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The scripture reading of the morning is taken from Paul's letter to the Romans, the eighth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 22. We know that the whole creation has been groaning and travail together until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan

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inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray

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as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And may that same Spirit who inspired these words incline our hearts to the

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understanding of them. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It happened last Monday evening. I was working late here at the church. It was about 930. As a matter of fact, I was putting together the thoughts for this message. As I went down the front steps

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carrying my attache case with me, a young man passing up the sidewalk turned to me and said, "Good evening." I responded, "Good evening." I continued up 6th Avenue. He was about ten paces in front of me, and then he stopped and turned toward me and waited for me to catch up with him. He said, "I wonder if I might ask you a

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favor." Certainly I said, "What can I do for you?" He replied, "I wonder if you would pray for me." This young man was asking for the greatest resource that a Christian has at her or his disposal, the power of prayer. "Won't you pray for me?" he said. As we continued up 6th Avenue, we stopped at the corner and he told me

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about the problem he was confronting. He is a Christian, but has not been a Christian long. And in the weeks of his faith, he has suddenly found himself to be under attack with temptation. This, of course, is not unusual. The closer one draws to faith, the more intense the temptation that comes. So in the midst of

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this conflict with temptation, in the midst of this struggle, he turned to me, having seen me come down the steps from the church, and said, "Would you pray for me?" What he is looking for is the power of prayer. Now we've been talking in the last weeks about how to deal with tough times, and we have noted in our study

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that the Apostle Paul says we are to put on the whole armor of God. And he identifies six different items of armor. And when he has completed his list, he adds this, "Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." Now when

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Paul talks about prayer here, he is not suggesting that it is another weapon. There are only six weapons. But what he is saying is this, that as we set about using each one of these six items of a Christian's armor, the breastplate and the shield and the sword and the like, we are to use prayer with each one of them.

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In other words, prayer is necessary for the effective use of the other things that God gives us so that we can face tough times. Prayer, you see, is communion with God. And whether we're talking about the breastplate or the helmet or the sandals, no matter what item of Christian armor we're discussing, we need to have

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communion with God and the peace and the poise and the power that come from that. We need to talk with God and listen to God. That's the reason the hymnist in the great hymn "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus" says, "Put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer." Now you have known people, as I know people, who are very

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theologically educated. They can discuss the theological implications of the faith forever, it seems. Yet at the same time, there is in them no evidence of spiritual life. They are, in fact, spiritually dead. You've known people, as I do, who have the form, the outward appearance of religion, but inside their

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confidence in Christ has no reality. Well, just so there are people who understand the armor that is to be used in the Christians defense, and they may have even developed some skill in the use of it, they may be able to use the sword of a spirit, they may be able to use the shield of faith, but because they

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do not come to God in prayer with the exercise of these spiritual disciplines, they do not have that victory which God wants his people to have. So we want to think this morning about what the Apostle Paul says about this practice of prayer, which is basic to the use of all the items of a Christian's armor. The

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first thing that Paul says is this, "We are to pray in the Spirit." Now a lot of people miss or fail to understand the purpose of prayer. Purpose of prayer is not to change the mind of God. It's not in any way to alter the Almighty. I had a woman say to me on one occasion that she didn't pray anymore because she prayed

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for a while and nothing ever happened that suited her. Well, that woman was making the mistake of making God into some kind of magician. She wanted someone who would perform whatever particular trick she wanted to be performed. That's not the purpose of prayer. The purpose of prayer is intimacy with God, communion

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with God, and that intimacy and that communion with God is given to us by his Holy Spirit. In the passage of Scripture, which I read just a moment ago from Romans 8, Paul says that we're all very weak in our Christian lives, and he says we're particularly weak when it comes to prayer. We need, he said, the Holy Spirit

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to pray for us. Now what is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is that person of the Trinity whose principal function it is to draw God's children closer to him. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows us the love of God in Jesus Christ and warms our hearts so that we respond to that by loving God and serving him. It's

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as we experience the love of God that we are led to love God and return. This is the reason the Scriptures say we love because he first loved us, and this is the ministry of the Spirit. At another place, Paul says the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are the children of God. The Spirit is that

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person of the Trinity who comes and reminds us that we are the daughters and the sons of God. He stirs us up. There's a very real sense then in which one can say that all prayer really starts with God. It is God moving in us by his Holy Spirit that leads us to want to pray. When the Holy Spirit begins to move in

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a heart, all kinds of things happen. Wounds come where evil is, and healing comes where brokenness is. Fascination comes as that which is good in us is drawn for God, but there's also that which is frightening in the Spirit which drives evil out of our lives. The Holy Spirit at one in the same time kills

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what's ugly in us and makes alive in us, beyond anything that it had been before, all that is beautiful. At one in the same time, he draws us in terms of our love for God, and he repulses us in terms of everything in us that is unworthy of God. He sobers and he thrills. He purges and he relaxes all at the same time. And

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all of this has the effect of building a unity between us, God's adopted children, and God the Father. So this is what the Holy Spirit does, and the Holy Spirit, Paul said, is what we're to pray in. In other words, prayer is to be essentially this experience of loving unity with God. After this can come other things, but the

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primary purpose of prayer is to be at one with the Father. To use a military metaphor, since we are talking about the whole armor of God, picture, if you will, a large cannon. Now this cannon may have a very long and impressive barrel, but that barrel can do absolutely nothing in and of itself. Birds could build nests in it

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and nothing would happen. There's a device on the cannon that makes it swing back and forth, but that device that aims the cannon, that in and of itself can do absolutely nothing. There are sights on the cannon by which it is trained upon its target, but those sights by themselves can accomplish nothing. The

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ammunition for that cannon, the shells are stacked up beside and they'll remain stacked there and they will find nothing happening to them and nothing happening in the cannon. In and of themselves they can do nothing. There's a gunner standing behind the cannon and he can do nothing to make that cannon fire until and

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unless there is a flame. There has to be that igniting fire that happens when the firing pin snaps against that shell. All right, the Holy Spirit is the flame that is absolutely necessary in prayer. Without him, prayer is nothing. With him, prayer becomes powerful. Paul says in this passage that we are to persevere in

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prayer and that word persevere means to be loyal to. We are to be loyal to the Holy Spirit and allow the Holy Spirit to move in and through us so that we are drawn closer and closer to God and it is this communion with God, this unity with the Father, which is the primary purpose and blessing of prayer. So when that

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young man that I met on the street last Monday night spoke to me, his name was Daniel, when he spoke to me and said, "Will you pray for me?" I understood him to be saying, "Child of God, let the Holy Spirit move in you so that when you are in unity and communion with God, God will be able to use you and use your prayers as a

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blessing in my life." And so I have prayed and so I will continue to pray for that young gentleman. Now the second thing that Paul says is that we are to pray at all times. I had a businessman say to me on one occasion that he prayed a lot but he didn't find much power coming into his life because of it and I said, "You

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pray a lot. How much do you pray?" He said, "Well, I have 15 minutes of prayer at the beginning of every day." I said, "That's not a lot." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, think of it. There are 24 hours in a day and there's seven days in a week. That means there's 168 hours. Now you're probably asleep eight of those hours in

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each day, so let's subtract 56. That leaves 112 waking hours in the week. Now you pray 15 minutes each day, so add that up for seven days and that's an hour and three quarters. That means that 110 and one quarter hours out of each week, the busiest hours, the hours when you are at work, the hours when you are with your

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family, the hours of greatest responsibility, in those hours you're not praying at all. And if prayer is principally to be intimacy with God, then that is the time when intimacy is most needed. Prayer, you see, is to be a bias toward God. We need to drill our souls so that our souls lean toward God. You can't

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learn to play the piano without practice. You can't learn to operate a computer without practice. You cannot learn to fly an airplane without practice. And just so you cannot learn the powers and the principles of prayer without entering into those disciplines. That's the reason the Bible often calls prayer "waiting upon

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God." It takes time. It's not just talking and talking. When Paul says "pray at all times," he doesn't mean we're to be having a constant conversation with God, or even that we're to be constantly listening to God. But he's saying that there is to be a disposition of our souls toward God. You know how it is many times when you're

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doing one thing, you're thinking about something else. You're driving to work, your mind is on something else. You're mowing the lawn, your mind is on something else. You're dictating, your mind is on something else. You're taking care of the baby, your mind is on something else. You're sweeping the back

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porch, your mind is on something else. Paul is saying when he talks about praying without ceasing, or being in prayer at all times, that that's something else toward which our mind moves is to be God. You see, there are different times in our lives that lend themselves to different kinds of prayer.

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When we're at leisure, for example, we can take the time to meditate. When we come to worship, we can enter into prayers of thanksgiving and confession. In emergency moments, we can call out sudden prayers to God. But what we're being taught here is that above and beyond these particular prayers for

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particular times, there is to be in us an attitude of receptivity and attentiveness toward God. A leaning that way, a dependence, if you will, upon him. And that's to be part of us in every waking moment, and even while we're asleep. When I had heart surgery some ten years ago, I had an internationally

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renowned sermon, or surgeon, do the job. Good thing it wasn't a sermon. Had a surgeon do the job. A man worked very, very hard. Surgery in the morning, and then he would always come around in the afternoon with a whole team of young surgeons with him, learning from him. And one night, he came to my room very late.

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Must have been about 10 o'clock. And he looked utterly exhausted. And he flopped down in the chair, and we began to chat. And I said to him, "I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you can do two or three or four operations in the morning, and then teach all afternoon, and take care of your office interviews, and your

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correspondence, and your reports, and then come around and visit all of us who are in your care. I don't know how you can do that. How do you keep your calm and your composure in the midst of something like that?" And he said, "Part of me is always in the mountains." This man happens to be a very well-known mountain climber. He is

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also a Christian, because he said to me on more than one occasion, "It is God who does the healing. We doctors just help." Now, what he was saying when he said, "Part of me is always in the mountains," was this. That there had been moments in his life, peak experiences, if you will, in which he had lifted up his eyes to the

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hills and cried out from whence shall my help come. My help cometh from the Lord. There'd been those great moments, but they didn't come and then go. He stored them away inside. They had become part of his experience of the divine, so much so, that he could go back to those moments at any time. He could reclaim them. "Part of

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me is always in the mountains." That's what it is to be praying without ceasing, to be rejoicing in one's unity with God. Yes, we're to wear the whole armor of God, the breastplate and the helmet and the sword and the shield and the sandals and the girdle, all of it. But we are to wear these things dependent always,

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unceasingly, upon God. That's how we can know that we will never go into any battle alone. I think this young Daniel who met me on Smithfield Street and with whom I talked last Monday night has no idea at all how many times I have taken his name before the Lord in the last six days, or how many times I shall take it

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before the Lord in the week that is yet to be. Pray without ceasing. The other thing that Paul says is that we are to pray for the saints. In the New Testament, of course, the word "saint" simply means "church member." Today there are those who believe that saints are what we might call "super-Christians," but

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that's not the New Testament use of the word. It simply refers to a church member. And what Paul is reminding us here is this, that we don't go into this war by ourselves. We're part of an army. We're not fighting a private conflict. We're part of a body, if you will, and as one part of the body helps another part of

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the body, so we are to be helping one another. This is where our doctrine of the priesthood of all believers comes to the fore. What is that doctrine? It's the doctrine that we don't need to hire some people to pray for us, and we don't need to set aside from all common labor certain individuals to lift us before

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God. Each and every one of us is a priest before God, not only for ourselves, but also for one another. Pray for the saints. Basil put it a long time ago, "Let every man unite himself with the community in his prayers." I started a custom a long time ago of whenever I finish a book, and the place where I finished it is

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significant, I write that in the front of the book. When I read Calvin's Institutes, which were written in Switzerland, I read them there, and I wrote that in the front of the book. Just a few weeks ago, I was in Austria, and I stayed in a 13th century castle, the Castle Monkstein, and when I was there, I

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finished a book, and I wrote in the front that I had finished it in the Castle Monkstein. Well, as I was going through the books that I used in preparation for our sharing this morning, I found written in the front of one of them that I had finished this book while I was recuperating from that surgery to which

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I referred earlier. That surgery was a very difficult one, not because of the operation itself, but because I developed a staphylococci confection, which required me to stay in the hospital for five weeks after the three weeks that I was expected to stay there. And that five weeks was very, very hard. I was too doped

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up to read much, and I wasn't dopey enough to enjoy television. And, and this is one of the besetting sins of my life, I became very impatient and very frustrated, and as I so often do, I took out my anger and my frustration on my own family, the people who love me the most. It was a very, very bitter

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winter. There were some times when not all the staff could get there, so there were very few visitors in the hospital. My mother was ill so that she couldn't come, and I remember one morning in talking with her and spitting out all this anger and frustration and hostility that she said to me, "Do you remember how

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many people are praying for you?" There were a lot. The session of this church was praying for me, and the ministers of this church were praying for me, and I had received cards and letters from all over the country as the result of the tape ministry of people who were praying for me. And as I began to think on that,

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then the bitterness began to drain out of me. It helped me get well quicker, and it also led me to focus upon how important it is that the Saints pray for the Saints. My hospital room looked right out over Children's Hospital, so I would go each day and I would stand there and I would pray my way through each window

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of that hospital. I had no idea who was on the other side, but I prayed for every one of the windows and for every one of the people I understood to be there. You remember that slogan they used to teach you in camp, "Joy, Jesus, others, yourself." J-O-Y. That's what happens in prayer. We become one with God by the Holy Spirit

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who reminds us of the love of God through Jesus. And then Paul says, "Having that intimacy and that communion and that lean of our life toward that glorious truth, our disposition toward that so that we think about it and rejoice in it and talk with God often about it so that we're praying without

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ceasing." That leads us, you see, to others. And as we pray for others, pray for the Saints, then we find that we ourselves, yourself, Y is blessed. Let me give you one other illustration of this and then I'm done. In China, one of the most effective missions the church has ever had was the China Inland Mission, which

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was founded and led by Hudson Taylor. Now they had many mission stations across China, but one was more successful than all the rest. And they never could understand why. The staff was no more dedicated there than here, there was no more sacrifice, they had the same equipment, and yet this one particular

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mission station brought many more people to Christ than the others did. Well, on one occasion, Hudson Taylor was lecturing in Great Britain seeking to raise money to support the mission. And after his lecture, a man came forward and began to ask him about that one station which was so productive, so marvelously productive.

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And his questions indicated that he knew a great deal about that station, and so Hudson Taylor said, "How do you know so much about that?" He said, "Well, you see, the missionary there and I were college roommates, and we have corresponded regularly across the years, and he writes me about everything that goes on there,

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and about people who are coming close to deciding for Christ, and about all the steps that the mission is to take. He writes that to me, and then I get a group of people together here, and we pray for that mission station every single day." And suddenly there was the answer. Why was that one station more productive

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than all the others? Because there were people, you see, praying earnestly, praying daily, praying ceaselessly for the saints who were in ministry in that place. When Daniel, that young Christian out on the sidewalk last Monday night, asked me to pray for him, as a brother in Christ, he was doing exactly what he ought to do.

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For we are to pray for the saints, and we are to enlist the saints in praying for us. For make no mistake about it, Tennyson was far within the mark when he said, "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice rise like a fountain for me, night and day. For so the whole round earth is

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every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God." Let us pray. As through thy Son, thou didst teach the disciples to pray, O Lord, teach us to pray. Help us to know that if our prayer is to be what it ought to be, then it

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must be first of all communion and love for thee, and it must be second of all so much a part of us that our whole lives are turned toward thee. And in those moments when our minds wander from what we are doing, that they wander to thee and to the needs of others, and teach us especially to be in prayer for the

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saints, and never to hesitate to call the saints to pray for us. And out of all of this, out of this unity and this peace and this power, O God, help us to live through and triumph over these tough times. We lift our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.