# Conviction comes from prayer

Key Passage: Psalm 89:1
Date: June 7, 2024

Psalm 89, verse number one. We will just read that, then we will jump over to the book of Ezra, where we are studying on Wednesday nights. Psalm 89, verse number one. Grand Elijah quoted it by heart Sunday night. I thought, well, if Grand Elijah can quote it, I ought to be able to get it.

I will be honest with you. I need to memorize this verse myself, and I will. Next Wednesday will be our last Wednesday of the month, so we will try to get people to quote it—a reward for quoting it. Let’s work at a great, great verse. Psalm 89, verse number one. Of course, all these verses this year have to do with faithfulness, and this verse does also. If you have already found it, would you say amen? Amen. Good. Here we go. Let’s read it out loud together.

Psalm 89, verse number one: “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever; with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.” Good deal.

Then we are over in the book of Ezra. If you want to look to Ezra chapter number 10, we have been on this book for most of this year. We will review just a little bit to kind of get us going. If you know the answers to these, just say them out loud. Let me ask them as a review, repetitions for key learning. Somebody tell me, what is the book of Ezra about? It is about the rebuilding of the temple. Thank you, Brother Richard. Ezra, if you were to follow it in the timeline, begins right at the end of Israel’s 70 years of captivity. Good, good, good.

Somebody else has got an answer besides Richard DeVille, all right now. We are looking for somebody else here. God had sent this king, king of Babylon, excuse me, king of Persia that took over Babylon. He was very favorable to the Jewish people and said, “Look, you go back and you rebuild the temple.” Anybody remember his name? Cyrus, good, good. Now we are getting your minds back there. It has been a little while. Good. They went back. The first group went back. They were just shy of how many? 50,000, right? Just a larger group of people going back. They had been in captivity over here for 70 years in Babylon. Now they were going back over here to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. If you go straight across, how many miles is that? 500, good. Everybody thinks it went this way. How many miles would it be this way? Nine hundred. It took over a little over 100 days for them to make that journey, a little less than 50,000 the first time. They started rebuilding the temple.

Opposition always comes anytime you do something for the Lord. What was the first tactic of the enemy of God? Yeah, let us try to join up with them. Satan’s crowd always tries to join. They were wise; they said, “No, you have no part in the building of God.” But eventually, they sent a letter back to the king. It was a different king than Cyrus, and they were able to stop the building. It was stopped for something, most think, around 14 years. Then these two prophets come on the scene. They start preaching. One is a little bit older; he started preaching about two months earlier, and then this younger guy. Anybody remember those two guys? Zechariah and Haggai. Good. Who was the younger one? Zechariah. Good, good, good. Zechariah was the younger of the two. Good.

When they start preaching, they eventually listen to the message and start building the temple again. Remember Haggai’s word: “Is it time for you to live in your sealed houses while the house of God lies waste?” So they started building it again. Opposition comes again. They decide they are going to do the same thing the other people did, so they sent a letter back to the king. This time they searched and tried to find it. Cyrus really gave a decree saying they could build the temple. Where do they find that decree? The summer palace. Good. And they found it. God, of course, knew where it was, had it there in perfect timing. They got great blessing and freedom to build. In fact, the king said, “We will even help finance and protect you.” In chapter 6:15, they finished building the temple. But in chapter 7, a new man comes on the scene. He brings a new group of people—about 5,000 this time—back. They do not come back to build it; they come back to beautify it. There you go, to beautify it. Anybody remember that man’s name? Ezra. Good.

They start rebuilding it, but then people started saying there is some sin in the camp. Anybody remember the sin? This is a problem they brought to Ezra. They had not separated themselves; they had intermarried with the countries around there. It represents the lost people marrying the saved people. God was not for that. We are in chapter number 10 now. Thank you, Brother Marlon. We are in chapter number 10, Ezra chapter 10. We review a lot, trying to get it stuck in our heads, but we are in chapter 10, verse number one. Let us stand, if you would please, as we will read God’s word together.

Ezra 10, verse number one: “Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, they assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children, for the people wept very sore.”

Let me just comment, and then we will pray and get going on this. It is interesting how God says men, women, and children, young folk. I say this often: every church needs some godly men. It is a must. It is sad as you go across America, the lack of godly men we have. It is vital. But can I say, just as vital are good, godly women. Oh, how we need that. Good, godly women can add so much, and that is just as much of a must. And he says men, women—praise the Lord for godly ladies who want to follow God and stand up for the Lord. Praise God for that. And he says young folk. Praise the Lord for young folk that are in church tonight. That is the future of a church and of our country. All of those are vital, and God lists all three of them. We are just going to study the first three verses tonight, try to pull out some truths. Sometimes I try to centralize on one truth, but tonight I feel like we are just going to hit some different truths as we go through these verses.

Would you pray and ask God to speak to your heart before we leave tonight? Would you do that as I pray? Father, Lord, we come. Lord, I pray this is what you would have for tonight. As we go through this book, verse by verse for the most part, I pray these verses would come alive and these truths would come alive to your people. Father, would you take the truth that is intended for each individual and just drive that deep in their heart and their mind? Lord, please let us leave being fed and full from your word tonight. We will brag on you, thank you, praise you for what you do, Lord, and that is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Thank you so much for standing. You may be seated there.

Did you notice this saying? He says, “Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God,” they assembled—this great congregation came—and they were weeping also. Did you notice a pattern? Someone in tune with the Lord, if you will, prayed. And then a great group of people came, and they got in tune. They began to weep about the sin also. This is called conviction. Conviction comes because someone somewhere is praying. Can I say, as much as I am for preaching, and the Bible is for preaching—and it is sad how in America we are going away from preaching—Ezra did not preach here. He prayed.

Conviction comes from prayer.

Somebody goes to the Lord, seeking the Lord and begging of God to get a hold of someone. That is how life gets changed, folks. Can I say it would be a mistake for Ratherford County Baptist Church to depend on Pastor Paul or another preacher? Sometimes we will have revival, or maybe I will preach revival somewhere, and it is a sad thing if they are depending on me to bring conviction. I cannot do that. God does that. God might use the preacher; God uses those things, but it is God that does it. Somewhere somebody has to be praying. It does not record anywhere that Ezra went around doing a campaign and preaching. I am for those things, but he just prayed. He wept in his prayer. Parents, can I say this? The key to the heart of our child is our prayer life. Well, Billy Sunday used to say, “All hell cannot tear a child away from a praying mother.”

You say, “Man, I love to see Christians on fire and the church doing something.” You get Christians on fire in the prayer closet, and that fire spreads. Ezra just prayed. He has not really—people came to him. He is just old-fashioned, tear-shedding, prayer meeting with God. People are getting on board. Things are happening in Jerusalem, and people are getting convicted about sin, and revival is stirring. Why? Because somebody is praying. A church goes the fastest and the farthest on its knees. You get a church praying. I am not talking about sometimes we have prayer meetings where we talk for about an hour and pray for five minutes. Let us be honest about it. Or sometimes it is just a ritual: “Well, we have to pray, you know.” Adam, who was at John Rice’s, said he was praying at home with his family before they ate. He said his prayers like always, and he was almost to the end of his prayer when one of his daughters, just a girl, said, “Amen.” He said, “Yeah,” and he thought, “How did she know I was on?” He said, “Because I am not really praying; I am just reciting the ritual.” I am not talking about that. I am talking about sincerity in our prayer. You get someone just begging and pleading with God and wrestling with God, “Lord, we need you to move here,” and begging God and pleading for His mercy and His grace. The effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much. That is what Ezra is doing.

Boys began to pray, and things began to happen. I thought of Lou Rossi. I remember Lou Rossi preached for us many times. He used to be an evangelist; he has pastored now up in Baltimore. Lou Rossi told me when he used to pastor Curtis Hudson’s old church—when Curtis Hudson was a pastor, it was the fastest-growing church in Georgia for a good while, with people being saved and lives being changed, and it seemed like God put His hand on that church for a season. Lou Rossi pastored there years after that time. Some of the older people of that church told him stories. He said they used to tell him there was a stump out behind the church. It was not a committee, not an elected thing; just a group of men had a desire to see God move. He said Sunday morning they would meet before the sun was ever up at that stump behind the church. They would just gather around that stump. There was not a whole lot of fanfare about it. They would just gather up when the sun was not even up yet; it was dark. They would just start praying: “God, you have got to do something out of church. We want to see the hand of God. We want to see the move of God. We want to see miracles and lives changed.” They would just pray until the sun was up. It was not a set time. They would just pray until somebody said, “We have got to get going. We have got to go home and get changed, get cleaned up for Sunday school.” What I said is that it seemed like God just had His hand all over that church at that time. Somebody prayed. Ezra is praying here, and the people begin—this great congregation of people—are coming.

My prayer is—well, you get, praise the Lord, our last election, it could have gone a whole lot worse. Praise the Lord, we got the president we did, amen. He is not perfect; I understand. I am not trying to say that, but it could be a whole lot worse, folks. I honestly, sincerely believe he is in there because God’s people prayed. Prayer. Preacher, what about America? What is the answer to America? Prayer. Ezra is just praying. That is what he is doing. He is weeping, “Lord, forgive us for the sin.” He was not pointing fingers. He did not assume an adversarial role to those who were doing wrong. He is just praying, confessing sin. Now, I am not talking about joining up with the wicked crowd, but he was not out there fighting against them, talking about them, looking down his nose at them. He is just praying. The great crowd began to come through prayer.

Let us try to find a couple other things about this. Let us keep reading here. We are in chapter 10. First thing we have: Ezra, verse number one: “Now when Ezra had prayed.” Now there is a group of people coming; they are weeping also. Now verse number two: “And Shecaniah, the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God and have taken strange wives of the people of the land. Yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.”

Here is one thing I will just point out from this verse: They were confessing. They were confessing their sin. Can I say this? It was not just general confessing. In public, you do not have to confess your sins out in public. “Lord, forgive me, Lord, I got drunk last night.” I am not saying you have to do all that out in public. But when you get along with God, there needs to be some specific confession. Notice how he urged it. These men said, “We have trespassed against our God.” Now they get more specific: “and have taken strange wives.” By the way, that is not talking about race. The spiritual truth here is marrying with lost people—the world. God’s people marrying with unsaved people. People go in two different directions; that is what it is talking about here. But I want you to notice they were confessing specific sins. Never tire of confessing your sins. Every day, you ought to have a specific time when you are alone with God in your prayer closet where you get really clean with the Lord. You say, “Search me, O God,” and you allow Him to go through your life and get specific about yourself. “Forgive me my shortcomings” might be good when everybody is listening to you pray, but when you are alone with God, you need to get real specific about yourself. “Lord, I have been so selfish. Lord, forgive me for my tongue. Forgive me for being critical. Forgive me for my thoughts about so-and-so. Forgive me for my bitterness. Forgive me for my ill feelings towards so-and-so.” You need to be specific in your confession of sin to the Lord. These folks here did not just say, “Well, we have trespassed against God”; they began to tell how they trespassed against God and got specific with the Lord about confessing your sins. That is the key. We confess our sins; He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We have got to confess. There ought to be a time when you yield, “Oh, my God,” and you just say, “No, Lord, would you just speak to me? Show me my sin.” He will. He is very capable, and He knows.

If you are saved, you are still a child of God, but you have things between you and your Heavenly Father. You confess, and I am not condoning sin, but it is so important what you do after you sin. That is vital. You know the two—I have used it often—David, really, when God rent the kingdom from him, he had not waited patiently for the man of God. That was the first thing, and then he did not obey God a little bit later on. God said, “Utterly kill all the Amalekites.” I am confusing those two; that is Saul over there. God said to Saul, “I am going to take the kingdom from you.” Remember that? Saul never just owned up to it. He said, “Well, I was trying to wait seven days, but Samuel had not come.” He was just making excuses. Then he said, “Well, I was going to utterly kill them all, but the people saved the best.” God said, “I am going to take the kingdom from you, Saul.” David over here had committed adultery and basically committed murder against Bathsheba’s husband. But David, when Nathan the prophet pointed his finger and said, “Thou art the man,” David wept. Psalm 51 is what we call the repentant Psalm. He said, “I will get things right.” David stayed on the throne. Honestly, if I were just looking at sins, I would say David sinned a whole lot worse. Why is it that Saul got the kingdom rent from him, and David is still on the throne? Honestly, I really believe it is because of what they did after they sinned. Saul just kept making excuses and blaming everybody and justifying other people. David just said, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, O Lord. Would you restore the joy of my salvation? Would you create in me a clean heart?” He wanted to get right with God. There were consequences for years for David’s sin, but he stayed on the throne. Folk, I am saying confessing. You are not going to grow as you ought for the Lord if you do not confess sins. You are limited. Confession of sin is so vital. These people here are just confessing their sin; they are trying to get right with God.

Let us try to get something else from verse number two. Are y’all with me tonight? Good deal. Could we just get a little air flowing, maybe just a little fan? I would appreciate that. Thank you, Brother Kevin.

Look at verse number two. This is a wonderful statement here. These people are coming, they are confessing, and they are admitting what they have done wrong. Now look at the last couple lines there that they say in verse number two. He says, “Yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.” That is a wonderful thing—still hope. Still hope. Oh, friend, as long as you are willing to get things right and confess, there is hope. There is hope. Many of you heard me talk about my uncle David. My uncle David had a stroke when he was young, and his right side did not grow like the left side because of the stroke. His right arm was always like this, so he was disabled. He lived with my granny, we call her Granny Lee, on a little farm in Florida. My uncle David was saved, but he was defeated. He would not touch a drop for a long time, but then one of my other uncles, one of his brothers, would take him out, and he would go get drunk. He would come home a little bit drunk, a little bit of a drinking spree or whatnot. He was just defeated, discouraged. I think I told you about the first time he was drunk and wanted me to read the Bible to him. I thought, “Man, we got revival going on.” I read the Bible to him for a long time; I was just a teenage boy. I thought, “Man, God is doing something here.” Next day, he did not even remember it; he did not know what had happened. He was just defeated. I remember him; he just couldn’t win, though he wanted to win, and he could have if he did what he needed to, but he did not. All those years growing up, that was Uncle David, but there was hope because he wanted to get right.

His younger sister, my aunt, lived up in Maryland, I believe, up north, and she was going to come down to visit Granny. She was going to bring one of her good friends, a Christian girl. She said, “I want to bring her down, but if I bring her down, she has a little bit of a preacher in her, you know what I mean? And David is going to be drinking sometimes and smoking, and she is going to preach at him.” She said, “If I bring her down, David and this girl are going to fight all the time.” But she decided. She said, “I am going to bring her down.” She brought her down. She was a Christian lady, and my Uncle David fell in love with her and married her. I was best man at their wedding. I was amazed. Uncle Dave, just a country boy, moved up north, lived in the Baltimore, Maryland area, and never drank again. Eventually, he told me, “Paul,” he said, “The Lord helped me with the bottle. Smoking, man, that was a tough thing. The Lord just had to deliver me, and He did deliver me from it, Paul.” I was saying, “Oh, I watched him over the years struggle and try and fall and fall and fall, defeated, discouraged.” But there was hope. Oh, what a good statement he says. He says, “There is hope.” Yes, we have sinned. Yes, we have messed up. We will talk about how complicated this sin became because of their sin, but there was hope. As long as the Lord is there and someone is willing to seek the Lord and be honest with the Lord, there is hope. Do not give up on somebody; there is hope.

Now, they are just playing games, friend; we do not have time for that. They might be defeated, but I think about somebody right now praying for a loved one who has tried one time or two to overcome the bottle and has not succeeded. We are praying for that individual to be able to say that. But do not give up hope; there is hope. They said, “Look, there is hope.” Now let us keep reading. Let us find out what happens here. Verse number three. We are in verse number three, chapter number 10. We are just going verse by verse here. And verse number three: “Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives such as are born of them according to the counsel of my Lord”—now that is not capital L, not talking about the Lord God Jehovah, but talking about the leader there, Ezra—“and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God; let it be done according to the law.”

Let me just say this right off the bat: this sin—they had intermarried with lost, very sinful people around Jerusalem—that is a tough thing when you get marriage involved, very, very complicated. What do you do now? Can I just say this before we really get into it? Sin always complicates. Always complicates. I was just at someone’s house, being a man of the church, and a man and a lady, not married, but they have four children together. Now they are fussing and fighting like cats and dogs, cannot live together anymore, but they should not have been living together in the first place. But now what about the kids? One lives in Tennessee, the other lives in another state. You have all these kids, fussing and fighting, bills, and what are we going to do now? Sin always complicates. Always complicates.

Satan spins his webs, and it has all these tentacles. When you yield to sin, it becomes like yarn—you know those spools? When you get that yarn, it gets tangled in about 10,000 knots. I am not patient enough to untangle it, you know what I mean? Brother Larry is on board. Where is the knife or the scissors? Forget untangling all that mess. Sin complicates to the point that if it were not for God, there is no way to straighten it out. God is the only one. Can I say this? God still can. When those people yield to God and give in and follow God, the more they yield, the more God can untangle. Did you know sins that last to the next generation affect it, visiting the third and fourth generation? Wow, the complication of it all. I am not saying their sin is justified; they are still making a decision, but what happened back there affects them. It is just complicated. God is the only one to straighten it all out.

Sin always complicates. That is why it is such a wonderful thing when young people do not get tangled up in sin. What a wonderful thing when a young person grows up in church and never goes out into what the world calls deep sin, or what people call deep sin. Do not buy this lie from Satan: “Well, you have to go out and so you are out of control.” No, you do not. That is a lie from hell. Plenty of people have never been drunk before. I am not trying to brag on me; my parents would have rung my neck, but I have never been drunk a day in my life. Never have been. That is the only lady I made that promise with: my wife. I am just saying, look, you do not have to go out. “Well, I need to do drugs for a while so I can figure out what it is like.” No, you do not have to do that. Sin always has consequences. Satan is always wrapping his tentacles around, just complicating, messing lives up. It is so much better when young people just grow up in church—Destiny or Grace over here, an alley back there, John McKenna or Zan. I do not know everybody here tonight—and say, “You know what? I do not want to go out into the world. I do not have to go shoot somebody to figure out that it is wrong.” So often those are the people that God says, “I can put some weight on them because I do not have to untangle so much in their lives.” God can untangle it for anybody, but it is so much better if they never go there.

Look over at Proverbs, and we have got to hurry along. Look at Proverbs chapter 4 real quickly here. Proverbs chapter 4, verse number 12. When you find that, would you say amen? Amen. Proverbs 4, verse number 12. He says, when you go—talking about a young man who does not get mixed up in sin—“When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened.” You do not have to change direction; you are already going in the right direction. “And when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.” A young person who says, “I just want to grow up doing right,” can run for the Lord. They still have a choice; they have a mind. But they have a little better chance to just keep running without stumbling because they have never been tangled up in sin. Sin always complicates. Always complicates.

Let us get back over here to Ezra, verse number three. They are talking about what we are going to do now that these people have intermarried with lost, sinful people. Let me lay a couple of foundational things down real quickly. Number one, you know this, talking about this issue of marriage: God hates divorce. God hates divorce. God hates divorce. God’s original intent in marriage is one man and one lady for life. Y’all can say amen right there? That is God’s plan. By the way, it is not one man and another man or one lady and another; no, no, no. One man and one lady, that is God’s will for life. But can I say, in the Old Testament law, and even now, certain things—we are not getting into this marriage thing too deep—God allowed for it. Remember over in the New Testament, Mark, when they were talking to Jesus about divorce? They said, “What about Moses? Moses allowed for it.” Jesus said, “Yes, because of the hardness of your heart.” But it was allowed. It did happen; it was part of the law. We went through the Ten Commandments recently about that. So God did allow for it.

Can I say this? If you study a little later on in this chapter, I will give names—about 100 people, the best we understand, approximately 100 people had married with the lost. Sometimes God says, “Look, I want to do specific surgery to take care of the sin issue.” When my wife, oh, I do not know what it was, seven, eight, nine years ago, she had cancer; she had colon cancer, and they went in and cut out about a third of her colon; they just took it out. Why? For the sake of the rest of her body. The Bible talks about sin sometimes being compared to leaven. A little leaven, like in bread, leavens the whole lump; it spreads. Sometimes God says, “I want to take care of that.” And the best I can understand, God said, “Now I want to separate these.” He did so there in the Old Testament.

But that principle—sometimes God says, “I want to take care of this sin.” Can I give you a couple scenarios maybe more real to you and me? Sometimes even in our Sunday school classes, you have all 12 kids there, but one just disrupts to the point that it brings the whole class down. Sometimes in our bus ministry—praise the Lord for the bus ministry; we have had it from the very beginning, and we always will have it as long as I am here—reaching those unreached. But sometimes, if we do not say, “Hey, if you do not listen, you are not going to be able to come,” we love that individual, but for the sake of the way, we have to say, “Hey, bring the whole class down.” We have seen that happen more than once; it would have brought a whole bus route down. Sometimes in a church, there have been times when people, members, were living together with someone and just would not get the thing right. I say, “Hey, man, we love you. We want you to come. But to be a member, it is a little bit narrow.” Can you get this? Sometimes they are not going to get right. Sometimes we have to remove somebody from the roll. Nobody likes those sayings. We love those people. But 1 Corinthians 5—there was sin, and he said, “Look, need to take care of that thing.” I am not one of these guys going around looking for what everybody is doing. I do not do that. But sin has to be dealt with; it is a serious thing. God said, “I am going to take care of this thing here.” And so they did, verse number three.

Now, a couple of things more, and we are almost done. I am trying to study down through these verses here. He said that now, verse number three right there: “Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives such as are born of them according to the counsel of my Lord.” Here is the thing: while they were getting right, they were willing to get counsel. It does not necessarily have to be from the pastor, but they got counsel. What a blessing sometimes when a married couple is not there to fight with each other but says, “We just need some help in our marriage.” That has been a blessing down through the years. I think of people who say, “Hey, Pastor, man, I need some help overcoming this sin.” That is an honor. It does not necessarily have to be the pastor, but getting counsel and getting things right.

Then he says, “this counsel of my Lord,” so my Ezra there. Then he says, “and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God.” That is very interesting. Those that trembled at God’s word were those worthy of getting counsel from. Can I say this about the Word of God? I am amazed at books about marriage and different subjects, even in the Christian realm, where everybody gives their philosophy but not a lot of Bible principles. Those that trembled at the Word of God—that is where you want to get counsel from: the Word of God. They feared the Word of God.

I will not be much longer. I feel like I am kind of rambling, just hitting different truths tonight, but it has been a blessing. Years ago, when my wife got cancer, a couple who had come to our church way back in the beginning—I do not think about it now, but our church knows who it is—they heard that she had cancer. They wrote me a letter, just a nice encouraging letter, and they said something like this: “Even though we do not go to the church here anymore, you know, we learned how to have a marriage, how to raise our kids, at Rutherford County Baptist Church,” way back in the storefront. Here is what I am getting at: I remember back in the day when I was a young preacher and would come to teach a preacher on marriage, I thought, “Who am I? I am 30 years old, man; I have only been married a couple of years myself.” I talked to older preachers, and they gave me good advice: “Just stay in the Bible, teach and preach the Bible. It would be very biblical when you teach them in those areas, even if you do not have a whole lot of experience. Stay in the Bible, stay in the Bible and teach the Bible.” That couple told me back in the day, I did nothing really specific or certain or special; I just taught the Bible. Years later, they said, “You know, that is how we learned how to have a marriage and raise children—from the Bible.” These people want to get right, so they are going to get help from somebody, and they said, “Let us find the people that are sticking by the book.” We do not get help from people out there.

Would you bow your heads? Would you please? Our heads are bowed, our eyes are closed. I feel like I rambled a little bit tonight, but maybe somewhere along there, the Holy Spirit pointed something out and said, “Hey, that is for you.” You hear tonight and said, “Preacher, the Holy Spirit, it did it. It put His finger on something tonight in my heart, my life.” The Holy Spirit spoke to me tonight. God spoke to me tonight. I need to work on something. That challenged me somewhere. That is you, and that is the preacher. That is me. That is me. God spoke to my heart. Oh, God bless you. God bless you. So many truths in God’s word. Let us just heed. Let us just obey. Would you all stand, please? We are going to have a word of prayer. Our instruments will play. Would you just take some time and draw nigh unto the Lord? Would you do so? Father, thank you for your word. Lord, I want to be a better student of it. I want to be a better follower, doer of it. Bless our people here tonight. Thank you for working in our hearts. Lord, would you meet with us during an invitation in a special way? We thank you, Lord, for what you do. It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Would you take some time? Just spend some time. The Lord is there.

Original File: Ezra-Conviction Comes From Prayer - Pastor Paul Chisgar Wednesday 10232019