Once, after preaching past midnight in Korea, they told us, “Come with us, and we’ll take you down to your accommodations.”  So, we go down, and our accommodations are a little room that’s maybe, you know, six by eight.  There’s a cement floor with a little rice mat on it, and that was our accommodations.  So, we slept on the floor, and I was scheduled to preach again at seven in the morning.  So, we finally get situated and have a great night’s sleep.  The mattress didn’t quiet conform to my body like the one that I have right now.  We wake up in the morning, and had to refresh ourselves to get ready for the new church meeting that’s coming up here in the next 30 minutes.  We had a very small number of handy wipes, the little moist towelettes.  That was our bath.  So, we pulled a couple of handy wipes out and washed our faces.  You have to make sure you get it in the right order.  As we’re wiping ourselves off with these towelettes, they’re pretty valuable, and we didn’t want to waste it. 

We got all of this just because I was going to say, it’s not about staying up all night.  It’s about the presence of God; amen?  The fact of the matter is many of us don’t make this kind of a commitment to prayer.  Jesus was not praying for Himself.  There’s a good chance that Jesus was not praying at that moment for the unsaved.  When you read John 17, He’s praying for His church, His people.  “Not the unbelievers, I’m praying for you.”  Amen?  I’m going there to tell us about the prayer ministry of Jesus right now.  His ministry is ever living to make intercession for us.  “I’m praying for you.  Can you watch one hour with Me?  Can you help Me along here a little bit?  I’m praying for your lost child.  Would you join Me?”  How much effort are we going to put into it?

Are we caught up?  Are we not able to pray because we have to run and meet with these people?  “I have an obligation here.  There’s a noble thing here.  I’ve got a teaching I need to do.  These people are here to hear the Word of God.  I need to get over there and teach them the Word of God.  I need to go over.”  All of these things that distract us so often from the real issue at hand.  We are praying that for the eyes that Satan has blinded, those scales would fall off so that they would believe the light of the glorious gospel; amen?  When’s the last time you wept for souls of people you don’t even know?  Just broken-hearted because of the lost?  A people going to a devil’s hell because they’ve not heard?  How shall they hear without a preacher?  I think, as a fellowship, the one thing that we can never say is that we haven’t been sent.  We’ve been admonished to go.  Get it in our hearts, there are principalities and powers in the heavenlies that are blinding people’s eyes that we need to take authority in the spirit realm and pray over individuals that they would be loosed from these demonic influences and the lies of Satan that blind their hearts and their minds.  It’s a prayer of agonizing.  Satan does not turn loose these souls without a fight.

So, understand the warfare that prayer is.  Hebrews, Chapter 5, we get a little glimpse into the heart of Jesus, His ministry.  Having referenced Jesus with Melchizedek the priest, verse 7 says, Jesus the High Priest, the Head of the Church, glorified not himself.  Verse 7 says, “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared.”  “I thank You, Father, that when I pray You hear Me.”  The Gospels tell us that He agonized in prayer.