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ABC Prayer Crusade

I Met God

Glenn Coon

I Met God 1

And we want to be ready, and we can be ready, because this is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

And so, what is this mysterious sea of prayer?

Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, Millions of people are asking the question, does anyone care?

Does the Lord love me enough to give me a razor?

Does God love me enough to give me $1, 000?

Is he interested in that or is he looking the other way?

Does God love me enough to give me $6, 000?

Does he love me enough to give me 10, 000 books?

Does he love me enough to give me his Son?

Does he love me enough to give me eternal life?

He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Does he love me enough to give me Jesus Christ his Son, to give his Son away, and to give me a sinner, a vile, unworthy sinner, eternal life, to dwell with Him through the ceaseless ages of eternity, does He?

The prayer of the upright is his delight and it says that, delight thyself also in the Lord, he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Do I love him enough to trust him before I see or feel the answer?

Do I love him enough to trust him who gave his son to die on Calvary for me and has offered me free of charge eternal life?

Do I love him enough to trust him for all that he's promised before I get the answer?

Let me give you a few examples of the mysterious sea of prayer.

And it is just because I know that he loves me and he keeps his word as he's promised.

Can I trust him whose son hung on Calvary, the gift of heaven?

He poured out all heaven in the gift of Jesus.

The ABCs of prayer, A is ask, Matthew 7, 7, it's Jesus A.

The B of prayers, believe that you receive, Mark 11, 24, Jesus gave it.

The sea of prayers Jesus taught us in John 11, 41 and other places is to thank him that we have received on the basis of his immutable, eternal, impeccable word before we have any sign as far as sight or feeling is concerned.

Notice just 2 or 3 examples of the mysterious sea of prayer which God is delighted with.

We'll find, first of all, over in Jericho.

This is found in Joshua, the sixth chapter, and the second verse and the seventh verse.

In Joshua chapter 6, verses 2 and 7, We're told in verse 2, God said to Joshua, I have given Jericho into your hands.

I have given Jericho, that great wall city with walls going up to heaven.

The 10 spies said There's no possibility in this world that you can ever in any way overcome it.

God said, I've given it into your hands, a free gift.

Now the sea of prayer is before we have any sign other than God's immutable, eternal, impeccable word, we say yes, it is ours.

And you'll notice how God intended that they would show the sea of prayer, verse 7.

It says, you'll march around Jericho every day, the seventh day, 7 times, and then you'll give a long blast with a horn, and you'll shout before the walls fall, not after.

The sea of prayer means don't wait until you have received.

Thank God on the basis of his promise because his promise contains the gift.

Jesus said in Luke 8-11, the seed is the word of God.

Every promise of God contains a gift that he promises.

He said, now I want you to take my promise, and I want you to act on it just as though you'd already received it and could see it.

If you believe that I love you enough to do these things for you, I want you to show your trust and your love for me by believing me.

Don't go around worrying and whining and complaining.

Reach up and take hold of my immutable, eternal, never-dying word and love.

They marched around, that was their act of faith before they got the answer.

They gave the long blast before they got the answer.

They did the things that most armies would do after they received the answer.

You try that in claiming God's promises, beloved, and you can find a whole new dimension in life.

You know, my friends, God does not want Christians to go around being worry warts.

You know, I think 1 of the saddest thing is to see a 150 pound worry wart.

Years ago, they told us how you could remove warts.

Do you know how you can remove worry warts?

Calvary challenges you and me to declare that God is love.

He loves us with an everlasting love, with loving kindness he's drawn us.

The next illustration or example is that of Gideon, and it's found in Judges.

The Lord came to Gideon, and in Judges 6, 14, he said, I have given the Midianites into your hand.

And in the 18th verse, he told them what they were to do before they had any outward evidence.

They were to take pictures, they were to take lamps, they were to take trumpets.

They were to sound those trumpets before they had any external sign.

They were to break those pictures and reveal those lamps before they had any external sign whatsoever and they were to shout victory as the army usually would shout after they've received it.

You see, this communication with God is different from that with any other human being.

Since we know that Jesus Christ, the very central gift in all heaven personified is the gift of Calvary, We're never to doubt God's love.

And when God says, I want you to declare that you have received, because the gift is in the promise before we have any external sign, that's the mysterious sea of prayer.

And that is 1 of the most wonderful testimonies that you and I can give to the unbelieving world.

Let's go around telling people, I know God lives.

I have millions of evidences every day that he does.

God forbid that there be whining, worried Christians.

For he that believeth not God hath made him a liar.

The third example is the woman of the issue of blood.

The story is found in Mark, the fifth chapter.

I Met God 2

The Lord, when you're in financial need, when you're in trouble, the Lord said, look, I won't forsake you, call on me.

Be like the evergreen trees when the great snowfall comes and its weight is so great that the other trees find their limbs breaking because they resist in their own strength.

But the evergreen yields, it bends, it's willing to go clear to the floor, and its branches don't break.

That is the place where you and I find solutions.

Let us ask God to help us to be willing to bend.

You know, no home would need to break if the mates were willing to bend.

The Bible says the evergreen, whatever he does will prosper because his leaf doesn't wither, the first Psalm.

God wants a people who are free to get down on 2 knees and say, Lord, I do not have the solution, but you do.

And that's what we're teaching in the ABCs of prayer.

God has 3, 573 promises, or clusters of promises.

And he said, ask me and believe, reach up and take it.

Admit your helplessness, admit your hopelessness, but know that I will not forsake you.

This morning we sit here, After the first service this morning, I talked with a dear friend of mine who is in great financial distress.

He can fall on his knees with his family and he can reach up and say, Lord, I'm in trouble.

You have said, bring you all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house.

Prove me now here, where's the Lord post.

There shall not be room enough to receive it.

Whatever your problem may be, let's spread it out before God.

I met God at X in history, abominable history.

And the more helpless we recognize ourselves to be and recognize that God is eager to come to our rescue, the more quickly we can bend down before him.

And as we bend down before him, the weight falls on Jesus.

And I want to share a few of those experiences.

My, I remember how that man came to me after I'd picked up the ABCs of prayer, and I just gloried in the love of Christ.

I just gloried in his love, and I wanted to share his love everywhere.

He came in and told how his home was breaking, his heart was breaking, his hold on Jesus was gone.

And we shared with him a God that says, when you're undone, when you're thirsty, really thirsty, when you recognize your helplessness, I won't forsake you.

1 hour later, he walked out a new creature in Christ Jesus and a new home.

That sobbing girl that came, Nobody knew the serious thoughts that she had.

I was pastor of 1 of our college churches and that girl came in.

I'd been preaching, trying to uplift Jesus and let people know that Jesus loves us.

About 6 weeks later, a little tap at the study door.

I opened the door and there she was and she told me how that she had sobbed.

Nobody knew, not 1 person on the campus, myself included, knew that she had the first serious thought of Jesus.

She'd go into her room, fall on her bed, sob for an hour at a time, didn't even dare to look up to Jesus, didn't know how much he loves her.

Oh, if she'd only known that he said, look, when you're thirsty for answers, I'll not forsake you, And you'll know that the hand of the Lord has done it.

Everywhere I go, you go because there are hundreds and thousands of others who don't really know that Jesus loves them.

I think of that lost man that came into my study.

Oh, he said, I heard you challenging the young ministers to tell men and women how they're saved.

When the poor and needy are thirsty and seeking water, they can bend like the evergreen onto the terrible weight of the tempest and know that God is there.

I think of my own experience as an agonizing minister.

25 years ago, my wife and I started traveling.

We had a 36-foot house trailer, And we pulled it, towed it behind a little, 1 of the smallest Chevrolets.

It was like a jackrabbit hitched to a wagon.

And the very first encounter we had, the very first trip, we had to be towed up a hill.

They towed the Chevrolet and the trailer and all.

And you know when you and I find that we're thirsty for help and we just can't negotiate the hills of life, God will come to our rescue.

I found that my period of rest between series was worse than the series because the weight of that trailer would pull the transmissions of the cars and with it it'd pull my heart out and I was going through all kinds of trouble.

I found it was costing me a hundred dollars more a month than I was receiving from the conference for help and I didn't want to tell them that because we're pioneering this type of work.

And I found when a debt came due, I went to a bank and borrowed the money.

And when that came due, I borrowed the money from another bank to pay the first.

And when that came due, I borrowed money from the third bank to pay the second, kept my credit good.

And the aches and the pains went right to the pit of my stomach.

We're down in Natchez, Mississippi, 25 years ago.

You know how wonderful to know we can fall on our knees before God.

I jumped in the car, went out, way out, way out of no man's land.

I was sure that I was out in the woods where there's nobody around.

Parked the car, walked far out in the woods with my Bible, fell on my knees in deep agony.

I claimed his forgiveness, his pardon, his righteousness.

And it's gone all over my body and all over my soul and here I am telling people about how to get answers to prayer.

I fell on my knees out there and I lifted my hands toward heaven.

As I walked past my wife, I looked in the opposite direction.

You know, we don't like to have people see that we've been weeping.

I Met God 3

For every command in the Bible to keep the Sabbath, there are up to 50 texts that tell us to be happy.

So if we're Sabbath keepers but not happy ones, you know what we are?

But if we're happy, then we're gladvenists.

And you see, if a person is a sadvenist long enough, he can end up a madvenist.

And his children begin to leave home and they become Gad Venists and then they end up bad Venists.

So you see it's a bad bad root this sad deal.

826 texts of scripture tell us to be happy.

So I think it's about time we did, don't you?

So you'll know that during this series, and I believe during this pastorate, I believe that you might as well make up your mind that nobody is going to be sinning if he's happy.

In fact, you know something, I'll let you in on a secret.

You acted almost as happy this afternoon as Baptists And that's not a joke.

I'll tell you I've been to many Baptist meetings.

And it just thrills me to see Adventists so happy.

We have every reason to be happy in the Lord, every reason in the world.

Now this I hadn't authorized, this picture, but you can still put it back on because I'd like to look at it too.

I can see that we have an artist in the group here.

Did you do that Nancy or did your daughter?

Where in the world did she she left after she did it?

All right we're so happy that was beautiful thank you.

All right our text for this afternoon has to do with empty prayers and how we don't have to pray empty prayers anymore.

Maybe you would join with me in that nail prayer, in your hearts.

Dear Lord, make each 1 of us a nail on the wall to hold your picture in its place.

And 2nd Corinthians 4 18 tells us about the unseen world and it says this, While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal, 2 separate distinct worlds and yet blending in the heart of a Christian.

The 1 world is the world of faith, Hebrews 11 1.

It says, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, The evidence of things what?

You see we see a human being we can either see him we know he's there because we see him or we hear him or we touch him, but we don't see God, we don't hear his voice, we don't touch him physically, which means that there are 2 distinct worlds, right?

There's the world of faith of the unseen, and there's the world of the seen.

And because many of us forget that there is this world of the unseen, we get frustrated in our prayers.

We think unless we see answers that they aren't there, but let us never forget there's the world of the unseen.

It's a life of faith, Romans 117, and it says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of God, of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith." That's unseen.

As it is written, the just shall live by faith.

The just do not live by touch or by hearing or by sight.

In this world of the temporal, of the physical, God wants us to come into a relationship which is spiritual.

He walked in a new life, a life of the unseen.

Enoch walking with the unseen, with the unheard, with the untouched, and oh what a walk it was, but it was walk of faith.

Now this brings us to the subject of prayer and I'd like to have you notice some of our empty prayers, prayers that seemed empty, and while you look at this a moment, Do you know what makes claiming Bible promises real?

I hope the Holy Spirit will impress us as we share a bit with you.

The thing that I have found in my life that makes claiming Bible promises real and meaningful is the 1 who speaks these promises.

I cannot see him, I cannot hear his audible voice, I cannot touch him, but the just shall live by what?

By faith, not feeling, not any sense, but by faith.

So I found in my experience many, many times that the thing that would make a promise very real to me, and just not so many words, was as I would claim a promise, I would connect that promise to the 1 who made the promise.

So the Word of God of which we read and Christ the Word of God are 1.

So as I take a promise from the book, I am actually taking Jesus Christ.

And if I merely take it as so many words and not as the life of Christ, I'm merely dealing with a theory instead of a person of Jesus.

This is why we had in our little red book of Bible promises, by the way don't order anymore people keep coming to us and saying do you have any left we have none of these books left God's promises solve my problems and the others are rapidly going and we aren't doing any new additions at this time of any of them.

But I found this and those of you have the little book called God's Promises Solve My Problems, Any of you have that little book?

Pages 10 to 13 in that book represent the walk with God as we claim His promises.

We just don't say, Lord, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.

Now, I must claim this promise, these words.

1 Corinthians 1.30 says, Christ is made unto us wisdom.

So when I claim wisdom, I'm to claim Christ in the form of wisdom.

When I need guidance, Psalm 32 8, not just I need guidance, I need Jesus Christ who is my guide.

When I need righteousness, I don't need righteousness per se, I need Jesus Christ who is made unto me righteousness.

So claiming promises actually is claiming Jesus Christ in my life in the form of the promise.

I have sat down, I've laid down on my couch when I've had some very heavy crises in my life, and I have gone through the promises, for those who have the little red book, pages 10 to 13, and all those statements, pages 10 to 13 in God's promises solve my problems, all those statements have to do with God.

And as I lay down there on the couch, I've said, Lord, here is how I know that you're answering your promise.

This is how I know you're fulfilling your word.

Now listen to this, how the promise is God.

I Met God 4

Christ, who was God himself the creator, came down, humbled himself, born in the stable, cradled in a manger, and took upon himself the form of a servant.

Now which of these 2 philosophies should we accept?

Notice in the next text that you'll appear see on the screen, God fellowships the humble and that is found in Isaiah the 57th chapter and the 15th verse and it says this, Thus saith the high and lofty 1, that habiteth eternity, whose name is holy.

I dwell in the high and the holy place, with him also that is of a humble and contrite spirit." So God promises special fellowship to what?

And we're going to notice before we're through this evening, we're going to notice the height of humility.

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Series

I Met God

I Met God 5

Transcript

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