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Amazing Facts

Joe Crews

Electronics and Prayer

There are more radios than people in the United States.

No other form of mass communication reaches as many people as radio.

Yet there's 1 medium of wireless communication many times more effective than the latest electronic devices.

I'll return in a moment with the amazing facts about the ultimate in distance dialing.

♪ Hello, this is Joe Cruz in the Amazing Facts Broadcast, Facts Which Affect You.

Suppose you knew the world would come to an end before tomorrow morning, friends.

Listen, I am sure that if we thought the Lord were coming tonight, there would be a lot of earnest prayers between now and midnight, don't you think so?

If you realized, if you knew, If it were revealed to you that Jesus was going to come before midnight tonight, I think there would be a lot of praying.

The Bible says, "...at the end of all things is at hand.

Be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." That is what the Bible says.

Yes, if we knew that Jesus were coming tonight, friends, we'd push some things aside.

We'd lay aside some of those ordinary things of life and spend a lot more time praying and pleading with God that we might be ready to meet Him.

We'd be thinking of how we could talk to our loved ones perhaps who are outside of Christ, giving them a call on the telephone to plead with them to find Jesus while there was still a little time left even though it might be only a few hours.

And yet we realize that we are on that very doorstep of eternity and when these great prophecies of the Bible are being fulfilled before our eyes.

I'll tell you, friends, it's a solemn hour and we should be doing much praying together.

Now somebody says, I don't know how to pray.

It just seems that my prayers aren't heard.

I pray and it seems to me that my prayers bounce right off the ceiling and I don't know what to do.

Well, that's a problem that many people face today.

And I'd like to discuss with you the question of prayer and how to pray so that your prayers are sure to be answered, how you might understand prayer and the wonderful fact that we can have communion with our Heavenly Father.

Really this is a tremendous thing for us to think about today, just to imagine, friends, that God the Father who created all these things through Jesus will let us talk to Him, and He in turn is interested in us.

It is a temptation to think that He has so much on His mind and shoulders that He could never be interested in us.

But through the miracle of prayer, we can go right through the light ears to the very throne of God and talk to Him in an instant of time.

It's really amazing when you think about it.

This is infinitely faster than the latest scientific devices.

This is distance dialing in the truest sense of the word.

First of all, I would like for us to think about public prayer.

It's very important, but perhaps not as important as certain other types that we'll be talking about.

Now, public prayer should be always heartfelt, sincere, and short, right to the point.

There's a real danger that public prayer sort of degenerates into a form and sort of turns into a sermon.

I remember watching 1 of the great political conventions on television 1 day, and they asked for an individual to come out and give the prayer.

Well, he came out very pompously and stood behind the desk.

He had several pages of them, and then looking at the audience, he read his prayer from his notes.

He would look up, look at the audience, and there were people walking around, smoking, talking to each other all the time, and there he was reading his prayer.

He had changed the pages and it was just a lot of high-sounding words, friends.

I don't think the God of heaven appreciates that kind of prayer.

Prayer should be warm and personal, just as though we were talking things over with a friend.

And truly we are our heavenly friend, our Father in heaven.

Now some people have a hard time learning to pray.

When I visit in your home, you don't have any trouble talking with me.

In the hour of need, you would go to somebody who meant more to you than anybody else in the world and pour out your heart to that friend.

Well, we ought to be able to do the same thing with God, and the same thing is true with public prayer.

I think we ought to be more personal in those public prayers.

Sometimes we just say a lot of high-sounding words to the Father, but we ought to be personal.

We ought to be lifting people up before the throne, we ought to talk to God as we would to a friend.

And then there is the very important type of prayer, the family prayer or family worship, and this is really a wonderful thing.

Have you ever wondered where that expression came from?

It goes right back, of course, to the Old Testament times.

In the patriarchal system, the father, of course, was the priest of the family, and he offered the sacrifice evening and morning.

And when he offered the sacrifice at the altar, the family would gather around and have a season of prayer together and offer up that sacrifice to God.

So the term family altar has come down to us today.

You wonder sometimes how those old patriarchal families could hold together and stay together as they did?

Well, friends, I believe it was because they gathered the family and worshipped together.

We ought to gather the family, read the Bible, sing together, pray together.

I just wonder how many, How many of those families, friends, that have broken up would have been with us today together still had they done this little thing of praying at that family altar and calling upon God to take care of them during the day, dedicating those lives of the children and parents to God.

We need that spiritual strength in our families.

And then, of course, there is private prayer.

I think this is probably the most important of all.

When we can go to some quiet place and shut the door and be there with God to commune with Him alone.

We need this kind of spiritual strength if we ever expect to stand through that terrible time of trouble just before us.

We are going to have to be fortified through communion with our Heavenly Father, and we can only do that as we talk to Him in that wonderful personal private way in the closet of prayer.

I think of Jesus who had a special place to go to do this kind of praying.

He often went out into the mountain or off by the seashore where he could be by himself.

And then he'd go into the Garden of Gethsemane, you remember.

It was a quiet place where he could be alone with his Father.

Now listen, if Jesus, the sinless Son of God, needed a time when He could slip away from the crowds and the multitude and find a quiet time to pray and commune with His Father.

Don't you think we need that too, friends?

Jesus made it clear that prayer is not oratory.

He talked about those who tried to make prayer a kind of speech-making, standing out in the marketplace so that it could be heard by everybody.

And he said, that's not what I want you to do.

Go into the closet, shut your door just as though you're going in there to talk to an intimate friend, and that is the way He wants us to deal with Him.

He wants to talk to us also, after we have poured out our hearts to Him.

Is that the kind of word we should use in describing it?

I tell you it is a privilege to pray to God.

Suppose an anniversary comes and I bring a lovely plant home to my wife.

And she says, Well, Joe, why did you do this?

And I say, Oh, I thought it was my duty to do this.

How do you think she'd feel about that gift?

And yet you hear it all the time, well, I suppose I ought to go to prayer meeting, it's my duty.

It's not a duty to go to prayer meeting, friends, it is a privilege.

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