Words of Jesus Podcast - Come Boldly Prayer

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

"The least you can do is pray.” Is that right? The Eternal God is not subject to our wishes or demands. Scriptures say, 'The effectual fervent prayers of a righteous man availeth much.' We must live in a manner to hear the voice of God to have the wisdom to pray. Jesus always acted in obedience to his Father. We should follow His example. *** Wilt Thou Be Made Whole (Part 4)CHAPTER 15:  JESUS HEALS A LAME MANIN JERUSALEM, by the sheep market, was the Pool of Bethesda.  Beside it lay a great multitude of invalids—the lame, blind, withered, and bedridden—all waiting for the moving of the water; because at certain times an angel went down into the pool and troubled the water.  Then, whoever was the first to enter the water after its troubling, was cured of whatever disease or infirmity he had.            Jesus, one day, walked beside the Pool of Bethesda and saw a man there who had been infirm and lame for thirty-eight years.  Realizing that he had been so long infirm, Jesus spoke to him, saying;             “Wilt thou be made whole?”            The lame man answered:            “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.”            Jesus said to him:            “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.”            Immediately the man was healed.  He took up his bed and walked away.            This miracle came to pass on the Sabbath.  The Jews, therefore, stopped the man who had been cured, saying:             “It is the Sabbath day.  It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.”            He answered:            “He that made me whole, the same said unto me, “Take up thy bed, and walk.”            The Jews asked him:            “What man is that which said unto thee, ‘Take up thy bed, and walk’?”             But he who had been healed did not know who his benefactor was, because Jesus had left to avoid the crowd in that place.            Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him:             “Behold, thou art made whole.  Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”             The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello friend, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host. We're talking from our little book, The Words of Jesus, and we have been talking from chapter 15 of the book where Jesus healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. We talked about all the ins and outs of Jesus' assessing that situation and looking into it and deciding

looking at all the facts around it and making sure that this person was indeed a candidate for healing by asking him, will you be made whole? You know, you're going to find that question or one very similar to it in many of Jesus's encounters with people that need healing. He, you know, would see a blind man and say, what wilt thou? What wilt thou that I do unto thee? And you're thinking, come on now. Are you watching here? Are you paying attention? This guy is blind. What do you think he wants? You to fix his pocket watch? But see, Jesus has reasons for

asking these questions. And I think that this is perhaps one of the questions that, I mean in my experience growing up in church and watching people get healed and anointed with oil and, you know, prayed over and everybody coming and laying their hands on them and hollering at the top of their lungs. But I've never in my life ever had anybody actually qualify the person that they're praying for. See, prayer's just cheap. It's just cheap, man. I can pray for you and then I can go pray for that person. But you know, if you knew

that you had 25 prayers left. Alright, you're 40 years old. You got 25 prayers left. That's all you get. Man, when it comes time that you need prayer number 26, you can't have it. Wouldn't you be, I mean somebody comes to you and says I need you to pray for me.

You'd say, now, let's talk. Let me find out this situation. Wouldn't you investigate it a little bit more? But you see, the thing is, prayer is cheap. We don't have to wait for God to speak to us and say, this is what I want you to pray about, like old Don Harris tells you to do. No, pray, you can pray all the time.

You just open your mouth, God hears you, he answers your prayer. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, no. I don't think that's true. I think we can pray and should pray when the Lord tells us to pray. Prompts our spirit within us to pray. Man, I've gone for weeks without prayer. Does that scare the living hair off your head?

Well, it shouldn't. Listen, think about this. Even among some of the people you hang around now. What will happen to your preacher or your pastor or your friends, your family, whatever, if they actually are prompted to pray, they get down before the Lord and the Lord actually speaks to them and they have what we understood as Quakers a covered prayer or a And they have what we understood as Quakers,

a covered prayer or a covered meeting. What is it? I don't know how you describe that in Protestantese. But there is such a thing. Oh, I'll tell you. I'll give you the word. Back when I was a Pentecostal, they used to say, I prayed through. You ever heard that?

I prayed through last night. I'm thinking, all right, you prayed through. You know, tell us about it. And they'll tell you about it in the goosebumps or the whatever. I don't know. And perhaps they did pray through. I don't know. How in the world am I supposed to know? But here's what I want you to know. That person assigns to that prayer something different than he is able to assign to all of his prayers, not just three weeks, perhaps three months, perhaps three years.

That hasn't happened to him in three years' time. This is why it's so exciting to him. That's why he said he prayed through. You know, I was praying the other day and the heavens were just brass. Oh, you're telling me that the Spirit of God prompted you to pray and he shut the door? When are we going to get this right? Praying, it's like we think that God has an automatic speakerphone and if you call why? It's just going to answer. And your voice is just going to ring

throughout the castle. And he's going to hear everything you say. Now you know, even a telephone requires somebody to answer it. And if you thought that it did indeed require the Father himself to involve himself in this prayer, wouldn't you take it a little more seriously? Well I do. I take it very seriously. You're not going to walk through this door and

get me to pray for you indiscriminately, arbitrarily, without any information about your situation or even what you want. It doesn't matter. Oh yeah, we'll pray for you. Does that really make you feel better? That some idiot that really doesn't care whether or not God has anything to do with this situation, what your situation is,

he doesn't know that you're not in gross, heinous sin at that point. And you know what? He doesn't care. Yeah, I'll pray for you. Oh, thank you, brother. Man, it is time that we wake up. God is, I mean, at the very least 50% of our conversation, isn't he supposed to be? But you know what? We've just been raised in this so long. Prayer, it's cheap. How many would you like?

It's like having, I don't know, Post-it notes or something. Anybody else want one? I got a pad of them here. Here, come on. I mean, it has no value whatsoever. They'll pray for anybody. They pray in a prayer line.

They line up people in front of the altar. I grew up at a church with an altar. Does your church have an altar? Are they gone? I was looking around in churches. It's been several years ago now, but I was amazed that they don't have altars anymore. Anyway, we got an altar. And they line the people up down that altar and they come by and they lay hands

on them and they pray over this one and they pray over that one. And many times, I mean, now in the church I grew up in, the preacher would lean over and ask what the particular problem was and all. But nowadays, they don't even talk to the person that they're supposedly praying for. I don't care what's wrong with you. It doesn't matter. I mean, this isn't wickedness, you understand.

This is just neglect. This is just neglect. This is just apathy. It doesn't matter. And if you quiz them about it, they'll say, well, what in the world could be his problem? Jesus couldn't answer his prayer. So it leaves you thinking, oh my goodness, am I being too critical? No.

What you're doing is you're looking at it like Jesus did. He quizzed people. He talked to them about their situation. He heard from the Father. The Father would tell him these things. He says, I don't do anything of myself. Did you know Jesus said that? I don't do anything of myself. I only do what the Father tells me to do. That's why the guy laid at the beautiful gate for all those years, crippled. The Father never told him to stop, so he walked on by.

I know, this is all new to your thinking, but man, this is the way Jesus lived. And frankly, it's the way we're supposed to live. Prayer's not cheap. So you got 25 left. You're going to be a little bit more discriminating about who you pray for? You bet you will.

Now, you want to get mad at me? Is that what you want to do? You want to sit back in your chair and say, well, bless God, I've got more than 25 prayers left and I can pray for everyone I want to. Alright, go ahead. How's it working for you so far? Can you imagine if you had a situation in your life where the Lord actually asked you to pray about a situation and you did it and it happened? You know what you'd do? You'd run to church and tell everybody,

I prayed through last night! Or, you know, there was a miracle. We had a miracle. Well, what about the 187 prayers before that where nothing happened? Does that bother you at all? Man, it just bothers me so badly. I want to find out what's going on. Well, I found out there's a missing ingredient. Missing ingredient to prayer. Hearing the voice of God. To understand that He's the one that's in charge of this praying business. And you know, usually when I'm talking

about this kind of thing, I'm saying, no! You can't just up and go and start talking and expect God to hear you. And then they say, you know, of course you can. Anytime you pray, he hears you. Well, that might be so, but are you looking, what are you looking for? The Bible talks about the effectual fervent prayer. Are your prayers effectual? Well, no, not all of them. Well, get them that way. It's not impossible to do.

But if you continue with this idea of, you know, go boldly to the throne of grace and, you know, get mercy in the time of need. You know, that's what the Bible says. It says go boldly, boldly. We got to go boldly. Look, I've heard that all my life. I found out the Bible doesn't say that at all.

You say, well, I know it does. No, it doesn't. It says come boldly. He doesn't say go boldly. This isn't a decision that you make. You know, if I go to the president today, I will be in prison tonight. But if I come to the president,

you know what? I'm going to walk in the Oval Office. Why? I was summoned because I came. Come boldly to the throne of grace. But there has to be a summons. There has to be. Do you realize who you're speaking to? Do you realize that this is the author of the world? This is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? He's the God of this entire universe? You think you're in trouble if you go visit the president? But you think you're just going to walk in there and start talking? Listen, I think that the beautiful picture

that the Bible presents to us if you have the wherewithal to put this together, I think you can see this in Esther. Esther was not summoned to the throne. You know what she did? She went boldly. Somebody told her, you need to go boldly. And so she just, I don't know that she stomped in, but she sure walked into the courtroom, the courtyard,

the residence of the throne and the king without permission. You know what the sentence for that was? Death. I want you to hold on to that thought because we're coming back to it. But she walked in there and at that particular point, her life wasn't worth nothing. Well, the king didn't want that to happen so he held out the scepter, didn't he?

And when he did, and he kind of leaned the head of that scepter toward her, everybody in that courtroom knew that it was okay that she was there. Otherwise she would have died. Now, what if the king had called for Esther? She'd have walked in there. And all the courtiers in there, all the soldiers, all the people that are in charge of this, they'd know exactly who to expect, what to expect,

and they wouldn't have dared interfere. But that's the difference in going boldly to the throne of grace and coming boldly to the throne of grace. You want your prayers to mean something? You better pay attention to what I'm telling you here. These words, they're not indiscriminately put into the scriptures.

Do you think Paul didn't know this? Of course he knew this. He didn't, it wasn't that he and God were buds. We're just buddies, we're friends, we're fishing pals. We play cards together. The man upstairs. You think that he had that little respect for the Lord God? Absolutely not. This is why he had no compunction about saying, you come boldly. You don't go boldly. And you know, when the father summons you to his throne, you know what you're going to do? You're going to think, well, this is the old-fashioned praying through. That's exactly what it is.

You get mad at me because I say I haven't prayed in weeks? Would you feel better if I told you that I've been praying for weeks, but I've received nothing from heaven? Just the brassy doors of heaven slammed in my face, you'd say, oh, that's a shame. Oh, I'm going to pray for you or something to that effect. But if I'm going to wait until I'm summoned to the throne of grace, how long am I going to wait?

I don't know. I don't know. I've been praying for three years and never received an answer. Oh, brother, that's terrible. So it's okay to pray and not receive, but it's not okay not to pray because the Lord hasn't summoned you to the throne of grace. Wow, man. That's just so churchy, it stinks to high heaven. And we do that to people all the time. I told you to remember, death is a punishment. Do you realize that when you arbitrarily

add God's intention to what you do What you pray What you prophesy What you say Do you realize that when you add God's intention To what you say

What you prophesy What you pray Your whole Christian life You take his hand And you pinch it around the pen and you sign his name to the Christianity that you have invented. Do you know what the Bible calls that?

Perhaps not. I'm going to help you with this. There were prophets in Israel that used to prophesy and say, thus saith the Lord. The Lord, through his true prophets, would tell us, you know, not everybody that says, thus saith the Lord, has heard from me. Really? Well, we thought for sure he did. Nope. They're saying, thus saith the Lord, but I didn't tell them.

They're going, but I didn't send them. They're saying I had a dream. I didn't give them a dream. They're saying I had a vision. I didn't give them a vision. I don't know nothing about these people. Matter of fact, everything they say, they get from each other. Hmm.

Maybe that's what's going on in the preacher's coffee clatch down at Denny's on Saturday afternoon. Perhaps. Maybe. I don't know. I don't go. But, well, what are we going to do about this? And the Lord says, I'll tell you what, when I give somebody, when I give one of my prophets instruction for Israel, here's what else I'm going to do. He's going to give you these instructions and he's going to say, thus saith the Lord.

And then he's going to give you a sign that tomorrow, you know, the moon will go black in the middle of the night or I don't know, the mountains are going to tremble, or the sea is going to dry up, or the fish are all going to jump out of the sea onto the shore. I don't know, whatever. But he's going to give you a sign.

Now here's what you're going to do. You're going to hear what he says. You're going to see the sign. If the sign that he gives comes to pass, then you're going to do what he says to do. He is a prophet of God, he has spoken for me, and you will obey his voice. Now, if the sign that he gives doesn't come to pass, he's a liar. And you don't, what does it say?

Don't fear him. And you don't, what does it say? Don't fear him. Do you know what that means? Don't even respect him. Because what? The prophet has spoken, here's your word, presumptuously. He's taken whatever he's saying, whatever he's trying to get across to you and he's taking God's hand and wrapping it around a pencil

and he's signing whatever it is he's saying by saying I'm going to give you a sign. Now many of the false prophets that we live with today love to give signs. And, you know, they're, I don't know. I mean, if I started giving examples, you'd start attaching names to them, and you're thinking I'm just being mean to people. I don't want to be mean to people. I don't even want to point them out. I don't want to use their name. I just want you to be careful about who you listen to. Now I'm going to tell you, I preach a lot of

things that people have never heard before and sometimes it's not always accepted. But I have never had the Lord give me a sign to give to people to prove that I'm right. And that's been a little discouraging to me over the years. But you know what I found was is people that hear and people that have ears to hear, they fall in. And they get involved and all of a sudden I get an email from them.

My life's starting to make sense. Christianity's starting to make sense. I'm having things happen in my life that I didn't think was possible. And all this happened because I started keeping the commandments, and I didn't disobey my conscience, and I took time every day to hear the voice of the Lord. Could that be so? Absolutely it could be so.

It happens all the time. You know what I hear the Lord say? There's your sign. That's yours. That's the sign we're all looking for. We want a communication. There it is. What do you need? You know what? I don't need nothing. That's fine. That's sign enough for me. How's that? Well, remember I told you that when Esther popped into the court and the sentence for coming unbidden was death. Why? Because she presumed the will of the king.

Presumption is a sin punishable by death. That prophet that spoke presumptuously, he shall surely die because he's spoken presumptuously. Now, see, I don't know. Does that worry you? Now, see, I don't know. Does that worry you? I know a lot of people that do that. You know, the Lord said this and the Lord said that.

Well, really? Did he really? You know, I heard people prophesying that, you know, this person's going to be elected president, and they weren't. This person's going to end up going to jail, and they didn't. You know, this person's going to be elected president, and they weren't. This person's going to end up going to jail, and they didn't. You know, this person's going to do this, or whether it's going to be this or that or the other thing, and it doesn't happen. What happens to these people? Well, essentially nothing. Why? Mercy of God. Just the mercy of God. You know, I'm going to tell you if there was ever a prayer, a request

by Jesus Christ to his Father that has been wow, spread so thin and applied to millions and millions and millions of applications of this prayer, it was, Father forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. You know, we got that. You know, we received that from our Lord Jesus because He became one of us. We'd never have received such

a wonderful blessing as God allowing us to continue to live even though we are as stupid as we are. And the silly, stupid, damaging, harmful things that we do to each other in the name of God. But you see, because he came and he was one of us, he spoke with authority that day. You can't believe what these people have to think with down here. You cannot believe how difficult it is to be here and have faith in you. I guess you have to be there. Well, Jesus, that occurred to him, and that's why he decided to be here. Now I say all this so that you'll take your praying a little more seriously.

This subject is kind of out of our chapter that we're talking about here, but it just constantly comes up because we see Jesus when he does a miracle there's usually a prayer involved. Or he speaks to God about these kind of things. And he doesn't presume upon God's power. He doesn't presume upon it at all. As a matter of fact, changing the water into wine, that situation that happened, we talked about it

earlier. You know, when Jesus first approached that situation, he says, I'm not getting involved in that. My time's not yet come. Well, something happened between then and when he says, okay, go get yourself some water pots. Well, what happened? I think he heard from the father and said, your time's come. Let's do this. This is going to work to our betterment.

This is going to work toward establishing the kingdom of God on the earth. I happen to believe his father spoke to him. I can see his father speaking to him all the time. I can see situations where his father isn't speaking to him and not telling him what he should know or at least some of the things that he asked. You know, he would ask questions about the little boy with epilepsy. Didn't he ask his father, how long has he been in this case?

Well, why is he asking this? Because there should always be inquisition when a person tells you, I want you to get in touch with God himself and pray about this situation. My first question is, why haven't you done this? You think I'm closer to God than you are? You think that if we get enough, you know, I'll tell you why God didn't answer that prayer. There's only three

people praying. We need 300 or 3,000 or the whole nation. Yeah, that'll do it. That'll get God up off his throne. That'll make him do something. The more people who pray, really, the more people make it stronger. Hey, let's all hold hands. That'll do it. Ooh, he'll see that and say, ooh, yeah, these people are serious. We have all these silly little tricks and little, man, it's nothing more than witchcraft. It's nothing more than witchcraft. Consolidation of people, consolidation of mind, consolidation of purpose. There's people out there that are involved in spiritualism and say those kind of things are absolutely essential. And there's Christians out there that feel like they are for prayer as well. I hate to leave you in the middle of this controversy, but

our time is gone. Join us next time for another edition of The Words of Jesus. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a question or a comment, you can email me, don at thinkreading.com. Just that simple. And we will see you next time here. We're going to continue in The Words of Jesus. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries.

Email don at thinkredc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you