Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I am going to talk about battle, prayer battle. For the battle is the Lord's, and I believe the battle that we are in is one in prayer, one on our knees.

Now, there is a wonderful book called *Life on the Highest Plane* that again is my era, something that I delved into and had next to my Bible when I first became a Christian. It is a great big thick book. In fact, there are three parts to it, and Moody has put out one of those parts again about the believer remaining and living in the life of the Spirit. It is a wonderful, wonderful book.

But in her comments on prayer, Ruth Paxson, who wrote that book, she was a missionary, China Inland missionary, says this: "Do you honestly wish to live your life habitually on the highest plane? Then you must become a man or woman of prayer, an intercessor after God's heart. Are you willing to let the Holy Spirit deal with you in regard to the actual condition of your prayer life as it now is?

Will you, through the power of His divine enabling, determine what it shall be?" And what I have been trying to do each time is to challenge us all a little bit to say, "How is your prayer life? Let's take the temperature of your prayer life as it now is." But then say this, "Will you, through the power of His divine enabling, determine what it shall be?"

And then she just gives us a little checklist, which I will just read off to you. "Has my prayer life been powerless because of some besetting sin? Has my prayer life been hindered by haste, indefiniteness, insufficient preparation, unbelief, neglect of Bible study? Has my prayer life been fruitless? Have I had such power with God that I have had power with people? Have I had definite answers to prayer week by week? Has my prayer life been restricted merely to short, stated seasons of prayer, or have I come to know what it is to pray without ceasing and live on my knees, to have my soul on my knees all day long?

Has my prayer life been starved, or have I devoted time to the study of God's Word about prayer? Do I know His precepts and promises? Has my prayer life been joyless? Do I love to pray, or is prayer more of a duty than a delight? Has my prayer life been growing? Do I daily know more of the meaning and power of prayer? Has my prayer life been sacrificial? Has it cost me anything in time, strength, vitality, and love? Lord, teach us to pray." Quite a challenging list, quite a challenging book.

So as we come to this story that we are going to use out of the life of Elisha, we are going to read about a battle. A literal battle, but also a spiritual battle that was going on. So if you will turn with me to 2 Kings chapter 6, the life of Elisha now, we have moved on from Elijah to the one who took over from him in ministry. 2 Kings chapter 6, verse 8.

"Now, the King of Aram was at war with Israel. After conferring with his officers, he said, 'I will set up my camp in such and such a place.' Well, the man of God sent word to the King of Israel, 'Beware of passing that place because the Arameans are going down there.' So the King of Israel checked on the place indicated by the man of God. Time and again, Elisha warned the king so that he was on his guard in such places. This enraged the King of Aram. He summoned his officials and demanded of them, 'Will you not tell me which of us is on the side of the King of Israel?' 'None of us, my Lord, the King,' said one of his officers, 'but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the King of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom.' 'Go find out where he is,' the King ordered, 'so I can send men and capture him.' The report came back, 'He is at Dothan.' Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there, and they went by night and surrounded the city. When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early in the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. 'Oh, my Lord! What shall we do?' the servant asked. 'Don't be afraid,' the prophet answered. 'Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.'" Underline it, learn it by heart. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them."

And then Elisha prayed, "Oh, Lord, open his eyes, so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked, and he saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. As the enemy came down towards him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, "Strike these people with blindness." So He struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked. Elisha told them, "This isn't the road, this isn't the city. Follow me, and I will lead you to the man you're looking for." And he led them to Samaria. After they entered the city, Elisha said, "Lord, open the eyes of these men so they can see." Then the Lord opened their eyes and they looked and they were inside Samaria. And when the King of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, "Shall I kill them, my father? Shall I kill them?" "Do not kill them," he answered. "Would you kill men you have captured with your own sword of bow? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink and then go back to their master." So he prepared a great feast for them, and after they had finished eating and drinking, he sent them away, and they returned to their master. So the Arameans from Aram stopped raiding Israel's territory.

What a marvelous story, what humor in it. Absolutely wonderful. Elisha is obviously on good terms at this point with the King of Israel. This is not to last for many more chapters. But at this point in his life, he is on good terms.

And the King of Israel goes hunting, and the King of Aram decides to set some ambushes and catch him. But every time he is out hunting with a few men, he does not hunt where the King of Aram thinks he is, and he does not find him. Why? Because Elisha is telling the King of Israel and warning him. And so the King of Aram gets very upset and demands who the traitor is, as we have read, and decides when he learns it is Elisha, this prophet that is doing this hocus pocus and magic and telling the King things that he has no idea how he finds out, he decides to go and capture him, either for one or two reasons: one, to kill him, or to get him on his side. I mean, he could do with a prophet like this that tells him all the moves of the enemy. We do not quite know why he sent the whole army to capture him, but he did send a huge force. Enough to surround the city of Dothan. Dothan was in a valley and there were plains all around and it lent itself to siege. And so they go by night. And in the morning, very early, the servant gets up and opens the door and walks outside and sees that they are surrounded by horses and chariots. And he shouts out, he freaks out actually. First of all, he freaks out before he shouts out. He just freaks out and he says, "Oh, Lord, what are we going to do?"

Now, I really appreciate that. I have often felt surrounded by all sorts of things that were pressing in on me and shouted out, "Lord, what will we do?" Well, Elisha is not fazed because he is seeing what the servant does not see. And he asks God in prayer, "Open his eyes." "May he see that there are superior forces on our side." And then he asked for another miracle, that the men would be blinded. People do not believe this was physical blindness, or how could he have led the army to Samaria? They believe that God confused them and that they did not recognize Elisha. And so they thought he was some sort of scout who offered to lead them to Elisha. He said, "Come with me, I will take you to the man." And so blinded to the reality of the situation, he leads them to Samaria, which is where the King of Israel is. And immediately, the King of Israel is very, very thrilled and wants to slaughter them all. And he says, "No, wait a minute, let's humiliate them instead." So they feed them and they send them back to their master.

Now, it is very, very interesting that they see these chariots when Elisha asks that the servant's eyes are opened, they see chariots of fire and horses roundabout who, roundabout the other soldiers. So you have Elisha and the poor little servant here in the middle, and then you have ringed around the city real horses and chariots, and then you have around them real horses and chariots, real, real ones. Spiritual, yes, but really real. As real as the real horses and chariots. And yet they are spiritual. Often in the Bible, we read about chariots of fire. And it might be interesting for you just to take a concordance sometime and just look up how God describes Himself as riding on chariots of clouds and fire in the book of Job, or in the book of Habakkuk, riding on the chariots of the winds. The chariots of God are ten thousands of thousands of thousands. And it is speaking of the angelic hosts, the angelic hosts. Chariots of fire belong to the angelic host.

Now, the Bible teaches we are living in a war zone. All of us are living in a war zone. There is a battle going on, the battle between good and evil, Satan and God. And we are right in the middle of it. In fact, more than just being spectators, we are participating in it. We are on one side or the other. Now, in my childhood, hundreds of years ago, I lived in a war zone. I am a child of the Blitz. And my country chose a side. And other countries chose another side. Some were forced to choose a side. We have to choose a side in the battle that is going on, the spiritual battle, the unseen battle. And when we come to Christ, when we invite Christ by His Spirit into our lives, then we are on the right side. We are on the victory side.

Now, I know that now where Second World War was concerned. I look back and say, "I was on the victory side." But I did not know that when I was right in the middle of it. I needed perspective. I needed to come beyond it. I needed to be able to look back on it, to be able to say, "Yeah, we were getting blitzed to bits night after night and the bombs were falling all over us, but I was on the victory side because I know what happened." I have read the book. Final chapter of history, World War II, who won? We won. And a Christian has to get that heavenly perspective to realize even though you are in the middle of it now, it is won. And one day, from a heavenly perspective, in heaven, you will look back and say, "Yes, we were on the victory side." But you can know that in faith now, with the eyes of faith. You can have God open your eyes to the fact that you are on the victory side.

Now, some say the Second World War was the war to end all wars. But the Bible says no, the war to end all wars started in heaven, Genesis, and with the fall of man. There is a real war going on, we are all children of the Blitz. We face a real enemy, worse than Hitler, who has a real agenda, real powerful forces on his side, agents of destruction under his command. I do not know how people can open a newspaper and not believe there are evil forces that go beyond what human minds could think up. Humans doing things to humans that just beggar the imagination. When Rwanda hit, I remember picking up Time Magazine as the Holocaust there began. And the cover, I believe, if I remember correctly, said, "There are no demons in hell, they are all in Rwanda. There are no demons in hell, they are all in Rwanda." And when you look at what happened there, and is still happening in small measure, how can you conceive of human beings being able to perpetrate such horror all on their own? Even what we could do at our very worst depraved cannot account for things that happen in this world. And sometimes when people are really honest, they say, "Yes, there is something going on on a national level, an international level, and also on a personal level." I sat next to a girl on a plane, got talking to her and she was battling to hold her marriage together. And she said, "Something is tearing my family apart. What is going on?" And I was able to tell her what was going on. And she did not know she was living in a war zone. And there is a force of evil, destructive power against God and good and all God's good ideas like marriage.

Now, when I was a little girl, I was alive and able to understand the different battles that took place, and there was one particular battle, which most historians say was a pivotal turning point of the war, and it was the Battle of Britain. And those of you that perhaps have seen war movies in the archives, remember that actually our planes were flown by British and basically Polish pilots. Polish underground people that had escaped and had come, and they were crazier than the Brits in the air. But it is a marvelous story of how those Polish young men, 17, 18, 19 years of age, and the British young men, counterparts, saved Britain. The war, Churchill said, was won in the air. The war was won in the air. With a handful of planes compared to the Luftwaffe, but with some men with such spirit in their hearts for the battle, and such fight, willing to give their lives, and all that the Battle of Britain was the pivotal turning point of the war.

Now, the bigger war is one in the air as we pray. The bigger war is one in the air as we pray. And you know the very famous passage in Ephesians 6 where Paul is talking about we fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of darkness and high places. And then he goes on to say, "So you have to have armor and you have to have equipment," and he uses this as a parable that we have got the Bible and we have got prayer and we have got the breastplate of righteousness and we have got the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. It is a wonderful, wonderful passage in the Bible. And so this prayer is where the battle takes place.

I think it was Oswald Chambers, yes, said, "The secret prayer chamber is a bloody battleground. Here violent and decisive battles are fought out. Here the fate of souls for time and eternity is determined in quietude and solitude without another soul a spectator or listener. Secret prayer chamber is a bloody battleground." Interesting thought, but I believe it. And when I read that list of things about my prayer life, there was one of them that Ruth Paxson drew to my attention, my heart attention. It was that to be able to grow up in my prayer life enough, to be able to pray beyond my own family and my own needs. How much time do I spend on my own family and my own needs battling for the souls of men?

Now, this battle that is going to be won in the air is going to be won when we realize and believe we are surrounded by hostile forces, when we are scared, rightly so, of the opposition, and we cry out to God in dependence, "Oh, my Lord, what shall we do?" We cannot fight this battle. We are helpless. The devil is far stronger than we are. But as the little girl said, "When the devil knocks on my door, I send Jesus to answer it." "He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world." Those that are with us are more than those that are with them, right? And so we recognize we are surrounded by hostile, terrible forces. The devil has sent horses and chariots and a strong force against us, and he surrounds us, and he surrounds our children, and he surrounds our family, and he surrounds our church. But who is surrounding the devil? Chariots of fire, thousands of ten thousands of ten thousands of God's forces. And who is the captain? Jesus. He is called in the Old Testament, "Captain of the Lord of Hosts." He is on the white horse. He is the one who is commanding His forces on our behalf.

And so after we have been surrounded, after perhaps we have been scared, we can know that we are secure. And we learn in prayer and through the Word and as we grow in our Christian life to trust God, we are on the winning side and we have all that we need in weapons of our warfare to wage war, knowing that in the future we are going to celebrate this great victory that has already been won through death's, through the cross and the resurrection and ascension of Christ.

As I was doing a Bible note for some work I am doing on a Bible, I came across 1 Chronicles 5:20, and it says, "They cried out to God during the battle and he answered their prayer because they trusted him." They cried out to God during the battle and he answered their prayer because they trusted him. It is a little story, I do not have time to get into it now, but the men that were fighting, the Israel that was fighting their enemies at that point, were all skilled in combat, it says. "They waged war in their endeavor to possess the territory God had given them. They were also armed with shields, swords and bows, but their greatest weapon was prayer. Through prayer their help came. They were helped in fighting them," it says, in verse 20. They were helped in fighting them. You are going to be helped in fighting them. That is the word for the Holy Spirit, the helper of Israel. You are going to be helped in fighting these forces. As soon as we cry out to God during the battle, whatever that battle of life may be, the battle becomes God's and not ours. That is the passage that says, "The battle is the Lord's." The battle is the Lord's. Our part is to fight, to learn the skills of standing up against God's enemies, of wielding the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And as we trust and thrust, we gain ground. As we trust and thrust, we gain ground.

All of us need to gain ground in the battle of good and evil. Some are fighting for our homes and families. Some fight despair, fear, worry or depression. Some fight to gain ground in confidence. If we will only cry out to God during the battle, we will occupy the land. The end of this little piece of history is sad. They lived in the land until they were taken away into exile. They stopped praying, stopped trusting, stopped fighting, and God stopped stopping their enemies. So if we keep on crying out, God will keep on giving us victory. And so they cried out during the battle. Next time you are in, and sense you are in, a very personal battle in prayer, for someone else or for yourself, remember, cry out to Him during the battle. Cry out to Him during the battle. And as you transfer your trust to your own self effort of coping with this and give that control to God, then all the forces of heaven are put at your disposal. And those that are with us are more than those that are with them.

Now, what do we have to do to get our eyes opened? Open our eyes. That is what Jesus is praying. You know, Jesus is praying for us, I told you that. What is He praying for us? Have you ever wondered? I get a little worried actually when I try and figure out what He is praying for us. You can figure it out if you go into John 17 because He was praying for us then. He is praying things like, "Do not take them out of the world, just keep them there, just keep them from the evil one." Just keep them internally safe. He never promises to keep us externally safe. But He does promise always and ever eternally to keep us internally safe. The peace of God is going to garrison our heart and mind, whatever happens to our bodies. The peace of God will garrison, the word is, put little spiritual soldiers around our heart and mind in the middle of things that happen to us. And we need our eyes open to that. What do we need to see? Well, Ephesians says, Paul praying for people, "Open the eyes of their hearts, that they may know the hope to which we have been called, that we may understand our inheritance as Christians, and that we may know the incomparable power of the one that we trust in."

What sort of power? The power that raised Him from the dead. I remember sitting by my mom two minutes after she died. And realizing again, having seen a few dead bodies, how dead death is. And how dead a dead body is. How utterly dead. And I remember thinking two things at that moment. Firstly, "Lord Jesus, You did this for me." That was my first thought. "You did this." Never quite seen it like that before. I mean, Jesus died. Dead. He did this for me in order that I might live. And the second thing I thought was, "What sort of power would it take to raise my mother's dead body?" And I suppose until you have been in that situation and looked at a dead body, it never quite hits you quite the same. I mean, what sort of power? What sort of dynamic power? And Paul says, "The power I am talking about that is available to you to fight the battles of life is the power that raised Christ from the dead." That sort of power. That is part of your inheritance as a Christian. Given to you by the Spirit when you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have the power of God. Incredible.

Now when our eyes are open to that, we are ready to do battle with the enemy. Now, the counterpart of this is that people are blinded to this. There is so much ignorance. Jesus said, "The blind lead the blind and they are both falling into ditches." The God of this world has blinded the minds of those that believe not. Look at all these soldiers, they had their eyes blinded to the truth. This was Elisha. They were blinded. In that sense, God worked the miracle. But the devil works the miracle of blinding the minds of people that don't believe so that they don't believe in Jesus. They don't believe He is the only way. They believe He is one way. There is so much confusion. There was a census taken not too long ago, and the ignorance just in our own city is incredible. The best known Bible verse, the best known Bible verse is this: "God helps those who help themselves." That is not in the Bible. But when they were asked, "What is the best known Bible verse?" that was the answer. And that was the most frequent answer. "God helps those who help themselves."

"Who preached the Sermon on the Mount?" Now, you would expect they would have said Jesus. They said Billy Graham. Billy Graham. "Jonah, have you ever heard of Jonah?" they were asked. "Yeah, I think I have, but it is not in the Bible," they said. They had heard of Jonah sort of somewhere, I think they had heard of Jonah, but not in the Bible. 15% said they had been reading the Bible and when asked which book they were enjoying, they said the book of Thomas. "Where was Jesus born?" The majority said, "We don't know." That is America. That is the biblically illiterate generation that has come to being since I have been living here. So we are living in this post-Christian society that is blinded to the gospel truth. The glorious light of God by His Spirit that will open eyes to truth. And as our Bible has to be involved as we pray and our Bible has to be involved as part of that equipment, not only protect us from error, but also our Bible has to be the sword of the Spirit, so we can use it offensively as well as defensively.

Let me give you just four little words that might help you as you take your Bible into your prayer time and begin to use it as a weapon as we battle for the souls of men. Sir Arthur Blackwall, who is a Christian writer, summed up the Christian's relationship to the Bible in four great words. Number one, admit. Admit. Open your whole being to let it be flooded with light. Let the truth in. Study the Bible sympathetically and lovingly. Let it be God's voice to you direct. Admit, admit it. Give it access. Secondly, submit. Let the truth grip you, that it may govern you. Let the plain declarations of God's Word be the end of all controversy. Let the plain declarations of God's Word be the end of all controversy. Whenever we raise an issue with God, all growth and all blessing must stop until that issue is settled. Where doubt, he is talking about doubt here. Submit to the truth that you have admitted. Believe it.

Commit, number three. Grip the truth by hiding it in your heart. Let today's message be articulated to yesterday's so that a chain is forged that is a veritable anchor to your soul in times of temptation, trouble and trial. Commit. Grip the truth by hiding it in your heart. Commit it to memory. Remember Mary treasured these things in her heart. Lay them up. Transmit. Don't be a pool, be a stream. I love that. Don't be a pool, be a stream. Don't hoard your riches. Share the bounties of the Lord's table with another. Make every truth tenfold your own by passing it on. Missionary A possessed some strawberry plants, which he shared with Missionary B, who came to live beside him. That year, Missionary A's plants were all destroyed by insects, and Missionary B gave back to Missionary A half his plants. So all the plants which Missionary A possessed were what he gave away. I love it. And I tell you it is true. As you give it away, you receive it back.

So the Bible is our first line of defense and also our sword of the Spirit. And as we use those things, then we transfer all that biblical knowledge and principle to what is happening to us in our lives. I remember a very graphic illustration of this surroundedness feeling as we worked with sitting on the fence, which is a little play that my street kids that had come to Christ put together for evangelism. And we just made a little fence, literally, sat a kid on it, and I bunched the good guys over here and the bad guys over here, and they all had guitars. And the preacher comes along and he says, "Oh, I have come upon this. I was walking, came upon this maiden perched on the fence." Etcetera, etcetera. "Why are you sitting on the fence?" And she says, "Well, I don't want to come down on their side, and I don't want to come down on their side, so I am sitting on the fence." And he points out that you cannot sit on the fence. You are on the bad side if you sit on the fence because you are not on the good side. And of course, it is the battle to get her to come down on one of the other sides. Very simple, and we did it with music and drama and skits. Then we took it out. We took it to the malls. We took it downtown Liverpool. We took it where kids were. Anywhere kids were. On the beach, on the shore. Then we went up to Glasgow, very, very tough area, unbelievably tough area. In the shopping mall where there were gang fights and all sorts of things. And we set up our little sitting on the fence thing in the shopping mall. And I well remember the gang coming in, a gang of kids, coming in and surrounding our little gal who was valiantly keeping up her singing as this was happening. And all of us were getting very nervous. And then one of them just walked right up and pushed the fence, and she went right over backwards, hit her head on the, it was the fence was like this and she was up here. And a fight broke out and all of that. And I always remember my well trained little gal who had nearly been knocked out unconscious, got up, she was so mad, she was so ticked. And she picked up her Bible and swiped this guy right over the, "No grace, we don't do that. That is not the way. We turn the other cheek."

So anyway, from that great start that morning, we went outside to another venue. It was a parking lot where all the motorbike gangs were. And we set up our little fence again, and in the afternoon, we started our next outreach. Grace was on the fence again. This time, we had another experience. They all got on their motorbikes and they started circling us, round and round and round and round. And these were tough, tough cookies. Well, of course, it was no good singing, you could not hear because they were revving up their thing. So we just stayed, and then they began circling closer and closer and closer. And we just were sort of pushed and huddled until the team was standing very close. And I remember one of the kids, I cannot remember who it was, a boy, got out his Bible and turned to this passage of Scripture. And over the din, he shouted to us, "Those that are with us are more than those that are with them! Yay, God!" He did not say yay, God, because he was not American, but the equivalent. And so together, we just began to sing the next song, all huddled together, and the motorbike stopped. The gang leader stopped it. And they started to listen. We had one of our best outreach meetings. But I always remember, he calmed the sea. He calmed the storm. And he gave us a chance to speak to those kids. "Those that are with us are more than those that are with them." And I saw him use his Bible to fortify himself in that very, very sticky predicament, dangerous predicament.

So Satan attacks our prayer life how? Well, first of all, he attacks our body. He attacks our body. We just find it difficult to get out of bed. We just are lazy. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And always remember, sleep deprivation is better than God deprivation. There is a battle for your body going on. But don't fear those that can kill the body. Fear Him who can cast both body and soul into hell. And that is not the devil. That is God. I always used to think when I read that passage, it meant the devil has that power. No. You read it. And so we fear God who can save us or who can honor our choice not to be saved and allow us to go to destruction. The devil is a murderer from the beginning. He wants to kill the bodies of men. He is also out to destroy the mind. He is also out to destroy the heart. And he will attack us on all these levels. And it is prayer work to narrow our interests to this battle for the souls of men. It really is.

You know, we are living in an age that aims to rob religion of its inflammatory torch, someone has said. It is a life on fire which kindles another. There is one thing necessary for every soul, and it is to catch his master's passion. The battle for the heart, our heart for other people. That is what the devil attacks. And he diverts us from this prayer work for the souls of men. I heard a definition of compassion the other day, "Your hurt in my heart." Your hurt in my heart, that is compassion. And God will work that in us as we pray. And then there is a battle for our will. We have got to stay on our knees. We have got to stay on the cross. And we have got to stay on the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit if you like. Personal Gethsemanes, stay on our knees, "Thy will not mine be done." Personal Calvaries, dying to myself, staying on the cross, taking up my cross and following Him. Personal Pentecost, keeping in step with the Spirit, drawing on that power we have been talking about to fight the battle with the weapons that God has given us, the weapons of our warfare. And then going out into battle in prayer to do battle for the souls of men.

Let me finish with an illustration again from the war. I bought a video that I watched on PBS this year. It was the story of Dunkirk. It was a PBS special, actually it was a BBC special shown on PBS. I think it lasted three hours. I could not leave it. I started watching it at nine o'clock and I finished after midnight, and then I started going back to look at different bits of it. It is true footage. It is camera taken of people that were there taking those pictures, and it follows the story of three men that escaped. One of them said it was chance. One of them said it was the brilliance and ingenuity and effort of incredibly brave, brilliant men that made Dunkirk happen. And one of them said it was God. And they kept weaving the stories of these three men in and out. It is a fascinating video. But the thing that struck me when I was thinking of an illustration to end this talk, was it such a marvelous illustration. You know, the whole of the British army was on that Dunkirk beach head. We did not have one soldier left in Britain. And as you know the story, we were retreating, we were beaten at that point, and the German forces hemmed us in on Dunkirk. So the entire British army was sitting ducks out on the beaches. And Hitler said, "Got 'em." All we have to do is just keep sending the planes over with bombs and strafe them and just wipe them out. They cannot go anywhere. They have got their backs to the water. Meanwhile, Churchill called a day of prayer in England, and England went to its knees. The only time, I think, ever that every man, woman and child was kneeling on the concrete outside church buildings because you could not get in them. And I remember that day. I remember my mother taking me to see that down the road, and kneeling myself with my mother on the pavement. And you can only attribute this to God, and the answer to that prayer, that Hitler had a twist of mind and decided to wait and regroup and retool his army that was about to annihilate us. And it gave us breathing space. But he did send legions of planes and bombs just to keep us start chipping away at it while everybody else had some R&R, believe it or not. R&R before they did us in, which gave us space.

And a man had a divine idea, and he called up every single man and woman along the coast to bring any boat that they possessed or had access to to a certain venue on the coast, to bring their boats. It did not matter if it was a rowboat, it did not matter if it was a little cabin cruiser, or a sailboat, or a bigger boat, or a tug, or a, you know, a passenger boat, anybody with a boat or access to bring them. And so there was this great call went out for boats, and of course, they came, every type and shape imaginable. And a great big tug got them all in a line, and one of those pictures, I went back to look at, in fact, I was looking for it last night and could not find it very late. It is in my mind as this tugboat with these hundreds of boats as he takes them out into deep water, ready to send them over to Dunkirk with their owners driving them, the little sail hats on, you know. And they went and they rescued, as you know, a quarter of a million men under the bombs and under the strafing. And the story is absolutely incredible. And as I thought about that miracle story, I thought, you know, prayer is the vehicle that takes us into enemy territory to rescue souls from destruction. And you have got to believe you have got a boat. You are a boat. All different shapes and sizes. Some of us big, some of us small. All our capacity is different for rescue. But we have all got a boat. And that vehicle that is us, this this boat vehicle and prayer, can go into the enemy territory. And if you do, you are going to get bombed and you are going to get blasted out of the water perhaps. And there is going to be casualties. Because you cannot take on the devil, even though we know the victory is won. There is no war without casualties. You cannot take him on and be exempt from all of that. I also know that there were some people along the coast of England that did not go, that had a boat. And for all sorts of reasons, I would think pretty obvious ones. It was sort of going to certain death, probably, although it did not turn out like that for everybody. Or maybe they just wanted to use their boat for pleasure. I do not know. I do not know why they did not go. Maybe they were too old, infirm, scared, or pleasure seeking. But enough went. Nearly every boat went in order to do this work. And a great, great victory was won.

So, that is the challenge. We have got a spiritual Dunkirk on our hands. And there are people who are bound for destruction, and the enemy is blasting them to bits. And they have absolutely, they are helpless. But we can go in prayer with our little boats. And we can rescue one, or two, or three, depending on the capacity of the boat, and bring them safe home, if we will.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, thank you for the victory that is ours. Thank you that those that be with us are more than those that be with them. And yet, Lord, the battle is very real and very bloody. We thank you that we are on the winning side and that we have the Captain of the Lord of Hosts as our Savior, and Lord, and God. And Lord, You have called us to participate in this battle with the unseen forces that are fighting the evil forces. And one of the ways is through prayer. And so we pray, dear Lord, that You would touch our hearts, that their hurts would be in our heart so much that we get on our knees and we do battle for the souls of men. And we ask, dear Lord, that people's lives would be different because we have grappled with this particular aspect of prayer. Pray that there would be people in heaven because we have grappled with this particular aspect of prayer. We ask it for Your sake, Your kingdom sake, Your name's sake, Your glory's sake. Amen.