The Secret Burden

-There are unending rewards that come from prayer:

• Progress of the Soul.

• Healing in the Body.

• Relief from desperate circumstances.

• Evangelism of Nations.

• Revival and Harvest in Churches.

• Blessing in our lives.

• Restoration of broken things.

IV. CONCLUSION -- PRAYER. . . WHERE TO BEGIN?

-I conclude with another man’s writings. I have not had the opportunity to meet Brother __________ from _______, but again, similar to Brother _______ thoughts, he has encouraged me in the past.

Prayer... Where to begin? How do we do the subject justice? We can’t really do it justice--we have to just do it.

I teach and preach on prayer as often as I teach anything. It is a consistent theme with me. But I really think you learn more about prayer by praying one hour than by receiving ten hours of the best and most revelatory instruction on prayer.

I was blessed to be born to a mother that loved this Precious Truth. My mother and her sister were won to God in a little country church back in the Ozark hills in the 1950’s as children.

The little church sat beside a dirt road across from a local boot-leggers house, twenty miles from a blacktop road. When the wind was out of the south in warm weather and the windows of the church were open, you could smell the sour mash cooking up the holler. But the Lord was there.

By the time I came along, my family attended an ____ church. Our closest fellowship was with the old West _________ church pastored by "Pop" _________. That church was blessed with many consecrated, praying, fasting saints. The power of God was indescribable there.

At an early age, I received an appreciation for the value of prayer. I remember an old Sister by the name of ______________. She was in her 90’s, but always faithful to the House of God. As a child, I heard her pray many times, "Oh, God, my boys are lost, and I will be coming home soon...who is going to pray for my boys?"

As a nine year old child, I was so touched by this prayer that I made a commitment to carry on her prayers for her. I never told her. But to this day I pray for the descendants of Sister ________, because she impacted me with her life and consecration. I can still hear her quavering old voice, cracked with age but resonating with the power of God as she would pray between the pews two rows in front of where I sat.

I learned early that prayer is what you do when your back is against the wall. I was a young boy, and there came a season of awful church trouble. Many people backslid as a result...some never recovered.

When things became unbearable, I remember my mama, my aunt, and my Granny gathered with all us kids at my Granny’s house one evening, locked the door and pulled the shades. They told us we were going to pray until we got direction from God.

The hours stretched long, but I will never forget when the victory came, and the glory of God filled that living room. Every person in that room, right down to the babies, survived that storm and went on to live for God. That was a landmark for me.