I want to speak this morning
primarily out of verse 6 on this statement. For this shall everyone
that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be
found. The subject is prayer, the proof
of godliness. Prayer, the proof of godliness. All men are not godly. All men are not godly. In 1 John
chapter 5 and verse 19, it tells us that we know that we're of
God, but that the whole world lies in the lap of the wicked
one. The whole world lies in the lap
of the wicked one. The ungodly are the great majority
of the human race. Now when we speak of a man being
ungodly, we mean that he's without God. We mean that he is not God-like. And we know that no man can be
truly spiritually God-like apart from God dwelling in him in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ through the operation and work
of the Holy Spirit. That's the only way you can be
godly. Now all men, we know that all those men who are godly,
to some extent, they are not equally godly. There are some
that are more godly than others. Those that are godly, some are
more godly than others. The man who fears God and desires
truly to know God has some measure, I think, of godliness about him. Now the man or woman who has
trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has been pleased to
set forth as the great satisfaction for our sins, I believe has a
blessed measure of godliness. Godliness, might we say, is God
in a man, God's nature in a man's soul. It is God in you and you
in God. Now are you this morning in God? Is God in you? Does he dwell
in you by the blessed Holy Spirit? Now also the godly is that individual
who finds his God everywhere. Now I'm talking about those who
are given over, lock, stock, and barrel, sold out, altogether
100% to the God they worship and serve. And the godly is a
man who finds his God everywhere, who sees Him, in all the works
of his hands, the man who traces everything to God, whether it
be joyful or whether it be calamitous, the man who looks to God for
everything and takes every triumph to the throne of grace and every
petition to the mercy seat, the man who could not live without
a relationship with the God of the Bible, to whom God is his
exceeding joy, the help and the very health of his soul, the
man who dwells in God, I want to say that this is the godly
man. Now then, this morning, this
is the man who I believe shall dwell forever with the Lord,
because he has a god-likeness that has been given to him by
the sovereign purpose of God. And in the Lord's good time,
these that are godly, they should be called away from this world
to that blessed place where we shall see God. and where we shall
rejoice before him forever and ever." I'm talking about the
godly. I said all men are not godly, but there are godly people
in this world. They're godly because God chose
them and God did a work in their life and Christ has been photographed
upon their souls and their growing in their likeness toward the
Lord Jesus Christ. And we're going to be like Him
because we're going to see Him as He is when He comes back for
us. Now you can judge then by the
things that we've said this morning, are we godly or not? Are we godly
or not? Is God everything to us? Do we
take everything to God? Do we look to Him? Is He our
fountain? Is He are all in all? Are we, could we live apart from
a relationship with our God? My friend, we would, I think
most of us, if we know truly, know our hearts Now, we must
have a living, living relationship and union with the living God,
because we live off of Him. We have, through many, many years,
attempted to walk in His way and to draw from Him the sustenance
for our daily lives. Now, if you're not a partaker
of the divine nature, then you're not godly. You're not godly if
you're not a partaker of God's nature. is his nature in you. Does it dwell in you? We get
this in the new birth and we get it in regeneration. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Now the text itself is a test
by which we may tell whether or not we are among the godly. For this, the text says, shall
everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest
be found. That, my friend, is the text. Now in these words We have, first
of all, we have three things that I want to talk about this
morning. First of all, we have the universal mark of godly men. They pray unto the Lord. They're praying people. That
is the universal mark of a godly man. If you see somebody that
is a prayerful soul, truly spiritually prayerful, that is a universal
mark of godliness. And then we have in the second
place a motive a special motive for our praying. For this shall
everyone that is godly pray unto thee. For this, for this, we
must find out what this is and why the godly will be motivated
to pray for it. Now in the third place, we have
the occasion when prayer is most useful and it's in a time The
scripture here says, when thou mayest be found. A time when
thou mayest be found. So we have those three things
to occupy our thought in time. here this morning. May the Lord
be pleased to give us hearing ears and receptive hearts. Now
the first thing then is the universal mark of godliness. When the life
of God comes into a man and when it begins in a man, this is the
first sign of the change from the old way unto the new. This is the first sign of the
new life. The scripture says if any man
Be in Christ. He's a new creation. Old things
are passed away and behold all things become new. And the first
sign of this new life is we find it in Acts chapter 9 and verse
11. You remember when Saul of Tarsus
He was on his way to Damascus to hail men and women. He was
on his way to put folks in jail that believe what you believe.
He was on his way to persecute the church of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and the Lord struck him down on the road to Damascus.
God had a purpose for him. He was going to preach the gospel,
and the Lord arrested him and brought him unto himself. And
then the Lord appeared to him and to one of the brethren who
was Ananias. And he said to Ananias, he said,
you go to a street called Straight, and you go, and there's a fellow
there, and it's Saul of Tarsus, and behold, the Lord said to
Ananias, he said, behold, he prayeth. He prayeth. He's praying over there. Now
you see that he's a newborn soul. He's just been born into the
family of God. He's just been regenerated by
the Holy Spirit and now he is praying. And this is important
to see that this is evidence in the infancy of a child of
God that there is prayer. And this is the universal mark
of godliness. Now, prayer is the mark of godliness
not only in its infancy, but it is in its infancy, and some
people may say, well, I'd think a fellow would have to be several
years old in the Lord before he'd ever take up praying. Well,
that's not so. We cannot be sure that the divine
life is in a soul unless there is pleading and unless there
is petitioning of God. If there isn't something going
on in communication between the soul and God, We cannot be sure
that the divine life has ever come into that soul. There may
be desires, but if they never turn to prayers, they may be
as the morning cloud and as the fog when the sun comes up and
burns it off. That may be all they'll be there.
Somebody said, I've got spiritual desires. Well, we'll find out
whether you do have if you put them into prayers. If you've
got true spiritual desires and longings toward God, then you
will pray. Prayer is the breath of life
in the newborn believer. It's the breath of life in the
newborn believer. Prayer is the first cry by which
it is known that the newborn child truly lives unto God. Behold, he prayeth. Now if he
does not pray, we may suspect that he has only a name to live
and that he lacks true spiritual life. A man is no child of God
if he is prayerless. Now, and as prayer is the mark
of godliness in spiritual infancy, it is equally the mark of godliness
in all stages of growth in the Christian life. The man who has
most grace will pray most. Take my word for it as being
a word of certainty that when you and I have most grace, we
may judge of it by the fact that there is more of prayer and more
of praise in us than there ever was before. If you're making
progress in spiritual things, and if you have more of the grace
of God upon you than you've had in the past, There will be more
prayer in you and more praise in you than there ever was before. You mark it down. I know no better
thermometer to your spiritual temperature than this. of the
intensity and the reality of your prayers unto God. I don't
know of any better way to measure that. I do not mean, when I'm
speaking this way, of the quantity of prayer for their son, whom
Jesus told us about, who for a pretense make long prayers,
but I mean the reality of your prayer and the intensity of it. The honesty of your prayer and
the reality of it. Is it real? I mean, are you mimicking
somebody when you pray? Or you just say, well I listen
to so-and-so and I'm just saying what they said. Or is your prayer
A real prayer coming out of your heart in words which the Spirit
of God has fashioned and formed and hammered out in your own
soul. Are your prayers real? Now prayer
is best measured by weight rather than length or breadth. I say
best measured by weight. Is your prayers real? Are they
truly sincere? Now he is the godless man then
who has most power with God in his secret pleadings with the
Lord. In his secret prayer closet pleadings
with God. Now everyone that is godless
shall pray unto the Lord, whether he be but a babe in grace, with
his or her few broken sentences, or the strong man in Christ who
lays hold upon the covenant angel with the mighty resolve of a
Jacob. They're still godly if they're
praying. You may not have much to say
and you may not be able, you may not know the language of
Canaan, and you may not know how to verbalize everything you
feel in your own heart, but if there is prayer there, real prayer,
then you are indeed a godly individual. I'll not let thee go, Jacob said.
This was his resolve. I'll not let thee go, except
thou bless me. Except you bless me, I'll not
let you go. And there are some strong believers,
praise God for them, who has his resolve, and they will pray
and pray and pray until they have from God what it is that
they desire from the Lord. They're strong in their petition
unto the living God. Now the prayers may vary as the
degree of godliness differs in us. But every godly man has from
the beginning to the end of his spiritual life this distinguishing
mark. He prays. He prays. He calls upon the Lord. He is
looking to the God of His salvation. I'm not talking about public
prayer, I'm talking about private intercourse between you and God,
private communion between you and the living God. That is the
universal mark of godliness. True prayer is an infallible
mark that God is in you, and that God's doing something in
you, that there's a work, that God is working in you. Remember
this old saying, it's an old saying, but it is this, a prayerless
soul is a Christless soul. soul. Remember that. Now then,
if you ever think that you've become so conformed to the mind
of God and so perfectly in accord with the will of God, with the
divine will, that it is no longer necessary for you to pray, Then
my friend, you are deceived. That is wrong. You're wrong. Some people, I've heard them.
I've heard them and they kind of implied that they had gotten
so spiritual minded and that they were so well off in regards
to their understanding of the things of God that it was no
longer necessary for them to pray. Well, beloved, this is
the devil dressed up in white. It's nothing else. Don't be deceived. This is the devil, I say, dressed
up in white, and the devil in white is more of a devil than
when he is dressed in black clothes. It is always a mark of godliness
is that they pray. Now, if anything leads you to
decry it in prayerfulness or to abstain from prayer, it is
an evil thing, and disguise it as you may. And you must recognize
that it's evil and that it's the devil trying to move you
away from that which is a sure evidence of the fact that you're
a child of God. Now if the Lord enables you to
pray, and I know there's many times we're discouraged with
our prayers. There are many times when we just don't thank them
out to anything. There are many times when we
don't feel like that they get above the ceiling. And there
are many times that we just simply don't have any words to put in
to the sentence that is going to convey what we want to say
and we're ashamed of our prayers. But beloved, if the Lord ever
enables you, if you're ever convinced that the Lord has enabled you
to pray a true spiritual prayer from your heart, then you are
not to be depressed or discouraged. You are to build upon that and
to know that that, my friend, is evidence that you belong to
the Lord. If your prayers are with many
groans and sighs and tears, then pray on. You say, but all I can
do when I pray is cry. I just cry to God. I just plead
with God. They're just signs and groans
about all that will come forth out of my heart. Well, then pray
on, dear soul. Pray on, because this is an evidence
that God has claimed you for his own. We're usually poor judges
of our prayers. But if a heart is broken, you
know the Bible says that the sacrifice of God is a broken
and contrite spirit. A broken and contrite spirit
the Lord will not look down upon. He will not. The Lord will honor
it. But if a heart is broken, if
there are sighs and tears and if there's longings and pleadings
with God, such signs are tokens And these signs were never in,
they were never found in an unregenerate soul. They are found in only
the people of God. Now these flowers, one old writer
said, are exotics. He said the seed from which they
grew must have come from heaven. They couldn't have come from
the unregenerate heart. So you're in good company if
you can just sigh, moan, groan, cry, and travail and mourn before
God, you're in good company. This is an evidence that heaven
has planted in your soul these flowers, these exotic flowers
and we'll call them that this morning. Now if you ever pray
a truly spiritual prayer this is a sure mark that the Spirit
of God is striving within you and that you're a child of God.
There's a few that I've met in my life, in my travels with the
Lord that I only know they're Christians because I heard them
pray a time or two when I knew that God's Spirit had and was
the author of the prayer in their hearts. I felt it. There was
a bore witness, the Spirit of God bore witness with my spirit
that that's the Spirit of God praying in that individual and
I was convinced that they were children of God and there was
not a whole lot else that you could go on in their lives. They didn't have much to say
and some of the things that maybe if you watched them there were
some things that that you wouldn't agree with, or that you may have
turned thumbs down on them, saying they're not good enough people
to be Christians, and so on and so forth, but that don't mean
nothing. I'll tell you what, if the Spirit
of God is in them, and if there's been a true spiritual prayer
uttered ever from their hearts, it is evidence that they are
godly people from that standpoint, that they are the Lord's people. Now once more, let me say this,
that prayer is natural to the godly man. It's a natural thing
to the godly for them to pray. Now it's natural to their new
nature, to their new nature, which they receive from the Lord.
And there's nothing wrong, you know, we talk a lot about whether
we should have a set time to pray every day. Whether or not
we should somewhere or another have a time when nobody's around,
when we can get along by ourselves, when we just have a set time
when we can pray and seek the Lord. Well, there's nothing wrong
with that. Prayer is a duty, but it's more
than a duty. It's more than a duty. Now it's
wrong to confine prayer to a set time or season and say now that
I expect the Lord to help me to pray at 9 o'clock in the morning. Or I expect God to come down
and visit me in the closet and I go in there at 5 o'clock. God
must visit me between 5 and 5.30 in the morning because that's
when I pray. My friend, you cannot put God
in a box and say that God must meet with you at a certain time
of the day. You can't do that. You must recognize
that prayer in a child of God is a natural thing and that as
you go along through the day, and like I say, there's nothing
wrong with you having a time, and a set time for you to read
the word and to pray. But there are many times when
the spirit of prayer may come upon you at 6 in the morning
or may come upon you at 2.30 in the morning, may come upon
you in the middle of the night, and it may come upon you later
in the day. It may come upon you sometime
when you're not even expecting. But prayer to the godly man comes
to be like breathing to the physical body. sighing or crying, it's
just like breathing. It's natural and it's natural
to the spiritual man. It emanates from the renewed
heart, from the regenerate heart. Now, I thought of Jacob, I mentioned
him a while ago, and in his wrestling with God all night in prayer,
but Jacob could not always go and spend a night in prayer.
Very possibly, Jacob never spent another whole night in prayer
in all of his life after that one night which he never forgot.
I doubt seriously that God ever come to Jacob and dealt with
him like he did that one night. I don't think he could ever pray
that way again like he did that one night. I think God visited
him and that was of the Lord, and you can't duplicate these
things. Somebody said, I'd just like to have the same kind of
prayer meeting every day. Well, wouldn't that be wonderful?
Wouldn't it be wonderful? Well, God's not in a box. And
He's a sovereign God. And He just might come and He
might not. But He will visit His people. He will indeed visit His people. Now, what you want is that prayer
that just rises from you freely. that prayer that is natural that
is the outflow of the soul and you're not trying to impress
anybody and you know God knows you and you know God and if it's
at four o'clock in the afternoon on your way home from some place
and you're in the car and you can breathe out a prayer to God
you just do it you just do it if you're working If you're working
in the kitchen washing dishes and God's blessing falls on you
and you can pray, then pray. If you're in the middle of the
night or if you're twisting bolts or whatever you're doing, you
just pray when God enables you to. That's natural and that's
the way that it ought to be. It's just that when you're right,
prayer is just as simple as breathing. That is, unless you're asthmatic. Now if you're asthmatic, then
you've got problems breathing. And there are some Christians
that I think have problems professing Christians with this prayer business.
A prayerless condition should be, and I think it will be, and
I think it is, a miserable and unhappy condition to a child
of God. And he should have no rest, and
he will not have any, until once more he can truly pour out his
soul before the living God in a free and spontaneous way. I really don't think you're happy
unless you naturally can cry to God and pray and seek the
Lord's face. Well now secondly then we need
to talk a little bit about the motive for praying here. The motive seems to me to be,
you take note that I read verse 5 and this has a part in this
verse. The motive seems to be this,
you know the Revised Version, it's not an easy verse to really
interpret, but the Revised Version tells us, and if you've got a
center column reference in your Bible you might find this, that
it is in a time, the godless shall pray unto thee in a time
when sin is found, when sin is found. Now David It seems to
me to be the one in focus here, and we need to look at David
and think of him just a moment. The motive seems to be because
God heard such a great sinner as David, then he will hear us. That God heard this man David
when David had committed great sin, And he said, for day and
night the hand of God was heavy on me. He said, I sweat all that
I could. I cried all that I could. And
he said, it all turned into the drought of summer. My moisture
turned into the drought of summer. He said, I kept silent as my
bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. The first part
of this chapter here said, Blessed is he whose transgression is
forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile. David had experienced forgiveness of his transgression
and of his sin. In the time then of finding out
sin, the godly will pray unto thee, for this the godly will
pray. Well let us learn that God has
heard the prayer of a great sinner when he heard David's prayer.
He found out his sin and he said, I have hid my sin I confess my
sin not to my neighbor or not to somebody else that I knew,
but I confess my sin unto the Lord. I confessed it unto the
Lord. It ain't gonna do much good for
you to go around confessing your sin to somebody else. Confess
it to the Lord. The Bible says if we confess
our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness. It's God that does the cleansing
and the forgiveness of our sin. So if you have any sin, do what
David did, and that is take it to the Lord. Now, David had,
he went to God and he found mercy. And every godly man will experience
this as long as the world stands, the power of prayer to obtain
pardon for their guilt. Because there is not a just man
upon the face of the earth that doeth good and sinneth not, even
in the doing of the good. We know that all of us are sinners
and all of our righteousness is as filthy rags in the sight
of God. And the righteous obtain pardon
for their guilt and cleansing for their guilt by praying unto
the Lord. If there's no salvation, if there's
no forgiveness for the vilest of the vile, then there's none
for me. There's none for me. And whatever's
happened, wherever you slipped and how far you've fallen, There
is deliverance for a child of God. We're told that in verse
7, Thou art my hiding place, you'll preserve me from trouble,
and you'll compass me about with the songs of deliverance. All
my life I'm going to be delivered. I expect to be delivered. I must
be delivered. And only God can deliver His
people. If there's no salvation, let
me say it again, there's no deliverance. That's what the word means. If
there's no deliverance, if there's no forgiveness, For the vilest
of the vile, then there is none for me, and there is none for
anybody else, because we're all sinners. So God gives us a case
like that of David, that everyone that is godly may pray unto him
in the time of their finding out their sins. and their weakness
and their frailty. We might have been afraid to
come if David had not led the way. But David said, I came and
I got mercy. And he said, you come and you
get mercy. You come. I acknowledge my sin.
You know David wrote that 51st Psalm and oh how he prayed. in
that psalm, and I'd like you to read that sometime, I don't
have time to read it to you now, but you read that psalm, Psalm
51, you read it, and you see how he prayed unto God about
his sin. Now we all need daily pardon,
for this shall everyone that is godly pray unto be, for this,
for this covering of sin, for this blotting out of our iniquities
as we read about it in verse 1 and 2. If we commit no sins,
then Jesus made a mistake when he taught us to pray in the disciples'
prayer, forgive us our trespasses. If we got no sins, why was he
teaching the disciples to pray, forgive us our trespasses? What is the need of that petition
if we have no trespasses to be forgiven of? Now the Lord will
not accept you. He will accept you. May I say
it this way? He will accept you in rags, but
he won't accept you in ribbons. The Lord will accept you if you
come confessing and acknowledging your sin, but if you come talking
about your merits and your goodness and righteousness, the Lord will
not accept you. Now, I think that there is another
thing here that we're to notice. What is the motive? I said the
first motive is, for this we shall pray that in the day we
find out our sin, that we receive forgiveness, ask it of God, pardon
and forgiveness. Well, the second thing, because
trouble comes. Why should the godly pray? And
that's because trouble is on the horizon. Trouble comes. And in verse 7, Thou art my hiding
place, you shall preserve me from trouble. And the last part
of verse 6, it says, Surely in the floods of great waters they
shall not come nigh unto him. So there are floods of great
waters about us, and there are troubles that are very near at
hand. And so the godly pray because
there are troubles that are near. And that's the reason why we
just keep on crying to God, because we have so many troubles, so
many problems. Next, let the Lord, I gotta keep
moving here, the Lord keeps us praying by giving us constant
needs. That's a motive, isn't it? For
the godly to pray. Do you feel burdened to pray
because, is there anybody here that don't have a need? Is there
anybody here that can say, well I don't have anything I need
to be praying about? Well I'll tell you this, I never saw a
day since the Lord saved me that I didn't have a need, and that
I didn't need to pray, that I didn't need to seek the Lord's face,
that I didn't need to cry to God, I didn't need to admit that
I was a pauper, and that I was broke, and that I needed God
to undertake for me, and that I needed Him to supply my needs. So the Lord keeps us coming.
He's kind of like a man who has a friend Well, he's like this
man who is a very wealthy man, and he has a fellow that's dependent
on him. And he tells this fellow, the
first of the year, he says, you come to my house on New Year's
Day, and I'll give you enough of everything you need to last
you all year long. And so the fellow thought, well,
that's wonderful. Oh, that's wonderful. This man's
going to give me everything I need to last me for a year. And you
know, this fella, he liked this benefactor. He loved him, and
he loved to go to his house. And he thought, well, I'm just
going to have a wonderful time this day, this one day. So the
benefactor, he recognized that this fella really was enjoying
himself for coming to his house. And so he said to him, He said
to him, he said, well now, I'll tell you what I might do. He
said, I might just give this to you twice a year so you can
come back two times a year and enjoy my hospitality and get
a blessing by being here in my house and let you come twice
a year. I'll just break it up, give you
half of it in the first of the year and half of it the first
of June. And then they just went ahead on, and oh, the fellow
thought that was wonderful. He was going to get to come twice
a year. And directly the fellow said, well, you know, he said,
what we could do is we could break this down and give it to
you four times a year, quarterly. We can give it to you quarterly.
Well, the fellow liked that better. He liked that better because
he was going to get to come four times and enjoy here the blessing of
this good man. And so after a while the good
man said, well you know, he said, I think we'll just break this
down and you come once a month. And then he kept on going. You
know where I'm going. You know exactly where I'm going. And
first thing you know he was coming every day to the good man's house
and enjoying. And that's the way the Lord's
people is. And that's why God keeps you in need. That's why He keeps
you in the situations you're in. Because He wants you to come
every day. Now the Lord can give you a million
dollars tomorrow. He can give you everything you
need. He can bestow upon you what He needs. But He loves you
and He wants you to come to Him. And fellowship with Him and ask
Him for what you have need of. Isn't there anything wrong with
that? Is there anything wrong with that? Nothing whatsoever. And so I hope this morning that
we'll see that, that the Lord, the motive for our coming is
that we have need. And then one more word about
this motive. And what is the motive for the
godly to pray? Well, because God hears prayer. That's the motive. God hears
prayer. For this reason, shall everyone that is godly pray to
him, God does hear prayer. There will always be, as long
as we live in this world, a dispute between the unbeliever and the
believer as to whether or not God hears and answers prayer. The outside world will always
sneer at the idea that God hears prayer. No, they'll say, we don't
believe that. And we'll say, no, I didn't think
you did believe it. And they'll say, we don't understand
that. And we'll say to them, we know that the carnal mind
receives not the things of the Spirit of God, and we know you
don't understand this. And then we ask them, Do you
pray? And they'll say, no, we don't
pray. And we'll say, well, then you
keep your mouth shut about things that you've never experienced
or never tried. The God of the Bible does hear
a prayer. Is that not so, brother and sister
in the Lord? Is it not so that God does hear
and answer prayer? I haven't heard a yes yet. I
haven't heard you say yay. I haven't heard you say amen.
I haven't heard anybody say anything. But does God hear prayer? Does
He? Well, amen, He does. Amen, He
does. We could calmly and deliberately,
without any fanaticism connected to it, tell of many instances
in our life in which we called upon the Lord, and the Lord heard
us, and He answered us, and He gave us that which our soul required. Many, many times we've experienced
it and we know it to be a fact. God hears prayer. And because
He hears it, we will call upon Him as long as we live. That's the motive. For this shall
the godly pray unto thee. Prayer does more. Well, let me
say it another way. Prayer does move the arm that
moves the world, though nothing is put out of gear by our praying. God's machinery runs smoothly. The God who ordained, now hear
this now, the God who ordains the effect that are to follow
prayer, the effects that are to follow prayer ordain the prayer
itself. and it is a part of the grand
machinery by which the world swings upon its hinges. I think
that's a marvelous and true statement. You're not going to shake up
God's sovereign purpose by your prayer, and you're not going
to get God's machinery out of order by your prayer. It's all
in harmony. God ordains the prayer, and He
ordains the effects that the prayer is going to have. And
so you pray, dear soul. I hope this motive is real with
you. Well, the last thing that we
talk about, and we'll hurry here, this special occasion when prayer
is most useful. Well, the text says in our English
version of the Bible here that it's in a time when thou mayest
be found. It's in a time when God can be
found. Well, if I'm going to pray, I want God to hear me,
don't you? I want to be able to find the Lord. You remember
old Job said, oh, that I knew where I might find Him. That
I might find Him. I'd go there if I thought I could
find God. I'd get up any hour of the day
or night if I thought I was going to find God. If I was going to
find Him, then I would want to call upon Him in that time. Well,
in general, Cry to God and He hears. So long as you live here
and pray to God, He has promised to answer. And though, my friend,
it's the living power, do not hesitate to pray. You say, I
think it's too late to pray, preacher. Too much gone on, too
much happened, and it's too late to pray. It's never too late
to pray as long as this mortal life, as long as it lasts. It's
not too late, and now there's a special promise to those who
seek the Lord early. But I'd like to add this, that
this does not exclude those who seek him late. Seek the Lord. The Bible says, while he may
be found, call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake
his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return
unto the Lord, and the Lord will have mercy upon him, and to our
gospel, and for he will abundantly He will abundantly pardon. If
you truly seek Him, He will be found of you. He will be found. Now, I think, too, that the time
of finding is under this gospel day, or in this gospel day. Somebody might want to call it
a dispensation. I don't necessarily like that
word, but in this gospel day. God has always heard prayer,
but there seems to be a larger liberty that is allowed to us
in prayer now. The mercy seat is unveiled and
the veil is rent away that we may come with boldness to the
throne of grace. You can read that in Hebrews
chapter 4 in verses 14 through 16. Hebrews 4 verses 14 through
16. Now the next thing is this, that
beside all that we have said, there are special times of finding
God, namely in the visitations of His Spirit to us. Now often,
and I think more often than not, men and women began to seek the
Lord because they feel moved to do so by a heavenly impulse. Have you ever felt a heavenly
impulse to seek the Lord? Well, brother, sister, I have.
I've been woke up during the night, in the middle of the night,
with the burden of prayer upon my soul. I've been, at times,
going down the road, God with me, And you know this praying
business we talked about just a little bit earlier, but it
ain't necessary if you'd be on your knees. You know, Spurgeon
after Rowland Hill died, Rowland Hill was an English preacher
that lived and preached prior to Spurgeon's day, and he was
a great preacher, a Baptist preacher. And Spurgeon went to where he
lived, and there was a man that still lived in his house, Rowland
Hill's home, and on the grounds took care of the place. And Spurgeon
asked this old man, he said, could you show me where Brother
Hill did most of his praying? And the old fellow said, well,
he said, that'd be almost impossible. He said, it would probably be
a whole lot easier for me to show you and tell you where he
didn't pray. He said, see them trees out there? He said he'd
walk along that row of trees and all the time he'd walk and
pray. He said, you see that, you know, it's just a short piece
from here to the village. He said he'd walk the road and
he'd pray all the way to town, he'd pray all the way back. He'd
pray and pray and pray, and every time you'd see him when he was
alone by himself, you were just sure that he was breathing out
prayer to God, he was crying to God on his feet. You see,
there's nothing else to say about this. Now, I'm not saying anything
about getting on your knees, there's nothing wrong with that,
but don't fool yourself. Most of the praying that's done
is probably done by people on their feet. And a lot of it is
done by people laying flat on their back in a bed someplace.
And most of the praying that's done, and like I say, I'm not
talking about, I'm not in any way belittling getting on your
knees. But a man can't hardly get on his knees when he's driving
an automobile, and he can't hardly get on his knees when he's walking
to town, or when he's doing this or doing that or something else,
doing the washing of the dishes or whatever. I mean, a woman
can pray, and I've heard all kinds of testimonies when, you
know, on one occasion there was a sound of the going in the tops
of the mulberry trees. And David heard from the Lord
in that. It was a signal to get up and get going, and to move.
And so is with David. We begin to move sometimes when
we have a heavenly impulse. When the Spirit of God moves
upon us. And that's the time to pray. Oh, listen. Listen to me. I could tell you
some stories about how God told me that he was near. Time to
pray, fella. Time to seek the Lord. Time to
cry to God. Time to begin to plead your case.
before the Lord. And so, I tell you, there is
a heavenly impulse. Sometimes it moves a fella and
tells him, God can be found. Now is the time to pray and to
look to the Lord. Well, this last word, you are
finished. That you will find that God has found you when you
have done with yourself. Now get what I'm saying here.
You'll find that God has found you when you've done with yourself.
You give up on yourself. You don't have any confidence
any further in yourself, your prayers or anything else. You
give up on it. You're done with yourself. And when you've taken the blood
and righteousness of Christ to be the sole hope of your soul. You say, I can't do anything,
I can't produce anything, there's something wrong with everything
I do. I don't have any hope in what I do. I just take the blood
and righteousness of Christ. And that's my sole hope for my
soul. I give up on myself. You will
find that the Lord has found you, my soul, my friend, my dear
friend. God leads you to do this. Give up on yourself. Cast yourself
upon the mercy of the Lord, on the righteousness and blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can be certain that God
has found you. And you'll be found among the
godly praying unto the Lord and crying unto God. Well, I felt
special blessing in preparing this and preaching it. I thought
the Lord helped me a whole lot with it. I needed the help and
the Lord helped me with it and blessed me with it. And I hope
it was a blessing and help to you. I know that, you know, sometimes
you may think, It just seemed like my head must be sick. I'm not seeing all of it. I don't
know it all, but you ask God to open your heart and to give
you an understanding of his word. Let's pray. Father, in the name
of Jesus, we thank you that you have blessed us today and given
us some insight, and we thank you for your love toward us,
your mercy toward us. Thank you for the forgiveness
of our sins. and for putting away our sin.
And thank you that we have such a God as you are to rely upon
and to hope in. May your blessings, blessings,
for Jesus' sake, fall upon us all. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.