The Power of Prayer - Pastor Paul Adefarasin

matthew 14 the power of prayer i might change it halfway through and call it the prayer of power but for now let me just call it the power of prayer and if you have a bible and you are at matthew chapter 14 and verse 22 please stand as we go into the word of god begin to read from matthew 14 verse 22 and read all the way to verse 19 verse 19 22 oral 22 to 29 i should say verse 22 here begins the reading of god's word immediately or straightway jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he sent the multitudes away another version says straightway jesus constrained the disciples to get into the boat and go to the other side while he sent the multitudes away [Music] and when he had sent the multitudes when as a key word there when he had sent the multitudes away he went up on the mountain by himself to pray and now when evening came he was alone there but the boat was now in the middle of the sea tossed by the waves for the wind was contrary now in the fourth watch of the night jesus went to them walking on the sea when the disciples saw him walking on the scene they were troubled saying it is a ghost and they cried out for fear but immediately jesus spoke to them saying be of good cheer it is i do not be afraid and peter answered him and said lord if it is you command me to come to you on the water so jesus said come and when peter had come down out of the boat he walked on the water to go to jesus my concern this morning or this evening is with the 22nd and the 23rd verses let me re-read for emphasis immediately jesus made his disciples or constrained his disciples to get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he sent the multitudes away and when somebody say and win say it again and win and when he had sent the multitudes away he went up on the mountain by himself to pray now when the evening came he was alone there but the boat his boat was now in the middle of the sea tossed by the ways for the windwas country and now in the fourth watch of the night jesus went to them walking on the sea i want to use the subject this evening of when prayer suspends the rules or when prayer suspends the law look at somebody and tell them god is about to suspend some laws for you tonight [Music] he's getting ready to put some laws on hold i don't know if you hear me what i'm saying one law is the law of gravity by prayer he can suspend it another law is the law of sin sickness and death or sin and death he can suspend that i don't know if you hear me what i'm saying there's another law of the fullness of time i mean oh god can suspend the fullness of time and bring your time closer to you there's also the law of sowing and reaping and there's some things we sow that we don't want to read [Music] well i don't know if you hear me what i'm saying there's some things i did wrong there's some things i ought never to have done and if god were to lead me to the law of sowing and reaping i would be the most miserable of all men this evening but god who is rich in mercy whose ear is not death that he cannot hear whose hand is not short that he cannot say is about to change some laws on your behalf on tonight if you believe it shout prayer father we ask your blessing on the word of life this evening charge it with power send down the anointing that makes teaching and then preaching easy invigorate this atmosphere seize it empower it take it over till every here is able to hear what thus saith the lord most of all god move your people into the place of prayer mentor this house with the garment of intercession clothe this thy people with the unction to function in the place of supplication i pray now that you would do this and more even as we preach the word of god in jesus name and god's people said a big amen look at two or three people and tell them a man has to pray and then you ha may be seated in god's presence on tonight you will find in this account of scripture [Music] that it is companion to three other gospels that also [Music] record this particular event or these two particular events in the life and ministry of jesus [Music] it so happened that he had just finished feeding 5 000 men women and children or rather 5 000 men not including women and children if you were to include the children and the women it would probably be number swelling to as many as 20 000 people and the feet wasn't so much feeding the 5000 plus but the feet was what he fed them with he simply took the lunch box of a small boy containing five loaves of bread and two fish took it from him blessed the bread by looking up to heaven and praying a simple prayer broke the bed and then gave it to the disciples who gave it to the multitudes and after having fed perhaps 20 000 people they took up 12 baskets of crumbs quite a miracle it was that of just five loaves of bread and two fish that great multitude was fed by the very hand of god perhaps signifying again to his people that he was the bread of life luke recalls it or should i say matthew records the event mark records the event and then john who hardly deals with that kind of issue also records the event his emphasis is a little different from the two synoptics who first recorded it then immediately following the miracle the multitudes thronged him they seek to get a hold of him they wanted to be right in the middle of his presence and to crowd him in fact john tells us in chapter six when he records this same event that they wanted to force him to be their king that he might wear on the garb of earthly government and use that power to overthrow the domination of the roman empire but how many of you know tonight that at that time jesus did not come to set up an earthly kingdom but he came to establish his kingdom his lordship in the hearts of men and so very quickly before they made him miss his mission and distract from his purpose and lose sight of the real reason why he was on the earth he made two drastic moves against two categories of people and i want to announce to somebody tonight if you do not make those same moves you will never have an established prayer life can i talk to you on this evening if you do not do the same two things that he did you will not be able to take your prayer life to a place of establishment bible says that immediately look at someone to tell them you have to do it now another person said straightway he constrained the disciples to go before him to the other side in mark's account of the same same event mark says he constrained the disciples to go before him to bethsaida bethsaida by the way means the house of fish it was something instant it was something immediate it was something that had to happen without any more delays if you're going to take your prayer life to the next level you cannot wait another day you have to immediately come to the place where number one you constrain the people who labor with you in your work in your life in your mission or in your ministry whether it's a business a hospital an engineering firm or a company if you are going to see the supernatural power of god come to work in your life and in what you do as a vocational as a career you must at this time devise whatever means you need to devise to constrain the crowd and the disciples from encumbering your time and your place with god can i get a witness from somebody i don't know who you are but if you hear the word of god this evening and constrain that which encumbers you you are about to go into the house of fish i don't know who it is for but somebody you're about to catch some fish and in that draft of fish there's a big fish that's going to turn your whole life around there's something that you're about to stumble into there's a personality or someone or an assignment that is divine that's about to come in your life when you decide to constrain whatever is encumbering your prayer life and say god i will not let you go until you bless me when you come to him in the dialogue of prayer and stand steadfast in the commitment and consecration of prayer god is going to bring you to the big fish i don't know who i'm talking about some fish have a gold coin inside of their mouth some fish are so big that it will feed you for a thousand years some fish are so mighty that it will settle all your needs for a lifetime i don't know who you are but if you'll decide to go to god in prayer and constrain everything and everyone who gets in between you and your prayer time you are about to land the biggest contract the biggest opportunity the biggest open door the biggest event the biggest breakthrough of your life but be not deceived you cannot pray when there's so much pressure round about you on every side when everybody's placing demands on your time everybody's looking for an hour or five minutes or two minutes on the telephone with you those telephones all need to be shut off now you have an mtn and an econet and the multi-links and the real tail and a nighttail and you've got so many different avenues for the enemy to infiltrate your time with god and until you learn how to constrain those who would take up your time your prayer life will not go where it needs to go i looked at the greek word for constraint and i discovered it's the word anand castle which means by force it means by force to compel the unwilling to do what they are not willing to do that means the folk who are coming in on your time they will not leave you willingly they will not stop constraining your time willingly because you have an anointing you have a purpose there's something great and awesome that god wants to do in your life and it attracts people to you and unless you constrain them by force in other words unless you to stay in a place that is unencumbered by crowds and multitudes and be focused on the place of prayer with god can i get a witness from somebody there's some folk who are in your life night and day you don't need to hang out with them number one they don't pray they don't like to pray they don't like to do the things of god they're only there to steal your time they are rubbers that the enemy sent to steal from you to destroy your prayer life and by destroying your prayer life to mess up your whole destiny do you know what jesus said to his disciples he said watch and pray lest you fall into temptation do you know that in my in my opinion failure in the life of a christian is his neglect of the ordinance of prayer the neglect of his responsibility to pray and seek the faith of god because when you cease to pray you become vulnerable to all the attacks the temptations and the wiles of the enemy but when you watch and you pray when temptation comes it'll leave you standing but if you haven't watched and prayed when it comes it'll leave you falling you'll be vulnerable to all the wilds and the schemes of the wicked one so jesus very quickly said i will not let anything get in between me and prayer i notice the point at which he constrains his disciples wasn't in a time of adversity or failure or pressure the time that he constrained the disciples here was after great success in his ministry he had assembled literally thousands upon thousands of people they left the townships they left they left the neighborhoods to come out into a desert place just to hear a word that would come from the master's mouth at this point they wanted to crown him king of israel they wanted to make him the earthly king of their people something that was relegated to the second advent of the lord they were trying to bring into the first athen that he might not miss his purpose and be drawn away by the accolades of men he constrained the disciples now the disciples were people who were disciplined to know what the lord wanted them to do and he said to them get in the boat and cross over to the other side i've got your back your business cannot go to the other side until you send them there whilst you go into the place of prayer your company won't go to the next level until you give them the authoritative command go forward because i've got your back much the same way elijah said to the king get down for i hear the sound of abundance of rain and then elijah went up to the mountain to back up what he told the king was going to happen by staying in the place of prayer can i get a witness from somebody this evening look at somebody tell them i've got to pray i've got to pray look at someone else on my ain't going to let you get in my way i'm going to pray i'm going to pray they created a messianic uproar and we're going to try and keep him from his place of prayer the tactics of the enemy to deceive you from the importance of prayer our legion just when you want to pray the phone rings just when you want to pray your body tells you i'm sleeping just when you want to pray your husband or your wife says honey just when you want to pray the children run through the bedroom door and say daddy daddy daddy have you noticed that whenever you want to pray then all the disturbances come but when you want to do something foolish there are no disturbances at all because the enemy knows that the best way to work on you and to get to you is to attack your prayer life he's not really interested in attacking much else but your prayer life once he can pull your prayer life out he has taken the driving wheel from you you are in a car without steering you are aimless going about with no direction but when you can stay him and say get out of my face and understanding that the devil is not a physical personality but he uses physical personalities and his primary objective in your life first is to attack your prayer life your prayer life houses and holds your destiny it is from prayer you draw every strength and every grace that you will ever draw from god am i talking to somebody this evening so he got rid of the disciples he constrained them and then he commanded the multitudes to leave him alone he sent them away there are some folks that you just don't need to entertain especially when it's your prayer time if i don't care who they are when it's your time to pray nobody is as important as the one you're praying to you need to be able to shut everything out and for goodness sake when you call somebody's house and they tell you i'm sorry she's praying now put down the phone and say i'll call back another time or please let her know i called if you call somebody's house on the phone ring seven times don't let it ring more than that they're doing something serious [Music] half the reason why you want to talk to the pastor anyways is because you haven't been talking to god [Music] the folk who call up the pastor day night and evening are the folk who ain't praying but when you know that there's somebody greater than the pastor who you have a direct line to you don't need the plaster like those other folk do set up your own direct line get his own number i wonder how many people in the house this evening have god's telephone number i will enter his gates with thanksgiving i will come into his courts with praise i will enter his shekinah with his worship and when i stand before him i will make my petition known to the king for if god can hear me then i can get anything i need to get out of him sit down we're just talking [Music] first thing i want to say to you this evening is you've got to be able to get rid of the multitudes the multitudes of cars the multitude of friends the multitude of encumbrances the multiple personalities that come up against your prayer life to encounter it i noticed something about the maltese they were different from the disciples he didn't send the multitudes into a specific place he said just leave me alone get out of my face but the disciples he constrained to go in a specific direction said go in this direction go to bethsaida go across to the other side whereas the mountains he just got rid of them why the multitudes represent the people who are in your life just for what they can get [Music] not for anything they can give not for any support that they bring to you not for anything that they lend to your purpose or to what god has done in your life and if you only have friends around you who are trying to get from you they are going to drain you more than they help you and in any case forget about prayer you don't need them in your life anyways where all they want is bread and fish they were hanging around them just for bread and fish for what they could get from they were there for just the miracles am i talking to somebody tonight that's what's killing your prayer life it's the folk you're hanging around with they just want to use your time to do fun things do this that and the other or to draw from you steal from you grab from you or take from you as long as you have those kind of people hanging around you all the time you will not pray there is a time to be with the multitudes but you speak to them as one man [Music] you deal with them on your own terms but when you allow them to deal with you on their terms you will lose your connection with god can i go deeper [Music] you notice quickly in jesus life that prayer to him was utmost priority [Music] it was number one priority he valued prayer above everything [Music] because prayer was the means by which he connected with the father prayer was the means by which he drew strength from the holy ghost prayer was the means by which he emphasized or rather evidence the fact that he was a king and a god from another world prayer prayer so powerful in that it allows you or empowers you to be humble without which you cannot see god exalts you or empower you god does not empower the powerful in fact the fact that you go into prayer is evidence that you believe you cannot do it yourself not that you can't do it but you can't do it without the anointing and when you go to god in prayer and live a life for prayer it is evidence of humility at work in your life because prayer says i can't do it myself i can't be it by myself i can't have it by myself i need somebody bigger than me somebody stronger than me to help me to get it that's what prayer does so folk who don't pray they're relying on their abilities and they are proud they're relying on their education and they are proud they're relying on on their natural skills and their talents and therefore they are proud to go and take on any endeavor for god in this life without taking time in prayer is the form of human pride what we call the pride of life [Music] and because he was perfectly humble he could not do anything without praying to ensure that always he was in the will of the father to ensure that always he was connected to god in everything that he did look at somebody tell him you've got to pray you've got to pray i notice now that the bible says in verse 23 that when he had sent the multitudes away he went up on the mountain by himself to pray he couldn't go up to the mountain by himself to pray until he had sent the multitudes away you have to if you're going to really make a success of your prayer i've come to the point where you have structured your day your week and your month to give prayer its priority in your schedule [Music] so that everything and everyone around you understand that when you are praying you are not to be disturbed the way you are praying is the most important thing that you do and they will treat your prayer life the way you treat your prayer life if you allow them to interfere with your prayer life or you interfere with your prayer life by entertaining them they will always disregard and disrespect your prayer life whereas your prayer life is the most important part of your life it is your inhalation and your exhalation it is where you breathe in and breathe out from god and a man who can't breathe is a man who's getting ready to die [Music] and just because you're walking doesn't mean that you have uh that you still remain alive to the powerful things of god i want to talk to somebody on this evening look at somebody tell them you must pray and if you're going to pray the first thing you have to do is take out all the clutter from your life let the spouse know let your household no let your colleagues know let everybody who has unlimited access to you let them know that when i'm praying don't interfere with me the bible tells us in luke chapter 11 and verse 1 that it came to pass on a certain day that jesus was somewhere alone prey and the bible says when he seized praying one of the disciples asked him lord teach us to pray you do not see that disciple interfering with his prayer life but he waited until he was through praying he waited till he had seized praying never let anything come in between you and your time of prayer if you're praying and a phone call comes and you pick up the phone call to interrupt your phone call to god then you have respected men more than you have respected god and god pays notice to all of that he takes careful note of how much respect you give him in the area of your prayer life prayer will require separation i remember coming up as a young preacher if i go even further back tonight coming up as a young christian i wanted to go out and play hoop play basketball with the guys in college i wanted to go out and be at the beach with all the other members of the youth group in the church i wanted to go out and sit at those large lovely fellowships of 40 young single people being a single person myself but there was something between me and god that caused me to be separated from that lifestyle even though i wanted it and my flesh desired after it god was able to separate me to the point where because of my desperation and my need i was willing to forego the things which were natural and normal and maybe even uh somewhat expedient to go for the things which were consecrational can i talk to you this evening if you're going to have a real prayer life you are going to have to separate yourself from some things there are some things that are not sinful in your life but they take up your time there are some things that are not bad in your life but they keep you away from prayer there's some people that are not ungodly in your life but they are not prayerful and as long as you hang out with them doing what what what other people would consider normal your prayer life will stagnate and i fear that if it stagnates the things that god has for you you might not be able to draw them into your life can i get a witness from somebody i want to go a little deeper look at somebody and tell him when he sent the multitudes away he was able to go up to the mountain to pray look at someone tell them that for me because if you're going to go up in life you can't go up with the multitudes whenever jesus went up he left the multitudes on another level and then he went by himself or with a small posse of three maximum 12. [Music] many of you say pastor i want to pray i feel the need to pray i know the importance of prayer mentally i agree with the priority of prayer but it's one thing to have the fear and it's another thing to have to practice because every time i want to pray something happens there's always something to distract me from praying and just on the night or the morning when i felt like i could really pray now and nobody was there to call me no telephone calls no door knocks on my doorbell but my body was tired [Music] how are you going to beat that how are you going to beat that let me show you the example of jesus christ in his life he was consecrated to prayer he was steadfast in prayer he depended totally on prayer he was needful of prayer he gave himself to prayer more than anything that he gave himself to in mark chapter 1 and verse 5 verse 35 write that down he says now in the morning having risen a great while before daylight jesus went out and departed to a solitary place and there he prayed it was his custom a long while before the sun would rise a long while before the stars would give way to daylight a long while before the night the darkness of night will give way to the brightness of the sunlight jesus was up early in the morning i suspect he was up as early as three because it said a great while before day and if you understand the pattern of watches it is very likely that he got up at about 3 a.m found a solitary place where he could express himself before god where there were no disturbances no multitudes and no disciples to encumber his time with the master where he could be alone with god and be naked before god and talk to god be empowered by god draw the wisdom of god into his life ask god for direction ask god to tell him what's going to happen in the course of my day and go by prayer into the land of vision where you can see the events that god is going to bring to pass in the course of that next 24-hour period a great while before morning he went to the place of prayer because if you aren't able to get up a great while before morning to go into prayer when your day comes on you it will overwhelm you but when you go in the place of prayer and you prepare for your day before your day comes at you you will have power over your day instead of your day having power over you then in luke chapter 5 and verse 16 it said that he often withdrew himself into the wilderness and their praise luke 5 and 16 often another says as was his custom another version said he always another said he was accustomed to withdrawing himself into the wilderness where he prayed unless you have the customer prayer in your life you will not have the customer victory in your life unless it becomes a custom for you to spend large chunks of your day in prayer dealing with the business of god you will not have large chunks of victory in your life say what pastor where will i find the time the only way you will find the time to pray is when prayers your joy your hobby your pastime your delight you spend two hours reading the newspapers you spend another two hours talking on the phone to your friends when you add it all up together you spend another two hours doing things that don't really add up to any edification for your life but if you learn to transform that time into prayer time my goodness your life will go to another level let me show you some more in his life in luke chapter 6 and verse 12. the bible says now it came to pass in those days that he went out to the mountain and i like the word thee because it says it means that there was a specific place a specific mountain not just any mountain but a specific mountain where he went to pray and the bible said he continued all night in prayer to god and the verse following that he chose from amongst his disciples 12 apostles who he ordered to be with him i need to stop there for a moment and announce to you ladies and gentlemen that in a regular period of your life once a week once in two weeks it is a must it is a necessity if you are going to make the right decisions it is a necessity that you must continue all night in prayer where you say i'll pray from 10 p.m to 3 a.m or 12 midnight to 5am where you cut out at least four or five hours of your night dealing with things in prayer let everybody else be asleep but you'll be awake with god he was about to make perhaps the greatest decision of his posterity of his succession plan who was he going to choose to run the ministry for him who was going to take over from him maybe that's not your issue today but it will be your issue someday perhaps your issue today is who will i marry who will be my husband or who will be my wife if you think you can just walk into that decision because you saw tall dark and handsome or 36 26 36 honey you might be putting a judas in your household [Music] and until you spend long hours in prayer repeatedly over days and weeks and months saying god what is your plan for my life in this area you might make the wrong decision i remember when i was taking a wife for many years i had prayed but when it came down to the brass tags i spent about three months praying over the choice that i felt god was leading me to just to be sure and above both certain that this was the will of god for my life especially when you're a handsome preacher [Music] and you're a novel in the city you have to be exceptionally the more prayerful otherwise you will make the wrong decisions you see when you are in prayer you make a connection with god so that when you start going in the wrong direction by the spirit of prayer god will hold you you will feel a check in your spirit you'll feel there's something wrong here i can't go on with this decision and even if you choose to go on because you've been praying and praying in tongues where the mind is unfruitful even when you're going by your natural mind in the wrong direction by your spiritual mind god can pull you back [Music] are you here somebody so that your prayers in the net in the spiritual by praying in other tongues are so powerful to insist that only what god has intended for you comes to pass so that even when your mind is not renewed into the mind of god god is still able to prevent you from going down the wrong pathway because of prayer to make important decisions he prayed i'm amazed at how many people have not employed prayer at all before they went into the whole ordinance of marriage they just jump up from nowhere and say pastor i'm marrying her you met her yesterday you weren't praying before then and then tomorrow you decided you're married [Music] i will also announce to you that a prayerless coaching is good ground for a prayerless marriage [Music] can i go a little further [Music] luke chapter 9 verse 28 the bible says he took peter james and john up on the mountain to pray and notice one of it calls the mountain that calls it the mountain there was a specific player praise prayer place that jesus had on the mountain where he was accustomed to going to pray and he took three of his disciples with him peter james and john the inner circle the first terror of leadership and he took them to the mountain to pray and as he prayed the appearance of his face changed [Music] and his robe became white and glistening let me announce you ladies and gentlemen when you pray it will change even the way you look [Music] it'll change your countenance and your appearance it'll bring the brightness of heaven on you the reflection of heaven's glory will sit down on your face it will literally change the molecular structure of your face so you start radiating with the glory of god it'll do you better than that factor [Music] it will change you prayer changes things there are situations you are facing and fighting today but if you will go into prayer you can change all those things by praying if you're single and you've been single too long if you pray you can change it [Music] if you are the one that needs changing through prayer god can change you if it's your circumstance that needs changing through prayer god can change your circumstance if it's the man or woman you're supposed to marry who hasn't gotten the revelation yet through prayer god can give him a revelation are you here somebody if your money needs changing from four digits to six digits prayer can change it if your house needs changing because your bedroom is right next to the latrine to the latrine that 20 other roommates share or 20 other tenants share honey with prayer you can change it if your car keeps breaking down and leaving you stranded on third mainland bridge or your house is in a neighborhood where armed robbers keep knocking on your door prayer can change it prayer can turn the whole thing around prayers when you employ heaven's totality heaven's power to change your circumstances there's a power in god that when men who know how to pray when women who know how to call on god tap hold of their power they bring chains to this earth realm i feel like some earth changes are getting ready to raise up in this house can i go a little further mark 14 and verse 38 he said watch and pray didn't only say pray but he said watch and pray lest you fall into temptation do you know that half of the temptation you fell into you fell into it because you weren't praying in fact all of the temptation you fell into you fell into it because you were not praying whether it was the sin of the pride of life the sin of the lust of the flesh or the sin of the lust of the eyes you fell into it because you were not praying prayer will keep you strong and wise to the temptation of the enemy and by that word temptation he doesn't only mean temptation he also means trials [Music] there's some trials that were never meant to come your way even though god used them and the only reason why they came was because you won't pray like you should look at somebody telling watch and pray otherwise you fall into temptation let me talk about watching for a few minutes this evening you notice that the word watch is quite apparent throughout the old and the new testament text as i've said before for the hebrews there were eight watches in every day six a.m to nine am nine am to 12 noon 12 noon to 3 p.m 3 p.m to 6 p.m then the night watches 6 p.m to 9 p.m 9 p.m to 12 p.m 12 midnight 12 midnight to 3 a.m 3 a.m to 6 a.m and i notice in in christ's life he had this particular custom of watching three to four watches many of the times we see him in prayer in the scripture then at other times we see him rising a great while before day apparently catching the 3 am watch so that by 6 am when day had begun he was watched and prayed up [Music] you'll find that if you go to jerusalem today to the wailing wall you'll find that the hebrews they observe the watches and all the set times they go to pray when you look in the book of acts the disciples went to the place of prayer at the hour of prayer when you look at jesus in our text it says to them it says in the verse that he came to them walking on the sea in the fourth watch there's something extremely powerful about watching because watching compounds your effort in prayer with tenacity with bombardment so that heaven is forced to agree with you or heaven is compelled to hear what you have to say because of your tenacity there are some things that one watch will not deal with am i talking to somebody this evening there are some things that one watch will not deal with there are some temptations that one watch will not break jesus did not want to go to the cross of calvary it was not his plan it was not his desire it was not his intention to go to the cross there was nothing in his body or in his mind that suggested the cross he despised the cross the bible says he hated it he loathed the cross so when god said to him go to the cross nothing in him wanted to respond he wanted to obey god but he did not want to go to the cross and the bible says he took his disciples he went to the garden of gethsemane which is in the mountain region and he went there to pray he left the disciples in one area of prayer went further into another area where he could be solitary in prayer and he watched the first time i believe he prayed for the first watch of the night perhaps from the 6 pm to the 9 pm watch he came back looked at his disciples they were all asleep and he said to them could you not watch or tarry with me one hour i believe when it comes to watching you must try to spend at least one hour in the watch so that if you take three or four watches in the night you pray one hour in each watch he left them to sleep he went back to his place of prayer and he dealt with the same prayer point again my personal experience when we go away to watch or when i go away to watch and pray and i deal with the prayer points that i want to deal with in the first watch perhaps from 6 00 p.m to 8 p.m normally as i pray i feel resistance i feel spots i haven't broken through completely but by the time i sleep and come back to prayer at 10 pm or 11 pm and pray for another two hours i sense a breakthrough i feel like i've pushed down some walls and i've pulled some things apart and i penetrated into the realm of answers from god are you here somebody sounds strange to some of you because you ain't never been but does anybody know what i'm talking about this evening then you put it to rest you wake up again at 3 a.m or 4 a.m in the morning and you deal with the same point by the time you rise that morning to go to your office or to your work that matter is settled [Music] same thing happened with the lord the first time he went he said if it is possible let this cup pass from me but it didn't pass at that time otherwise he would have gone straight for judas and said oh yeah let's go to the cross he came back again he said if it is possible let this cup pass from me he didn't break it through but he at least pushed it to another level and became more certain that this was the mind of god for him and that beyond the cross there was a crowd by the third time he came out of the place of prayer and he said to the guys oh yeah let's go where's my accuser he was ready to go to the cross there's some issues that your first watch will not deal with neither your second watch and i hate to say it even your third watch there are some things that it won't deal with it will take weeks months of watching to break some things so if you think that you can just pray once and you would have dealt with the matter you're mistaken sometimes god will do it yes i agree with you but when he does do it it's either a function purely of his grace or of his mercy or it's because you are standing on a long platform of prayer already can i get a witness from somebody let's go a little further you find paul using the term watchful he lists for us six pieces of armor six pieces of weaponry or defensive weaponry for engaging in battle and we know that six pieces of armor would not be complete because god works by perfection there must be seven so in ephesians chapter six and verse 18 he gives us the seventh aspect of our defensive or offensive armor in god and he says praying therefore or praying always with all kinds of prayer and supplication in the spirit being watchful there unto with all perseverance now when i first read watchful there i thought and then pray but keep your eyes open and be looking if one preacher said it to me this way when you're praying for a wife paul pray but keep your eyes open so you can see here in the congregation [Music] but my bible said we don't walk by sight we walk by faith so the watchful there's watchfulness there has nothing to do with your natural sight but it has everything to do with your spiritual vision in fact the word watchful there is a term that [Music] you are going to have to observe the watches you are going to have to become a watchman over your life over your health over your family over your destiny over your future over your nation over everything that you are involved with you must become a watchman and a watchman is not somebody who prays three times a week a watchman is more so the person who prays about three times a day at least can i go further tell me in your bible to daniel chapter four daniel 4 [Music] [Music] are you there 4 i begin to read from the 13th verse [Music] king nebuchadnezzar said i saw in the visions of my head while i was on my bed and there was a watcher a holy one coming down from heaven and he cried aloud and said thus chop down the tree and cut off its branches strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit let the beast get out from under it and the birds from its branches nevertheless leave the stump and the roots in the earth bound with a band of iron and bronze in the tender grass of the field let it be wet with the dew of heaven and let him graze with the beast on the grass of the earth let his heart be changed from that of a man let him be given the heart of a beast and let seven times pass over him and then it says this decision is by the decree of the watchers and the sentence by the word of the holy ones in order that the living may know that god the most high rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he wields and sets over it the lowest of men that was nebuchadnezzar's dream now let me just give you a hint of nebuchadnezzar nebuchadnezzar was an oppressor he was such a vile king that he took one of the kings of israel sat him on a horse backward nailed his tongue to his chin allowed him to watch them cut off the heads of his two sons and then gouged out his eyes and then made him ride his horse backward out of the city as he set the city on fire nebuchadnezzar was a bad boy at 25 he was world ruler he had everything he wanted at his beck and call he was vicious than that he now took on israel and brought them into captivity in his country called babylon but all the time he was doing this there were watchers praying i personally happen to be able to believe that the watchers here number one are intercessors for the nation of israel [Music] can i go a little further and he says he characterizes the watches and says they are holy ones and he said here they came down from heaven and for some reason the scripture didn't give us any more clarity i know it's possible to conjecturably say that these were angels but for my personal uh application this evening i would like to consider them as intercessors and i'll give you basis for that in a moment but when daniel comes daniel announces that i understood by the decrees of the watchers in other words this pronouncement of judgment on nebuchadnezzar to humble him and to bring him down from his throne till he became a grass eater was a function of intercessory prayer that said you cannot continue to harm the people of god and get away with it the bible tells us in job chapter 22 and verse 8 that you shall decree a thing and it shall be established unto you that was a promise made to somebody who was prayerful to those who are prayerful when you decree things that are in line with god's intent and purpose they will come to pass a decree is a legal action taken to enforce a certain position decrees are not foreign to us in our country we lived for over 30 years under military rule where they propagated laws by decree and if you violated the degree mustafa will get you hallelujah but here god shows us something about decrees operating from the life of those who are watchers those who are given to consistent regular prayer those who observe the watches those who like paul said in ephesians 6 and 18 are watchful with all perseverance in prayer they persevere in the watches because when you stand in the watches and you prayed over a matter for a while you begin to move into decrees you begin to make declarations and god establishes what you declare unto you are it's you here in our church in fact they've been a few they believed god for the fruit of the womb we prayed the first time no answer but how many know what just because you don't get an answer the first time doesn't mean you should quit there there are some things that will require persistence and tenacity in prayer that's when prayer now graduates to watching i noticed that he didn't put prayer before watching he said watch and pray watch and pray look at somebody tell them watch and pray [Music] now we followed these matters one was maybe about six six years ago or so after having what in prayer for this family for about a year and a half they presented a baby girl as the miracle of the lord there's another couple every service this lady will come and stand around the pastor and i was wondering what is this woman up to somebody gave me the insight that she's trusting god for the fruit of the womb so we continued in prayer not just for her family but for a system of about eight to ten people that we were praying for god you must give them the fruit of the womb and by watching and prayer i'm proud to announce to you this evening that god who hears prayer whose heirs are not death whose hand is not short has delivered and that particular woman is the mother of two children today and if she wants more she can have them there was another brother god was dealing with him in his life through different things and allowed certain delays to take place because he was grooming him for something in the kingdom of god i went to his house after a long season of watching and praying in fact it was right after one of the bible conferences or the combined services or something like that a meeting we had at the national stadium and i said i didn't really come to talk much with you i just want to lie down before god on my face in your house and when i got through lying down i listen carefully to god because a watcher cannot decree what he wants to decree he decrees what he hears from god i lay down and i spoke to the father i listened for a few minutes i got up i walked him and i told him god said i should tell you you have clearance for whatever he has willed in your life and then i announced him i said you're going to have the baby i want to announce you that it won't be long [Music] his wife is already caring i won't disclose who it is she's already carried and she's the proud mother already of a fetus that she's carrying in her womb god who began a good work is faithful to complete it against the day of christ house on the rock as a church was birthed through watching to give you the basic prayer program or watch program that we used when we started house on the rock at 10 a.m in the morning my intercessors would come and pray with me till 2 p.m then i would have lunch if i had time to eat and then at 4 pm i would get out and go and pray on the balcony for another hour at 5 p.m the church would come and join me to pray from five and we used to announce until seven but we never ended until 8 30. then i would counsel for about an hour or two talk with the pastors and share about the things of god then about 11 o'clock 12 o'clock i was back in prayer i prayed till three then sleep or i would sleep until three and then pray till seven and then back up at 10 p.m 10 a.m in the morning to pray till two that's how we birth this church but since then the crowds have come they've pressed in on us from every side they've taken over our time they've taken over our privacy they've taken over our effort they've encumbered our office they've taken all our hours they've taken every moment of our day that i fear that if we don't get this message of prayer into the leadership and into the laity house on the rock may not fulfill the totality of god's ordained purpose in her ministry look at somebody tell them you've got to pray you've got to pray now can i go a little further i believe that there were certain israelites and i believe the last set of watches that dealt with the matter was shadrach meshach abednego and daniel that through their prayers they arrested the wires of nebuchadnezzar so that after he had ridden on his lefty throne for many years and oppressed the children of israel god said this far and no further the cries of my people have come up to me i will make you like a grass eater he took him off the throne this man crawled on all fours for seven years eating grass not salad he was a great shelter for the nations of the earth but god shot his tree down to a stump because of the decree of the watchers there are things that god wants to do in this nation that he's not waiting on the senate or the house of assembly to pass into law he is waiting for you to declare thus saith the lord in the place of watching and prayer and as you decree it job 22 and verse 28 it shall be established unto you as a watcher you have the ability to decree the success of your life to decree the fulfillment of god's purpose over your business to decree the fullness of god in your body in your health in your family in your finances in your hospital in your business in everything that you engage in by watching it was called the decrees of the watchers not the decree of the man or the persons the decrees of the watchers and the watchers were holy ones they were separate unto god they were different can i go further when you become a watcher one of the things that you will be graced with is the spirit of grace and supplication david said it this way i prayed until i was in prayer there's a level of prayer you must get into that will now make prayer easy in your life you have not prayed into prayer if it is if it's a struggle always to get your prayer life going in fact let me help you real easy if when you start shone dying and kabashin up and down your bedroom floor or your living room floor and it takes 45 minutes for you to sense the anointing your prayer life is dry but when you have been watching consistently for a period of time the moment you even think about god you haven't said a word to him yet the anointing comes [Music] and when you are in that state as a watcher watch what you say because it will come to pass if it's in the word of god you will know the time it will come to pass and when you decree it it must happen because one of the things that a watcher does is you are empowered to suspend certain natural laws certain spiritual laws that are in place can be superseded by higher laws which is the law of prayer are you here there are some things that god says this is how it is this is the spiritual life set in motion and he won't change it unless a watcher steps up and by prayer makes him reverse a law that he put in place or make an exception to the rule that is set in motion let me give you some examples there's something called the law of gravity that if you throw it up it will come down that the pull of the force of gravity in the center of the earth is greater than the ability of this object or whatever is propelling it so that instead of going up it eventually will come down whatever goes up must come down but how many of you know there is another law that can suspend the law of gravity it's called the law of the aerodynamics [Music] the law of the aerodynamics says that when the thrust is greater than the drag and the lift is greater than gravity that whatever is subject to those forces will become airborne as long as the thrust is greater than the drag and the lift is greater than the pull of gravity can i get a witness from somebody suspense laws there's another law set in place the law of sita and harvest winter and summer rain and shine god talked about it in genesis chapter 8 and that law is simply the revolutions of the sun the moon and the earth on their respective axis can i get a witness from somebody that's called time joshua was fighting a battle against five kings of the amorites and god proceeded to give him and his people the victory over the amorites but they needed a little more time so that their vengeance upon their enemies would be complete you know what joshua said joshua said in chapter 10 and verse 12 joshua 10 and verse 12 sun stand still over gibeon move over the valley of agilent so the sun stood still and the moon stopped till the people had vengeance on their enemies then the next verse says since then there has been no day like it and before them there has been no day like it either moreover when you talk to astronomers in the field they will tell you that when they go back in the hours of time there is a 24-hour period that they cannot account for because for one whole day by the decree of a watcher he said to the sun stay where you are don't go down yet he said to the moon stand still over the valley of agilent and time had to hear the decree of a watcher the the law of intercession prevailed over the law of seed time and harvest are you here somebody prayer changes things i don't know what you're going through in your life right now but prayer can change it i don't know what you're going through in your business or in your body on your finances but prayer can give you the direction the power and the divine enablement and the divine intervention to change it look at three people ask him will you pray [Music] then we see christ we see christ he's constrained the disciples [Music] he said to them get out of my way go across to the other side i've got your back i'm sending you there and you're going to get there you have to be able to send your business where you want it to go and then you go to the mountain apart by yourself unencumbered and deal with the destiny of your business in prayer am i talking to somebody this evening he went up to the mountain to pray if you study the text carefully he went up in the evening evening means around six o'clock [Music] and we know that jesus was watchful in prayer because he asked his disciples to watch and pray he commanded them to be watchful in prayer so let's assume he went up there at 6 p.m i believe according to the text that he stayed in prayer for three complete watches and by the fourth watch he had accumulated so much presence so much power that he suspended the law of gravity and water that would normally be permeable that he would sink straight through it no longer was permeable to his physical body he became so light and so boy he literally transfigured through three watches in the night possibly three and a half he had prayed up so much that he had accumulated so much presence and so much power that when he walked off the mountain the mountain and the sea couldn't tell the difference whether it was that he made the upper layer of the water hard or that his body became so light whichever way it happened it happened otherwise it wouldn't have been written in our book and if it was the same god who spoke something from nothing if it was the same god who spoke to the red sea and made it part on two sides if it was the same god who by the decree of a watcher made the sun stand still over gibeon made the moon sit still over agilent then the same god would employ whatever means he needed to just because somebody employed prayer over gravity let me announce to you the doctor's report may say you won't get better the doctor's report may say you'll never have the baby but there's another law beyond the doctor's report it's the law of prayer if you pray you'll get a breakthrough if you pray you'll get an answer he prayed through the night he accumulated power in the watches see the problem with us in our generation is that we take too little time in prayer we pray one little pretty pentecostal prayer for one hour on monday then the next time we visit prayer is sometime way far in the front on wednesday and between monday and wednesday the enemy has had field day infiltrating interfering and invading our lives invading your faith with doubt invading your faith with fear but when you stand in the watches what the watches do you pray two hours you break at the very next opportunity even if it's your lunch break at the office use the whole hour and pray and eat your meat pound the way back to the office all that time you are putting prayer on top of prayer then you sit down in the office and you work to five on the way home thank god for the traffic more time for me to pray you spend another two hours driving back in the driving shone dying and if the downfall is an uncomfortable place to pray get in a car pool get somebody to give you a ride and make sure they're an intercessor too i spent those two hours going home praying by the time you get home if there were any arm rubbers that were on your path god would have directed them to one wicked man's car are you here somebody that when you get home you eat your dinner but before you do it you spend one hour praying the grace [Music] are you here tonight then you go to sleep but the problem with us is many of us go to sleep on an empty prayer tank the reason why your tomorrow is weak is because your last night was poor [Music] if you will pray well before you sleep at night you wake up in the morning strong 45 minutes in tongues this thing we call tongues is dangerous in the kingdom of darkness it might seem foolish to you it might seem incapable to you it might sound impotent to you but do you know when you pray in tongues you are operating in diversities of languages one language is directly between you and god secret code when you want to talk about your sins and your failures you begin to roca shundai kabash and the things that your neighbor doesn't understand god knows how you feel inside then there's another language paul called it the tongues of men and angels and when you talk about angels there are many categories there are some things you speak in tongues only the cherubim will hear it there's some things when you speak in [Music] [Applause] [Music] tongues there are some times when you pray you bring angels from god's presence in their myriad to fight your battles against satan for you are you here tonight tongues it's a dangerous thing the other thing tongues do is it speaks to your spirit man and edifies him [Music] are you here then when you speak in tongues sometimes somebody can be passing in front of your door and they hear your prophecy tongues then there's tons of edification to build yourself up jude said beloved praying always in the holy spirit building up yourself on your most holy faith when you pray in tongues you are mounting to the top of the wall you are climbing high to the wall on its top so that from that place of prayer you can see clearly what god is intending what satan is planning use what god is intending to intercept satan's plan are you here tonight i want to go further we talk about watching watch it if you don't have a desire to pray [Music] let me give you a desire tonight my whole life was destroyed and broken everything i had was gone my livelihood my self-esteem my self-worth drugs drug addiction had stolen it from me i gave my life to christ but i still had nothing just salvation and free ticket to heaven but i was broke busted disgusted the laughingstock of all my associates on the college campus the livestock of all my friends the embarrassment of my family and one man introduced me to prayer and he taught me how to stay in prayer prayer was the only thing i had it was the only ladder i knew it was all the only life belt or life boy that i had i said i will learn this thing called prayer and i stepped into the rudiments of prayer and once i stepped inside there i began to sense god's presence god's presence became more beautiful to me than anything on the face of the earth i had nothing anyways at that time god's presence meant more to me than silver and gold i cherished and coveted his presence more than anything the only access to his presence for me was prayer so through the desire for his presence he cultivated the need the the the joy of prayer in my life i remember ways up at 4am in the morning i would get up get out and go to upper room assembly of god in uh southwest miami and go and pray there with pastor bill atkins you saw him here a few months ago and we pray there until 7 80 in the morning i'd go back home shower go to school as soon as i finished my classes by midday i was back in prayer i spent my whole day just praying now some of you have that kind of opportunity and time because your life is not incumbent you are single and the bible says a single man cares about the things of the lord and if you are single and not praying what about when you're married when it becomes more difficult to pray and if you don't establish prayer in your time of singlehood you will marry a prayerless woman [Music] if she can't pray with you and stand in the watches as a single person then honey perhaps you don't want to marry her until prayer is established in her life because there are certain things you cannot arrive at in your life without prayer i was talking about how prayer changed my whole life i started praying started praying like like crazy my whole life was prayer if you shook my hand i was liable to not speak english but speaking tongues to you because all i did was pray if i used to go around saying i wanted to be like paul i pray in tongues more than you all because there was something about praying in tongues that helped me to build up my broken down self-esteem helped me to feel like a man helped me to feel better about myself there's something about praying all the time that helped me to feel awesome when i was broke helped me to feel wealthy when i didn't have a penny in my bank help me to feel handsome when i have no teeth in my mouth [Music] i don't know if i'm talking to you this morning or this evening prayer it changes everything then it puts a fragrance around you do you know one of the easiest accesses to favor is prayer because when you pray you bring the fragrance of god around your life anybody who likes god knows that smell and because of that smell they'll want to favor you they'll want to be around you they'll want to help you one of the easiest access points to favor is prayer [Music] i want to go further took out a long story short from blockbuster that was disgusted within two years of praying my whole life changed completely completely i finished my university degree [Music] i bought my first car from my own money i got a 25 000 a year job i i was quickly elevated through the ranks of leadership in the local church i used to worship in there my life just turned for the better got my own house had my whole life paid my own bills i started paying taxes my whole life changed i began to see a future are we going to hear the plans that god had for me whereas before prayer i thought i was a useless dope i used this personality going nowhere nothing going to happen in my life but when you pray you see the future that god has in store for you i want to go further [Music] look at somebody tell them prayer changes things it changes things it changes things completely i i was trying to get married when i eventually came back to nigeria and i prayed and said god i need a wife i will not start a house on the rock until you give me a wife i stood up to preach somewhere i saw the young lady there i had prayed for months for a wife so that when i saw her i would know who she was you don't have to know your wife before you start praying for her you don't have to know your husband before you start praying for him if you pray for him or her now by the time they show up in your life you will know they will know are you here how do you think it happened to pastor healing [Music] anyway let me continue i prayed when i saw her i knew she was the one so i investigated in the natural they told me there was one man trying to fly around there but i decided that there is the decree of the watchers he had bmw mercedes-benz his own house generator in fact i walked into his house one day i saw the furniture i said child the competition is heavy but then i called him i said brother let's pray i listen to him pray i said this one small thing i hadn't spoken to her yet i hadn't met her i only saw her i went into prayer three months by the end of the first month the brother said to me said you know god showed me that she's not my i said bless the name of the lord he said my mother had a dream that um i had a clean glass of water and somebody came and poured something into it and that she's that person i said bless the name of the lord one man's food is another man's poison [Applause] [Music] are you here somebody before i knew it what else everywhere the relationship broke down and i walked in [Music] [Applause] [Music] within one week she had said yes to marry me one week if you ask her today she'll say pastor paul you never chased me i said i didn't chase you i chased god and god chased you for me [Applause] [Music] are you here somebody prayer changes things prayer changes things we used to bring in 5 000 naira every week as offerings in house on the rock i got with the pastors i said let's pray and ask for specific amounts of money to come in every week as we pray we move to fifty thousand fifty thousand game hundred thousand hundred thousand again two hundred thousand two hundred thousand per service 250 and we kept going i can't tell you what it is now it's not what they call confidential information that's anything above six digits are you here somebody i want you to hear me what i'm saying to you [Music] so i wanted to marry her i didn't have car i didn't have money i didn't have a salary my job was voluntary in other words he wasn't paying the salary and i wanted to marry her we prayed in everything i made her pray and fast with me for about six hours every wednesday she stayed in my house wednesday she'll come at 10 in the morning we'll pray till four in the afternoon are you here all night prayer meeting every friday she will be there praying with me from 10 pm to 6 a.m in the morning [Music] she says 8 30 a.m are you here we prayed in literally everything the things i told her about five years ago in specific details that this and this and this will happen concerning our transportation concerning our home concerning the ministry as we pray it came to pass prayer changes things i needed a pastor in my life and i chose the best i said god by prayer you can make it possible i flew to london on a routine missionary trip and i only had a ticket for lagos london lagos economy when i got to london i knew that somebody was going to come and give me a ticket to go to the states a brother in the church walked up to me said pastor i don't know what it is but something has been troubling me to give you this ticket to go to the states i said obey god i took the ticket from him in the next few days i was in dallas i met with bishop jakes from then till now he has remained my pastor and a tremendous inspiration encouragement and counsellor in my life and ministry prayer changes things are you here somebody by prayer you can do anything that is within the parameters of the word of god i want to go further look at somebody telling prayer i can change it for you i want to go further see when you go into the watches one of the things the watches does for you is you accumulate power on top of power so when you stand in the first watch you are putting a level of power and presence in your tank then you be careful to not do anything that will leak your tank and within a few hours be back in the watch so what you now do is you put power on top of the power you already put in place but what happens to most of us is we put power in place then we spend it on gist jest jokes [Music] so by the time you go back into prayer you are starting from square one again whereas when you go back into watches you are building on what you already built days upon days or rather hours upon hours days in one day sometimes he would not sleep for days just because he was praying through the days and he would labor timelessly for souls he was born uh somewhere in uh i think around the 19th century this man's ministry was colossal in its impact grandest infinity was known to sit on a train and the whole train would go into instant revival they would start weeping and crying without him preaching one word to them without them even knowing who he was the presence of god and the convicting power of the holy ghost would arrest everybody in the cabin in the carriage and on the entire train his ministry was phenomenal one time it is said that his train went the training was on pass through rochester new york just because the train that the intercessor was on pass through the whole of rochester came under revival he didn't even stay there to preach he was going to preach somewhere else but because he passed through with prayer the whole of rochester immediately came under the power of the almighty god there was another intercessor by the name of evans roberts he was the central figure that god used behind the welsh revival that eventually spread around the world and still has some pentecostal denominations that preceded the 1907 asus street revival bishop eric brown was a product of the evans robert revival it spread from wales into their part of england evans roberts didn't preach [Music] he just prayed that revival was characterized by prayer there was no preaching in that revival one by one they would just come and pray and this boy heavens when he got hold of that proven and called on god all of wales had to change it was said as a result of that prayer revival people will be driving in their hospital buggies and stop in their hundreds get out of their carriages kneel down lay down flat on the sidewalk and start crying out to god for forgiveness of their sin to revive us swept that whole place prayer changes things there was another man by the name of george muller george mueller prayed he was a man who god had given a calling to start orphanages and he started these offerings for children without parents and he had no resource no food for them but he prayed in everything till every morning at certain points in time the right person would show up with bread milk or flour unsolicited [Music] till eventually he started running a huge orphanage system with orphanages all around the world as far away places as india africa other parts of asia and the united kingdom and europe tremendous man of god time forbids me to tell you of men like benson idahosa many people don't understand the kind of power that he walked in because most of you are in your 30s maybe 40s but those who are around in his days when he first started his walk with god that man was a man of prayer i remember him sharing the testimony of how he had been in prayer for days weeks and he went to ghana to conduct a crusade somehow the crusade was not breaking forth [Music] attendance was very shabby and while she was going through town one of the evenings or one of the days a painter was painted on one of the upper stories of a building and his colleague called him from downstairs he turned slipped and fell head first i want to tell you about the power prayer when he saw the man fall and the pandemonium that followed he said he heard the voice like a lion say to him go over there and heal that man the voice troubled him three times he refused all three times eventually he went to the very presence of the dead man he said the brain lobes had spilled out the skull had cracked into the loaves were hanging on the on the asphalt and he said he heard the voice of a lion rising him again and said i said believers will lay hands on the sick and they will recover he said lord yes this one is not sick this one is dead said before he knew it the lion thing inside him took over and he bent down packed the brain back inside the skull took off his tie tied his head back together stood the man up commanded life back into the man and the man was still alive until just a few years ago this happened 20 or 23 years ago or something like that same praying man same prayer man he had a crusade somewhere in africa and live electric wire electrocuted the first few congregants that came to the crusade and so they went to call archbishop and he arrived at the scene seen dead bodies slaying in the water the live wire connected some of the flood water and it took all of them out dead for hours when he arrived at the scene you know what he did [Music] [Applause] and there was a mass resurrection he says till date [Applause] he says till date it was the greatest miracle that happened in his life the greatest miracle many people have heard about reinhardt bunker [Music] and if you know him well you might know of susette hatting who is the woman who leads intercession for reinhard donkey's ministries and they pray and watch i have the privilege of her teaching me in bible school whilst i was in the uk at international bible institute of london and she said i'm not teaching i'm just praying and for three whole days breaking a little bit at night she was praying there in kt and katie was never the same after that experience she prayed from our ranks that god raised up apostles that will shake the five continents of the world and [Music] days in a car accident to cut a long story short they brought his coffin to the church bunker was dedicated that sunday they took him out of the coffin showed him on television camera live around the world laid him on a table the boys went to prayer the man's body was stone cold but all of a sudden he started breathing and coughing so the boys went to malpra and started to massage his body he had been dead three days certified dead they had put this thing in his nose in his mouth the man was cold dead i saw his dead body on television are you here they prayed more his arms started to get warm then they started to move it then the man stood up oh you don't hear me what i'm saying to you prayer can change anything he stood up he said please i need farm they knew he was alive they put a fan there together long story short we saw the man who gave his testimony of his return from hell he went to heaven he went to [Music] hell can i go further there was a man by by the name of praying hide i often confuse him with david brainerd but one of the two of them was on a ship sailing intercontinental and a great storm overtook the ship [Music] and whether it was hide or braided i'm not sure went to the captain and gave the captain instructions the captain refused to hear you know what he told the captain he said the storm will get worse before it gets better after it gets worse you will ask me to call my god i wanted to call him earlier but you wouldn't allow me to call him in your presence the storm will get wet worse before it gets better so you will know that there is a god the storm became so bad hide or brain and whichever one of the two it was went back into prayer in the presence of the captain commanded the storm to leave and as he did the storm left either hyde or brainerd averted the nazi invasion of the british mainland they were coming in but because of these people's prayers all of a sudden they turned midstream without any explanation till date are you here i could share with you many more we were faced with the big muslim bill to pay for the whole facility for a six-month period we didn't have more than five thousand nine in our bank account we prayed mushan gave us the facility to use we went home to breakfast because of prayer somebody passed a sheet of paper around by the time they had brought the sheet of paper back to me the song was completely paid for i didn't ask you to collapse if you're going to clap clap properly [Music] look at somebody tell them prayer changes things had member after member who came in as stark sinners we went into prayer today some of those who are sinners of the worst order have become saints of the best order because of prayer it's because of prayer that we're able to put on meetings like this and see the auditorium full to capacity because of prayer out of prayer 35 churches have been birthed from house on the rock bearing the name house on the rock our prayer god has opened doors that he the two would not have been able to walk through from prayer the sick have been healed blind eyes have opened tumors have shrunk on people's bodies because of prayer people's lives and destinies have been changed according to the purpose god sent over this ministry through prayer [Music] through prayer i will tell you about a man called bishop duncan williams last time he was here he told me that he's in a class by himself he wasn't being arrogant what many people don't know is that he couldn't read or write and yet he was in bible school and they gave him prison exam he couldn't take it so they agreed to give him oral exam and up to this point he had never sat in anybody's classroom so he was in a class by himself and the lecturer asked him a question and bishop williams spoke back to him in tongues he said to him if you can interpret my tongue that is your answer to god a long story short somehow he passed out of the university in benin graduated he came back to ghana to start his ministry he didn't work he went back to archbishop said i want to work with you he said no god didn't call you to nigeria go back to ghana he laid hands with him and sent him back he still faced mighty frustration in ministry and he gave himself back to prayer what a lot of people don't know is while he was in bible school his classmates were in class he was praying in towns they were writing their homework he was praying in tongues when when they had exams on paper he had exams with the supernatural when they asked him to write paper he would demonstrate signs wonders and miracles that's the nature of that man that's the man who who was the second person to step into my life and rub prayer onto my holy spirit because i don't believe prayer can be taught prayer can only be caught we can give you principles in prayer that will help you but if you don't catch prayer by association you may never catch it he went back to ghana and he went preaching preaching nothing happened so he went back into prayer and he preached a message about blind bartemaeus as he preached it a man who was blind in both eyes from birth got his sight restored through prayer dr williams ministry took off from that point onwards i've seen him go through hell i've seen him face mighty storms when i used to be a branch pastor of his church in the uk mighty storms of every kind the kind of storms that i haven't seen any other man of god survive but by prayer he survived it i remember one time they took him before a tribunal in ghana because the presidency at that time wanted to get rid of him and kill him they had already well three or so preachers had already mysteriously died and he was next on the list so they brought him before the tribunal they went to his church to collect him he said i won't go now because if i go now you will have a riot on my hands i will come and meet you at the tribunal when he got to the tribunal [Music] he said to the the judges the military officers and everybody he said before we go into tribunal please i want us to all talk to god that's the wrong request i have [Music] they took off their hearts they stood up and he prayed this is how his prayer went [Music] he said father when they stand in the judgment let them not be acquitted those who would reach out their hand to touch the lord and his anointing make their wives widows their children become orphans give them the cloth of shame as a garment let the tempest pursue them as a whirlwind say let their office another person take by the time he finished praying the head of the tribunal sense the judgment and the presence of god that he said you are acquitted the tribunal is over tonight what a lot of people don't know is that for six months before that tribunal he had been in prayer night and day for his deliverance [Music] are you here there's another friend of mine his name is bishop ajin asari he'll come to nigeria soon to be a blessing to us in this church young man he's about 40 just turned 40 a few months ago those ghanaians they pray is there any guardian here says some crumb crumbs to me [Music] these guys pray [Music] whilst i was in action chapel we had guys who calmly would walk up and down the corridor speaking in tongues and in understanding for 12 hours sometimes they will sit for 15 minutes to get a break and drink some water about 12 hours they will sleep for three four hours get up again and pray weeks then you hear of their ministries five years later you say no wonder today out in asari packs stadiums 40 50 60 000 they will line up wheelchairs in their hundreds 60 70 of them will get up that have never walked before he seen the dead raised in his ministry several times prayer prayer and i started to ask him some questions i was with him in portugal a few weeks ago i started i said how do you do it he says he doesn't get involved with administration except on dedicated days that he gives his life to prayer he said pastor at one time i used to read 25 chapters of scripture every day and i was praying at least 14 hours a day he said when i get to the auditorium he said pastor i'll pass pastor i've walked in some things so i've walked in some things he said i'll give you the address the name the event your the seat you are sitting on your mother's name everything because of prayer [Music] he said also when you pray you can't hold grudges long because the presence of god is so sweet to you and the grief of grudges drives the presence away because you love the presence so much you get rid of your grudges quickly because you want god's presence if you hold the grudge to enter god's presence is hard you say with that kind of sensitivity i could pick things in the hall i shake a man's hand out i will hear god tell me the things he needs me to tell him prayer through prayer you can determine what god has in store for your life draw the power necessary to effect it into reality through prayer and you don't have to be articulate to pray you just have to be passionate and persistent [Music] if you are not articulate spend spend let me give you let me share something with you i think you ought to do in prayer [Music] then i'm going to let you know i'm just closing my eyes jesus come down again if you want to break change your prayer life how many of you are struggling with your prayer life right about now it's a lot of people i appreciate your honesty if you want to change it start tonight we'll have a few minutes at the altar to recommit your life to prayer before you recommit make certain decisions about your phone calls who you entertain your house and when you entertain them give prayer the number one priority in your life when you schedule your day schedule prayer first then schedule it in the middle and scale it at the end of your day that's number one second identify the people in your life that resist your prayer like personal assistants secretaries friends put them on certain hours your pa should only call you in emergencies at any time other than emergencies you should have certain hours he should call you in otherwise he shouldn't call you you understand what i'm saying then if you're going to pray you must do like what jesus did a great while before morning rise up and find a quiet place where you can go and pray i didn't say to god to go and meditate that's a different thing because there's another deception that you don't have to say to pray but jesus said in matthew 6 from verse 9 following when you pray say so they say pastor i can pray what i do when i pray is i meditate [Music] meditation is good but it's not the same thing as prayer secondly when you rise up in the morning to pray map out for yourself three or four significant prayer points that you feel desperate about in your life or in your environment and at least one of them must be intercession otherwise your prayer is selfish i believe god anoints intercession more than he has anoints prayer [Music] pray about what you are passionate about then during the course of your day whenever you get two or three minutes pray breathe the prayer speak in tongue if you get 15 minutes use it in prayer god wants to change your life he wants to change your marriage he wants to change your health for the better he wants to change your finances he wants to change your church he wants to change your nation but he's waiting on you to pray somebody said god does nothing except in response to prayer and i can agree with it to a large degree because i believe that god has done nothing except in the response to either the prayers of the master or people who prayed a long time before we got here i believe we are living on the fruit of the prayers of men like apostle who prayed some of the most scripturally accurate prayers in the whole of the text second just as a matter of advice try and get three sessions of prayer in a day one hour might be ambitious for some but it might be minuscule for others but everybody should at least if you're gonna start with 15 minutes three times a day do that but make sure you stick to it then raise it up to 30 minutes then raise it up to an hour and understand that for me i believe that the basic minimum is could you not tarry one hour jesus said praise the lord then another point that i think will help you praying at midnight is is critical especially when you're dealing with issues [Music] i can't explain it too well but there's something about the midnight hour prayer that causes things to shift and change [Music] ruth got her deliverance from boaz at midnight israel came out of egypt at midnight paul and silas prayed and at midnight they got their breakthrough there's something about that midnight there's also something about the fourth watch when you're able to observe that midnight watch and you step into the fourth watch you have the victory so that when you wake up in the morning my goodness all your prayer rivers are flowing all your cylinders are firing you know your mantle your anointing your gifts your callings they operate on your prayer anointing if you want to activate all your callings gifts and mentals your prayer anointing will activate them hallelujah hallelujah let me let me share this also with you to be effective with your prayer power it takes building it takes time weeks to build a strong anointing or to build a strong mantle let's say you have an important engagement to preach at or an important business event or an important issue or decision and you want to be in the center of god's mind you say okay for the next three weeks i'm going to step my watches up from two or three watches a day to four or five watches instead of half an hour per watt i'm going to one and a half hours per watch and i'm going to be diligent about it because my boss could not change my situation my money couldn't change it my father couldn't change my connections couldn't change but my god can he's willing to and i'm going to make him do it by holding on to him in prayer madam sit down look at somebody tell them pray so what you do is you build i learned this from a preacher a while ago he said paul one of your distinctions is you know how to build a prayer anointing people don't see what you do behind the scenes they look out of their what you do and they can't compute the results you get the answer is what you have been building in private over the years and when you have spent five years of your life 10 years of your life praying heaven knows your voice that when you preach they think you're praying so the answer is a function of building your prayer mantle build it up build it up it will take you weeks months to build it so that when you slip away from your prayer hours your prayer watches you you begin to feel like a fish outside water but when you haven't built prayer in your life you can be outside of water and not even know it you could have taken your leg off the accelerator and not even feel like you are losing speed praise the lord second the people who live in your house they must be constrained they must be constrained for example now i love my wife but she does not sleep in my bedroom every night i'm not saying you should do that your ministry on my own are not the same but she doesn't leave my bedroom every night because he's a beautiful woman [Music] anywhere between two and four nights in a week i must have my my bed to myself and my god because i can wake up at two or three and want to pray in my bedroom as opposed to my normal prayer place downstairs and i must have that liberty so when she now sleeps we now sleep in the same bedroom if i wake up at three she wakes up at three if i pray at three she must pray at three but when it's time to give the baby milk bottle she will give them i will pray praise the lord you must constrain everything around you to respect your time with god it is an abomination for anybody to interrupt your prayer time if you pick up the phone and they hear you speaking in tongues they say please i'm sorry i'll call you another time in fact you should turn your phones off when you go into prayer let me also say to you that if you think you will break through by praying at 9 00 a.m in the morning you are mistaken [Music] because by 9 am satan is already on the prowl the human bodies that he uses are already at work why it is good to pray before human bodies are awake satan uses human bodies so when human bodies are inactive be active you understand what i'm saying it's important to pray before human bodies wake up [Music] my wife would have died in the second child birth [Music] when we were having alvin the delivery was perfect everything was good just mismanagement by the org specialist there or the midwife she started to bleed the child but baby and her were very healthy but delivery was normal things went very well but she started to bleed and the nurse said oh it's normal but she was concerned about it she mentioned it to the nurse and then said no it's normal she had lost what two two and a half half of her body weight in blood over half of her body weight in blood and she was dying what i had been praying about that son and my wife her life the longevity of her days for years before before i married her for many months before i married her we had settled the fact that we would grow up and be all together you understand what i'm saying we had dealt with those matters in prayer so when she called me on the phone i said they will pray i wondered whether alvin had died i knew she she sounded well so i had no idea that she was the one in trouble i got inside the car and rushed to the hospital i went straight to the place where they i said where's my son he said he's there i walked into my wife's room she was not there my heart started to skip a beat i walked to the nurse i said now you tell me right now where's my wife she said she's in now i said is she all right she said she's all right but it's good to pray at that point i said thank you i went and i looked at her she looked half dead i stepped out and i reminded god of the years of prayer and i said she cannot go at this time it is not possible i went back inside inside there by that time my mother came they picked my wife up the bed her eyes rolled and it looked like she was gone but a peace came over my heart and the lord spoke in my heart and said she would live and not get dying to declare the glory of god within a couple of hours her blood pressure had come much better than it was by the following day she was pretty much back to normal and god had delivered us and i believe it was not the prayers of that day it was the prayers of before prayer is not an emergency thing prayer is meant to be preventive and not curative [Music] it's meant to be preventive and not curative you're not supposed to be looking for a wife you should have settled that in your years of singleness so that when the wife comes you will know who she is i was saying to somebody i hope to send my children to school in england to give them a good education because a good education at the tertiary level is hard to find in nigeria and i said i must start laying aside money for their school fees fund now for much later i won't start looking for the money 10 years from now i've got to start putting it aside now prayer is the same thing you anticipate what your future will hold and you deal with your future now in prayer so that by the time the future comes you are already ready for it are you here i hope i'm getting through to somebody all i've really tried to do tonight is motivate you in prayer to get back into prayer there's nothing in your life right now you can't change it might have been a marriage gone sour by prayer you can fix her and you can fix it the marriage finance is gone busted as long as you follow the principles of biblical economics and you go into prayer you can change laws and decrees and ancestral covenants and curses that have been written against your family because of sins of your phobias or sins in your own life are you here somebody you can change you a lot in life everybody in your family could have been broke and poor by prayer you can change it let me say to single ladies by prayer you can deal with the whole issue of marriage and there are basically two one is the partner the other is yourself mostly when we go into prayer to sort out marriage for ourselves we generally pray for the partner the partner is never the problem you are the problem you need to pray over yourself and say god make me the best spouse that the man you have given to me will ever need or desire make me the best wife or the best husband that i am supposed to be so that by the time he or she shows up they identify you quickly and say this is my bone this is my flesh are you here and then i've got to say this to you the fragrance of prayer on your life will make you beautifully attractive to the man that god has been in fact it will make you attractive to so many different men that you will have options not you not you not you not you not you you're quite good stand over there not you know you're quite good to you stand over there not you know you two you stand over there too and and you stand over there you're quite nice too you pray well you stand over there father which one is it [Music] the fragrance of prayer fragrance of prayer also with prayer you will know things supernaturally before they happen [Music] they didn't invite me to pray at the interdomina into the nominational service for the governor i wasn't invited to pray i was just invited to come but as i was praying that morning with one of my intercessors i said to him please pray that god will give me utterness because i think that i think they're going to ask me to pray because i had seen it whilst we were praying saw myself standing there and i heard the prayer i was to pray [Music] now they invited us they shot us between the archbishops and everybody and then right at the last minute they asked us to take the prayer if i hadn't been prepared for it i would have lost my god but because i knew what was going to happen and had seen it beforehand i knew exactly what to do i knew what to calm my nerves to take over the atmosphere knew what to say to the governor and to the crowd and they knew how to pray before god on his behalf those of you who were there it was a victory great victory so prayer does a lot of things for you it does an awful lot of things for you how many of you are single here let me share this with you the bible says a single man a single person cares for the things of the lord but the one who is married they care about the things of their spouse that means in your single time you must consecrate yourself to the lord so that you are attractive and attracted to a person who is like you otherwise when you get married your prayer life will not only diminish it will be destroyed ask any of the men and women here who are married who are prayerful before they got married asked them how many battles they fought to either keep their prayer life or how badly they lost their prayer life after marriage because especially for the women looking after the husband keeping house looking after the babies pushing out the baby my wife didn't pray for almost eight months with the pregnancy because pregnancy will rob you of a prayer life so you had better pray well before you get pregnant you had better pray well in fact god gives you time to establish your prayer life before you get pregnant so use it then men pastor yami will soon know this one [Music] once the babies come oh god that's pastor kenneth once the babies come at night you are just constantly thinking about the babies is he still breathing let me check and see [Music] then you don't sleep at night so during the day you try to get something it messes up your whole prayer life unless you have built prayer so strong before the babies come then you have received your prayer life to keep you praying even through difficult times to pray are you here let me also say to you that you will notice now if you don't pray me and you we don't work together anymore i'm courteous and i'm called here but if you're not prayerful we don't walk together anymore it just doesn't happen because my life is too pressure now to not stay focused in prayer there are too many things that could disrupt or distract that would be dangerous not for me but for several people that are counting on me to deliver on their behalf that's why when i say it's time to pray and you tell me you have other things to do you notice the relationship will begin to dwindle [Music] because if prayer is not important to you then you are not important to me especially if you are in the leadership say amen somebody if you can't say man stay out let me tell you why if you are not prayerful you will not hear from god clearly and when you don't hear from god you are what paul calls an unreasonable man who does not have faith the lack of hearing from god makes you unreasonable to the vision of the visionary so when the visionary says we go this way you always know better and you get you and everybody else into trouble all right now let me close with the text that we started with and then i'm out of your face are you getting something this evening let me close with the text jesus wanted to get his disciples to the house of fish to bethsaida the sea of galilee was 10 miles long when it says that they were in the midst of the sea they were in the middle that means they were at least four to five miles away from jesus four to five miles into the sea he's up on the mountain he's climbed up there and from six to nine he has been watching and i believe one of the things he was dealing with was the destruction to become an earthly king and set up an earthly kingdom which is what the children of israel were trying to put upon him because of his exploits and his miracles but by wisdom he constrained the people who were with him just for bread and the people who were with him for ministry and divine purpose he sent them on a mission a training mission he sent them on the boat to cross over to the other side and then pray over them and some of the days at least one possibly two days of the week step back and go into prayer uncover whoever you have put in place with prayer if i don't know how to say it you better i actually now enjoy covering people with prayer let them go down into the battlefield let me stand on the mountain and watch let joshua go down into the valley and let moses stay on the mountain with his hands up before god moses felt the battle for him was better there and more effective there than in the valley so jesus is up there on the mountain he sent the boat and in that boat his whole ministry was on it the whole ministry was on the boat he went up to the mountain and he prayed the first watch i believe he was dealing with a distraction to his purpose i believe he was praying over the disciples i believe he was dealing with the storm and i believe he was praying down a miracle to show his disciples the effectiveness of prayer that mountain he went to they knew where it was they seen him go there several times to pray second watch 9-12 he digs in and masters the matter in prayer some things will not move on the first watch 12 midnight to 3 a.m he's back in the watches can you imagine how much power he had accumulated can you imagine if the vocalist would take up watching before you come to church on sunday morning and you watch friday night you watch saturday night when you hold the microphone to sing your voice might be caused but somebody in the background will be healed of leukemia you hear me what i'm saying by 3 am maybe 3 30 or 4 am he had already seen that the winds were country and the boat was tossed with tempest he walked off the mountain he had accumulated so much power and presence that by the time he hit the water the water thought it was sand and he walked for about four to five miles on water oh god oh god when you are prayed up and a watcher you will walk on top of what other people are sinking in what other people are afraid of will become afraid of you i don't know if you hear me what i'm saying what other people can't deal with you'll be on top of it what other people are sinking in you'll be floating over it because you would have accumulated so much buoyancy and power to be above only and not beneath i believe that what caused him to be transfigured on the mountain of transfiguration was the fact that he prayed for several watches and watching had been his lifestyle for his whole life for his whole life he was a watcher so by the time he prayed up his whole face transfigured that he was carried into a realm of heaven and those onlooking saw heaven because of his prayers i'm going somewhere i'm almost there now just three four minutes then [Music] he walks as if he's going to walk past the boat the disciples are afraid they think they've seen a ghost listen when you have prayed up i don't know how to say it better but it's almost like as if you are a ghost you are more spirit than you are flesh you hear me what i'm saying you are more spiritual than you are natural what other people bump into you walk through what resists and retards other people you go through it like a knife through butter and look at what he did when you are so prayed up in the watches not only do you change your atmosphere you change the atmosphere of anybody whose atmosphere you get into his prayer power was so strong that he kept him above water but it also empowered another man to walk on the same water he was walking on another version said it excluded the portion of peter walking on water and it said as soon as jesus got into the boat immediately the boat appeared on the other side prayer doesn't only change you it changes everything around you prayer will change your family it will change your environment it will change your street it will change your neighborhood you remember when we prayed that god this bloodthirsty spirit in lagos must be arrested within three months mara became the governor of lagos state and armed robbery was quelled by operation what did they call it sweet recently it's been coming up again so we are back in prayer dealing with the bloodthirsty spirit in those days we didn't have ministry to administrate the only office house on the rocket was one briefcase you remember we had no physical office our office was prayer now we become administrative we have to keep membership roles and all these different things and different ministries to sustain the no brother jesus had no office he had no administrative secretary all he had was prayer it's time to come back to prayer now let me close on this note tomorrow morning those of you who can get up at three to pray get up at three those who can rise at four get up at four but the latest sleeper should be five later six pray before the sun rises get in an hour or two lunchtime go back into prayer those who can reappear in prayer before lunch do it evening time be back in prayer and you do that until we meet again next week wednesday and tell me your life has not changed tell me things haven't begun to god best get better for you there's a scripture i like to share often when i deal with this particular issue pastor but how will i rest you sleep five six hours and you still wake up tired because rest is not a function of sleep only rest is a function of praying in tongues isaiah 28 11. with stammering lips and another tongue i will speak to these people this is the rest and the refreshing but they would not hear so the rest of the refreshing is speaking in another tongue why does it bring you rest because by speaking in tongues like i said you're speaking many times tons of men angels and the tongue of god and by speaking in terms of angels you're empowering angels against the devils who are fighting you and half of your lack of sleep is restlessness at night where your emotions your mind your subconscious are plagued by the attack of the enemy over the many cares of your life so you're wrestling with them at night that you wake up after six hours of sleep and you feel like a steam roller run over you but have you noticed if you pray 45 minutes in strong tongues before you sleep you sleep like a baby wherever you wake up in the morning your anointing is fresh when you read your bible the rhema word jumps out at you many people do let me show you one sign that you're not in prayer your bible is boring you read two chapters and you close it you say there's no ref revelation is not a function of reading it's the function of the spirit when you are prayed up you see your bible clear hallelujah let me say to all the aspiring preachers this house it grew up on prayer it doesn't it's not a function of preaching or great teaching that's a part of it but what fuels the prayer or fuels the preaching of the teaching is prayer is prayer one of the little secrets for the branch pastors who are here i see some of you sometimes i come to church and i don't hit it like i want to but especially on those evenings or those mornings within the next one to three days i take out a lot of time to pray and to pray through that message and what was meant to come through that message to the people so it happens how many know that when elijah told elijah i told the king i hear the sound of abundance of rain it might not have been a good message but it was a rhema word but he didn't leave it to god he took it back to god in prayer and insisted god you must bring it to pass do you not know that god said to abraham if you give me ten men i won't destroy the city if you give me one man i won't destroy the city one man can make a difference when nobody else in the city warrants the breakthrough one man with god through prayer you can change the whole place there are men who walk this earth in prayer that change continents they forever continents forever i need some of you to get up at 3 am in the morning if you're going to rise at 3 am please stand [Music] let me say to you i used to get up at 3am every morning for a two-year period just to pray i didn't need an alarm clock but i also realized that to get up at 3am to pray i had to be in my bed by 8 30 and it became my lifestyle except on wednesdays and on sundays because of church service we used to have sunday evening service in miami at the time and with those six hours of sleep i was arrested man and i was prayerful i would pray for two three hours before i went to prayer meeting in church so you arrived at the prayer meeting prayed up i need those who will get up at 4am as a habit as a habit one week for this week if it works for the week then protracted those who will get up at 5am those who will get up at 6 00 am [Music] the rest of you can sit down [Music] i appreciate you madam you can sit it's not a problem i need to just qualify this it doesn't make you a sinner if you don't get up at three four five or six it doesn't make you a sinner [Music] and then especially the aged they don't have the same passions as young people do so the distractions from prayer are not as not are not as numerous so if you want to ask somebody to pray ask one of the old mothers in the church or the widows they'll be very dedicated at it and there's something about their prayers that moves the hand of god all right i want to say this to you let me put you on a simple prayer program just advisory before you sleep pray 45 minutes to an hour at least every day we haven't gone so much into the form of prayer and the content of prayer so for now if you can pray the understanding fantastic but when you lack understanding to pray pray in the spirit yeah pray in tongues and pray till you break through pray till you press through and then go to sleep now because you would have prayed your spirit will be alert take your bible to bed and read for at least 15 20 30 minutes because prayer will keep you awake for at least that long after you've prayed if you pray from 11 to 12 or 12 to 1 you'll be awake at least in 1 15 120. so read then in the morning get up and pray again i'm trying to get you to do three watches in the day basically that's for congregation pray at night before you sleep in the morning as soon as you get up get up to pray you don't get up to go to work you get up to talk with god god will tell you to go to work then in the middle of your day you must carve out another period of prayer whether it's your lunch break or your time on the way home from work or your time as soon as you get home from work your wife must know you as a man of prayer [Music] everybody else can think you to be a man of prayer but you become a man of prayer when your husband says this woman is a woman of prayer three times that's for congregation pastors ministers i don't see how you can thrive on that at least three four days in the week you must observe watching where you say okay nine to ten twelve to one and then four to six or three to four or three to five then you go after work at least two three days in a week especially at a time like this when we're trusting god for certain breakthroughs in the ministry when we're coming into a crucial uh electoral year when there's armed robbery on our streets and in our neighborhoods whether you live in victoria peninsula or the mainland then those of you who are trusting god for husbands wives fruit of the womb for solutions in your marriage for challenges with your health you cannot afford to pray like john doe your prayers should be more like john knox are you here somebody if you are dealing with battles and you're facing certain standstills it's time for you to watch and pray like you shouldn't even have time for people until you settle your future with god you should be giving over completely to prayer don't come to my house and say pastor i've been praying for this thing it didn't happen no you just prayed once you keep praying until god is forced to answer if your one hour a day prayer doesn't work step it up to three hours if three hours will work increase your watches if the day watches won't work shift to midnight watches and late night watches and early morning watches if that won't work add two or three intercessors to your to your asana cause some strong prayer warriors or build some strong prayer warriors and let them join you in prayer are you here somebody i don't care how single you've been and how long you've been single with prayer you can change it [Music] i don't care what the doctor said about your inability to bear the fruit of the womb with prayer you can change it prayer can change it even if you don't have the gift of miracles prayer can bring a miracle i hope somebody's listening to me when you take holidays it's not to go to hawaii's to go and pray when you take days off it's not to watch tom and jerry is to pray let me tell you one of the things that kills prayer secular programming on television especially with all this dish and the sad thing about this is to get the christian one you have to pass through 80 other channels [Music] i hope somebody's listening to me you have a future but you have to pray it through you have a destiny but your destiny is tied in prayer i want you to pray now and i want you to pray in english language unless it's not your tongue and first of all i want you to deal with the things that distract you so think for two or three minutes what is robbing my prayer life is it the lack of rest is it the people around me which people around me is it an attitude in my mind is it a deception of the devil that i can do it without prayer i can succeed without prayer i can make it without prayer or there's a formula that doesn't require prayer identify what encompass you and deal with it violently now make up your mind with dogget determination i will not allow that infiltrator into my life anymore i won't receive phone calls during my season or time or session of prayer i will instruct my whole family that when it's time for prayer it's time for prayer [Music] talking to god is more important than talking to your president that the creator and president of the universe would give you time with him is the greatest privilege anybody can have that he will give you audience and lend you his heir that his hand might move on your behalf is a privilege [Music] there's no spare part for the human body that god by prayer cannot put in your body there's no woman that is your wife that you haven't met that god cannot bring you to hell bring her to you there's no situation that god cannot fix but can you call on god to step in and fix it will you be dedicated to show god that you want him to do it at all costs whether it costs you your sleep cost you your appointments cause your friendships cost you some relationship are you going to do it for god [Music] [Music] the second issue when i was in miami there was two ladies in one church that were both suffering from the same condition called lupus lupus is a worse condition than aids and one of these women she was consistently in prayer with us in the prayer meetings and used to pray and fast continuously she got completely delivered the other lady did not understand why and became very bitter [Music] let me say this to you i said that to say this will you get tired before god of praying he said pastor i prayed for years nothing has happened well now you know about watching prayers didn't work now i'd watch into your prayer and see who will get tired first you are god if you can get god to get tired before you get tired of praying you've got your answer [Music] concerning the unjust judge and the important woman the judge got tired before the woman got tired of asking when you get tired of asking then you are giving up your objective is to make god tired of hearing from you until he says look just take it and go because there's something that impresses god when he sees you do not tire in prayer and you persist and he still says it is still possible for you it's not outside my wheel it's still something i want you to have it's in my word it's in my will and then you persist in it yeah in here out if need be god will do it because he is impressed by your tenacity that's the second thing that i want those who are trusting the fruit of the womb trust me for the fruit of the womb those who are trusting god for us for a wife or for a husband or for another child or for the first child i want you to say to let god know that god i'm going to be determined as necessary i will make you tired i won't get tired i believe for those people who will make that decision today that father i will persist in prayer only give me the grace to persevere in prayer your answer will come in this year 2002. i told a brother i said by this time next year in december bbc we would have dedicated your baby unless you want to keep the baby for us to dedicate 2003 bbc today everything is in motion and on time the baby is already five months or something like that are you here somebody i'm saying to somebody right now if you will make god tired before you get tired this year we will either join you or we will celebrate with you the pregnancy or we will come to your wedding or we will post your bands on the altar or i don't know if you heard me what i'm saying to you see once you can believe that god can do it then the only thing left is to pray and insist that he does what he can do there's also something else there's some of you here who have a dream to give house on the rock for the building from 25 million 50 billion god can do it but will you pray about it will you pray about it i'm praying i'm praying about it and i believe god will use me also that's what i want you to deal with now it's my second to last prayer point i want you to insist that lord i will structure my life so that prayer is my first priority the most important aspect of my life so that i will not tire or wane in praying for answers let's deal with that in prayer i will make you tired before i get tired lord [Music] i will wear you with my continual coming till you give up and say to the angels give him what he wants give her her heart's desire [Music] open your mouth and begin to talk to god about your prayer life father i want to recommit this whole life to prayer i want to live my life in prayer this house this temple this body of mine will be a house of prayer i will be tenacious in prayer i will be continuous in prayer i will be perseverant in prayer i will stand on my watch at the hour of my watches i will stand and be faithful in prayer i will be sustained in prayer i will sustain prayer by your grace by the grace of prayer my supplications will be sustained before heaven heaven will hear my voice on a continual basis day and night day after day week after week i will call upon heaven and heaven will answer and heaven will show me great and mighty things that i know not the things that i has not seen that heir has not heard that haven't entered into the heart of man god will reveal to me through prayer by his spirit in the name of the lord jesus a call for the release of the prayer anointing father i call upon heaven tonight that you would release the mantle of prayer the garment of prayer the grace of prayer the spirit of prayer the supply of the prayer unction utterance in prayer the tongue of the learned in prayer passion in prayer fire and further in prayer in the name of the lord jesus desperation for prayer joy in prayer the anointing that makes prayer easy by the name of jesus by the token of the blood covenant we call for prayer to be upon the house and on every life of every congregant and every believer in the name of jesus right now i hold in divine judgment every deception that works against prayer every attitude that contends with prayer every spirit sent from hell to retired or to repress or suppress prayer in the name of jesus every deception that says prayer is not important every deception that says that says prayer is not the priority we bring on the divine judgment in the name of jesus we hold every thought captive to the obedience of christ we bring every mind in obedience and in captivity to the mantle of prayer to the word of prayer to the inspiration for prayer for the utterance in prayer in the name of jesus now almighty god by prayer work miracles by prayer let the solitary be set in family by prayer let the barren woman become the joyful mother of many by prayer let hiv positive become hiv negative by prayer let ss become a a by prayer let undetected blood disorders and diseases be healed by prayer let seek bodies become healthy by prayer let the bound be loose let the captive be free by prayer in the name of jesus may the heavens bow down may the heavens be opened in the name of jesus by prayer prayer prayer we release prayer now we release the anointing of prayer prayer come on the house on the rock prayer come over the ministry prayer come over the department's prayer come right now in the name of the lord jesus christ we speak to the reavers of prayer that have been choked to the well that has been covered up to the whales that have been covered up by sand in the name of jesus we unplug every river we unplug every whale we don't every flow and we command the river of prayer to flow let the mantle of prayer rest upon this house in the name of jesus staying prayer sustained prayer sustainable prayer persistent prayer persevering prayer watchfulness in prayer in the name of jesus we command prayer in the house the spirit of grace and supplication the spirit of prayer and petition the mantle and the garment of prayer be upon the house in the name of jesus in the name of jesus in the name of jesus father on the business man the business woman the teenager the adult the housewife let prayer be upon him and on her now in the name of jesus every officer of the church minister ministries prayer come now in the name of jesus release your prayer language begin to pray in a strong tongue the mantle of prayer is coming down it's coming heavy dragon ball game lift up your voice lift up your hands all your people call unto god call unto god repent of prayerlessness repent of the neglect of prayer dedicate your life to prayer declare to your spirit to your soul and to your body i will pray and i will not faint i will not lose heart the bible says men ought always to pray and not to faint the bible says you will reap if you faint not lift up your hands and declare i will pray i will not faint i will stand on my watch i will be committed in prayer i will develop in prayer i will grow in the grace of prayer i will grow in prayer and supplication prayer will be my lifestyle prayer will be my driving wheel prayer will be my priority prayer will be my life my livelihood my lifestyle [Music] what's his prayerlessness and bind the personalities human or spiritual that bring prayerlessness in your direction to know how to stop what stops prayer and to know what to stop that interferes with your prayer [Music] ma'am till i have talked with god what one of his disciples asked him lord teach us how to pray [Music] by prayer you will carry the fragrance of god by prayer wherever you walk the miraculous will happen by prayer heaven will attend your every conversation your every appointment your every meeting every incident and event of your life will be attended by the presence of heaven because of prayer if you will be good at anything you don't have to sing as well as kick a llama you don't have to preach as well as parry rufus you don't have to administrate as well as call out more but you can pray you can pray you can pray as well as the greatest prayers [Music] i want you to make a verbal commitment to god and tell him i commit my life to prayer i first committed my life to jesus now i commit my life to christ through prayer together we will pray nigeria into her promised place together we will pray nigeria into christianity together we will pray nigeria into development [Music] together we will pray house on the rock into her destiny we will pray the body of christ in this nation into her design the predetermined purpose [Music] i will pray strengthen your prayer life for the next seven days the next week is crucial for prayer if you can break through and break past prayerlessness into prayer where your life is surrounded by the breath of prayer in these seven days if you can break through you will keep praying your life for a long time so i want you to ask god god let the mantle of prayer that thing that makes prayer so easy and so delightful let it rest on me mightily this week

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Keywords: Pastor Paul Adefarasin, House on the Rock, Prayer, Intercession, Supplication, Watches, Persistence in Prayers, HOTR, Lagos Church, Prayer Conference, Praying in tongues, archbishop benson idahosa, watch and pray sermon, paul adefarasin messages, Pastor Ifeanyi, pastor ifeanyi adefarasin, pastor ifeanyi adefarasin messages, pastor paul adefarasin 2020, pastor paul adefarasin sermons, house on the rock 2020, house on the rock experience 2020, Making new year plans

Id: cCXfWY8O8_E

Length: 149min 13sec (8953 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020