Understanding Prayers: When God Says Yes or No

I suppose even a hard-hearted person in Southern California, there's a desire sometimes to see whether or not God answers prayer. I know sometimes you get people who are quite willing to listen if you tell of a story of an answer to prayer. I thought tonight I would talk to you about the kind of prayer that God does not answer or to which he says no. And for those of you who are just sort of beginning in this and also some who've been on the way for some time, I'd also like to tell you the type of prayer to which God always says yes.

I've seen some strange answers to prayer in my life since I left home 25 years ago from my native Ireland, but I'd like to do it from a scriptural point of view. I'm going to quote some verses to you. I'm not going to preach a sermon, just going to talk to you out of my heart.

When Philip the Evangelist went from Jerusalem down to Samaria, he found a man there called Simon who was the great Houdini of his day. The authorized version says he was a sorcerer, but that's an unkind word. You'll see in the modern translations he was a magician. He performed tricks of magic for money, and he seemed to have done pretty well because he had a lot of money to spare. But of course, he had religious interest, and when Philip preached the gospel he was interested. And the scripture says he believed, and he joined the church. But there was such a spiritual awakening in Samaria that Philip had to send for the other apostles. When they came down, they laid hands on these new Christians that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

We find here in this record in the Acts that Simon, the magician, wanted the same power. He saw something real and he wanted it. So he went along to the Apostle Peter, the big fisherman, and he said to him, I would like to have this power, and I'm quite willing to give a substantial donation to the church for you to pass it on to me. The reaction of Peter was quick. He said, your money perish with you. You think you can buy the blessing of God with money? Your heart is not right. Simon was scared, and he asked Peter to pray for him that he hadn't grieved God too much.

But the lesson we learned is this. There are people who come into the Hollywood Christian group, there are people who join church for the power that it gives. And God never gives them that power. They ask for power, but God doesn't give it to them because their hearts are not right. You know, power is the greatest lust of men. I've known a number of millionaires in my day. I find a strange thing. After a man makes a million dollars, he's not satisfied. He wants to buy himself into something. He'll buy himself into politics, or he may buy himself into education, or he may buy himself into church work. He may try and buy himself into some other field of activity. Money does not satisfy. Power is the thing that people are after.

It's not so long since that madman Hitler died in the bunkers of Berlin. The time he was struggling, you think he was struggling for a raise in salary? Not for one moment. Hitler wasn't interested in a raise in salary. He was interested in power. He wanted to dominate Europe and dominate the world. When Stalin was alive, he wasn't interested in getting a raise in pay. He wanted to extend the communist domination over Europe and the world. Lord Acton said, all power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I think that's true.

But there are people, for instance, who come into our Christian work because they want power. They want to shine. They want to influence people. And if ever you pray to God, oh God give me spiritual power, you won't get it. I would say one of the most influential men in the world today, in fact, if I were a little more subjective and less objective, I'd say possibly the most influential Christian today is a friend of this group, Billy Graham. All Billy Graham needs to do is to stand up and say something and the papers have it next morning, all over the world.

Billy Graham I knew as a student in Florida in 1940. He showed me around the grounds of Trinity Bible College. I'd spoken there at chapel. When Billy Graham had his great break in Los Angeles ten years ago, many people were surprised. Looking back now with hindsight, I could say, well, God picked a man who's humble. And Billy Graham didn't seek to rise to the top. He wasn't seeking that. God gave it to him because he wasn't seeking it. After Billy Graham had his opportunity, quite a number of people in the United States thought there'd be another Billy Graham. And I knew of this one and that one, the other one forming teams and trying to do what Billy does. But as Armand Guesswine, my friend, says, Billy Graham's in a league all by himself. Why? He didn't seek that power. If you're out for power, God must say no, because your heart is not right.

Now, of course, Simon the Magician was a shifty character. He wasn't very well grounded. But here were two men who followed Jesus Christ around everywhere he went, James and John, St. James, St. John, the sons of Zebedee. And they went along to see our Lord. They said, Master, we want you to do something for us. Now, if anyone comes to me with that kind of suggestion, I get immediately suspicious. My boy Alan said, Daddy, will you promise something? I said, what? Well, he says, you promise, then I'll tell you. I said, nothing doing. You tell me what you want first. Because when somebody's trying to do that, they're trying to put something over on you.

Now, these two came along and said, Master, we want you to perform something for us. And he said, what is it? Grant to us that we may sit on either side of you when you come into your kingdom. You read this story twice in the New Testament. In the other account, it says that they brought their mother with them. And she spoke to the Lord on their behalf. She was a godly woman. But the Lord looked at them in amazement. He said, you don't know what you ask. Are you willing to be baptized with the baptism with which I should be baptized? Are you willing to drink the cup that I'm going to drink? He was thinking of the cross. They were thinking of glory. And they answered glibly, yes, we're able to do it. Our Lord knew everything, and so he said, indeed you will.

You know, of course, that most of the disciples died for Christ. Peter was crucified upside down, they say. Thomas was stabbed to death in India. Others were beheaded. And our Lord simply said, yes, you will. But this position that you want is not mine to give. Sometimes Christians come to God and they pray, and they really want position. They're willing to do work provided they're recognized. It's amazing what people will do for recognition. It's amazing how offended people get when they're not recognized. And anytime you pray for position, anytime you let your mind wander to position or recognition, the Lord has to shake his head and say, you don't know what you're asking for.

Let's take a good woman this time, Martha. Has it ever struck you that the home in Bethany belonged to Martha? She was the older sister. We read about the home of Martha and Mary. Martha owned the place apparently, and Lazarus was her younger brother. But our Lord was so much at home at that place, anytime he needed a rest or relaxation, he made for Bethany. He loved to go to that home. Now, Martha was a great entertainer. She was full of the social graces. And one day she broke into a Bible class and interrupted the Lord while he was speaking and said, don't you care that my sister's left me alone to do all the serving? Make her help me.

Sometimes our prayers to God are utterly spoiled because we get mixed up with other people. You know, the sort of person says, well, why does God allow so-and-so to do such and such? You can almost hear the tone of our Lord's reply to Martha. He said, Martha, Martha. Shall I put it into plain English? You fret too much. The fussy, worrying, fretting Christian, who's always upset by what other people are doing, doesn't get his prayers answered. Mary had chosen the better part. I don't know what Martha was serving that day. I suppose it was a snack. It was some little meal. It couldn't have been a big meal. But who cares? For instance, if President Eisenhower came to your home and you had a lot of guests, would you talk the rest of your days over the fact that you had served shrimp or the fact that the president had said something? People aren't concerned about those little trivia. But Martha was bothered. The Lord said, Martha, Martha. You're too much bothered. You fret too much.

I mentioned the big fisherman, Peter, already. He was a husky type. But he had let the Lord down. He denied him with oaths and curses. And before his ascension, the Lord said to Peter, Peter, do you really love me? Peter said, you know I do. The Lord asked him a second time, and Peter was a little bit upset. He said, Master, you know everything. You know that I love you. And the Lord asked him a third time.

I suppose years afterwards, it dawned on Peter that the Lord asked him three times to express his love for his Savior because he denied him three times. Then he said, Peter, you're a big strong man, and now you gird yourself. But one day somebody else will tie you up and take you where you don't want to go. Was Peter unwilling to die a martyr's death? No, no. He had learned his lesson. He would have suffered for Christ. But he got his eyes off himself and off the Lord, and he said, indicating the youngest disciple, the mascot, the young one, John, what's going to happen to this fellow? And the Lord said, if I will and he stays here on this earth until I come again, what is that to you? You mind your own business. He said it in a sweet way. But so often our prayers are spoiled because we get concerned about somebody else. The Lord has to say, you mind your own business and follow me.

Now I began with these negatives because I want to come to the positives. What kind of prayer does God answer automatically? Well, the first one I'm going to mention is a simple one. The disciples gathered around our Lord and they said, Lord, teach us to pray. I've been in the ministry 25 years. I've been converted nearly 40 years. And yet I'll be quick to admit that if I were allowed to send a telegram to heaven with five words, I would say, Lord, teach me to pray. I've never known anyone to graduate from the school of prayer. I've never known anyone, for instance, who would say, well, I'm satisfied with my prayer life. I've met men who prayed earnestly. My own heart was touched.

I remember I was a boy of 16 in Ireland. I went to church. One day the son of a very famous missionary came and spoke. He was a shy little man. I still remember him because he'd been a missionary in China and his front teeth were all gold plated. And I don't know why he had them all done gold, but there he had a mouth full of gold teeth. But I went and talked to him afterwards. And because it seemed to the right thing to say, I said, I hope you'll pray for me. So he wrote my name down in a little book. I was about 16 at the time. Five years later, I left home with 65 cents in my pocket to become an evangelist and a minister. I traveled around. I met this man again. He was a very nice little fellow. And he told me he was still praying for me.

Years went by. I traveled around the world. And finally, when I was at Oxford studying under the GI Bill, I tried to track this man down and found him in the Mildmay Hospital in London, dying of cancer. Twenty years had passed since I'd seen him. I was in United States Air Force uniform. He didn't quite recognize me at first. He didn't have his glasses on. And I suppose I looked rather strange in an American uniform. And he remembered me as a young Irish boy. So I introduced myself again and he was quite excited. I could see he wasn't long for this world. When we were leaving, I didn't refer to the fact that I knew he was dying, but when we were leaving, I knew I wouldn't see him again. So I said to him suddenly, well, did you keep your promise to pray for me every day? And then I wished I hadn't said it because a cloud went over his face. And I thought, what right had I to ask anyone a question like that? Because much as I loved my own wife, I couldn't say I'd prayed for her every day. I do pray for her every day now, but I couldn't say all for 20 years. I knew I'd failed. So what right had I to ask him? A cloud came over his face. No, he said, I'm sorry. Then his face brightened again. Well, he said, I don't think I've missed you more than five times. But he said, believe me, Edwin, the pain was very great those days. I ever wanted to think, why did God use a little shrimp like me in Christian work? I just think of a man like that. His name, by the way, was Ernest Hudson Taylor, son of the famous Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission.

Oh, I think every one of us say, well, I would like to pray. I was talking to the college department of First Baptist West Los Angeles on Sunday, trying to tell them the secret of the incarnation, that the virgin sweet boy is the Lord of the earth. We pray in the name of Christ. We're approaching the almighty God who made everything, and yet we don't do it half enough. Now, the disciple said to our Lord, Lord, teach us to pray. They were his team. He'd been traveling around with them. Could you imagine, for instance, if Billy Graham hired Mervyn Roselle, we'll say, to work with him as an associate evangelist, and Mervyn came along and said, well, how do you preach? Billy would say, well, don't you know how to preach? And here were his own disciples saying, Lord, teach us to pray. But he didn't scold them. He said, very well, I'll teach you. And he started to teach them. He said, pray like this. Say, our Father. A lot of people can recite the Lord's Prayer, but they've never analyzed it yet. It has adoration, and confession, and petition, and intercession, and thanksgiving. Those are the five elements of prayer.

You say, I sometimes find it hard to pray. So do I. When I find my heart cold, or I think the heavens are made of solid brass, instead of trying to pray as we normally consider prayer, I begin to give thanks to God. Thank Him for the various things, and count your blessings, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Your heart begins to warm right away. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Sometimes you can't pray because you've got sin in your heart. You haven't confessed to God. You should confess first. Now, other people pray, but they're always asking for things for themselves. The best cure for that is to pray for other people first. Intercede. There's no set order. But remember, the elements of prayer are adoration, and petition, and confession, intercession, and thanksgiving.

I learned to pray in the way the Lord taught me. I was 21 years of age. A group of us boys used to go out and hold meetings in the open air. One day a fellow said to me, does God really answer prayer, or do we just imagine things like that? I said, let's try and find out. He said, well, how would you find out? I said, let's keep a record. I got a little notebook. On one side of the page, I wrote the thing for which we prayed and the date. We left a space in the opposite folio for the answer and the date. That was fair enough. You say now, what was your first prayer request? I still remember it. I started out in the open air in Ireland about 1933. I had a little ukulele about this size. My friend Jim Wilkinson had a great pair of lungs, but he couldn't sing in tune. If I played in G, he always sang in H flat. We never struck the same note together, but we always got a crowd. After we'd been going for about a year, and there were 24 of us, we needed a stronger musical instrument. So the first thing I wrote in that book was we prayed for a musical instrument, a piano accordion or a banjo mandolin or something with more volume for the open air.

Two days later, the telephone rang in the office where I worked. There's a fellow called Bert Bradley. I didn't know him. He said, I'm a friend of Sidney Murray. I said, well, any friend of Sidney Murray is a friend of mine. Well, he said, I hear that you're having open air meetings. I said, yes. He said, just a bunch of boys. I said, that's right. He said, what age are you? I said, oh, about 18, 23. I said, I'm 21. Well, he said, could I come along? First thing I said was, well, can you do anything? Well, no, he says, to tell you the truth, I'm one of those fellows that even if I get up to give a testimony, I get all mixed up. He said, don't ask me to speak, but I have a banjo mandolin. I'm a pretty good musician at it. And he said, if you like, I'll organize your music for you. There was our answer to prayer.

You say, did you always have it like that? I remember about a week after that, we prayed one night that it wouldn't rain. What do you think happened? It just rained in buckets. We were forced to take shelter in a little Presbyterian church where the midweek service was struggling. And that minister was delighted when a bunch of young fellows, 24 of us, came in and brightened up his meeting. I was glad it rained. Sometimes God says yes in a different way when you pray. But then I left home with 65 cents. I can tell you so many cases where God answered prayer. It was during the Depression when there were 13 million unemployed in the States and about 3 million unemployed in Great Britain. I slept under haystacks. I slept in the basement of churches. I roughed it. Yet strange things happened to show that God did answer prayer. I was cycling near London to a place called Gravesend.

I was going to spend the Christmas vacation with an Englishman. He'd asked me, are you going home to Ireland for Christmas? I didn't tell him I didn't have enough money to go home. I said, no, I'll be staying in London. Well, he said, how about spending your vacation with us? I said, where is it? He said, Gravesend. That's about 30 miles from London. I said, I'll be there.

So I cycled down. My old bicycle broke down on the way. I discovered I needed new handlebars, new front fork, new back wheel, new front wheel, new three-speed gear, new pedals, new tires, new tubes, and several other new parts. So I prayed for a new bicycle or the money to buy one. I had to wheel the old wreck about 10 miles. My friend, Will Hopkins, got tired of waiting for me. He'd gone out to a meeting, so he left the back door on latch, and there was food left on the table, a cold supper.

The phone rang. There was my answer to prayer. A Baptist minister across the Thames in Essex had suddenly taken ill, kind of nervous breakdown. He was suffering from what they call over there, a spot of bother with the deacons. So he quit. The deacons were in desperation trying to get another preacher to take his place two days before Christmas. They called this one, that one, the other one. They couldn't get anyone to come. I don't know how they got my name. That was always a mystery to me. What baffled me was how did they get the address of Will Hopkins? But they called me long distance, and this deacon asked me on the telephone if I'd come over and preach the Christmas sermons in Hornchurch. I told the deacon on the telephone, but you don't know anything about me. He said, Mr. Orr, don't be offended, but we're so hard up, we'd take anybody.

I went over there to preach. Not a soul in that church knew that I needed a bicycle, that I was praying for one, but another deacon came up to me afterwards, and to make a long story short, he wanted to know if I'd be offended if he gave me a Christmas present, a bicycle that he had custom built at Coventry. The best bicycle made in the world. I said, what makes you offer it to me? Of course, I had no intention of refusing it. I just wanted to know why he offered it to me. Immediately he got red in the face. You know, there's a difference in national temperament, even among people who speak English. An Englishman's always afraid of making a fool of himself, so he's very careful of what he says. An Irishman doesn't care whether he makes a fool of himself or not, so he doesn't care what he says. An American doesn't realize when he's making a fool of himself. They're different temperaments.

So he explained that his father had died and left him some money, and he bought a car, and he couldn't bother with the bicycle anymore when he had a car, so he hung the bicycle up in a shed. He said, while I was preaching, he thought God told him, give that young preacher your bicycle. It was the best bicycle I ever had, and I visited every county from Land's End to John O'Groats. Oh yes, I find that God did answer prayer. I mention that as a material answer, but there are so many spiritual answers to prayer.

Some of you ladies here know my wife, very shy, quiet girl, doesn't have any public ministry, but we were on our way from Adelaide to Ballarat in Victoria in Australia, 1938. Just vivid as yesterday. My wife had developed a bad toothache, and the dentist had extracted an ingrown impacted molar, and he said, now Mrs. Orr, you must come to me every day for a week, because you're going to have a bad bleeding with this extraction, I'm sorry to say. I had to chip the bone, and I said, well, I'm leaving tonight for Ballarat in the next state. He said, well, you have to leave your wife. My wife didn't want to stay in a strange city without her husband, so she said, I'd rather go with my husband. Well, he said, so be it then, but let me give you a word of advice, don't take a sleeper. I said, why not? He said, because the jolting is going to set your jaw bleeding, and then I want you to be sitting up all night, in case anything happens.

So we went on a coach. My wife had a terrible time. She used every handkerchief I had. I opened my suitcase, got more handkerchiefs. I was getting scared, because it was a train journey of 10 hours, no place we could stop and get any help. Suddenly, a lady leaned across the compartment. She said, do you have toothache, dear? I said, she doesn't have toothache, but she had a tooth taken out, and it's been bleeding a lot. Well, she said, I think I can help. She got out a kind of zipper bag that was full of cotton batten, and a flask of hot water, and she took my wife along. My wife went a little reluctantly with a strange new friend, but they came back quite cheerfully. This woman, very expertly, had plugged the hole. Now, she says, try and sleep, and I'll wake you every hour, and do it again. So every hour on the hour, she awakened my wife.

So I said to her, are you a nurse? No, she said, I'm not a nurse, but my husband's a dental surgeon in Melbourne. I belong to the Episcopal Church, the Church of England, and my sister's a very godly woman. I'd come over to see her in Adelaide, and I prayed last night before I left that my journey might be a blessing to someone. I just got a strange conviction I was going to help somebody with toothache.

Well, we got off the train at half past seven. It was frosty, bitterly cold, middle of winter, Ballarat in Victoria. I said to my wife, keep your mouth covered. I said, if nobody comes to meet me, we'll take a taxi to any hotel, because I can't have you out in the cold like this. She said through the handkerchief she was holding, did you send a telegram? Oh, I said, I forgot.

There was one man, however, hung around the platform after everybody else went away, and finally came over. He said, you're not Edwin Orr, are you? It's amazing how many people won't believe that I'm me. I said, that's my name. Oh, he said, welcome to Ballarat. He said, I was appointed by the minister's fraternal to meet you. You're going to stay with me. I belong to the Society of Friends. I said, thank you, you're kind. He said, what's the matter? Is this your wife? I said, yes. He said, what's the matter? So I told him what happened on the train. He started to laugh. Well, he said, I'm the dental surgeon in Ballarat. And he said, if your wife's having any trouble, let's go to the surgery before we have breakfast. And he fixed her up.

Isn't it strange? Before my wife had that miserable tooth pulled, the Lord had arranged for an Episcopalian lady to travel with us with a flask of hot water and a bag of cotton batten, and had arranged for a member of the Friends Church to meet us at Ballarat. The minister's fraternal appointed him long before, well, they didn't know that we were in the need of being met by a dentist. Oh, God does answer prayer. I prayed a lot that night on the train, but I didn't quite expect it to happen that way.

Would you like God to answer your prayers? Just you ask him, Lord, teach me to pray. And the secret is that we pray according to his will. If you were inclined to burgle the Bank of America for $10,000, you couldn't say, Lord, prosper my enterprise. That's not according to his will. And if you're going to sue somebody and do some mean trick on them, you can't ask God's blessing on that. You pray according to his will. You say, does that give you any scope? Plenty of scope.

Here's the other request they made. Lord, increase our faith. Increase our faith. Now, the Lord didn't turn around and say, all right, I'll give you a great big ready-made faith. You're going to be another Hudson Taylor, another George Mueller, another man of faith. No, no, he didn't say anything like that. He said, if you have faith as big as a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains. Now, a grain of mustard seed is the tiniest seed there is, but it's alive. It's not dead. He didn't say if you've got faith like a grain of sand, because sand is dead. But if you've got faith as a grain of mustard seed, even a speck of living faith, you've got enough.

I had to learn this. I told you I left home with 65 cents in my pocket. I crossed to Liverpool in England. By the way, in case some of you Californians have forgotten where England is, it's a little island off the east coast of Ireland, so keep your geography straight. Well, the only friend I had within 150 miles of Liverpool was a Roman Catholic scoutmaster whom I'd met at a jamboree, so I went to see him. His name was Frank Nelson. He said, where are you going to sleep at night? So I said, in bed. He said, don't be funny. He said, where are you going to get your next meal? I said, I don't know where I'll get it, Frank, but I know where I'll put it. Look, he said, this is serious.

Do you realize we're in the middle of a depression? He said, I went for a holiday down to Brighton, and he said, I went short of money and had to beg my way home. He said, it was a humiliating experience. What are you going to do? I said, I'm going to serve God. He said, in the Catholic Church, when a man has a vocation, we send him to a seminary. I thought the Protestants did the same. I said, they do, but I'm an exception. He said, Edwin, I'll lend you enough money to go home. He said, I'm not flushed myself, but I'll lend you enough money to go home. I said, Frank, I don't want to borrow it. But I said, the scripture says, my God shall supply all your need. If that's true, I can depend upon it. If it's not true, the sooner I find out, the better.

So I started out on that old bicycle from Birkenhead, opposite Liverpool, and began to cycle right on down. When I got to Shrewsbury, it began to rain heavily, so I prayed that I might reach Shrewsbury 40 miles south. When I got to Chester, it began to rain heavily, so I prayed that I might reach Shrewsbury 40 miles south without getting wet. You couldn't cycle 40 miles in the rain and not get wet. I got there without getting wet, and yet it rained all the way. Now, of course, your reaction is, did you hitchhike? Let me assure you, in 1933 in England, hitchhiking was unknown. It's an American phenomenon. They didn't know how to do it until the G.I.s went over and showed them. In 1933, if you stood in a road with your thumb out like that, the people would have thought you had a sore thumb. They wouldn't know what that meant. I didn't hitchhike.

But a truck driver stopped to tie a waterproof cover over his lorry, as they call it over there, sugar bags. He shouted across the road, hello there, in such a friendly way, I knew he must have made a mistake, so I wheeled the bicycle over to him. I said, do you mistake me for someone? He said, I'm sorry, I thought you're a friend of mine called Bert Cook. I said, that's funny, I have a friend called Bert Cook too. He said, you're not English. I said, no, I'm from Ireland. He said, I knew you were a foreigner as soon as you opened your mouth. He said, then you wouldn't know the Bert Cook that I know, because, of course, he was English. Oh, I said, I was in England once before for a holiday, and I met a fellow called Herbert J. Cook. He was studying to be a Methodist minister. The truck driver looked at me in amazement. Then he says, blimey mate, it's the same bloke. Where are you headed for? I said, London. He said, I'd like to talk to you. He said, would you like to ride with me? I said, are you going to London? No, he said, I'm going to Cardiff in Wales, but I'm going through Wellington. I said, where's Wellington? He said, that's near Shrewsbury. I said, I'll go with you. So we tied the thing on, and I rode with him in the cab of the truck.

When I got to Shrewsbury at 11 o'clock at night, I had nowhere to stay. So I stopped the nearest policeman to see where to get cheap accommodation for the night. Now, I had in my possession about, I suppose, about 35 cents left, and consequently, I was anxious to find a cheap place like Salvation Army Hostel, where you get a bed for about a dime. The policeman looked me up and down. He said, what do you do for a living? Now, what could I say? I had been a bookkeeper, but I'd given that up. I wasn't an itinerant bookkeeper. I couldn't say I was a clergyman. I had not been ordained. So I said, I'm, I noticed he was looking at me when I hesitated. I said, I'm an evangelist. He said, you don't look like an evangelist to me. Well, I said, what's an evangelist supposed to look like? Well, he said, you're very young. I said, no, I'm 21. Well, he said, I consider that young. How long have you been an evangelist? I said, not very long. He said, tell me, how long have you been an evangelist? Well, I said, a little while. He said, I have reasons for asking. How long have you been an evangelist? Well, I said, you must be technical. I started at eight o'clock this morning.

He said, do you have anything to show that you're genuine? I said, well, I thought quickly. An Episcopalian rector had given me a letter of introduction to show to the people in the Church of England. A Presbyterian minister had given me a letter of introduction to show to people in the Church of Scotland. I had one from a Baptist, one from a Methodist, and so forth. The nicest letter of the bunch was written by an obscure friend of mine who wasn't at all well known. He worked in a little mission hall, storefront mission. But his letter was the nicest letter. So I showed it to the policeman. I thought a policeman in Shrewsbury wouldn't know anyone in Ireland anyway, so it didn't matter who signed it. He read it through and then he shook hands very warmly. Not only was he a converted policeman, he was a deacon in the Shrewsbury Baptist Church, but he was a close friend of the William Philip that wrote that letter in Belfast. I asked him afterwards what he meant by a close friend. Well, he said, I met William Philip in Wales at a convention. They were very short of accommodation and they asked us to share a single bed. He said, he's 280 pounds and I'm six foot two. So he said, ever since then, we've considered ourselves very close friends. He took me home. That night I slept in a feather bed. Next morning I had two eggs for breakfast.

Frank Nelson had said to me, where are you going to sleep at night? Where are you going to get your next meal? Something clicked in my mind. If God Almighty could take care of me, a lonely young Irishman in England, my first day, he could take care of me the next day. If he could take care of me this week, he could take care of me next week. If he could take care of me this month, he could take care of me next month. And so for 25 years now, I've worked without salary with the exception of five years. I was in service as a chaplain and Uncle Sam insisted in paying me a salary and I took it. I didn't object to it at all, but God does answer prayer.

Well, I just found something out about Ralph Hoopes. When Ralph went up to San Anselmo Seminary after he left his professional work in the entertainment world, he and George Lee had it pretty tough. Ralph was mowing lawns. I only found out last week that a friend of mine, that he didn't know about at that time, heard about it and sent him $100 a month for quite a while. It wasn't until Ralph graduated, he found out it was a businessman in Hollywood who was doing this. God answers prayer, but you get the point. He won't give you a great big ready-made faith, he simply says, use the little faith you have. Because faith is like muscle. The more you use it, the bigger it gets. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. If you don't use it, it withers away. And if you have faith, you say, well, I don't have much faith. I wish I had faith like you. All you need is the amount that I had to start with, and that was like a grain of mustard seed. It was a tiny speck, but it was living. But again, you can't use that faith to aggrandize yourself, to build yourself up. You can only use it to do the right thing for God, and that may be in the entertainment world.

Oh, there are some other things that the Lord answers automatically. I'm going to mention one that's on my heart. The leper said, Lord, make me clean. He said immediately, I will be thy clean. I was talking at lunch the other day to a friend of I will be thy clean. I was talking at lunch the other day to Ellsworth Culver and Bernard Barron of World Vision Incorporated, and we were discussing things. And the question of apartheid in South Africa came up. What do the Christians think of it? I said to him, you know, the standards of the Christian church in any country lie halfway between the standards of the country and the New Testament. Now, for instance, the New Testament has no room for racial prejudice. All men are of one blood. But living in South Africa, where there's great fear of being dominated by the blacks, you find the Christians are halfway between. They've got a conscience, and yet they compromise.

When I was in India, I found in every parish where I preached, the minister or the treasurer had been prosecuted for embezzling funds. In fact, in India, they have three treasurers in every congregation, two to count the offering and one to watch the other two count it. You laugh at that, but let me tell you, if you were living on 10.5 cents a day, the basic wage, money would be a temptation to you too, to slip something out of the offering. But you see, the Christians are above that.

If you go into a post office in Bombay, you'll find a notice on the side of the post office: please insist that the clerk frank your stamps in your presence. Why? Well, if your back was turned, you'd steam them off and throw your letter away. If you were on a train in India, it says, bar the door because of thieves. So you lock the door with chains and bolts while you're traveling on a train. And the standard of the Christians is halfway between that and the New Testament.

In Brazil, when I was preaching, I preached in one town where 85% of the population suffered from venereal disease. The moral standards in some towns were pretty rough. He said, what about the Christians? Oh, they were better than the people around them. They told me, however, not to mention tuberculosis. I said once in a meeting that my father died of TB, somebody came up and told me, don't ever mention that in Brazil. I said, why? Is there anything shameful about TB in Brazil? Yes. It's a malnutrition disease here. So it means that there's something to be ashamed of. Yet they discuss social diseases at table. Again, the Christians are halfway between the standard of the country and the New Testament.

He said, what are you leading up to? My dear friends, I have found whether it's in First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood or First Baptist Church in West Los Angeles or the Hollywood Christian Group or Youth for Christ or any of these organizations right here in Los Angeles, our standards as Christians lie about halfway between the standards of our country and the standards of the New Testament. You say, well, what are you getting at? The one thing that is known throughout the world, the thing that the Russians jeer at so much in our American life, is our preoccupation with sex. Look at the newsstands, look at the magazine racks, glorification and glamorizing of sex. And Christians seem to come about halfway between what the common people do and what the New Testament teaches. In other words, we compromise. We've got a conscience, but we compromise.

That's why you find such a lot of unhappiness in marriage, even in Christian circles in Southern California. That's why you find such a lot of license among young people before marriage. That's why you find wholly improper friendships between people not married to each other, because we compromise. I wonder if you ever get to the place where you just feel fed up to the teeth with yourself. Well, I want to tell you, pray a prayer: Lord, make me clean. The Lord Jesus Christ made it very clear. You've heard it said, from days of old, you shall not commit adultery. Everybody knows that. But I tell you, be more particular than that. Whoever looks to lust has committed adultery in his heart already. We've got to be clean in our heart and thought. So if you say, Lord, make me clean, remember, he isn't shocked by sinners. He's grieved by sin, but he doesn't turn away from a single sinner. Nothing you've ever done—you think you've done some pretty miserable things at times—nothing you've ever done would keep you away from Jesus Christ if you repent. The word repent is a simple word. It means change your mind, change your attitude, change your heart, change your ways.

Now, there are many other things we could say, but why wear you with detail? If you're out after power, don't ask God for it. He won't give it to you. Your heart's not right. If you're out after influence, don't ask God for it. You don't know what you're asking for. If you're fussed about other people, don't let it block your prayer life. Stop worrying about other people. And if you're envious because other people are doing better than you are in Christian ways, just you mind your own business and follow Christ. There I gave four negatives. But if you'd like to learn to pray, pray three prayers: Lord, teach me to pray. Lord, increase my faith. Lord, make me clean. Because if you regard iniquity in your heart, the Lord will not listen to you.

I haven't given an evangelistic message. I've spoken more to the Christian folk here. If there are any who have just dropped in for the first time, something that I've said may have sounded strange to you, like almost a different language. Yet on the other hand, I may have touched your heart. Would you like to be the kind of person that God would like you to be? Well, then you better start praying. Lord, teach me to pray. Increase my faith. Make me clean. Always remember to say, for Jesus' sake, Amen. Let us pray.

Maybe God's Holy Spirit would show you some need if you'd give him half a chance. So I want to challenge you. Would you like to be the kind of Christian that Jesus Christ could commend? Would you like to be the kind of Christian that God could use? Well, then you must repent of your ways. And the meeting tonight, and the meeting on Friday, Saturday, and next Sunday, will be specially for Christians. If you want to be a Christian, you must repent of your ways. With the exception of the last service or two, which will make evangelistic. So I want to invite you, in the name of God, to come and pray the prayer. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me. Lead me in the way everlasting. Let's have a moment of silent prayer.