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Series Code: BOLS
Program Code: BOLS000143S
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00:04 #S074 - All You Had To Was Ask (Part 2)
00:19 Welcome to The Breath of Life. 00:21 Television Ministries broadcast with Pastor Debleaire Snell. 00:25 In today's episode. 00:27 Pastor Snell will continue part two of the powerful message. 00:32 “All You Had to Do Was Ask” 00:36 Now let's go deeper into the Word of God 00:39 and see what I need somebody to know 00:41 is that sometimes the hardest thing 00:44 that get done every day are your spiritual objectives. 00:48 And it is because the enemy knows 00:51 that when you come out of that prayer closet, 00:56 he knows that when you come out of that war room, 00:59 there is an anointing that is upon you 01:03 that he knows that he can't even fool with. 01:06 And so he's got to distract you before you go in. 01:10 He's got to resist you before you get on your knees. 01:13 He's got to keep you away from the altar 01:16 because your prayer life makes you so powerful 01:19 that he has to protest it in every way. 01:22 And what I'm saying to somebody today is that when your prayer 01:25 life is protested, that's where you've got to lean into it. 01:31 See, the problem with some of 01:32 us is too often we pray, like volunteer hours. 01:37 In other words, is something 01:38 I can do or something I cannot I can't do. 01:42 In other words, it's optional. 01:43 We don't see that it is consequential 01:47 to the outcomes of each and every day of your life 01:50 and the daily experiences which you have. 01:53 But I need somebody to know that the most important 01:56 part of your day. 02:02 Lord, I wish I had more than three 02:04 or two or three rolls of church today. 02:06 But the most important part of your day, 02:10 it ain't getting to work on time. 02:12 It is not making sure the bills get paid. 02:15 The most important part is not your breakfast, lunch or dinner. 02:18 The most important 02:19 part of your day is making sure that you make connection 02:24 with the King of Kings and the Lord of Laws, 02:27 and that you have private time to call upon His great name. 02:31 Are you meant to be today? Church. 02:33 And so the reason this is critical 02:35 is because sometimes we treat optional things 02:38 like they are essential 02:39 and we treat essential things like they are optional. 02:43 And see, that's why every now and then, 02:44 if we just read it there in our text, sometimes 02:47 God has allowed some trouble to touch you 02:52 so that you realize that your help 02:55 it only comes from the Lord. 02:57 Are y'all with me today? France. 02:59 I see. 03:00 And that's why the Bible says that Daniel 03:04 set his face to pray. 03:08 Oh, God. 03:10 In other words, he did not go before God with a weak 03:14 willed petition that can be easily deterred by man. 03:18 Some more is our interruption. 03:20 The Bible says he set his face to pray. 03:23 And I love Malcolm because the scholars 03:25 give different interpretations 03:26 of what it means to set your face to pray. 03:30 Some believe admits that he set aside a time to pray, 03:34 that he set aside a place to pray, that he minimized 03:37 personal distractions. The prank. 03:39 In other words, 03:40 he put a barricade around private time with the Lord 03:45 so that nothing could interrupt his interactions with Jehovah. 03:50 And when I need somebody to get is that a strong prayer? 03:52 Life is not accidental. 03:55 It is intentional. 03:57 You got to make time to pray. 03:58 I hear that. Hear me today. 03:59 You got to find a place to pray. 04:01 You got to be consistent. 04:03 And you got to set your face. 04:06 To call on the name of the Lord. 04:09 And I love kind of what that word to set your face. 04:13 It has a particular connotation. 04:15 It has a certain word picture 04:17 that shows up in the form of battle. 04:19 So that what would happen, Dr. 04:20 Doolin, is that if you are a soldier in the war 04:25 and if you are a horseman or you rode a chariot, you 04:29 what happened is you would be led by the general 04:31 on the lead horse or the lead chariot. 04:34 And what would happen is you had to set your face 04:37 in order to follow the general, especially when they were going 04:41 through rocky or desert terrain, because when the lead 04:45 was going through 04:46 desert or dusty terrain, his chariot or his horse 04:49 would kick up a bunch of dust 04:51 in the face of those who were behind him. 04:54 And so what they could not do was turn away from the general. 04:58 They couldn't close their eyes. 05:00 They couldn't go their own path. 05:02 They had to set their face to make sure that no matter 05:06 how many pebbles flew up, 05:08 no matter 05:09 how much dust was kicked up, they had to set their face 05:13 and keep their eyes state upon the lead. 05:14 General. 05:15 And I need to know, do I have any believer 05:19 that are going to keep their eyes on the lead, General? 05:22 You got to keep your eyes on the Lord Jesus. 05:26 And it doesn't matter how much does the devil kicks up. 05:29 It doesn't matter how many pebbles hit your windshield. 05:32 It doesn't matter how many distractions come. 05:34 I'm gonna keep my mind stayed on. 05:38 Jesus. 05:39 Are y'all hear me today? Friends. 05:42 And so the Bible 05:43 says here and Daniel chapter nine verses five and six. 05:46 I want you to see something here in the word today. 05:48 Ten year chapter nine versus five and six. 05:51 The word says it like this. 05:53 Then you nine. 05:54 We have seen and we've committed iniquity. 05:57 We have done wickedly and rebelled. 06:00 Even by departing from your precepts 06:01 and your judgments, 06:02 neither have 06:03 we heeded your servants, the prophets 06:05 who spoke in your name to our kings 06:08 and our princes, to our fathers 06:10 and to the people of the Lord, to the people of the land. 06:13 Third thing that just teaches us friends is that sometimes 06:18 chastening is necessary. 06:22 Okay, that was quite a man. 06:26 Sometimes chastening is necessary. 06:31 Now I need you to notice something that Daniel confesses 06:35 these sins, and he writes these things down 06:38 in a detailed and informative way. 06:42 Because understand that this prayer 06:43 is going to also be sent to the other Hebrews 06:47 that are dispersed throughout the channel audience 06:49 and to the different lands to which they've been driven. 06:51 Now, now, 06:52 the one thing you see in Daniel's prayer 06:54 about a prayer of confession, 06:56 one of the things you got to notice 06:57 is that prayer can't be general 07:02 prayer. 07:03 Confession can't be general. 07:06 Confession has to be specific. 07:09 Oh, I love how we come to God. 07:12 Unsure as if we have said 07:17 we come before God. 07:18 Very high minded saying Lord, forgive us if we have said, 07:21 you know doggone well today, no matter 07:25 if you have sent us right there, when you say, come on is hey, 07:29 man in the Bible says in the Book of Moses 07:33 that we have to be specific, specific 07:36 in the very thing that we confess unto the Lord. 07:39 And so Daniel is very specific and laying out his confession 07:42 before the Lord. 07:43 He talks about how we have exited the Covenant. 07:47 He talks about how we rejected the council of the Prophets. 07:50 He talks about how we just 07:51 obeyed the commandments and not follow your ways. 07:55 He is very specific and the way he confesses sins to God. 07:59 Now, this is crazy, because what Daniel is doing 08:03 is he's praying for the people, 08:06 but he's not praying on behalf of the people. 08:10 That is saying that 08:13 he's confessing sins on their behalf. 08:17 But Daniel is not mirroring their sentiments. 08:20 Are y'all hear me today, friends? 08:22 See, I need to understand, when you look at the Old Testament, 08:25 there is a particular imagery 08:27 that is used for the children of Israel. 08:30 Often Israel is stated as being like a stubborn mule 08:36 that refuses to get it because of their hard 08:39 heartedness toward God. 08:40 I am still with me. 08:42 In other words, I need to forget that 08:43 this is not the sentiment of the people. 08:47 This is Daniel expressing the correct sentiment 08:49 on their behalf. 08:51 In other words, I need somebody to understand 08:54 the reason that Daniel lays out those confession in such detail 08:58 is that, man, God is so merciful that the people 09:01 don't even realize why they are there in Babylon. 09:06 They don't even realize why they have wound up 09:08 in this particular situation. 09:10 Now, it's crazy because like we have this idea 09:14 that in the New Testament, God is merciful. 09:16 But in the Old Testament, God is vengeful. 09:19 We have this wrong idea 09:20 that somehow God was just mad all the time, that he was 09:24 just this volatile, explosive God that just exacted judgment. 09:28 Every single time you sin. 09:29 But the devil is a lot. 09:31 In fact, 09:31 when you read 09:32 the history of Israel, do you realize that they were be 09:35 in rebellion for centuries 09:39 before a judgment would be inflicted upon them? 09:43 In fact, sometimes God would actually prosper them 09:46 and grow them 09:47 and protect them even while they were in rebellion against God. 09:52 That's why church you ought not see every success 09:55 as come from Mason that God is pleased with what you're doing. 09:58 See, sometimes God bless you because of do I have a witness 10:02 that sometimes God just blesses you in spite of? 10:06 And see what happens is because God 10:09 has been so slow to get angry 10:13 because he's blessed them in spite 10:16 of their foolishness with judgment comes upon them. 10:18 Then, like Lord, what we did wrong, 10:21 they don't even realize that it is their sins 10:25 and their transgressions that have them in this position. 10:28 They have this developed, this idea that we can sin 10:31 and still indefinitely prosper. 10:35 So they don't even realize what they're up against. 10:37 They don't even understand why they are in this situation 10:40 and see sometimes, like Israel of Old, 10:43 we struggle to see the correlation 10:46 between said habit and set form of chastening. 10:51 We don't even understand 10:53 why things aren't going like God promised. 10:54 They should go so that sometimes we don't see the connection 10:59 between our financial ruin and our robbing of God. 11:04 Sometimes we don't see the connection 11:07 between the family tension 11:10 and the destruction of the family altar. 11:12 We don't even see the correlation between our mammoth 11:15 pride and the destruction of all of our relationships. 11:20 We don't understand why the spirit of the enemy 11:23 has been loosed and our home 11:24 and the husbands and the leaders are not even taking stock 11:27 of the amount of pornography 11:29 and the spirits that are loosed in the house when you do so. 11:33 And what I'm saying is that there are times where we don't 11:35 see the connection between said habit and said result. 11:40 And what happens is like Israel, do you realize that in Israel 11:44 we're for Daniel confessing that this is the people 11:47 don't see anything wrong with their behavior. 11:50 They are questioning the faithfulness of God. 11:53 In other words, they're saying, Lord, where are you at, Lord? 11:55 Why have you forgotten us? 11:57 Lord, why have you turn your back on us? 12:00 And Daniel is trying to help them know 12:01 that God has not forgotten. 12:04 God is still on the strong, God is still faithful. 12:08 But sometimes it requires some chastening 12:11 in order for us to turn around. 12:15 And what I'm going to say is going 12:15 to sound very crazy to you, 12:17 but I'm at a place now where I would rather 12:19 have God's chastening than his indifference. 12:26 Do you realize that if God was indifferent toward Israel, 12:30 all He would do was just remove his hand of protection? 12:33 You realize that the other nations, 12:34 they didn't just want to enslave Israel. 12:36 They wanted to wipe them from the face of the earth. 12:41 And so all God did was when he allowed 12:43 the captivity to take place, he actually put them 12:47 under Babylonian and Chaldean authority. 12:51 So even though they were enslaved to them, 12:53 they were still protected by them from the other lands. 12:57 So I need somebody to know that even your chastening. 13:02 Oh, God is a blessing, 13:05 that even your punishment is for your protection. 13:09 You see, 13:10 if God was indifferent, then God simply removes his hands 13:14 and lets his enemy, the enemies, have their will. 13:17 And what happens is they are no longer a people. 13:21 But how many of us know that chastening as this chastening 13:22 is simply when a good parent allows a lesser form of pain 13:28 to preserve you from a greater form of pain. 13:32 It is where God simply allows an inconvenience 13:35 to touch, to afflict, to disrupt the comforts of life, 13:40 to actually preserve you from greater calamity 13:43 that is destined to come and see. 13:47 I know this kind of hard thing to rejoice on, 13:48 but man, the same way. 13:49 If you had good parents, good parents in this room 13:53 now, now good parents didn't 13:54 just pray for you, but good parents chastened. You 14:01 don't have anybody old enough to remember the days before. 14:03 Time out. 14:04 Come on and say, may anybody remember the days 14:07 before what they call gentle parenting. 14:10 Where because your parents loved you. 14:13 Come on, do I have a witness out there that 14:15 they would stand up and say something you did not believe? 14:19 Where they would say, this is going to hurt me. 14:22 Come on. And it felt like a lot. 14:24 Come on and say 14:25 it's going to hurt me more than it's gonna hurt you. 14:28 And then. 14:29 And I didn't realize that punishing kids 14:32 takes so much out of the parents. 14:35 That's why your mama would make you get your own switch. 14:37 Now, y'all not hear me today? 14:39 She said you have the energy to do it. 14:41 And it's crazy 14:42 because, man, in that moment, the taste thing was not good. 14:46 It felt unnecessary. 14:48 But when you look at your own life 14:51 and some of your friends life and how it played out, 14:55 you look back on your life and you say, I thank God 14:57 for parents that chastened me and punish me 15:02 and dealt with me and got in the way of my ideals 15:05 and my hopes and what I need somebody to know that chastening 15:10 is simply proof that God is still working on you 15:15 and dealing with you and sanctifying you. 15:19 Because if God didn't care, He would simply stand back 15:24 and let the devil have his way in your life. 15:28 But I am grateful that I have a God. 15:29 In fact, the Bible says him the Lord loves. 15:34 He chases that. 15:36 That's the one that he treats as a son. 15:38 I remember like one time we had the swimming pool 15:41 and you know, 15:42 the kids were running around right there on the edge 15:43 and my daughter was there and I had to pull her aside 15:46 and had to let her know, this isn't right, 15:47 this is very dangerous. 15:48 And there was a lady kind of watching this interaction, 15:51 and she said, that must be your daughter right there. 15:53 And she say, It's me. 15:54 I said, Well, can you tell that she looks that much like me? 15:58 She was like, No, I can tell the one that's your daughter, 16:01 because your chastening is the proof of your concern 16:05 and say, I need somebody to know that God loves you too much. 16:10 Oh, God, 16:13 to let you be lost without a fight. 16:16 He loves you too much to let you keep straying 16:19 without stepping in the way he loves you too much. 16:22 To keep letting you go down a certain path 16:24 without any intervention. 16:25 And see this thing, I need you to understand 16:27 about chastening that sometimes chastening 16:30 is not even God always just sending a punishment. 16:33 It's not God always sending a curse. 16:35 Sometimes chastening is simply God allowing us to experience 16:39 the natural counsel clients of certain actions. 16:44 And do you realize that God is so good that even that 16:47 none of us even get the full consequence 16:51 of our actions? 16:53 Do you realize that Ellen White says that God is so faithful 16:57 that even when our consequence should be this great, 17:00 that God steps in before the consequence touches you, 17:04 he reshape his head, and he cautions it so 17:07 that by the time it touches you, it doesn't destroy you. 17:12 It actually blesses and it helps you out. 17:16 Are you hear me today, friends? 17:19 That's the thing this teaches them by passing. 17:21 One of the points is this is that it's teaching that 17:24 some prayers are actually overdue. 17:30 Some prayers are actually overdue. 17:33 Okay. Y'all are going to be funny. 17:34 Verse 30, The Bible says, As it is written 17:38 in the law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us. 17:45 Watch this. 17:46 They've been in Babylon 69. 17:48 Are y'all here in this church? 17:49 They've been there 69 years. 17:51 All this disaster has come upon us. 17:55 And yet we have not made our prayer before. 17:59 The Lord, our God. 18:03 Okay, God. 18:05 They've been in calamity for 69 years, 18:10 and there hadn't been one prayer meeting. 18:14 There hadn't been one assembly. 18:17 There hadn't been one time where they said, 18:21 the elders of the church let us come together 18:23 and call upon the name of the Lord. 18:28 In other words, the rebuke of the prayer. 18:30 If Daniel is saying 18:31 we should have been praying like this a long time ago 18:36 and this is the faith 18:38 and this is my challenge to the body of Christ, I promise 18:40 I'm not going to be here before you much longer today. 18:42 I need somebody to understand that there are certain prayers 18:46 that are simply overdue and being prayed. 18:51 There is somebody that's dealing with sickness today. 18:55 You go to the doctor, you go to the pharmacy. 18:59 Nothing wrong with that. 19:00 But the only problem is that you've never gotten between 19:03 the porch and the altar and offered up the prayer 19:07 of faith and said, Lord, I need you. 19:11 Oh, God, 19:14 I need you to bring healing to my life. 19:17 There is somebody that is struggling 19:19 with a miscarriage and infertility, 19:21 and you go on to see the specialist 19:23 and you've gone to see the doctors. 19:25 No problem with that. 19:26 But you've done everything except 19:28 what like Hannah did to go before God 19:32 and the altar and call upon the name of the Lord. 19:35 That was somebody that's in financial trouble. 19:37 You didn't borrowed it from your friends. 19:38 You didn't tried to get it from your cousin. 19:40 You tried to get the payday loan, but you called upon 19:43 everybody except the God that supplies all of your needs 19:47 according to His riches and glory. 19:49 There are some of us that are dealing with enemies 19:51 that are more and more much more of than our allies. 19:55 And guess what? We get even. 19:56 We talk bad about them. 19:58 We tell everybody about our enemies except God. 20:04 And so that's why the Bible in Philippians 20:06 form, verse six says, Be anxious for nothing but pray 20:10 about all things and see there's a very simple formula 20:15 that the more I pray, the less anxious I am, so that 20:19 if I pray about everything, I'll be anxious about nothing. 20:24 But if I pray about nothing, 20:25 I'm going to be anxious about everything. 20:30 And see, this is the word somebody. 20:31 Today. I need you to know, because 20:33 there are certain Bible promises. 20:35 They seem so fluffy 20:37 and so ethereal that we hadn't even tried it in the Bible. 20:41 Say Saints, be anxious about. 20:46 You know, it means search. 20:47 It means that being anxious is optional. 20:54 And I need somebody to understand this with clarity 20:57 that when you call upon the name of the Lord, 21:00 see, prayer doesn't just change things. 21:03 Prayer changes your disposition. 21:05 So you see the promise of God is this that when I pray 21:07 about all things, that the peace of God, which passes 21:11 all understanding, is going to guard your heart 21:15 and your mind through Christ Jesus. 21:18 And what I'm saying to somebody who's stressed out 21:21 and anxious and overwhelmed and you can't sleep at night, 21:24 I bet you almost all the money I have 21:27 is that the thing you worry about the most is the thing 21:29 you pray about the least, because I can't pray about it 21:35 and be worried about it at the same time. 21:38 Because the direct result of me calling upon the Lord 21:41 is that before the situation changes, 21:44 before the Bill is paid, before the child comes back to church, 21:48 I get peace in the presence 21:51 that helps 21:52 me know that before it's all right outside of me. 21:55 Yes. What? 21:56 It can be all right inside of me. 21:59 And see, this is why I share all the time. 22:01 I need you to know 22:03 that prayer and peace plate pray on the sea salt together 22:06 ya'll remember the old playground taught a seesaw 22:10 where when you mess down on one side 22:11 it raises somebody up 22:13 and when you mess 22:14 down on the other side, you raise the other partner up. 22:16 And I need you to know, the further 22:17 you go down in prayer, the more you raise your peace. 22:22 The deeper you go down on your knees, 22:25 the higher your peace and tranquility is going to be. 22:28 But the more you stand up off your knees, 22:31 the lower your peace is going to come. 22:34 And so you've got to stay in a prayerful posture 22:38 if you want to maintain a sole peace and tranquility. 22:42 See, there are some of us that had this idea 22:44 that says, I'm going to try to manage it 22:48 and I'll only pray when it starts falling apart. 22:52 Why? If we don't call upon God when it falls apart, 22:57 why not call upon God before it falls apart? 23:00 Why not call upon God first? 23:03 It's kind of like this. 23:03 I don't know if you guys remember 23:04 old school video Pac-Man 23:05 or how many witnesses in the eighties back in the day. 23:08 And you remember the game, Pacman like in you know, in 23:12 each frame you be chased by these spirits are these ghosts. 23:15 But in the corners, you would have these little power pellets 23:17 in his power corners. 23:18 And in the four corners of the frame. 23:19 And see, 23:20 that was one flaw in my game, Jackie, 23:23 when I would try to play the game. 23:24 One of the mistakes I would make is 23:25 I was asked to try to complete the frame on my own 23:29 and I would only go to the power corner when I got in trouble, 23:33 and that would work on the first couple of levels. 23:35 But once you get to the higher levels, guess what? 23:37 The spirits moved with more speed 23:39 and distinctiveness, 23:40 and I didn't realize that the game was set up 23:42 in such a way 23:43 that you couldn't just wait till you got into trouble 23:46 to go into the power corner. 23:48 You had to go into the power corner 23:49 first in order to reach the next level. 23:53 And what I'm saying to somebody today 23:54 is self sufficiency may work on the first level of faith. 23:58 You can wait till you get in trouble 24:00 to go to your prayer closet on one level. 24:03 But when you get to the next level, guess what? 24:05 These doubles move with more speed and more aggressive scent 24:09 and more intensity, 24:10 and you can't wait 24:11 till you get in trouble to go to your prayer corner. 24:14 You got to go to your prayer corner first 24:18 before you make it the rest of the way. 24:19 Are you hear me today, saints? 24:21 But then I need you to get it. 24:23 As I'm closing, I'm done. 24:24 The word sends to us here in verse number 18, 24:28 I would say is, Oh, my God, incline your ear in here, 24:32 open your eyes and see our desolation 24:34 and the city which is called by your name, 24:36 for we do not present our supplication sins before you 24:40 because of what our righteous deeds, but 24:44 because of your great mercies. 24:50 And it's amazing because it sits in what Daniel is saying. 24:54 He's saying we don't have no standing. 24:57 We don't have a leg to be able to stand on. 25:01 We have no reason and nothing within our behavior 25:05 that would suggest 25:06 that we are worthy of receiving anything from you. 25:09 So you know what he says? 25:10 He says, we don't come to you with a list of what we've done. 25:13 Right. 25:14 We don't come and lay out our spiritual resumé. 25:16 We don't come and say 25:17 these are the reasons and the causes 25:20 that we deserve, your blessings. 25:21 But he says, we're going to come to you solely and exclusively 25:26 in the context of your mercies toward us. 25:29 And see, I'm saying this on behalf 25:30 of somebody who feels like I'm not righteous enough to pray 25:34 and I'm not good enough to pray and I'm not done enough 25:38 in order to receive the blessings and favor of God, 25:41 I need you to know that when you go before God, don't go 25:42 before God with a list of your spiritual good works. 25:45 Our deeds 25:46 don't come before 25:47 God with your spiritual resumé in hand, 25:50 because whenever we come before God, 25:53 we come as empty pictures before a full fountain 25:57 having nothing to offer, having nothing to bring, 26:01 but completely dependent upon the full range of God's mercy 26:06 and His grace. 26:09 Hello, I'm Pastor 26:11 Snell, speaker director for The Breath of Life 26:13 Television Ministry. 26:14 This ministry was established to take the gospel of Jesus 26:18 Christ throughout North America and across the globe. 26:22 My goal is to make Jesus Christ 26:25 known through the preaching of the word. 26:29 I need you to know that we need your financial partnership 26:33 in order to make sure that the Gospel can go into every hill, 26:37 into every rural county, and into every inner city. 26:41 And we can only take the gospel as far as the gifts 26:44 that you lend to us. 26:46 We thank you for your financial partnership in the past, 26:50 and I'm asking 26:51 that you will continue to be a financial partner 26:55 with this ministry going forward. 26:56 Here are some ways you can give. 26:59 You can give online at our website 27:01 at www.breathoflife.tv 27:05 You can send your gift by mail to breath of Life. 27:07 P.O. 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Revised 2024-10-24