army that has come in and has ravaged the cities and the young men that were soldiers have been killed and young women have been brutalized and prisoners and the young sons and daughters have been taken as captives. Cities are no more. And the way of life that they used to know with peace and happiness is all gone. And there's a hesitancy of life. They don't know where they're going to eat, where they're going to get their food. They don't know where to get water. The freedoms that they were enjoying and the prosperity that they had has all been taken away. Safety is no more. And when we look at the news in this hour, we know this, that we're not too far from them. Is that again, just by watching what's happened in the last week, our land is being ravaged by natural disasters. The homes and the streets are in chaos and the church really has not had a voice that they have spoken during these days to say, just save the Lord. And it is time for us is that we would get before the Lord, come boldly before his throne and obtain the mercy and the grace to help us in this time of need. And so Hannah gives us a picture of that. And so we see the problem here. So let's walk down through these verses and let's imitate what Hannah did in our minds, in our hearts, in our souls, in our lives, that we may obtain the same thing. Because I've read all these verses that when we get to verse 19, the burden was lifted off of her. She got up, they worshiped the Lord, they packed their bags, they went back home. Elkanah knew Hannah and she conceived and God remembered her. Remember that's exactly what she had asked. Lord, if you would remember me and the request that I'm making. And she obtained what she asked for. And so that's the very desire that we have for this time, this weekend, is that God would not just hear us, but that God would answer us and say, I remember what you prayed. I have seen your tears. I've seen your fast. I've seen your brokenness. I know what's on your heart and your mind and I am finally going to give you what you desire. And the blessing of that will be a revival to the church. It'll be a spiritual awakening to the United States and it will be the fulfillment of his kingdom to the four corners of the earth, that the gospel will go out and his glory will be demonstrated to the nations. That's my prayer, if it was answered. And I'm praying that many of you that I see signing on here are like-minded in that same one. So let's walk down through these verses. So we begin here with this in verse five and verse six, we begin with the problem. Now verse five at the very last phrase that it says, but the Lord had shut up her womb. Now that's mentioned back to back, verse five, verse six, her womb is shut. Now this is not the first time that we see this in scripture, is it? We go back to the book of Genesis and we go back and we see where Sarah, who is the wife of Abraham, is that God shut her womb. She was not allowed to have a child while she was in the age of normal childbearing. Matter of fact, way past those years of childbearing before God finally opened the womb to allow for her to conceive, which would be a part of the covenant. And Isaac was born. And again, what a miracle that was. Then you, not two generations later, you have Isaac and Rebekah. She has the twins within her, Esau and Jacob, and they wrestle and Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. And here comes Jacob and he has 12 sons and a daughter and you get to his four wives with Leah and the two servants. And then Rebekah or Rachel and Rachel can't conceive. And she comes to Jacob and she says, give me children because Leah is having children left and right. She's had numerous boys before Rachel hasn't even conceived one. And she comes to Jacob and says, give me children. Hannah here can't have children and no doubt they've been trying. And we know people, and some of you might be in this condition that again, where you get married and you want to start a family and you say, well, we can't, we've been trying, but we can't and something's wrong. And in this day and age with the advancement of our medicine, we run to the doctors and we say, something's wrong. Tell us what's wrong. And they have means and remedies now to fertilization and all those things of science and medicine that's going on. But in this, where it says is that she, her womb was shut and God would not allow for her to have a child. And on top of that problem in verse six, the other one comes and is just downright mean and causes her with slang sayings. And you just know the venom that was pouring out of her towards Hannah and, well, look at all my kids. You don't have kids. And I'm not going to spend time, but you can imagine what she was saying so much so that Hannah was crushed. And so then in verse seven, as they went up to the house of the Lord and the husband now Elkanah says, in verse eight, he tries to appease to Hannah and to comfort her and to give her a word of encouragement saying, am I not enough for you? Am I not more than worth 10 sons? And the answer of that is no, you're not. It's one thing to have a husband and a wife, but again, when a woman wants to have children, there is a great frustration in the midst of this. And that's the word that was spoken there. The adversary provoked her and to make her to fret in verse six, provoked her and caused her to fret. And the womb was closed. Is that not where we're at? The ability of the church to reproduce, to be fruitful is gone. God has stopped it in the United States. Now again, every outpouring and the baptism or salvation and answer to prayer as the angels rejoice over one soul that is brought into the kingdom. So we rejoice. I'm not discrediting that in any way, shape or form, but let's just be honest that again, I can remember decades ago is that people were coming to Christ on a weekly basis. I can remember is that the numerics of the church and Christianity in North America was flourishing and there were great meetings and there were great revival services and evangelism services. And there was missionaries going and there was decency in the land and a moral compass that was there. And all these things that we're talking about this night was not even mentioned or thought of at that time. And all of a sudden, there's a problem. And the fruit that the church was bearing, the holiness and righteousness and faithfulness is now eroding away. And that's a hard thing to find among Christians. We see in the example of liberty, just all the conflict that they're going through and praise God tonight, they're having an all night prayer meeting. We join with them to pray for their future and the things going. But again, the way the world is watching the church of saying, you all talk about you serve the true God, that there's victory in Christ and that there's deliverance and there's power. Where is it? Give us evidence. Where's the fruit? You can talk all the talk you want, but where's the fruit? And this is where it is, is that God has removed the power of the church right now. And it is for us during a weekend like this to get back and to say, God, pour out your spirit on us, that we might be light and salt in this day and age because of what we're facing. And the provoking and the fretting is not on the side of God that he has been provoked by our nation. He has been again of all the blessings and all the mercies and all the things that he has done for the United States and for the North American church. Again, that we would act as we are acting so carnal, so tempting, so selfish that he would say, is there, could I not have done anything more? Remember that what he said about Israel in the Old Testament? What more could I have done than what I did for them? I gave them a land. I made them a nation. I entered into a covenant with them. I established prophets and I gave them David and God did everything that was meaningful. And so can the church say that today, God has done everything meaningful. We don't lack anything. But when we despair, provoke and fret the cause of God, it has a direct relationship to the fruitfulness of the church and to the individual sin. The testimony of answer prayer, the testimony of bearing souls, winning people to Christ, of seeing miracles and mercies of God, of his mercies being poured out. That's a testimony of fruitfulness. Is there evidence of this or does he cause the womb to close? Now that's the problem. Then down when this woman has caused her to be at a disparate place of despondency, she does the right thing. And let's enter into this because this is the crux of this verse 9. And she arose and she went to the temple of the Lord. She got up. She went to where the altar was. Oh, you remember the old altar? No, again, that old favorite hymn of mine is you're all on the altar. Sacrifice laid. They're bowed the knee to bow the face to grab hold of the horns of the altar and to cry out to God. I remember the old testimony of the old Pentecostals and charismatic is that they prayed at the altar an hour before the church service and they prayed at the altar an hour after the church service. Now it is is that for most the cobwebs grow over and the altar is never, never used. And she got up and she went there, rose and went. And again, brother and sister, that's why we're doing this this weekend. It is time for us to arise and go to the throne of grace. It's time for us to arise and to go before him because of this problem of fruitfulness that we have provoked the Lord and fretted the cause of his good name across this land and in the church house and to get back to where God wants us to be. So she arose and she went and it is is that verse 10 and she was in bitterness of soul and she prayed unto the Lord and she wept sore. Three things there. She was in bitterness of soul. The despair of what we're seeing happening today in the headlines in the nation causes that bitterness of soul. The the lack of souls coming to Christ knowing that they are in their last breath. They are walking on as Jonathan Edwards preached that sinners in the hands of an angry God, they're walking on a pie crust and at any moment they can drop down through and fall into hell if it was not by the grace of God who holds them up. Well, this is where we're at. So it is is that crying out to God for this hour and this need that again God would meet us in this bitterness of soul for what we're seeing and on our watch as the church on our watch this these things have happened and mushroom and multiply and it is again that as it has been on our watch so again that we might be provoked that we might be at this fretful point and say I'm going to go before God and I'm not getting up till you meet us. Now again why would I do a full weekend? Why would we do during broken before the thorn? Why would we do a full week? Well because one of the things that I believe about the need for the solemn assembly is that there needs to be protracted meetings. There needs to be a protracted long time period and you can't do these things in an hour. You can't deal with all the things that need to be dealt with in just a couple hours and so time needs to be given to this. So again for the full weekend is that God's Holy Spirit might speak to us that he might cause that bitterness of soul within us is that we would be content with nothing else than to gain the heart of God so as to prevail for his kingdom and his name's sake in this hour. She wept sore tears. Have you been weeping? Have you been tears flowing when you enter into the prayer closet every time that you see the headline? Every time that you read about another drug overdose death? Every time that you see another murder suicide? The happenings in our nation? The devastation and destruction which you saw down in Louisiana after the hurricane rolled through? Did you weep? Jesus beheld the city and he wept over it. What causes you to weep when you enter into your prayer closet? What causes that bitterness of soul? Frustration of saying God I know that you're the answer. We don't have any answers and we don't have any remedies and we don't have any solutions and all of our humanism and all of our problem solving amounts to zero. With you God all things are possible. With you we desperately need you oh God. Here's the desperation where it mounts and it bubbles up inside the soul and it comes out in the prayer meeting when people wail and howl and scream and lament and sorrow because again their eyes and their minds have seen and heard what's going on out there this night and they know that they know that Satan is having his will in his way with people's lives and homes and on the streets. His activity is greatly multiplied and increased in the United States and it seems like there's no barriers. It seems like there's no restriction but there is and you and I as the church have the power and the ability in the name of Jesus to stop it and to put it down. Here's the remedy. In the bitterness of her soul she goes to the altar weeping saturated in tears and she makes this in this statement that's here and she says and she prayed to the Lord. That phrase pray to the Lord is about a dozen times in the Bible in the scriptures and I want to go through a couple of those just so that you get it because it is the primary point of this prevailing prayer that we not just pray but again add it with bitterness of soul add it with the provoking and the fretting add it with the weeping and the wailing and the lamenting and the howling in the morning of Joel 1 and 2. Come before God and not be satisfied till God speaks the words from heaven I have heard you and I will grant you the desires of your heart. Now the first one of these that we come to and again besides in Genesis where Jacob wrestled and he prayed and received blessing from the Lord he prevailed. We go over to the book of Numbers and for those who've been following for us over these months of Bible study we've come through the book of Exodus and we see the children of Israel well over in the book of Numbers twice it's mentioned there the first time is that it says and the children of Israel they murmured and they complained against the Lord and against Moses. You know that they bowed down and they worshiped false gods and it says is that God sent fiery darts among them he poured out fire on them and they came to Moses and they said Moses we've sinned against you we've sinned against God and God's destroying us again. When you see these things happening call for a solemn assembly. When you see the problem the womb is shut up there's a provoking there's a fretting call for a solemn assembly. Gather the people pray to the Lord in bitterness of soul with weeping lament and confessing repenting and waiting upon God till he bestows and gives us what he wanted to give us all along. They come to Moses and he did and Moses always did this he was a great intercessor for the children of Israel and it says is that he prayed to the Lord and God repented and he stopped the fire and he stopped consuming the people and he and he gave them a period that they would get back to doing what they were supposed to do. This is the evidence of remedial judgments. God sends judgments upon a land upon a people upon the church upon individuals then he gives them time to repent. If they don't repent in the next round of judgments as Leviticus 26 tells us seven times works. How did we get here in this fight 2020? Well we didn't we never repented. We never got right on all them other times over the last 40 years that God's been sending remedial judgments to us and we weren't in bitterness of soul. We were content content. Are you content tonight with the way things are? I you've preached funeral services and I just was reminiscent about this not too long ago and not too far from here in the graveyard. I'm standing there doing great graveside service and I had heard this poem recited for years by other pastors and whatnot. The poem goes like this and it says as you are now so once was I as I am now so you will be so prepare to follow me. Somebody answered that little poem and it said prepare to follow you I am not content so I know which way you went. I'll stay in there in the cemetery when families were coming out of their cars and pallbearers carried casket up and I'm standing there waiting for them and the funeral director to nod and tell me to go ahead and as I look down there right right down from me I'm looking at the back of a tombstone and there's that poem on the back I couldn't believe it. I sat there marveling at that pointed out to all them that that was gathered around family and friends there at the grave site I am not content so I know which way you went. Are you content? I am not content with the status of the church today. I'm not content with what I see happening in our nation today and I know I know God's the only answer for our problems. I know that he's able to open the womb. I know that he's able to remember us and to give us the desires of his heart. I know that he's able to pour out his spirit in revival and that we can experience that which you have been birthed within you to pray so many of you to pray for revival to pray for his manifest presence. God can do that. This is the hour for that. That's why he said when you see these things call for a solemn assembly. Gather the people together. Gather the bride together. Gather the church together. Call upon the Lord. Pray unto the Lord. Let's go through a couple more of these where we see these. Let's go over to the book of Daniel chapter 9. There's Daniel the prophet. He has been reading the book of Jeremiah. It doesn't say that he read Lamentations. It just says he read the book of Jeremiah and it says is that he understood that there were 70 weeks determined against Israel and Judah before they would be delivered from their captivity and it says and Daniel prayed unto the Lord and made confession for his people. When he knew why they had been put into captivity for 70 years. Remember Daniel was one of the first. Him, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were one of the first young men that was taken to Babylon as young wise men, scholars there to be before the king. He'd been there a long time and when he saw this he prayed unto the Lord. A couple chapters over from this and first Samuel chapter 8. Samuel is now the prophet and he's the ruling voice of the Lord in the land and the people come to him and they say we want a king. The thing just flees Samuel. He went before the Lord. There's the problem. When you see these things, the problem. He went to the Lord and prayed. Well, you can go through all these. When Isaiah comes to him and says get your house in order. You're going to die. There's a problem. I'm going to die. I only have a few hours left, a few days left and it says he turned his face to the wall and wept and he prayed to the Lord. I want to ask you where your prayer life is. When I ask you where your heart, your mind, your soul is when you see these things happen. Because you see these things have been happening for a long time and there has been a sound of alarm going out to many churches and to pastors across this land of all denominations. For a long time they've been content. Almost like Laodicea is that we have need of nothing. Not even God. You see now things are crumbling. The fabric of society is crumbling. Homes are decimated. Marriages are dissolving. Young generation coming up with no knowledge of God whatsoever. No fear of the Lord. Churches are at their all-time lowest. Baptisms are at their all-time lowest and the prayer meeting which should be the highest attended thing in this day and age, but what we see happening is the least attended thing in the church. When you see these things happen, we are in a desperate fight brother and sister. You know that. You wouldn't be a part of this if you didn't know that. You have the same urgency in your spirit as I do in mine. You know the remedy. I know the remedy, but there may be someone sitting listening tonight and that they have not resolved within their mind. I am not content. You've been saying prayers. You've been going to church. You've been reading your Bible, but you haven't fasted. You haven't wept. You don't have that bitterness of soul. You see when I teach on prayer, I teach the power of the difference of apathy versus empathy. What's going on in Portland? What's going on? What happened in D.C. last night to all those that were coming out of the Trump meeting, the Republican National Convention meeting there? They were harassed and thrown. What's happening in Wisconsin? I don't care. That's not happening in my city. That's not happening on my street. That's happening. Every time children are disappeared and taken and, well, that's not my child. I'm not worried about that. Drugs and alcohol, well, I don't have any issue with that in my home. We're all clean. We might drink a little bit or this and that, but we're not addicts. I'm not worried. That's happening. The church is happening, but the empathy, it's just like the Geronimo. That bitterness of soul and that desperation wells up within you comes from that that, again, like she had been provoked by the other wife. Every time she saw her children, every time she saw her children playing, every time she heard those children say, Mama, it touched the cord inside of her, and she was at that point of desperation to say, I can't go on like this. God, if you don't do something, I can't go on like this. I have used over the years, and I share it with you here tonight, that point of desperation. There was a man that come up out of Africa, and he was addressing church and prayer leaders here in the United States decades ago. I think it was back in the 90s. They was down in Florida, and they was interviewing this guy. They said, tell us about what you experienced. He had been part of these villages. I think it was Rwanda when they were doing the genocide down there. The army come in, and the soldiers come in, and they were just killing anything and everything. Those people didn't have any ability to fight back. They didn't have any power to fight back. They had been living, worshiping God, living in safety, living in casualness. They were content. They got too content. They didn't see the clouds rising out of the sky of warning. He said, we didn't serve God with fear. We didn't serve God in urgency or desperation, because we just thought everything was always going to go on like that. Well, what happened was, was that the soldiers come in, and it drove them out. They ran for their lives, and they ran out to the swamps, down into the water. Didn't worry about crocodiles. Didn't worry about whatever else might be in there. There they, in the reeds, in the march, they hid. Had to stay there all night, because the army soldiers would sit on the banks and wait for anybody to come back up out of the water and kill them. But they wouldn't go into the water after them. They just said, let them stay out there. And that man said, during the stars out over the top of them, he said, you could hear the wails, screams, and shrieks, not knowing what happened to their family members, in the darkness, crying out of desperation. He says, that famous statement, he said, if you will not learn to pray out of desperation now, you will pray in desolation. Brother, sister, the fabric of our society is coming apart, and the bitterness of our soul is out of an infinite. And it's happening to one, it's happening to all. What's going on in one church is happening to all the churches. What's happening to one family is happening to all of us. And that urgency wells up within us. And it is that bitterness of soul that comes before God saying, God, this is just awful. This is not what you intended. This is not what we're supposed to be. And oh God, we've caused this, and we've allowed this. We have provoked you in front of the cause of your great name. God, we come before you again. You've closed the womb, open it that we may bear sons and daughters to the kingdom, children to be saved, adults to be saved. Give grant to us the power again of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Preach the word of faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And they prayed unto the Lord, and there was an answer. Every great revival has come in those moments of desperation. Every great revival has come. Someone prevailed in prayer. And you and I are at this day and age just to say, why not us? Why not this week? Why not now? Some of you have been laboring longer than I have for the cause of revival and spiritual awakening. You've been praying in the midnight hours longer than what I have. But it is birthed within you, and content we are not until we see God answer, God to move us to that place that we're supposed to be. So it goes on with these. And again, I could go to Jonah chapter 2. Jonah disobeys. He runs the opposite way. The fish swallows him when you throw him over the boat. And he's out in the sea. And it says, out of the belly of hell, cry it out. Pray to the Lord. Just walk right through the scriptures, and you can see that little phrase in there, pray to the Lord. Brother and sister, you and I are here to pray to the Lord for these causes. I want to go on with this because again, there are these moments here in scripture that just kind of gives to us these things, these moments. She makes a vow in verse 11, right after this sorrow of heart, right after this weeping. She makes a vow. It almost is a parallel. What we see with Sam. I won't cut his hair. I'll give him unto the Lord that Nazarite vow. Again, he's yours. If you just open my womb and give me, I'll give that child back to you. Here again is that throughout scripture, Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, you're a hundred years old. I'm going to give you a son in your old age. He has Isaac. Now, as you know, 112 boys, 12, 14 years old, something like that. And God says, take him out. And I want you to sacrifice your own child for me. God gave him how God requires it. Then of course, the same mirror reflection is that we have that found in the New Testament where God the Father sends forth his only begotten son, sends him into the world so that he might be slain, that he might bring us into a relationship and a covenant with him forever. God gives and God calls back. So Hannah makes that her vow. She says, if you give me a child, I'll give him back to you. That's it. I don't know too many mothers that could do that. I don't know too many that are willing to be so extreme. We do it in children dedication or the church used to do it. Is that child is born and parents bring the child before the church and they make a vow. They enter into a covenant. They tell God from the time that this child has understanding with ears to hear, mind to understand, we will bring this child up into fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Lord. And the church stands and they make a vow and they make a covenant. And they say, we will support these parents as they raise this child to fear the Lord and to know the Lord. And we will do our part to pray for them and to instruct them and support them and edify them and rebuke them and correct them, but to be here for them. I remember. That's a hard thing to find anymore. Here it is again, to say for your child, my child is set before the Lord saying, Lord, they're yours. You do with them what you want. Bring honor and glory to your name through their lives, through their testimonies, through their witness. And that's what Hannah does. And here, here, here we have, here we have the testimony and the statement of this. She called his name Samuel. Ask of the Lord. Here at the end of August for this weekend, God gives us that opportunity to pray to the Lord in bitterness of soul for what we see in no time. Anguish, desperation, crying out to God, weeping, saying, Lord, give us a Samuel. On the gatherings of your body, the church gatherings, O Lord of your people, gatherings that are happening where they're lamenting, howling and weeping and mourning for the sins of our nation and the sins of the homes and the sins of the families, crying out to God, have mercy and wrath. Remember mercy, O Lord. Burning California, burning Colorado. You sent the hurricane through Louisiana and Arkansas, floodwaters and other places. Oh, God, the streets are filled with protests and looting and stealing and death and dying drug addicts and alcoholics and murder suicides. Right on down the line, we go one thing right after another. Oh, God, desperation, here I come. That old song, pass me not, O gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry, while on others thou art calling. God, please, please don't pass me by. Please don't pass us by, God. Give us a Samuel. Break forth, Lord. Break forth. It says, and they worshiped the Lord and went back home, knelt in the new hand of God with them. God cannot forgive. He knows who we are. Our names are engraved on the palms of his hands. He knows how many hairs are on our head. He knows how many breaths we take. He knows how many steps we take. He knows us. And he gives to us the divine opportunity to come before him in the same as him. No, it is not that we are not able to simply physically bear children. Some of you, that might be your condition, your case physically, but this is not about physical issues. There are always the physical requests that we must pray and bring them before the Lord. This is about bringing forth the preciousness of the Holy Spirit and fullness upon the church for revival, upon the streets and the homes of America for spiritual awakening. Only God can do it. God is waiting for us, that we would come before him and do exactly what he told us to do. When you see these things happening, call for a solemn assembly, gather the people together, confess and repent of the sins, make the wrongs right, and then I'll come back to fullness and restore that which I broke. Again, all the examples of Moses, Daniel, Job, David, Hezekiah, right on down the line, when they was faced with this, they prayed to the Lord, God remembered them. Our opportunity tonight is that God will remember us in our prayers. One thing that I said when I set this up is that when I get on the other side of this, no matter what comes in September through the rest of this year, again, two-thirds of this year is now almost now complete. The glory of the end has been, we all say that, we all know that. What will the last one-third of this year bring? Most people are very fearful and fretful about what it may bring, but you and I are allowed to come before him that he may hear our cries tonight, through this week, that as we offer them, we're not just praying prayers, but now the bitterness of our soul, the desperation of the hour, the tears in the week, languishing for what we've become, content. Oh, may we say, I am not content until I know which way to go, not content to live like this anymore, not content just to say prayers, not content to go without, not content to be filled with apathy. I don't want to be like Laodicea, have need of nothing, not even God. I want God. We need God. And there's no other answer. Regardless of what happens in November, there's no other answer for the church. And again, it is that I share with you this account of 1 Samuel, chapter one of Ham, she prevailed. It is the example that for the rest of this week, speakers to come and bring these accounts in scripture to our minds, to our hearts, souls, to teach us what it is to prevail. Many have forgotten because we've been so long without bearing fruit. Our wounds have been closed. We haven't multiplied. We haven't made disciples. We haven't prevailed in prayer. We say prayers, we offer, we go to church, we try to live in the right way with the Lord, but we have no evidence of it. God says, I can change that in a moment. When you see these things happen, call for the psalms. So we begin. So I want to close out my time here in the next moment. I want to give you these prayer points. I want to walk down through these scriptures. I want to come back to these points that I brought to you in the sermon and bring back to you. But again, we can offer them up as petitions. Again, one of the things that I'd like to do, and the time does not allow me to do that here this evening, is that for the hour of prayer, like we did last month, over these months, I've been teaching prayer, trying to help for those who struggle in their prayer life of how to pray an hour before the Lord. You know, again, we sing that song, sweet hour of prayer, but it's a rare thing to find a Christian that's an hour before God. So I just simply offer verses and prayer targets and prayer points for three subjects, worship, confession, and petition. Would you allow for me tonight just to share those with you, that you might worship the Lord for a few moments, bring confession before the Lord, and then bring petitions before the Lord. And again, as I speak these things to you, in your respective places where you're at, if you have a way or a means that you can get down before the Lord, you know, again, driving, I know that might be hard, or busy with something else that might be difficult. I'm just asking you right now to make a point. Hannah King rose up, arose, and went to the temple in the altar, and she came to God in prayer. I'm asking you to rise up and to go to God where you're at. Meet him, who is the God of the universe, who's the God of all things, and worship him for you. Understand that, is that again, your very existence is because God brought you forth into this world. God gives life. Thank you, God, for giving life. Thank you, God, for opening wounds. You know, some of the writers in the scriptures, Job, Jeremiah, they lamented their their day of calamity. They said, it'd been better that I had never been born, than that they should have announced, is that to the parent, is that you have a son. Better that you were said that have been stillborn, and never raised in this world. You are where you're at right now, because God allows you. God caused you. God has given you opportunity in life right now for his name's sake. Would you honor him with that acknowledgement for those things? We read these accounts, it seems impossible. Many are frustrated when they have that and they're exhausted with the medical profession and fertilization, and they can't conceive a child, and then when all other means fail, they say, well, let's pray about it. And God opens the wound. Isn't it a miracle when God opens the wound? The story of Mary, a virgin, never knowing a man. She was by the Holy Spirit incarnation. What a miracle. Praise your name, Father, for the miracle of Christ's birth. Spiritually, for truth, Lord, I thank you for every answer prayer. I thank you for every mercy that you've given in life, that you've shown me that you are able to do the impossible. You saved the wicked, wretched man like me. Paul writes those words, I am what I am by the grace of God. Thank you, God, for your praise, God, that the word went forth. Someone took time to pray over me. Someone took time to give me the gospel, and they bore it. They not just planted the seed, they reaped the harvest. Thank you, God, for the harvest. Thank you for the word, which is the seed. On and on we go with that worship. We just need this. You are able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think here tonight, and I praise you for that. I want to be respectful of my time. So let's go into this confession for the next few moments, and then we'll conclude our time with petitions on this confession, and to not provoke him. And you hear me speak, and I spoke tonight on it, and I've shared it other times, and those of you that may not be familiar with me, I understand that, but this is one of our sins. As a church and as a nation, we have provoked the Lord. We've legalized abominations, judicial edicts that have set into motion everything contrary to the word of God. God, we stand before you guilty as a nation that we have provoked you. As the church, we've divided our time and our affections. It says, set your affections on things above, but Lord, we set our affections more on things of this earth than you. Forgive us for provoking you for jealousy. Very natural disasters in the remedial judgments that we see upon our nation. The epidemics that we're facing in our nation comes because we've provoked you, God, in front of the cause of your great name. This was not what God intended for the United States. This is not what was intended for anybody to experience, but this is the price you pay when you provoke a holy God, and we're reaping that which we have sowed. The church who knows the answers and has the answers has not followed through with a remedy. It's called for a solemn assembly. 1860-some was the last solemn assembly that was called for in the United States. Wow, 160 years before we finally come back around to say, Lord, it probably can't get any worse. Well, yes, it can. Why would we want to provoke the Lord any more than what we already have? Why would we want to fret the cause of Christ any more than what we've already done? Forgive us, God. Forgive us for our time that has been wasted, our opportunities that have been diluted, prayer has been obsolete, and again, we have not borne fruit for your name's sake or your kingdom. I always quote that old hymn, must I go empty-handed, not one soul to bear, not one soul to give him, not one soul to share. We're like that unprofitable servant when he was given a talent and it says he went in the backyard and dug it, and when the master of the house came, he gave it back to him. Everybody else had been fruitful and multiplied. Five gave ten, two gave four, but the one gave one. He said, you unprofitable servant, find a man to feed, take him out to do good, whether it's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Are you an unprofitable servant? Not one soul to give him, not one tear to shed, not one prayer to offer. Oh God, forgive us for dry eyes. Forgive us, oh God, for not bearing fruit. Forgive us, oh God, for not being what we're supposed to be as servants unto you, for your great name's sake. Forgive us that we've been ashamed speaking your name. Forgive us that we've missed opportunities. Forgive us that we haven't created opportunities to speak the name of Jesus to our neighbors and to our co-workers and to our families. Again, the urgency of the hour that we don't literally see them going down into hell. Forgive us for our callousness Lord, because there is no way possible that there is any one of us who understands the truth of the gospel and see souls in hell cannot be unmoved by that. When I talk about using catalysts to stir yourself up, you see your loved one there, you say, again, an urgency in the bitterness of spiritual cause, exactly like Hannah, that to say, don't let that happen, God. You are dogmatic, definite with God. Don't let my loved one go there. And forgive me, God, that I've been content to watch other thousands of souls go to hell, and I've not cared one iota about them. Forgive me. Forgive your church. Forgive the body of Christ that we have provoked and fretted because of Christ. We've been unfruitful. We've not borne. The bloom has been claimed. It's going into this. It says they prayed unto the Lord. My house shall be called a house of prayer. Father, forgive us. At the houses of worship today, the churches that are structural and organized and gathering or not gathering during these times, Lord, they have not been houses of prayer. They have not consecrated one hour a week to have a prayer meeting. They open in prayer, they close in prayer, but they pray, and they don't prevail. Forgive us for being content. They offer and say prayers like the Muslims do, or like the Buddhists do, or the Hindus do, and never see anything. Forgive us for being content and satisfied with Jesus, but the question still remains, Lord, are you satisfied with me? Father, forgive me that I have been too satisfied in this world with my goods, my possessions, my health, my freedoms, and I didn't realize that there was a price to pay. These things that matter on them. Now, let's go to a time of petition as we close out here in the next 10 minutes or 15 minutes to break off on this, and here we go into a time of petition, bitterness of soul that I've been mentioning throughout this sermon. Some of us have never experienced this, so maybe it's time right now when I'm talking about desperation, and I'm talking about wrestling, and I'm talking about prevailing, and you don't understand what I'm talking about. You've not seen this in your church, you've been a part of it. I understand that. There's a lot that is missing for some. Others of you, I understand. You've been there. You know what I'm talking about, but for the vast majority of the church, they don't know what the bitterness of soul is about. Again, just to give you a quick example here, again, I'm asking you to pray as I speak these petitions to you right here in Kaiser a number of years ago. We was, again, the last couple years, here we are in August where it was supposed to be brown grass and brown fields and, you know, dry with dog days and all that, but we have had rain consistently in this area, in this region. The last couple years, the summers have been very wet, but a couple of years ago, we was in a drought, and New Creek, which is right down off of my house here, supplies for the water there, and it was practically bone dry. A bunch of the pastors and church leaders in the city were gathering every once a week to pray, and I shared with them. I said, we're going to wait till the water finally dries out to say, let's pray. Let's pray now. So, we had a solemn assembly. We invited all the churches and all the pastors, and we came together that night, and I forget how many was there, and I forget how many churches was there, but the place was packed. Hadn't been done for a long time. We stood that night. We worshiped God. My responsibility was confession, and I went down through from A to Z the sins of our city, sins of our homes, sins of the church, sins of our own hearts specifically, and the last part of that was the petition where they cried out to God to give rain, and within 24 hours, rain came, but it was two ladies that was in a Presbyterian church and sat out in the parking lot of the church that night, and they shared with someone later on that got back to me and just said, we have been in the church for almost 50 years, and we have never seen anything like it, where again, if you don't have water, you don't survive. When you see these things happen, here they've been in the church for 50 years, and they've never heard this, and again, when you see these things in the headlines, and you might shake your head saying, boy, that's just awful. That's just wrong, and that's as far as it goes, but down in your soul, you don't understand what God looks at that as. The way the church is supposed to view that is that bitterness there saying this is not the way it's supposed to be, and again, for some that you remember, this isn't the way that it always was. We didn't have this kind of happenings, so again, it is that it causes within us a stirring. We grab a hold of the altar, and we come before God with that promise in Hebrew that we can obtain mercy and find grace to help in this time of need. God, I haven't had that in my soul, and I haven't had that in my spirit. Stir me up, oh God. Teach me what it is to be desperate. Make me to pray in desperation before I pray in desolation. Cause me, oh God, to pray so as to prevail. Teach me how to prevail in prayer. That's the petition. Father, my church is not a house of prayer. Lord, how do I change that? Show me what I need to do. Lord, my prayer life. Throughout the prayer conferences for 15 years, we've had this pastor stand up and say, I have no prayer life. For people in the churches, we have no prayer in our church. That's the confession that was and is and unfortunately shall be unless things change. God's able. He can do it. Pray for that. Lord, make us to be a house of prayer. Pray for your church right now where you're at. Pray for your pastor right now. Lord, let him be a man of prayer. Let him be more on his knees than he is with men. Spurgeon said that. Pray right now for those of your brothers and sisters in your church, in your Sunday school class, in your region, your place, brothers and sisters in your city that you meet with and have studied with or have fellowship with. Pray for them. Hold them up. Let them be a man of God. Let them be a woman of God. Don't let them be content for what we see happening in our city. Stir us up, O God. Make us that, O God, that bitterness in our soul that moves us, O God, content with nothing less than to prevail with you, O God. Grant to brothers that they may join. Don't let me bear this alone. May we all be involved. Cause us and teach us how to pray. Remember the disciples asked Jesus that. Lord, teach us to pray. Maybe you just need to ask God that fourth this evening, Lord, teach me how to pray. I already mentioned it, but let's go back to it. Lord, give me a Samuel. Remember, Samuel means ask of God. There might be some petition, lost soul, some specific thing in your life you've been praying for and you haven't been granted that yet. You've been praying for revival, for spiritual awakening. That's the emphasis of this weekend. We haven't seen that. We've seen as the psalm, there shall be showers of blessings. Mercy drops round us for fall, but for the showers. Lord, give us a Samuel. Ask of God. May it be a testimony in history and eternity forever. This is when God rent the heavens and came down. I always use Duncan Campbell's Hebrides. When they pray, said the ground shook. Duncan Campbell and that Scottish voice appears and God stepped down. God stepped down. Not in wrath and anger, not because you're provoked and fretted, but Lord stepped down in grace and mercy for your name's sake. Bring glory and honor to your name. Bring souls into the kingdom. For I would have none to perish. I would have none to go away from me. Oh God, give me a Samuel. Give me the desire of my heart. Ask of the Lord. Take a moment right now just to pray for me. I come to the last moments here and I want to save this for the very end. I wrote an article and I posted it on Facebook, a call for a psalm assembly and I posted here about two days ago. Where is the urgency? I used the account out of the book of Genesis, where the Egyptians were, they were pursuing, I said Genesis, I'm sorry, Exodus and they were pursuing Israel across the Red Sea. And again, the plagues that happened, the nine plagues, but the 10th plague came, death. And that death came to their homes every morning from the barrel right on down to the surface. Flesh and animal died that time when the death angel crossed over. And there's a little verse there that says that when that everybody woke up and they found someone dead in their house and every house that did not have blood experienced death that night. It says that they were urgent to get Israel out of Egypt because they were all, and they said that we'd be all dead. Brothers and sisters for years, I've been standing in front of a live stream and in my churches and prayer meetings, and I've been touting stats and numbers of drug overdose deaths, 70,000 a year, alcoholism, 80 to 90,000 causes of death a year, suicides, 50,000 a year, homicides, 50,000 a year, murder suicides, 30,000 a year. We have been dealing with this for a long time, death and dying. But I'm telling you that within the last five years is that those stats have skyrocketed. I share and post on our prayer targets and our prayer points is that we are now at a place, what happens when it's happening every day, every other day, that there's death and dying like what we're experiencing, unnatural, unnatural, not growing old, not simply heart gave out, but because of disease, because of foolishness, because of sin, and God wages of sin's death, death has come. The death angel is sweeping across the United States. We're dying faster as a nation now than we are reproducing. I wrote that article and shared where's the urgency because I cannot express to you as much as I could possibly do and what I'll attempt to do over this weekend for my allotted slots and sessions. We're out of time. Our nation is out of time. We're not going to make it on the path that we are currently on. Our streets are filled with anarchy, homes completely obliterated, the family structure I saw opposed by James Dobson. You know James Dobson from the family has instituted for marriage, for traditional family, and he has fought all of his life. He's got to be in his 80s by now. He's fought all of his life for what God intended. A man shall leave his mother and father and shall cling to his wife and those two shall be born. And the man and the woman shall go into each other and have children and raise the children up in the spirit of the Lord. That's what God's plan is, but that's not what's happening. Abortion, butchery, crime, sin, evil, wickedness, Satanism, agnosticism, atheism, right on down the line. We are out of time as a nation and the church ought to have its hand on that button of urgency and say we just can't go on like this. That's something else that produces that bitterness of soul. See what you see and know that your loved ones aren't going to wake up in the morning. Your loved ones went out, simply went to the store, simply went to the ball game, simply went to work. They're not coming home because they're going to be shot and killed on the way back or on the way to. That's the tragedy of today. And so it is is that with some kind of whatever it might take in your mind, heart, and soul to be urgent for this hour for what we're facing. And as I just don't sense it, I don't sense in the church and I don't sense among those prayer meeting, they say prayers as if they don't expect nothing to happen and they don't care whether anything happens. Welcome to Laodicea. But I'm telling you is that before we get there, that there would be an urgency in your spirit. And I know for some of those names that I've seen that have joined us tonight, you haven't. You've had it for longer than I have and you've joined me in that same field and I thank you for that. But let's pray for all the bond. Understand God's not going to let us see the end of 2021. You think it can't get no worse? I wrote in that just how worse it can get. We'll know what destitution is. We'll know what it is to just simply survive day to day. Religious freedoms will be gone. Electricity, running water will be gone. Stores, availability of food will be gone. We saw a glimpse of it back in March and April when the panic hit and they screamed into the stores in Horton. That was a glimpse that if we don't get this thing turned around and prevail with God, we're going to live that day in and day out. Our children and grandchildren will have to grow up in that. All the luxuries and all the advantages and all the freedoms that we've had will be gone. It's an urgent time and that requires an urgent response. You cannot just say prayers. Quote Leonard Ravenhill when we started this and I put it in the letters and the invitations to you, Leonard Ravenhill said, God does not answer prayer. God answers desperate prayer. I'm adding on to that. Desperate, urgent, fervent prayers. Here we are. If there was ever a time to pray, it's now. Not just pray, but pray so as to prevail. Again, this is what this weekend's all about. When you see these things happen, it's all one and two. All of us all on a Sunday. In September, they're going to have one. But for this weekend, it's for the body of Christ to come together. It's for these speakers to come and encourage us not to be content, not to be satisfied, not to be complacent, not to be filled with appetite, to stir some, to realize the lateness of the hour. And again, we talk about the last days for the second coming. I'm talking, we're in the last hours, the last minutes for our nation to survive. If the church doesn't prevail, and prevail we must. Every one of those examples that I gave in the scriptures, they pray to the Lord, they prevail. God heard it, God answered it. And that's the reason is that again, if I can give you a promise first, let me give you Jeremiah chapter 33, verse 3. Call, and I will answer, and show you great and mighty things. Content I am not just to call, I demand that God answer. Again, he teaches us these things of importunity, urgency. Gives us that example over in the book of Luke, the man that rose up in the middle of the night, knocked on his doors. And he said, he said, I need food. I have company that has come and I don't have anything to give. Rise and give. Jesus using a parable, he says, and because of the urgency of the hour, the need that's at hand, the opportunity that's there, that man will rise up out of bed and give to you. How much more will your heavenly father do for you? So here we are to begin for this week. My opportunity was just to present an introduction to you while we're doing this, what this is all about. Why do another call for a solemn assembly? So as we can prevail. And I want to thank you for signing on tonight. I want to thank you for watching and joining. We're going to get ready here to transition for a moment, but I want to close here in prayer. I want to ask you that you would close in prayer where you're at. We're going to have this weekend in front of us, full day tomorrow, eight hours on Sunday and every moment that we not just be haphazard. I pray that you're not being distracted. I pray that you're not trying to watch and listen a little bit as you're doing something else on Facebook or whatever, social media or whatever. I want to ask you for your attention and your time because this is serious business. And I want to tell you is that the certainty of our nation hangs in the balances. That again, you and I can prevail this weekend before and the church can see mighty things for his glory.