Alright, Matthew chapter number 6, the verse I want to focus on
is verse number 6 that says,
But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret,
and thy Father, which is in secret, shall reward thee openly.
The title of my sermon is this,
Getting Paid to Pray, Getting Paid to Pray.
If you've got your Bibles, please go to
1 Samuel chapter number 12, verse 20.
Go ahead and just go there.
You know, so what I want to talk about today is prayer,
of course, but I want to motivate you guys to pray more
because in 2021, we need more prayer.
But you know, we're going to need more prayer
as time goes on, not less prayer.
We're going to need more Bible, more church.
We're going to need to serve God a whole lot more.
You know, if we're going to succeed down the road,
because the world is going to get a lot harder.
It's not going to it's not a secret.
Like the Bible says that things are going to get worse
and worse towards the end.
It's going to be tribulation like never before,
says the evil men are going to wax worse and worse.
The love of men is going to get colder and colder.
So we shouldn't be surprised if the soul when it gets
a little harder every single year. Amen.
But that's why we got all these cool trips,
you know, to the small towns right into Mexico
and everything else that we do to balance that out. Amen.
You know, but right here, it clearly shows in Matthew six six
that look, God's going to reward you when you pray.
It's never in vain when you do it in secret.
Obviously, we do pray sometimes publicly.
We pray before the service, you know, that God will bless it.
You know, but primarily our prayers should be done in secret
and everything you do in secret, like it says right there.
God will reward you openly in this life and the next.
So we're going to find out how much you prayed in the next world for sure.
Maybe not in this world, but in the next one,
we are going to find out how much time you spend in prayer.
And it does amaze me.
We get calls once in a while, people struggling with sin,
you know, asking for tips on how to overcome sin.
And what are the questions like to ask them?
Well, let me just simply ask you this. How's your prayer life?
You know, when was the last time you prayed?
This is what they usually say.
I can't remember. I don't know. You're right.
I need to step that up.
And it's not a shocker.
You know, it's not a shocker when people call.
I am struggling with sin.
Yeah, I read my Bible, maybe. But how's the prayer?
How's it going?
Do you have a prayer life?
You know, are you disciplined?
You know, do you have something going for you?
Because let me make it very clear.
We need it. And not just that. It's a commandment.
Let me just read a verse really quickly.
Luke 18 one. This is the Lord Jesus Christ speaking.
He says, and he spoke a parabon to them to this end
that men ought to always pray and not fade.
God wants us to always pray and not fade.
Never quit is what he's saying.
And this isn't this isn't a suggestion from Jesus.
This is him telling you to do it.
This is the order, you know, from our captain of our salvation.
Go ahead and look at First Samuel, chapter number 12, verse 20.
It says, and when Samuel had caused all the tribes.
I'm sorry, and when Samuel said unto the people,
Fear not, ye have done all this wickedness.
Ye turn not aside from following the Lord.
Here's Samuel trying to get the nation of Israel to get right with the Lord,
to stay right with the Lord.
So he says, you turn not aside from following the Lord,
but you serve the Lord with all your heart and turn ye not aside.
For then shall ye go after vain things which cannot profit nor deliver.
For there are vain, for the Lord will not forsake his people
for his great name's sake,
because he has pleased the Lord to make you his people.
Moreover, as for me, this is the prophet of Israel, as for me,
God forbid, meaning I hope I don't do this, that I should sin,
sin against the Lord and ceasing to pray for you.
So he's saying, look, it is sin for me to cease.
And what is sin?
Transgression of the law, breaking God's commandments.
So as God's people, it's the same thing for us.
If we stop, if we stop praying, guess what?
There's going to have to be some confession
as soon as you start praying that you haven't prayed before.
You know, Lord, forgive me for not praying yesterday, the day before or whatever.
Or if you happen to pray in the morning and you mess up in the afternoon,
Lord, forgive me for that sin I committed this afternoon.
Constantly keeping your heart clean, constantly keeping it nice.
You know, so the Lord will be happy with you.
You know, I heard this illustration.
You know, it's a whole lot easier to keep the kitchen clean after you eat
than when you eat and you neglect the kitchen.
How's it going to look after a week or two?
How easy is it to clean a kitchen, ladies,
after you've been kind of letting it go for a week, two weeks, three weeks, a year?
Try 20 years.
See, when I started going to church, that's for volunteers one day.
And I jumped at the opportunity to serve.
I was a new Christian.
I was excited, started going to this church.
I became a Baptist.
And then he had volunteers. I'm like, I'll do it.
And guess what it was for? To clean the kitchen.
And I'm thinking, how hard could it be?
The kitchen? I can do that.
It was very, very difficult to clean that kitchen.
They specifically wanted me to clean the stove, and my wife was there.
It took us hours to clean that stove.
And people will walk in and they're like, oh, that's a messy stove.
And walk right out.
They were not thinking at all as far as helping us out.
And my fingers got so messed up.
It took weeks for the black, you know, whatever it was that I was cleaning.
It took, it seemed like forever for it to just go away.
My fingers were all black. We didn't use gloves.
I was just scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, trying to get that stove clean.
But I got it clean, amen.
I got that clean.
But you know what is the same with sin?
You let it go. You don't confess it.
God, purify my heart. Clean my heart.
Forgive me. Help me out.
You know, keep me straight.
Hey, it's going to get dirty and dirtier.
It's going to be harder to clean it once it's defiled.
Amen. You know, but we see Sam is saying, look,
I'm not going to sin against God by failing or ceasing to pray for you.
And we need to do the exact same thing.
We need to make sure that we don't go days, you know, days without prayer.
You know, this one said, or there's a saying that says, hey, seven days,
you know, without prayer makes one week.
And we're not talking about the number, amen.
We're talking about you spiritually weak.
Not that a seven days without prayer equals a week, like in a week.
You know, one week of the month or whatever.
It will make you weak as you go without prayer. We need it.