House of Prayer - Part 6

For someone who's so ill-prepared as myself for the ministry, it seems to me that God has chosen, among other things, to make my wife and I example of those foolish things that confound the wise. My wife writes music and directs the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, and she neither reads nor writes music. She's never been trained.

She doesn't know what she's doing. She just does it. I've never been to a seminary or a Bible school, and I ended up with 15 or 18, 20 people in New York City on a street that was so depressing.

Our church was so depressing, I didn't want to go, and I was in charge. Drugs everywhere, inner city, totally different culture than especially my wife grew up in. I, as a ballplayer, had been around.

And then I realized, what am I going to do? Am I going to live in this Christian fantasy about what God once did and then what God's going to do one day, but then your life goes by and you never see God do anything? You can let your life pass by with that kind of talk. Remember, the worst epitaph on anybody's tombstone will be this. You have not because you ask not.

Someone says, well, Brother Jim, you understand, Jim, that you don't get everything you ask for. It has to be according to God's will. I understand all of that, but we can't use little theological dodges to get away from the fact that a lot of people don't have things that God wants you to have right now today.

He wants you to have it right now today, but over my life or possibly yours, he writes, you have not because you ask not. I want to do it for you. But God has chosen prayer to be the one conductor.

Listen, the one conductor, the one channel for all of God's blessings, the channel is prayer. In other words, God has this table set for us. And he sees Jay and Amy, and he knows exactly what they need to raise that child.

And he has the table spread with every kind of wisdom and grace and strength that they could possibly need. But he says, the only way you can get it is to pull up to the table and taste and see that the Lord is good. And pulling up to the table is called prayer.

In other words, God doesn't tell us, pray, because I want my people to pray. He says, pray, because I have all kinds of things for you. And when you ask, you shall receive.

In other words, it's not legalism. It's not, get in there and start praying. It's, I need thee.

Oh, I need thee. Every hour, I need thee. God, you see what I'm facing.

Help me, Lord. And as we pray, he's faithful to his word and supplies. Well, my wife and I began to learn a little bit about this conductor and this channel called prayer.

And we began to see people's lives get changed. And I began to preach. And not being trained and studying on my own and building a library which has grown quite large and trying to stay a student, but at the very beginning, it was rough.

Sermons I preach at the beginning, it's tough when you fall asleep doing your own sermons, not just the people falling asleep. It's when you doze off. But you know, I found this, that God, when you become a Christian and because of what I just said, how he blesses people through prayer.

He's going to make you a woman of prayer. He's going to make you, sir, a man of prayer. And you try to run, he'll chase you.

But he will make us people of prayer. He knows how to order our lives and to get our attention and say, do you realize how much you need me now? Oh, no, Lord, I can handle this on my own. And God says, all right, fine.

When you hit the stone wall the 32nd time, remember that you need me. But notice, he's not making me a man of prayer so he can say, see, I got him praying. It's a father saying, I have all of this and you live with such scarcity.

Please, come unto me, all you that labor. Pray, talk, spend time. Why are you so rushed for? You're running for what? Working with what? There's nothing in gym symbol to work with you.

Everything that you need, I have. So when are we going to talk? So I began to learn, and we began to stress our Tuesday night prayer meeting as the Brahma of our church. And this past Tuesday night, between 1,200 and 1,500 people gathered like every Tuesday night.

And since, of course, those days, we've had like 14 other churches begin all stressing that prayer meeting night.