Address—John Ruga
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There is a spot where souls unite and St. meet St. in heavenly light, Those thundered far by faith. They meet before the common mercy seat #246. Let's open our meeting this evening by singing #246.
From every.
Stormy wind and.
From every.
Where?
Our.
Game.
Let's just look to the Lord.
Our God and Father, another day of Thy grace and here we are at the evening meeting and we just seek Thy help now as we open my precious word to just glean from a few verses to encourage our souls on for Thee to draw the affections of our hearts closer to Thee, Lord Jesus.
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And so we just commit ourselves to thee for Thy blessing now, and my most precious name, Amen.
May we take our Bibles and open them up to the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew, Chapter 6.
And verse 5, Matthew chapter 6, and verse five. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward, but thou.
When thou prayest enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret.
And thy father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.
Now what I have on my heart tonight to speak about is the prayer closet. You know, I think sometimes as young people and I know I I was this way. I had a lot of misconceptions about raising my voice up to the Lord in prayer. And I always thought that, you know, with the prayer closet that this was talking about those grey headed Q-tip brothers, you know that they're grey headed that they always would go into their.
And and pray. And I figured, well, maybe someday I'd get to be a Gray headed Q-tip brother and maybe I'd go into a closet and pray and the house that we have.
Is kind of interesting, but you know, a prayer closet, as we have just read has a few characteristics to it and that is one it has a door and you know if I were to go around the room and ask you what?
Do you have in your closets at home? You probably have a very typical closet that has some clothes and maybe some recreational gear and maybe some other stuff on the shelves. But we seem to use our closets to store a lot of stuff.
How many of us really use a closet for prayer? Now I'm going to take a little bit of liberty when we talk about a closet here because I've had several in my life time. Closet.
Go to to pray.
And some of my closets have had radio controlled airplanes in them with landing strips. Some of my prayer closets have had polo fields in them where the horses run up and down playing polo.
And, you know, sometimes when we think of a prayer closet, we have a tendency to think of a four walls. But, you know, in the day and age in which we live, we find that a prayer closet, if your life is anything like mine, is very hectic.
My current prayer closet is roughly 25 miles long.
And I leave my house in the morning, and I have 25 miles to talk to the Lord till I get to work.
And, you know, it's interesting that we have certain times where we can go and talk to the Lord in prayer.
Now prayer closets come in all shapes and sizes.
But the main thing about the prayer closet, if you notice in the verses that we read, is that they have a door. They have a door. What would you use a door for on a closet? Well.
It hides us, doesn't it? It hides us from the world.
And it keeps the world out.
We find that with a closet, you know, when you're having company, I don't know if you do this or not, but at our house, you know, if we have company coming real quick, you know, and they're coming over, you open up the closet, toss everything in, close the door, they'll never see it, right? We use our closets that way, don't we?
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But a prayer closet? Think about a prayer closet now. It's a place where you can go and talk to the Lord.
A place where you can meet the Lord, now the children of Israel.
We're told to build an ark, and on this arc there was a mercy seat, as our hymn has suggested, where God would meet with the high priest and the priest would offer a blood sacrifice for their sins.
It's a place of communion, a place to address the Lord in our lives.
And I have to say this is that, you know, as a young person, I really didn't understand that too much and I wasn't quite sure how.
How I was supposed to go about and establish a prayer closet. But what I would submit to you, dear young people today is that if you're not in the habit of praying.
There's no reason why you can't start today. There's no reason why you can't kneel by your bed and lift your voice up in prayer to the Lord of glory, the Lord of glory, your Savior. And so we find here that.
We have some instruction in regards to a prayer closet, but we also I want to turn to a couple of verses and the first one.
Turn to is in the book of. Let's go to the.
Book of the Book of Daniel.
And we find something very interesting there.
Now in Daniel, what I was thinking about was.
In Daniel chapter 6 we find something there that.
We know that.
There were various presidents and Princess.
There in the Kingdom and they were jealous of Daniel because he was number one in the Kingdom and what do we find there that.
The the king made a decree about.
That they were not to pray to any other God.
And I'm looking for the verse where it says about he kneeled upon his knees. There it is, 10 Daniel chapter 6 and verse 10. Now here's something kind of interesting about Daniel. It says now when? Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he nailed upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks.
For his God, as he did a fourth time. Here's a couple of things about Daniels prayer closet. We find that he was very much in the habit of going to this prayer closet. We find that he had a window in his prayer closet. It says that he kneeled on his knees. He prayed three times a day.
And we find too, that he gave thanks before his God. Now Daniel was in a fix. He was going to go against the law.
The land and here we find that Daniel, regardless of what the laws of the land are, he was going to kneel and pray to his God and give thanks to.
His God.
Now I ask you, dear young people, if somebody were to come into this room tonight and say to you, I catch you praying, I'm going to take your head off, would you give up praying?
You know, there are people in this world where if they are found praying, there's a good chance that they may lose their life.
And Daniel prayed three times.
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And he opened his chamber. It was his habit to pray, dear.
Young person, do you have the habit of prayer in your life? Are you in the habit of as you go through your busy day, to just take a few seconds like Daniel said here and gave thanks before his God? When you're busy at school or you're walking to school, do you take a few minutes and just thank God for his Son, the Lord Jesus?
Have you ever thanked him for dying on Calvary's cross for your sins?
There's a passage that comes to mind a verse over in Exodus.
That I find very interesting.
If we turn over to the book of Exodus.
And we go over to chapter.
14 Exodus 14.
Let's go to Exodus 14 and 19 and let's let's read these verses here. It says Exodus chapter 14 and 19. The Angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel removed and went behind them. And the pillar of the cloud went from before their face and stood behind them. And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud and darkness to them.
But it gave.
Light by night to these so that the one came not near the other all the night. I read this because you notice that there's this pillar.
Of the cloud that goes between the Egyptians and the children of Israel, on one side is light, on the other side is darkness.
I know we weren't.
When Tim asked me to speak, I told Tim I had been thinking about this subject of prayer. I didn't really mean to, to turn it into a gospel meaning. But you realize, or maybe you don't realize yet, but if you're lost in your sins, if you're on the pillar of the cloud, that's on the dark side, my friend.
You know have to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior to be on the light side of the pillar.
If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior tonight, you've lived on this earth one second too long.
Now is the accepted time. Behold, now is a day of salvation. And may it be that each and everyone is you. Sit in your seat. May you look into your the depths of your heart and say, Lord Jesus, are you my Savior? Do I really know you as my Savior? Am I just coasting along with all the other young people?
Maybe I got a front on me and and maybe I got an outward shell that it's just hard to Pierce.
But tonight, dear young person.
Is God's day of salvation. This past weekend we buried a brother in our home assembly. His name was Jim Hamilton and our brother Ralph Rusink had come down and he was talking to a man in the mall and he made this comment to Ralph.
And it really struck me and his comment was this.
He said we believers that know the Lord Jesus as our Savior, the closest to hell we'll ever get is what we have right now on the face of the earth.
And for those people that do not know the Lord Jesus as their savior, this is the closest they'll ever get to heaven.
Have you ever thought about that?
Those that don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, for all the crazy things going on in the world, this is the closest that they're going to get to heaven. Why? Because God, God's Word, tells us where those that reject Christ as their Savior are going to be.
And outer darkness, Weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth. How solemn.
How solemn. But you know, if you're a believer and you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, we look around this scene and we say look at the immorality, look at the famine, look at all the wars. This place is falling apart. I have the glory before me. I have a Savior on high in the glory that wants me for all eternity under the shelter of His precious blood shed on Calvary for me.
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That's my hope. And can I not lift my voice up to such a Savior and just say thank you Lord, for saving my soul? Can we not think of that passage of the Pharisee and the publican who smote on his breast and said, God be merciful to me, a Sinner? And what does God's word say about that? That man went down to his house justified.
Justified dear friend, tonight stop and think about it. If you don't know the Lord Jesus is your Savior, stop. And anywhere you're currently sitting right now in this room, lift your heart up to the Lord and accept him as your Savior, the Savior of sinners, Savior of sinners. He saved the sinners such as me.
You know, it was kind of interesting. We a week ago Friday, we.
My wife and I called our brother Jim Hamilton up.
And it was his 83rd birthday.
And.
We went over to his house.
And we took our car key if you ever have to.
Rouse somebody in the house with the police. Officers taught us to do as they say, take a car key and tap on the glass because it makes a distinct sound that will catch people's attention. And so we tapped our key on the glass. I called his name and there was no response.
And my wife said you have a set of keys to the house. I said yes. And I said.
Will go and open the door so we open the door and as soon as we open the door we we could tell that the there was a high humidity in the house and the shower had been running and and my brother Jim there he had passed away and taking a shower.
But you know.
One thing about.
Jim was that we had talked about that day coming for about four years and he had even walked me back to the bedroom and he said, John, you know, when the Lord takes me, you'll probably find me dead on the floor right here.
And I, you know, I think, you know, that's kind of hard to take sometimes to talk about these things, but.
Yes, dear young person is a reality.
God is going to use something to take you and I out of this scene if the rapture doesn't. If the Lord doesn't come first and rapture us out, it will be something. It may be sickness, may be an accident, who knows, but He will take us out one by one as He sees fit.
Number your days. Stop and think about it. How many days did Jim have? He had roughly 83 years on the face of this earth. You know when you're young, you don't think about dying and when I was in my.
Early 50s I was sitting at my desk and.
I get these emails from the personnel department saying plan for your retirement, click on it, delete.
Next day and for your retirement, save money, we can roll in a 401K plan, click delete, you know, and after doing that for a while, I thought, hey, you know, they might have a point. You know, if the Lord carries, I might end up getting into my 60s.
The Lord is tarry. I'm over 60 now. What can we say? Retirement is getting very close for me.
So we plan. We have to number our days. You only have a certain amount of time. I don't know how much time you have. The Lord does, though. The Lord does.
Number your days. Use each day for the Lord. Commit yourself to the Lord in prayer for each day. Make each day count. Don't waste the day. Stop and think about.
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What the Lord would have you to do?
Now I want to turn over to the book of Esther because I want to take a look at a a a young lady there.
And look at her comment in regards to. Again, very similar to.
What we read earlier.
Chapter 4 of Esther.
Here's we'll read the the 11Th verse. This will give us the background of what Esther was, the day and age in which Esther was living.
It says all the King's servants and the people of the King's Providence is do know that whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come on to the king into the inner court who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death.
Except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter, that he may live.
And now let's go to verse 13. Then more to Kai, commanded to answer Esther, think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the King's house more than all the Jews. And let's go to the end of the 16th verse. And here's her response. And so I will go.
And unto the King, which is not according to the law. And if I perish, I perish. Does this young lady have purpose of heart?
Does this young lady have a goal set before her hearts? Affections for her people, Israel for her uncle that was faithful and telling her what to do. Here she has this response if I perish.
I perish, you know, when we pray, and I read this because, you know, sometimes I have to admit when I pray, I ask the Lord, well, Lord, here's here's a situation and and you know, it's kind of a tough situation and I'd really like it to go this way.
You ever pray like that?
You know, sometimes.
Favor one way or the other, when we commit things to the Lord. But when we commit things to the Lord, like Esther did, she said if I perish, I perish. She didn't really.
Have a have a desire one way or the other. And so it is when we pray, dear young people, we take things we committed to the Lord and ask the Lord to answer the prayers.
Now.
In my life, I grew up in the.
60s late 60s there's a lot of student unrest and what not going on. But the day came when I needed to buy a car and so I went down with my brother in laws and we went down to the dealership and we piled into a 73 Torino Grand Sport bucket seats, 351 four barrel carburetor.
And it was a really slick car.
And we took it for a test drive and.
Took it back to the dealership and, and I was thinking, boy, you know, this would be the ideal car to get because one, it has a lot of power. And the other thing that we were into at that time was I was pulling a lot of boats because we were getting together with young people and, and Phoenix and, and water skiing back and forth. And I needed a car to do that, you know.
I might say it might have been a little bit on the overkill side, you know, but it was a.
Kind of a cool car, you know. So I turned it back to the dealer and the dealer says, well, can I sign you up tonight for it?
No, tell you what, let me think about it. I'll get back to you tomorrow. Well, you sure you don't want to sign up for it tonight? No, I tell you what, I'll just.
And I just couldn't get it, get it out of my mouth that I wanted to go home and pray about it. OK, That was what I was really trying to tell the dealer, but he was trying to close the deal, you see. So they finally left the dealership and my brother in law's, they were kind of quiet.
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You're going to get that car.
I think I'll ask the Lord about it.
So I went home and I got on my knees, got my Bible out.
And just started coming through the pages, you know, and you get you just kind of.
Wondering well, Lord, you know, there's really no verses in in your word that deals with buying, you know, the 73 Torino Grand Sport. You know, it just there's just nothing in there that I can find.
At least I thought that and sure enough I got over to. I think it's in Galatians where it says ye did run well.
OK.
Go sign the papers tomorrow.
Now I know, dear young people, you know, we, we try and I mentioned this because, you know, sometimes we think there's some special.
Revelation that we get, but sometimes we open up the Word of God and we just see a portion of the of the verse that gives us direction as to what to do.
And so I went ahead and I and I bought the car and sure enough, we got the trailer hitch, the air shocks on it hooked up the boats and and my desire with the car was to use it to go water skiing with young people and encourage them. Now you got to watch your underlying motives because I believe that the Lord for as weak as maybe I had as an exercise as a young person.
But the Lord honored that and he gave me the means to pay the car off and always have gas and provide for the.
The costs of going skiing and and having a good time with.
With young people.
Going water skiing again, you say, well, why did you do water skiing? Well, when I was in high school, I played water polo. I swam in high school and I I like the water. I like to be around the water. It was a lifeguard. And you know, you sit around on the pool decks or on the beach and watching the having the responsibility of pulling people out.
But you know, each and everyone of us have a different vent too. I mean, some of you guys might have some other some other activity that you're interested in. And all I can tell you is that committed to the Lord, committed to the Lord.
Did I have to get in a prayer closet and close the door? And no, I just simply got on my knees and and asked the Lord to.
To give me a verse to encourage me in the pathway, whether it was.
Good to go and get a car or whether it wasn't good to get a car.
But there's many decisions in our lives, dear young people, that we make even when we get older. And I, I say these things to be practical because, you know, sometimes we have a tendency to say, well, that's kind of a trivial thing. I, I really shouldn't bother the Lord with it. I'll just go do it the way I want. No, that's not exactly what how the Lord would want it. He would want to see your exercise with.
The things that you do.
The directions that you choose as you go to school. The classes that you select.
These are things that are practical to submit to the Lord and ask him, hey, should I go and and take in my case?
I remember my sophomore year of high school, I used to walk by the drafting department and I saw these drafting tables with these arms. And somebody, one of my friends said, oh.
That's an engineering class. And I, my heart sunk because I was wasn't too good in math and I thought then I don't want to take take that. Well, in my sophomore year, the counselor got ahold of me and said, thou shalt take this, you know, okay, you know, so I took a drafting class and I found out. Well, it, yes, there was some math, but I found that I had the mathematical ability to do it. So I went ahead and and took the class.
Well, in the 60s, what happened was there was a lot of student unrest. There was a lot of.
A big thing at this high school that I went to was to light trash cans on fire. And everybody would, you know, they try and get the fire department to come out and disrupt the schedule of the school, you know, and all of this. Well, some of my friends that I had made on the water polo and swim team, they said, hey, come on, John, let's go and we're going to go set some trash cans on fire.
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And I thought you got to be kidding. You know, this would not honor the Lord.
So we headed down the hallway, and at the end of the hallway you could turn left and you could turn right. And my friends went left out to the trash cans and I went right. And so I went back into the drafting class.
And I spent my time studying the drafting. Well, what happened there was I excelled in the class and I completed four years of the drafting and the advanced classes and.
When I graduated as a senior, I was awarded they had a student body award. There was a 24 inch high trophy on the table.
And you know, my buddies and everybody, you know, they're all sitting there looking at the trophies and say, wow, look at that one. That's a big one. Wonder who the guy is that gets that.
And.
When?
They called my name.
Went down and picked up the trophy and they announced to the whole student body what it was for in the scholarship and stuff and all of that, you know, And I went and sat back down. Well, you know, all the friends that I had gone to school with, they all wow, John, you really, this is cool, you know?
Man, I didn't think you were that smart and.
You know I'll never forget because I had an older sister.
Who was?
What Val Victorian, She was just flat out smart and she came over and my friends are standing around and they and she comes up and she says, I don't know how you did it, little brother, but I know you're not that smart to get a reward like that. I know you're stupid.
Sitting there like, OK sister, go away, you know?
But what I found was that later in life.
You know, as we make friends at school and you're going to have to have some friends if they decide to go off and do something that you know is not correct and would dishonor the Lord.
I found that.
The Lord opened up another door where I could Chan all my.
Studies and and excel in my studies.
Tom.
And these things are practical, dear young people, because it's on a bended knee that when I was a.
Sophomore again in high school.
And I don't know how many sophomores we got in the room, but.
One of the other things that I always prayed for, two things that I prayed for for the Lord in regards to prayer, was one, to have an occupation so I could support a wife and make the weeknight meetings, and then the 2nd.
Request that I had at the Lord as a sophomore in high school was for a wife that was saved and was gathered to the Lord's name.
Now you know, dear young people, over the years, what can we say?
Trials come and go.
The Lord honored, I believe has honored those two requests all the way from my high school years because I very rarely have I ever had to work a Sunday morning in my career. I think I may have worked maybe one or two and it was totally disastrous because we didn't accomplish anything and I could have just gone to meeting and, and and done with it.
And sometimes I still get called to to come in on Sunday morning. So I'll usually tell him, OK, you guys get there at 5:00 AM Sunday.
We'll take a look, have the problem solved by 6, and then you guys can figure out the rest of Sunday to figure out how to get the production line back up again. And so the Lord has has blessed me and I really feel that it's been because of those years in my youth. Now let's go and take a look at another individual again, this is going to be about the age of.
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Young people here in the Book of Psalms.
Let's go to Psalms 121.
Psalms 121 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.
He shall preserve thy soul, the Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore. Now this Psalm is talking about David, and he says I will lift up my knives onto the hills, from whence cometh my help? What's he talking about?
What's he talking about?
He's talking about his prayer closet. He happened to have some sheep in it. He's talking about the times when he had his heart and he was on those Judean hillsides and there he would sing to the sheep. He also had a sling. He slew a bear and a lion. He's talking about those times when he would sit there and he would talk.
To the Lord, to Jehovah, lift up his voice in song, and just a little bit of praise.
Probably thanking him for the mercies of the day.
He has a prayer closet listed here and it's the bad hillside. Dear young people, you can have a prayer closet where you can get away from this world. close that door, close the world out. You get those iPad things and ear plugs, pull them out, turn it off, put it aside. Pick up the word of God.
That's what that means. When you close the door, you're shutting out the world.
And you're focusing just on the word of God, reading something to encourage your soul and hear. What did David say? I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. Dear young people, how you establish your prayer closet in your youth will be a great comfort to you when you get older, if the Lord carries that long.
What you do in your youth won't come back to haunt you if you seek to follow the Lord.
And read His Word faithfully on your knees with an open heart, asking the Lord to direct.
I say that because Saturday, when we buried.
Her brother Jim.
Jim and his youth.
Treated the things of the Lord very lightly.
He paid a price for it.
But in the last 20 years that I knew him.
He was drawn back. He realized that that path, he was now old, He was getting into his late 50s, early 60s, and he realized he wanted to draw close to the Lord.
Now dear young people, I'll tell you one other thing. I see a bumper sticker sometimes on the back bumper of cars. It says God allows U turns. If you find yourself in the pleasures of sin out in the world, God will allow AU turn. He will allow you to draw closer to himself. The Lord always has an open year.
Like that?
Publican had smote upon its breast. God be merciful to me, a Sinner. He always has his ear open so that you and I can draw closer to Him, that we can enjoy His presence, what He has done for us on Calvary.
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We were at the.
YMCA because we had a meeting room on Rosecrans and the owner was giving it to his daughter for a blood bank for the Red Cross. So we had to vacate the meeting room and so we moved into the YMCA.
And so we were in there for a couple of years and.
Our brother Jim.
One Sunday.
Stood up.
And poured out his heart and giving thanks for the loaf and the cup.
That was on the Lord's Table.
It left us all in tears.
To listen, to know what that man had been through and that he could draw close to the Lord and pour out his heart in Thanksgiving to his Savior.
Dear young person, I just sit in your seat.
Don't let the locusts eat the ears of your youth and waste them.
Stop and think about when you're in the Lord's presence and you see the loaf, and you think upon what the Lord has done for you on Calvary.
I know it's very tough sometimes to stand up.
But you know.
Dealt the light the heart of your older brother.
You don't have to worry about what to say, you just have to pour your heart out to the Lord and Thanksgiving.
In prayer to him.
You know.
We sometimes think that older brothers, they stand up and they have such an eloquent way about them and giving thanks for the emblems.
But you know.
There's also room for the young brothers, too.
To lift your voice up and praise to the Lord of glory.
We go through these things as a course of life.
We experience many things down here, dear young people.
And I know that a lot of times we get involved with peer pressure.
But you know, it's kind of hard, and the hardest gospel to preach is to your friends and your relatives.
It is really tough.
Because.
Some of our relatives have become gospel hardened. They know exactly where we stand in in regards to the work on Calvary.
And they usually will tell us, oh, I don't want to hear it.
I don't want to hear anything about the Lord's tape.
And what can you say?
It's sad, but some of the toughest gospel meetings to preach is to your own relatives, to your own brother or your own sister and your own family.
May the Lord encourage us and always seek to.
To keep us steadfast to himself.
I I always enjoy this 27th Psalm in verse four that David.
Has.
That the Word of God has penned these words, Psalms 27 and verse four. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
Ah, dear young person, may it be true of your heart that you have that one thing that.
You have desired and that's the follow and serve your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I will turn to what Psalms 139. I just want to point something out there too because it's a very interesting Psalm. I had this pointed out to me in the Fullerton the other night.
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Psalms 139 Let's look at this first verse. Oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising. Thou understand this, my thought afar off.
Isn't that wonderful, to know that the Lord, thou hast searched me and known me? Notice it's written in the past tense.
Right.
And I and I thought, man, that's, that's so great because the Lord has searched me. He knows all about me.
And I thought, wow, that's really cool until I got down to the end of the chapter. A brother pointed this out. He said look at that 23rd verse. Search me O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
The searching hasn't stopped. As long as you have breath in your soul and I have breath in my soul, the searching doesn't stop. It continues. It's a lifetime occupation. The Lord is going to search our hearts. He wants absolute purity in our hearts. He wants your whole heart's affections.
It's not a one time thing. It's not.
If you read that, that first verse, it sounds almost like it's done and over with, but it isn't. It's ongoing. He's always going to be searching our hearts. There's always going to be the test. And so we have to be on our guard. That's why, you know, sometimes you'll hear older brothers say, well, you know, you should come out to the weeknight meeting.
Well, you should. You should make the weeknight prayer meeting.
And it's good to make the meetings because your heart and mind are such that if we don't go to meeting and have that time alone with the Lord and our prayer closets, we're going to go off and get involved with the world and some of the attractions in the world. We're going to wander away. We're going to get wrong thoughts about the Word of God.
And our hearts affections are going to be drawn out to other things.
Before you know it, we forsake the meetings. We start leaving them behind.
And we start getting occupied with other things and our hearts gets get filled with the things of this world. But may you search your own heart in prayer, on your knees before the Lord, and see if there be any wicked way in me. You know that's a hard thing to pray.
That's a hard thing to pray.
And if there is a wicked way you find it a wicked way pointed out in you forsake it.
Confess it to the Lord, Get rid of it. You have a Savior on high in the glory.
That has an ear open and ear ready, willing, able to forgive you and draw you closer to himself.
I just wanted to also mention.
Tim had shown me some of the questions in the question box.
And I hope by some of these examples that I've given you that hopefully you have an understanding that prayer practice in your life is very practical. It's very practical there there's.
Anything in your life if you're not sure about?
Or even if you are sure about, you can commit.
Your activities for the day to the Lord and ask Him to keep you and bless you.
Do we pray intelligently? You know, I, I thought about that.
And I suppose the only passage that I can think of a of a intelligent prayer is that one with the publican that says God be merciful to me, a Sinner. Was that an intelligent prayer? The word of God says it was. He went down to his house justified.
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Was it very long? No. It was a nice short prayer. And you know, sometimes the shortest prayers can be the most intelligent. Sometimes in our lives we're going to need.
Help. Pardon another example. In high school I took an electronics class.
And.
I knew it was going to be Thursday morning. Wednesday night was a prayer meeting and I was thinking, well, I should stay home from the prayer meeting and study to pass this class because I really needed it to get my GPA up and whatnot. And but then again, I didn't want to miss the prayer meeting. And so finally I studied for a while. It was time to go to prayer meeting. I just turned to the Lord and said, Lord.
You're going to have to help me on this test.
So I went to the prayer meeting, came back the next day, I went into the electronics class, and here's the exam. The instructor had three electronic classes set up that semester, and so I was in the second class and he went through and I took the exam.
Monday morning the instructor came in and he shook his head. He says I don't believe it. He says. I have never seen the scores on any of my electronic exams as low as this one.
He says either you guys are not listening to what I'm telling you about diodes and how they function.
Or you guys just have not studied, you know, we thought.
And he comes back and he says, and I know you guys didn't study because Ruga got the highest grade.
I wasn't an electronic whiz. I think I got 86 out of 100 questions.
And and then my heart sank because he says, I'm going to throw that quit that test out the window. You know, obviously it's not not a good test. You know, my heart just sank and I just said, Lord, you got to help.
And sure enough, the instructor said, well, OK, it wouldn't be fair to Ruga. So what we'll do is I'm going to give you guys another exam and you can keep the highest of the two grades.
Man, that was music to my ear because that next exam, it doesn't matter how I answered the questions. I already hadn't had my grade, you know, So, but I went through and took the exam and I I tell that young people because that's something practical.
I I've had other cases in.
With college.
I had an English class where the Kent State riots had broken out. There were shootings on the campuses. Cal State Fullerton had shootings on the campuses and on my English instructor was the faculty advisor for the student radicals on campus. You know, I mean, this guy was he, he was, he had it in for me. So the very first day I get into his class.
And he sits down and he looks at me and.
He's calling roll, you know, and he's, you know, So and so here. Yep. OK. So and so here. Yep. OK. So and so here. Yep. OK. John Ruga. Yep.
John Ruga. And he looked at me.
And he looked.
You're different than the rest of the kids in this class. And I sat in my seat and I said, Lord, I'll put up the floor. I want to fall through.
The whole semester he was on my case big time. You're different than the rest of the kids in this class. I don't know how how he singled me out that way or what he saw in me, but you know, I, I really shuddered that whole semester. I was trying to learn English and this guy was more interested in talking about all the riots and students.
Rights and all this other stuff, you know, and it's just over my head, you know?
After six years of college, you would think I'd have the most best distinguished, but I don't. OK.
And it's very interesting because as I proceeded on in my college.
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Education. I then got into a philosophy class at Long Beach State.
And I had a professor that said that reason that water doesn't boil at 212°F. Any reason did away and I sat there. Look.
I'll boil some water. You stick your finger in there and tell me it's not 212°, You know, And I thought, boy, this guy is really, he's off. So the second class meeting, what did he do? He reasoned the way that people.
Have a soul.
And he said, we know people don't have a soul. I said, really?
And he says I can prove it. We had a baby.
And we weighed it before it died. After it died, it was 25 grams lighter in weight, therefore.
The body doesn't have a soul, you know he and he, you know, logically with reasoning reasoned the way that we don't have souls.
Well, I'm not the most intelligent individual when it comes to logical reasoning, but one thing I do know, the word of God says every man, woman and child has a soul.
And that's what the word of God said. So I went to the counselor and said, look.
I just can't. This philosophy class is just beyond me. I just don't want to stay in this class.
OK, no problem, I'll give you an art history class.
Cool.
You know, I have some artistic talent. OK, I'll take the art history class. So I got to the art history class.
And the instructor says.
We're going to have a Renaissance Fair in a about, you know, near the end of the semester.
And what we have to do is make triumphant arches out of these cardboard boxes and paint them up.
And then at the end of the Renaissance Fair, we gather up all these cardboard boxes that you guys are going to paint. We put them in a big pile and set them on fire.
Uh-huh. OK, so I went from psychology to art history, Scotch taping together cardboard boxes and painting them.
OK, well, higher education at its best. What can we say?
However, got my grade and it helped my GPA to go up and so I thank the Lord and we move on.
But I say these things, dear young people, because you know, as you go through school, you may have a tendency to think that again, the prayer and committing things to the Lord.
Is for the older brothers, but it's not.
I look back in my life and I think of the things that I committed to the to the Lord.
Maybe 50 years ago.
And it's an encouragement to me now.
To know that my Savior has stood by me all these years and that my Savior is on high in the glory, and that.
As life continues on, I know I can go and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and lift my voice up to Him in my prayer closet and know that His ear is ever opening, open and will hear my request, my petition to Him.
It's very practical. The prayer closet. May you establish your prayer closet.
Hopefully tonight take time to thank the Lord for the mercies of the day.
Thank the Lord for his.
Kindness.
For his love.
For what He has done for you on Calvary and make Calvary ever get sweeter to your soul. And if you're not at the Lord's table, my friend, you're missing out on a privilege that the Lord has given us where we can sit around in His presence. Sit around His table, in His presence.
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And thank Him for washing our sins away for suffering on Calvary.
To pay the price for my sins. And they're gone forever Gone.
I'll tell you what it does to my heart when I think about it. 38 in the back of the book. Maybe we can stand up and sing #38 in the back of the book. In closing.
We adore the.
Evermore.
For the swear by you.
Sure, it's made me hurt always.
Who runs him through?
A pledge of alludes.
Let's just look to him.
Our God and Father, what can we say?
As this another day of Thy grace draws to a close, and we thank the Lord Jesus that thou hast gone to Calvary to redeem us, to pay the price, to redeem us from the pit of corruption.
Because without its delight in US and that it's desire us for all eternity, what can we say? We offer thee this thanks, and we praise the Lord Jesus for Thy unbounded love to us, to sinners saved by thy matchless love and grace. And so, Lord Jesus, we just commit ourselves to Thee now, asking thy safekeeping and care upon us for the rest of this evening.
And my most precious name. Amen.