This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.

Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s Word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. Here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll-free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

So one of the things that we are going to talk about this morning is a little subject called prayer Now, I know you know everything there is about prayer. You know it all. There’s nothing I can tell you about prayer You don’t know and if I say well, what is prayer? Well, John our rice wrote a book called prayer is asking and receiving Boy, isn’t that sound simple asking and receiving He wrote a little book. I’ve had it for over 44 years.

Prayer. Asking and receiving. I don’t know if they have it in the bookstore, but this was a very good book. It’s loaded with a lot of little jewels, a lot of stories. You know God’s people who have a hard time in life. So God says in his word that it’s designed for a reason so that you and I will go to the Lord and ask the Lord and he shall answer your prayers. So I want you to take your Bible and very quickly turn there with me to the book of James the book of James and chapter 1 James chapter 1 and look there at verse Verse 2 is a good verse, says my brethren, talking to believers.

My brethren counted all joy when you fall in the divers temptation. That alone is contrary to the human nature. You count it all joy when you fall in the different kinds of testings and temptation. I don’t think so. Most people don’t. But it all depends on your perspective. He says in verse three, knowing this. See, you can count it for joy if you know something. Knowing this, the trying of your faith, work of patience. God is doing all that He can to teach you and I to trust Him.

Patience means we’re gonna trust the Lord. That’s what patience is revolved about. Anger and explosion, all those things, because we’re not trusting the Lord, because we feel that limitation of our knowledge and power, our abilities, and so we become impatient, because we can’t make something happen the way we want it to. Patience is put it in God’s hands and seeing what God can do. So he makes a statement in verse 4, let patience have her perfect work that you may be perfect or complete, an entire, wanting or lacking nothing.

God wants to give to you everything that’s needed to mature you, whatever it might be, so that you’ll be complete the way God wants you to be. Now you’ll read a little bit about that in the book of Hebrews, chapter 4, that you’ll no more be tossed to and pro that little children by every wind of docking that comes by, but you become solid, rock solid, because you’re comparing yourself with the Lord and not with somebody else. So God gives every individual personalized attention so that he can make you the way he wants to complete the chore, lacking nothing.

So by the time you get ready to go home to be with the Lord, you might even be the way you’re supposed to be, except for getting rid of that old nature that you get. But look what it says in verse five, you ought to underline the first word. The word if, it means that you do. If any of your lack of wisdom and you do, let him ask God. So if you follow the sequence down through here, you will see that there are things that God allows into your life.

That gets you to see that you’re lacking something and you’ll go to the Lord so that you will get what you need. Because God’s the one that knows what you need. And so He’s working in your life to put certain ingredients into your life because He knows what He’s trying to make out of your life. And so it’s a good verse. In verse six, let him ask in faith. I mean, believing God, trusting God that you know that God has something that’s beyond you and that he will work out whatever God wants to.

All God wants you to do is just, are you willing to accept it? Can you accept it even though you don’t know what it is? But you know it’s best because you honestly believe that he loves you. Now, in this little book, I read it years ago, it was really encouraging to me. I don’t agree with everything John R. Rice says. There were things he would say on the gospel that I felt was really off the wall. But that doesn’t mean the man didn’t know the Lord, or that God hadn’t taught him some valuable lessons.

He says, why pray? Another chapter. Prayer is asking. The answer to prayer is receiving. Pray in for daily bread, asking bread for sinners. Pray in for healing. Pray in for anything and everything you want. Pray in the will of God. Definite praying. Have faith in God. Just pray. Praying through. Why fast in praying? Big prayers to an Almighty God. Does God work miracles today? and then you can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can

can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can Understandings, I’m not going to do it.

Just pray. So hearing your notes, I want you to look at the statement, E.M. bounds, and I must have 10 or 15 books by E.M. on prayer. It’s incredible. You would think there’s nothing else you can say about prayer. And he finds another way to say something more about prayer. And I cannot digest all of his stuff. giving him an insight into things. And sometimes, you know, a one person they hone in on, all they want is evangelism. Another guy, all they want to talk about is just prophecy, prophecy.

Somebody else, it’s prayer. But most people have, I guess you could say a little hobby or something, and you’ll write it to death. And at the exclusion of a lot of other things, the apostle Paul says, I have not shunned to declare new the whole counsel of God. In other words, I want to teach you everything it’s in the book. My goal is I’d like to teach on a lot of different things. I don’t like to write one thing all the time.

Though I always like the gospel, be clear and weave it through just about everything I say on making the gospel and service separate so that you can understand that, which I think is what God wants us to do. But prayer is something that should be at the forefront of every individual, every Christian, because that’s where you determine your relationship between you and God. See, people might pray for you, but there’s things that God wants you to do. Personally, He wants you to come to Him.

And so there’s things that He will put into your life because of what He wants. I’ll just read this a little bit here. It says, Prayers, not a little habit pinned on to us while we were tied to our mother’s apron string. neither is it a little decent, decent quarter of a minute’s grace set over an hour’s dinner. I know where you say you’re about ten seconds of grace and you eat for an hour. Well, that’s about the way it goes.

It engages more of time and appetite than our longest, dineings and richest feast. Take your Bible and look there in Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7, I want you to see these three words in verse 7. These three words, chapter 7 verse 7, ask, seek, and not. That is putting You on the spot. That’s what you do. You don’t just sit back and just expect God to do whatever it is. God, whatever you want to do, just do it.

There I am. There’s saying God wants you to do. He wants you to ask. He wants you to seek. And he wants you to not. That’s how you find things. I was one time working on the church up there in Georgia and I. I lost my wallet. I couldn’t find my wallet anywhere. What really bothered me is I had almost $500 in my wallet.

Then I come to the conclusion, the last time I saw my wallet was I was digging on one end of the church because we had a water problem and the preacher is going to solve this problem. We don’t need a plumber. I didn’t have James. I had to do it by myself. and so I got it, I dug and I was hot and sweaty. I’m getting down in there and I’m got mud in the mud everywhere and muddy water and I finally got down to the pipe and I had to try to bucket out some of the water so that I could get down to this thing and get it cleaned off and I finally found it.

Got to try to get it fixed and then I’m walling around and all this junk. I was muddied from head to toe. It wasn’t the happiest moment of my life. Have you ever bit off more than you can chew and think I shouldn’t have done this but it’s too late. Now you got to get through it. And I remembered, I bet my wallet is down in that hole. So now I’ve got to try to find my wallet. So I dug up some stuff again.

And I went through again and I could not find my wallet anywhere. I still believe somewhere in that mud, under one of those pipes. There’s a wallet with $500 in it. The church felt a lot of sympathy for me. They could feel my pain and say, well pray for you to find it. I never did get that $500. Some DISTRESSED. Some things just don’t work out. I even asked the Lord and prayed. But over the years I’m sure God has given me $500 more over the years.

So sometimes you lose a little bit here, but God will give it back. But you never know when or you don’t know how. So anyway, there’s a few things I wanted to share with you. And if you’ll notice in that verse seven, ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find, not and it shall be open unto you. But sometimes see, we just ask one time if I don’t get it, we quit. get it we quit.

I didn’t get it. I quit. Seek. Oh, well, I didn’t find it. I quit. What I can’t stand is I go to the closet and I’m looking for a particular shirt or sweater or pair of pants. And I go through everything. It’s not there. Then it says, what are you doing? I said, I can’t find it. It’s not there. She says it’s there. I said, it’s not there. She says, it’s there. It’s not there. And every time she’ll walk right into that closet and she’ll take it right off the thing.

It wasn’t there a minute ago. But she, all the time. And I don’t know why, but I can’t see it. I don’t see it. But she sees things that are unseeable. I think there’s a spook that lives in our house. You know, somebody’s doing something moving things. I think over here with this board, we’ll have it all set up. Everything’s right. And no, you can go from one week to the next and nobody touch it. There’s ghosts that live here in this church and they will, they got to be ghosts living around here.

Haven’t you ever thought about that sometimes at your house? Now who moved that? And they ain’t nobody else there but you, and you can’t remember how things like that happen. And look in verse eight, Every one, you ought to underline that in your Bible. Every one that asks you to receive it. Now this is Jesus Christ, God who made the heavens and the earth. And he’s encouraging us. He wants us. He wants you to come to him and ask him for things.

But you see, you have to know the will of God, what you’re asking for. And the reason you ask for it, because I believe our heavenly father wants to give to us more than what we’re willing to ask them for. Sometimes we just don’t believe it’s kind of like this woman one day, and she would take the dishwater and she would open up the kitchen one and she would just throw it out. Well, it would hit that tree and then splash back in one.

But it was shorter than having wall the way outside. So she heard about this and so she said, Lord, I want that tree to be moved. I don’t want it there anymore. So she finished doing her dishes and she didn’t even look. She knew God had answered her prayer. She opened up the one and she took that thing and she threw it out in that water splash right back in on it. She said, just like I thought, just like I thought.

Now, did she really believe? Just like I thought. In other words, sometimes you really don’t believe God’s going to do certain things. God knows. He says, be it unto you according to your faith. See, God knows whenever you’re really trusting Him, and when you’re really not trusting Him. Look at the next verse in your notes there, where it has John 14 verse 13 and 14. Oh, this is a loaded verse. And verse 13 says, and whatsoever ye shall ask.

Remember, it’s not that God says, I know what you need, and you don’t have to ask. No, God said, I want you to ask me. What’s over? Ye shall ask and get this, there’s the key in my name. It means for his honor and for his glory. It’s for his work. It’s for what God left you here to do. And therefore you have to discern the things that you ask for and what is it, what’s the purpose of it?

Is it because it’s something that God wants me to have because of the work God wants me to do. Look what he says. And my name, and the God underlying this, that will I do. Well, that’s positive. That’s enough to scare you. So whenever you experiment with God, sometimes you find out that you’re looking for ways to prove whether or not will it work or will it not work. It’s like turning on the lights switch and see if the lights come on.

And you assume, well, of course they’re gonna come on. But whenever it doesn’t come on, you think there’s gotta be a reason. And maybe there’s a breaker that you need to flip. Maybe the light bulb is out. So it means you gotta fix something. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the switch. There’s nothing wrong with asking, but there might be something that’s not right in your life. Something else that needs to be corrected in order for God to get that light to come on.

So that’s what he’s doing in your life. See, God wants you to ask for things, and then if you don’t get the first thing you’ll ask is, I wonder why not? Is there anything in my life that could cause God not to hear or to answer my prayer? So you see, it causes you to examine yourself. You see, you turn on the flashlight and turn it on whatever it is that you want. the Lord, but this is what I want.

And then you turn the flashlight over and shine it on your soul. Now, what can I do that God would expect me to do to get me to whatever it is I want? Or do I just expect God, would you go get that for me? And God says, I gave you two legs, eyes, hands, a brain. That’s something you can do. So God can enable you to have the strength and the grace that you need to get whatever it is you want.

But sometimes people are just plain lazy. They want everything given to them on the silver powder and it doesn’t work that way, not with the Lord. And look at the last part of this book where it has that the Father, that the Father, may be glorified. So the reason that we can ask and receive is because God wants the Father, because God wants you to give him the praise, the honor, and the glory that’s due him. And sometimes God knows that you’re not going to give him the praise, the honor, and the glory, because your motivation right or your heart isn’t right.

And therefore it seems like God either doesn’t hear my prayers, because God is also, he knows all these other things that he answered for you and you never thanked them for. And so the Lord knows the future, and there’s lessons that God has for us to learn. Do you really thank the Lord for what you already have? Remember the other day I was talking to you about, what if we only had tomorrow what we told the Lord we were thankful for today?

We may not have much tomorrow because most people just take what they have for granted. Do you ever thank the Lord for your health? You know, I thank the Lord He knows I thank the Lord. I say Lord. Thank you for our help. Thank you for our help Because you know how quickly you can lose your help It don’t take much We are very fragile individuals It don’t take much for us to get hurt or to get sick to lose things in this life and So there’s a lot of lessons for look at the next work if you shall ask anything in my name That means it would be for him, for his honor, for his glory.

To do what God wants you to do, he says, I will do it. Now he’s talking to his disciples, yes we know, but we can learn a lot of principles from these things that he says to them. Look at the next verse. John 15 and verse 7, he says, if ye abide in me, but you see that word if? That means that this is conditional. It’s conditional upon you abiding in Him. And my words abide in you. Not only that you know what the Word of God says, and that you know the will of God is that you do the will of God.

To abide in Him means to serve Him. Does it mean to, I’m saved? That’s because I’m saved. No. Those who abide in Him. You learn the Word of God and you live there. And you are obedient to do whatever God wants you to do with your life. He says if you do and my words abide in you You see you can’t isolate this verse from the other verses because you see the word of God can’t contradict itself And so there are conditions that God puts up on certain things I am saved and I’m going to heaven if I believe on Christ.

So I did that so I get this When he says you can have this if you do this But a lot of people don’t believe and they don’t do everything God says You see these are the conditions Upon which you can ask God and God becomes obligated To keep his word So he says if you’re biting me in my words to bite in you He shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you So it’s not just a blanket say but anybody that just do whatever you want to do No, you got to live a holy life a godly life this is to those who are maturing in the Lord.

This is to those who want to walk with God and they want the best that God has for them. And so a lot of times, see, God will allow things to come in your life because He wants you to mature and to grow. And as you get older and wiser, you become more careful about what you pray for. Lord, give me a million dollars. Lord says, why? You know, I don’t even ask the Lord for a million dollars anymore.

It won’t go that far. I ask for 10 million. No. I want that Pete Cadillac. My wife did it the day. She says, what kind of a car is that? I said, let me get a little bit closer. I said, I asked the Jaguars. That’s pretty. We’re driving on another road, on another day. She said, you can have a car that over there. I said, that’s a jaguar. She said, both of the perting, ain’t you? She has a rich taste.

You ever seen people who have a rich taste? So now she’s got me looking at the jaguar. And it’s going to have to be about 40 years old, you know, ball tires. I said, honey, you’re riding around in a Mercedes now. Even though it’s 16 years old, you got 215,000 miles on it. So what? It still runs. You know, a guy can get in the car and just run it until it don’t run no more. But I says, I know a guy that has a jaguar.

Gary Steffin. Somewhere along the line, he got him one of those jaguars. He doesn’t, labor mention it because he doesn’t want you to know how rich he is. I don’t even know if I have a road in it yet Gary. I did. First time we met, I wrote in that thing. I think I did, yeah. Nice car. But anyway, now that see the Lord knows my wife’s prayer and desire, he just liable to use Gary to answer her prayer.

I’m just, I’m just, Josh, you know. Number one, she likes to car she has and I like the car I got and I like the car she has and that’s all she’s going to get. Anyway, as we’re moving right along. In John 1624, it says, hitherto have you asked nothing in my name. Ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full. In other words, it’s for your joy. Did you know that God says he has freely given us all things to enjoy?

That this life, the world, is designed for us to really enjoy. God wants to enjoy life. And sometimes we don’t stop long enough to enjoy the world. I’ll have to admit, in the beginning years of my ministry, I hated to take off a day to do anything. Because I just, I loved doing what I was doing, I enjoyed that. And I believe probably to the expense of, I could have spent more time with my wife and my kids, but I don’t know why they couldn’t have enjoyed what I was doing.

You know, sitting in the office, working on the computer, getting all these things done. But there’s another life to live and sometimes we neglect. And I think sometimes, oh, I wish I could just go back and read, live some of those things. And I might be able to make wiser decisions. But when you’re going through it the first time, you say, you don’t see a lot of those things. Not until you get 30, 40 years on down the road and you say, no, I could have done better.

That wasn’t the best decision I ever made. And so there’s things that we need to enjoy as you go because you see, I know some people that couldn’t wait until they got 62 years old so they could retire. And when they finally got 62 and retired, they died. They died. Betty’s dad had just gone to the doctor and got a clean bill of health. He was in great shape. He was 59, 60, he died of a heart attack. Just like that.

And Dr. Curtis Hudson, he finally got to be 60 and told me you got six months to live. I think it was 62, so passed away. So maybe you need to always have something that you’re doing, always something that you’re working toward, a goal, a purpose, you know. Even if you retire, there’s still got to be something that you reach for. But anyway, look there in Acts chapter four and verse 31 in your notes there. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together.

And they were all field or controlled by the Holy Spirit, and they spake the Word of God with boldness. Now, there is a possibility that when they spake the Word of God with boldness, that could have been their prayer. That could have been the fulfillment of their prayer, because the scriptures talked about that, I may preach the Word of God and teach the Word of God and speak the Word of God with boldness. So it’s a prayer, but then the fulfillment of it.

So do you pray that you’ll make wise decisions? Well then that means you studied a word of God so that you’ll have the knowledge, the discernment to make wiser decisions. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. Part two of this teaching will conclude with tomorrow’s broadcast. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll-free 1-800-576-3771.

That’s 1-800-576-3771. To listen to today’s message again or to obtain a free download of any of our Bibleline programs, just go to our homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the Radio Broadcast link. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 10-30 and at six o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcasts of our services may be seen by clicking on the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org.

Thanks for joining us on Bibleline and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound and we will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up.