My theme is “Foundations for Prayer Toward the Global Purpose of God,” and here’s the thinking behind that title: In order for a movement, or a heart, or a church, of prayer to be sustained, you have to talk first about something besides prayer. If you talk only about prayer, you will not sustain a movement of prayer. And the two things that I want to talk about underneath prayer, on which prayer sits, is war and the sovereignty of God. And then I’ll close by asking how prayer is awesome in its place, within the context of life being war and God being the sovereign.

Life Is War

So let’s talk first about life being war. What needs to be said here I think first is that life is war. In 2 Timothy 4:7, Paul comes to the end of his life and he says, “I have fought the good fight.” He looked over his whole life and said, “It’s been a fight.” Or he says to the young Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:12, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.” So for this younger man, life is going to be a fight, and for me, Paul, it’s been a fight; life is war. Or 1 Peter 5:8–9: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.” Life is war against he devil. Day by day by day, we take the sword of the Spirit, and the shield of faith, and we wield it against the devil. Jesus said, “The one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22).

Paul described his life like this: “I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:26–27). The Olympics provide a good time to think about life as war: war on your body, war on your enemies, and they are many. Second Corinthians 10:3–4: “Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” Life is war. Or the most famous text of all, of course, that I haven’t mentioned yet is Ephesians 6:12: “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

For the Front Lines

Life is war. You do not know what prayer is for until you know that life is war. However, most people, and probably most in this room, do not believe in that. Or at least we don’t act as though we believe that. In wartime, newspapers carry headlines of the troops and how they’re doing. In wartime, families talk about their sons and daughters, and they tremble, and they weep, and they cry, and they get on their faces asking that on the front lines they might be protected. And if they’ve gone AWOL, they ask that God would bring them back and put them on the front lines. In wartime, we’re on the alert. We’re armed. We’re vigilant. We spend our money differently in wartime. You don’t even buy tires in wartime.

The cause of the front lines is everything. It brings such a massive change into the way you live your life, you need a wartime mentality about what you wear, and what you drive, and where you live, and how your health and retirement plans all work out. There is a different way to live when you believe that life is war, and most people act and live in America like it’s peacetime — big time peacetime. There’s no wartime mentality in the church in America, by and large. We’re all thinking about how to get more comfortable. We’re all thinking about how to get more secure. We’re all thinking about how to multiply our comforts and ease. And we have justified it with ten thousand kinds of ministries that have nice Christ-coated ways of justifying it. We don’t believe that life is war. At least, we don’t act like we believe it.

There are very few people that think what’s going on now is worse than World War II — worse than any kind of potential nuclear holocaust. Satan is a much worse enemy than communism ever was, or militant Islam ever will be. The conflict isn’t just restricted to any global theater; it’s in every town, every city, every home and family, every church. The casualties don’t just lose an arm, or an eye, or a leg, or their own life; they lose their souls. And they enter not into any prison camp, but into hell forever and ever and ever.

Urgent Need

Now there’s a connection between prayer and war in Ephesians 6:17–18: “Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” Collapse it down and get that participles right relationship here: “Take the sword of the spirit . . . praying.” You don’t know what life is for until you know that life is war, and when I know that life is war, the participle makes sense. “Take the sword, praying.”

Prayer wields the word. Prayer is the communication for the weapons of warfare to be brought in and deployed according to the Lord. There’s a text in John 15 that doesn’t have the wartime metaphor; it has another kind of metaphor, but it really explains the relationship between prayer and war, so I’m going to read it anyway even though it doesn’t fit the image. John 15:16 says,

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

That’s very strange. Did you ever pause and think how strange that logic is? “I’ve got a mission for you, so that you might pray” — not the other way around. This text doesn’t say, “I’ve given you prayer so that the mission could be successful.” That’s implicit. That’s not what it says. It says, “I’ve got a mission for you so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he’ll give you.” Now think about that. Think about that. That means that prayer exists to serve the mission, and the reason we’ve been given a mission is that we might have the joy of participating by prayer in the triumph. “I send you out to bear fruit so that whatever you ask he might give you. I give you a wartime mission so that prayer might work.”

And the number one reason prayer doesn’t work for saints is because we have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and turned it into a domestic intercom by which we call up the maid to bring another pillow to the den. It is designed to be a wartime walkie-talkie, with the bullets flying over our heads, people falling all around us, blood everywhere, hell filling up with lost people, and we are getting our second houses and our second cars, and our nice clothes, and our fat retirements, and our comfortable, safe neighborhoods while the world can just perish.

It is a war time walkie-talkie, not a domestic intercom, and it malfunctions when it is strung up with little wires all through the cabins, and all through the cars, and all through the nice places, and we try simply to make our lives more comfortable with it. People have simply stopped believing. They’ve stopped believing this: that life is war. So that’s point number one: Life is war. And until you know that life is war, you won’t know what prayer is for.

You will not sustain a life of vigilance and prayer, perseverance in prayer, agonizing in prayer, nor will you build a church that prays anything other than some simple little prayer-meeting type prayer. But you won’t have people laying hold on God multiple times a week and not letting him go until there’s a breakthrough among the Mandinka in Guinea, until the son comes home from his lost condition, and until there’s a breakthrough in the carnality of this church, and until the fifty to seventy percent of the people who belong to Southern Baptist Churches and don’t come, come home. I mean, is there any brokenness in the Southern Baptist Church for this condition? Is there a crying out to God that our big numbers that are so inflated might mean something someday? You won’t know what prayer is for until you know life is war.

Sovereignty of God

The second thing you need to talk about in order to sustain a heart of prayer and churches of prayer and a movement of prayer for the global cause of God and world evangelization and local evangelism is the sovereignty of God. You have two reasons for this. I’ll take them one at a time, but let me mention them.

1. You can’t consistently pray for God to save people if you don’t believe he has the sovereign right to save them.

2. Unless you believe that he’s going to win the war, you won’t have the energy and the hope to sustain prayer for the triumph.

And the only way that God can save people is to be sovereign and the only way that he can win the war is to be sovereign, so let’s talk about those two things for a moment.

God’s Right to Save

In Romans 10:1, Paul says, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them [my Jewish kinsmen] is that they may be saved.” What does that mean? “Would you please save my kinsmen according to the flesh, the Jewish people?” Can God do that? Does God have a right to do that?

Inconsistent Prayer

My point is that praying that way is inconsistent if you don’t believe that God is sovereign and has the right to do that. What I mean by the sovereignty of God is that he has the right and the power to save unbelieving, unrepentant, pardoned sinners. He has the right to do that. And he has the power to do that. And he does that. And we ask him to do it when we pray for lost sinners.

But there are a lot of people who don’t believe that. They believe that man has the sole right over his heart. And he has the right and power of ultimate, final self-determination. They govern their hardness. They govern their stiff-neckedness. And in the end, they govern the universe in determining how much of their number will enter into glory and be among the praising saints. God doesn’t govern that. He doesn’t rule that. He doesn’t have the right to, and he doesn’t have the power to; they do. They determine how many are in heaven, and they determine how many will praise him, and they determine the inhabitants of the ultimate age to come.

My point is it’s very hard to pray if you believe that for lost people with any consistency — at least with biblical language. You can’t pray, “O God, take out a heart of stone and put in a new heart of flesh.” You can’t pray, “God, circumcise their heart so that they will love you.” You can’t pray, “Father, put your Spirit within them and cause them to walk in your statutes.” You can’t pray, “Lord, grant them repentance to come to a knowledge of the truth.” You can’t pray, “Lord, open their eyes that they might see and believe the gospel.” You can’t pray, “Put the fear of God in them so that they will not turn away from you.” You can’t pray like that if you don’t believe God has the right and the power to do those New Testament, new-covenant promises in people’s lives.

‘Make Me Love Thee’

Last Sunday, we sang a song that perhaps you’ve sung, and to my utter dismay, the words had been changed. You get upset when great hymns are ruined. I just don’t mean in terms of the manhood/womanhood thing; that’s bad enough. But I mean that great theology bothers people. The hymn says,

Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart,
wean it from sin, through all its pulses move.
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as you are, . . .

and then they changed it. What’s supposed to come next? “And make me love thee as I ought to love. ” Do you know what they put? “Let me love thee.” As though God were saying, “I’m not going to let you love me.” And please God, stop getting in the way. “Make me love you” means “I’m in the way; get me out of the way.” Well, I don’t know if you believe that.

But that’s my point right now. I’m in the way, and if God doesn’t get me out of the way, I’m a goner. If he doesn’t triumph over my rebellion, if he doesn’t give me a new heart, if he doesn’t open my eyes, if he doesn’t change this wicked, depraved, fallen John Piper, I am hopeless. And that’s why I pray for my son. I have four sons, and I have one son who fills up almost all my praying.

Inconsistent Prayer

I tried to find books on this. What do you pray if you don’t believe that God has the right to save rebellious sinners? And I found a book, The Hour That Changes the World that describes prayer that does not believe this. I’ll give you a few sentences and think about them with you for a minute.

What would you pray to God if you didn’t believe he had the right and the power to overcome your rebellion and save you? What would you pray? And this book said, “Ask God to cause a specific person . . . to begin questioning whom they can really trust in life.” That’s fine. That’s a good prayer. But my question is: Why would it be right and legitimate for God, contrary to what my will otherwise would have posed, to put a question in my head, and yet be wrong for him to put an answer in my head?

Here’s another sentence that I got from that book: “Pray that God will plant in the hearts of these people . . . an inner unrest, together with a longing to know the ‘Truth.’” That’s a great prayer. I agree entirely. There are two kinds of longing you can pray for: a successful longing and an unsuccessful longing; a longing that is so strong, it draws you to embrace Jesus, or a longing that is weak that doesn’t embrace Jesus. Which are you going to pray for? Are you going to pray for a weak longing or an effectual longing? Are you going to pray for a successful urge and desire to be planted or an unsuccessful urge or desire to be planted? I know what I pray for my son: “Take him. Make him. Get him. Save him.”

Because if you pray for divine influence in a sinner’s life that is successful, then you’ve taken away his ultimate self-determination and given it to God. And if you pray for one that is unsuccessful, you’re not praying for his conversion. So either you give up praying for conversion, or you give up ultimate human self-determination. And I don’t have any doubt in my mind what Paul chose. Romans 9:16: “It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.”

God May Grant

So how do you pray, then? How do you pray? You pray like this: “O God, take out of their flesh the heart of stone, and give them a new heart of flesh. O God, circumcise their heart so that they might love you. O God, Father, put your Spirit within them and cause them to walk in your statutes. Grant them repentance that they might come to a knowledge of the truth and escape from the snare of the devil.”

That’s one of my favorite texts on this issue from 2 Timothy 2:25. Because the text says in essence, “You, John Piper, you love him. You speak kindly to him. You share the truth with him, and God may perhaps grant him repentance to come to the knowledge of the truth and be delivered from the snare of the devil, who has taken him captive to do his will.” And therefore, I pray, “O God, not perhaps. Not perhaps. Make it happen. Make it happen. Open their eyes that they might know.”

Or just to use the words of the abstract of principles of this seminary, “Saving faith . . . is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit” — just ask God to do it. Faith is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit. Say, “Holy Spirit, work it in the heart.” That’s the way to pray for lost sinners. That’s the way to pray for Muslim people groups in Guinea and North Africa and the Near East. That’s the way to pray for Hindus and Buddhists all over the world.

Do you think it’s easy for missionaries to get a breakthrough when century upon century upon century of demonic, misleading powers have held people in bondage, so that a simple little thing is going to get a breakthrough there? Nothing’s going to get a breakthrough there but the mighty power of God, shattering through, working in them what is pleasing in his sight.

Pleasing in God’s Sight

Sunday we commissioned a church plant from our church, and they lined up across the front. They are high days for a pastor to look upon dozens of his people who are going to go out. And I looked over here and the one family had been with me for twenty years. I looked here, and it was one of my elders, who had been here for eleven years. He has encouraged my heart so many times. And we’re going to let them go and they won’t be there anymore. I prayed for them like this, and I said, “Now, open your eyes and look at me.” And I said to the thousand people back here looking at them, “Now, lift your hands like this. Let’s bless them.” And here’s the blessing I gave to them. There’s one little phrase I want you to latch onto.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20–21)

What is pleasing in God’s sight according to Hebrews 11:6? Faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Now you pray, “Oh God, take Sovereign Joy Fellowship and work in them, O Christ, what is pleasing in your sight” — that is, work faith in this church and through this church. So my first reason for talking about the sovereignty of God in relationship to a movement of prayer is simply this: Consistently (and I thank God for human inconsistency), you can’t pray for God to save people if he doesn’t have the sovereign right to do it.

We need to know about the sovereignty of God, and our people need to know about it, that they might pray with tremendous earnestness, and forcefulness, and urgency, and vigilance to lay hold on God to do the only thing that’ll save their children, and their neighbors, and their colleagues, and the unreached peoples of the world.

God’s Right to Victory

And here’s the second reason the sovereignty of God is so important underneath the movement of prayer, and that is: How do we know he’s going to win this war if he’s not sovereign? World missions, in its modern Western form, grew up in a soil of theological reflection that exalted the sovereignty of God.

God Wins

The Puritans were lovers of the sovereignty of God, and they laid hold on texts like Psalm 86:8–9.

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
     nor are there any works like yours.
All the nations you have made shall come
     and worship before you, O Lord,
     and shall glorify your name.

Well, how did the psalmist know that? I mean, how do you know that? All the nations will come, and they’re going to bow before king Jesus. That’s the kind of triumphant promise that the Puritans laid hold on.

• Genesis 12:3, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

• Psalm 2:8: “I will make the nations your [ the Son’s] heritage.”

• Psalm 22:27: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.

• Matthew 24:14: “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

God’s going to get it done. He will win. Revelation is the one book that John Calvin did not write a commentary on. And I never will either. But I know the main point of the book of Revelation: God wins. God will win. That’s the point of the book of Revelation, even if you can’t figure out some of the pieces.

Finish Well

One of those hope filled Puritans was named John Eliot. In 1631, he crosses the ocean. He becomes a pastor at age 27 at a little church in Roxbury, Massachusetts. For thirteen years he preaches, builds his little church, and he looks out on the howling wilderness. Cotton Mathers said there were twenty nations, choosing the word I believe biblically, of Indians around this Boston area in the woods — twenty nations of Indian who had no contact with the gospel whatsoever. And John Elliott, at age forty, decided to do something about these unreached peoples.

And I thank God there’s this movement in America today called “the finishers,” and there’s probably something corresponding to that in the Southern Baptist Church. The Southern Baptist Church is a world to its own, and they have everything, so whatever happens somewhere else, they’ve already got it. They’ve got everything. So there’s probably something called “the finishers” — that is, people who’ve gotten to my age (I’m 54), and you’ve done all you want to do in life, and it didn’t satisfy. You’ve got twenty years maybe to go, and you want it to count. So by the thousands, they’re leaving their first job, they’ve got their retirement, they’ve got their money, they’ve got whatever they need, and they want their lives to mean something now. And so they’re starting to get involved in the frontline efforts.

Well, John Eliot was forty. And at forty, he decided that if God is sovereign, if the Bible is infallible, and if there are promises that all the nations will worship, there’s hope that if I go to these twenty nations, they’re going to believe. And so he, at age forty, starts to study the Algonquin language. Some of their words were 27 letters long. And he learned it, and he translated the whole bible into Algonquin. He translated Richard Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted. Do you believe that? How to do discipleship among illiterate Indians: Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted. Amazing — not our little seven points to prayer or whatever.

So from 40 to 84, he ran his course. There were Indian churches. There were Indian pastors. There was a little Indian Bible school. There was an Indian Bible, and one of the great tragedies of this country is that all was wiped out. We’ve got much sorrow to have over what our policies have been in many cases toward the Indian peoples of our land.

But here’s what he said toward the end of his life: “Prayers and pains, through faith in Jesus, will do anything.” Why? Because he knew life was war, and therefore knew what these prayers and pains were for, and God honored the walkie-talkie, and an amazing work of church planting and discipleship and Bible school founding, and book translating, happened through the ministry of one prayer-filled, sovereignty-of-God-saturated man. And he wasn’t the only one. You’ve got some great heroes too. But William Carrey, David Brainerd, Adoniram Judson, Alexander Duff, David Livingstone, John Patton are just a few of those missionaries whose lives grew in that same soil where you cherish the sovereignty of God as what guarantees the victory.

So there are two things you have to talk about first at least. There’s lots more, but this is two: life is war and God is sovereign. There are two points under God is sovereign — namely, he has the right and the power to save sinners, and we can ask him to do it without any fear of contradicting his purpose. And he will win. He’s going to win. And therefore, our hope is indomitable.

We’ve got one family from our church in the United Arab Emirates. They’ve been there for seven years. And like so many, like Carrey, Judson, they’ve spent the first seven years, sowing and sowing and sowing, and there are no converts yet. But they’re going to come. And they have hope. Mike and Mary are just so full of hope, because God reigns and there is no people group from which he does not mean to get a people.

Do you remember how Paul was encouraged in the vision at night in Acts 18:10? Paul’s afraid at first, and Jesus comes to him in the night and says, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” Find them. Preach the gospel. The Holy Spirit will take hold of them and bring them. Just like Lydia: “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” And a church was planted in Lydia’s house in Philippi. And that’s the way he does it.

The Place of Prayer

Now I close with the last point: What’s the awesome place of prayer in the purpose of God for the world? If these are the two things, life is war and God is sovereign, that have to be put underneath a movement of prayer, a heart of prayer, a church of prayer for global evangelization, how does prayer fit in there? Now the purpose is plain in Revelation 5:9–10:

And they sang a new song, saying,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll
     and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
     from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
     and they shall reign on the earth.”

That’s the purpose. And he has sealed it with the blood of his Son: “I have bought them. You win them.”

Now, what’s the role of prayer? And right here in the prayer movement in America today, which is big, we tend to overstate the case and say things like, “Prayer is the battle,” or “Prayer is the mission, or “Prayer is the triumph.” And I take those all with a grain of salt, but here’s the danger: that’s not true. At the frontline of the battle is the word of God. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Don’t replace the word with prayer. Don’t think that you can just pray people into the kingdom. They’ll never come to the kingdom without hearing the mighty word of God preached by human spokesmen. God has not ordained for people to pop up into being Christians in hidden people groups without the gospel having reached them as though enough prayer here might do good there.

And nobody who says that means that. Don’t hear me accusing anybody of saying that. But I just want to make sure that we get the word of God at the front end, and prayer behind it. The word’s in front, and prayer’s behind it. Prayer is the hand, as it were, on the sword, wielding it. But it’s the sword that slays the devil, the sword of the Spirit. Romans 8:13 says, “By the Spirit . . . put to death the deeds of the body.” What’s the one offensive weapon in our warfare armor? The sword. Put to death the deeds of the body by the sword of the Spirit, and you wield it by prayer. You can see that in Ephesians 6 where I already pointed it out: “Take the sword of the Spirit . . . praying.”

God’s Word Does the Work

So picture it this way: God has a purpose to gather his children like it says in John 11:52, that he died not only for the nation, but for all the children of God scattered throughout the world. He’s gathering his children. That’s his great, indomitable, infallible purpose. Next picture underneath it the word of God as the instrument by which they are grasped and taken. The gospel is the power of God to save those people, and therefore he has made his whole purpose hang on the triumph of the word. Will it fail? It will not fail.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven
     and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
     giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
     it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
     and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10)

It cannot fail. The word of God will achieve the mission of God.

Let the Word Run

Now, here’s the amazing place of prayer. The word of God is ordained by God to depend upon the prayers of God’s people. And if you think that brings in a little bit of uncertain contingency to the whole program, you didn’t understand anything I’ve said so far. Because God will see to it that his church prays as they ought to pray in order to bring that about. Here’s the connection. Ephesians 6:19: “[Pray] also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel.” D you see the connection? Pray for me that my mouth will preach so that the purpose will be established. Or Colossians 4:3: “Pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word.” It’s the word that saves people. Pray that the word will have the door open for it.

Second Thessalonians 3:1 is one of my favorites that I pray for my preaching and my witnessing. Last night on the plane, my plane got diverted out of here to Richmond. We couldn’t land last night, so I sat on the runway for two hours in Richmond waiting to come here. Well, those are never mistakes. God makes no mistakes. So there’s Joe sitting beside me. Joe sees me working on this message. I spent a half an hour telling Joe the gospel. What do you pray at times like that? You pray like Paul: “Pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored” (2 Thessalonians 3:1). So Justin and I, last night, we prayed and I prayed, “O God, Joe’s probably in the car right now driving to Myrtle Beach. Save him! Take the word that I sowed and planted in his heart, and the cards we exchanged, and grant, O Father, that it would become mighty and effectual in his life, and that his wife, who won’t go to church with him, would be drawn to you as well.”

Cry to Him Day and Night

Well, let’s wrap things up here. It’s a wartime walkie-talkie, this great thing called prayer. It’s designed for war. It’s not designed for peacetime. And it’s designed to do a lot of things in war. It’s designed to get the accurate location for the target of the word. It’s designed for protection and air cover. “O God, cover us and protect us.” It’s designed to blast open doors so the tanks of the word can go through and defeat the enemy. It’s designed for asking for miracles of healing for wounded soldiers.

I’ve pastored local church for twenty years, and I know how broken people are. And I fit that into the wartime mentality as well, because there’s no morale in a good army if there isn’t a good field hospital. It’s designed not only for prayer for wounded soldiers and old soldiers who don’t have any strength anymore, it’s designed for supplying the forces with what they need and for calling in reinforcements. What else does Matthew 9:38 mean? “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” I know the image is different. It’s all right. That text absolutely boggles my mind. I mean, does it boggle your mind that the farmer tells us to tell him to send more workers? He’s the expert , he knows how to run crops, he knows how to position laborers. And here I am, a little teeny peon worker out on the edge of the field, putting in my seed, plowing my row, and he says to me, “Would you please tell me to send more workers?”

That’s an awesome place for prayer: that God almighty who knows ten thousand more things than I do about how many workers are needed, where they’re needed, what kind are needed, I’m supposed to instruct him, and he says, “Ask me. Ask me. Ask me for workers.” I’ve heard great things about this seminary in this regard. Oh, I’m so encouraged about what I see and hear in so many of the Southern Baptist wings and seminaries, and the mission. I was down at Ridgecrest just a few weeks ago, and I just loved it. It was such a tremendous thing to be there and watch what God is doing. Sure, you’ve got your problems. Every denomination has its problems. But God is doing a great work on this campus as far as I can tell, and somebody, somebody’s grandmother must be praying, “Lord of the harvest, get ahold of this seminary, and send them to the unreached peoples of the world.” Somebody must be praying that, because God has ordained to respond to prayers like that.

Have you ever cried out, “How long, O Lord? How long until the heavens are rent, and you come down in revival and reformation upon the Southern Baptist Church or my little Baptist General Conference? How long, O Lord, until we’re awakened? How long until there’s a wartime mentality? How long until 200,000 of our young people are laying their lives down by the tens of thousands and the ones behind them are standing on their blood until the Islam force gives way? How long, O Lord, until you make that kind of commitment and that kind of warfare happen in the world? How long until you vindicate your cause in a pagan America like this? How long, O lord?” Have you ever cried out like that?

Now, what’s the answer there? I’ll read it to you. Luke 18:7: “Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.” When? When they cry to him day and night.