Section (1) (Could You Not Tarry One Hour?)

SECTION 1 (PREPARATION )
Ch.1. (HIS NAME IS NOT HENRY!)

 

 I was 17 years old in 1968 when the heavy doors of the psychiatric ward of Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, Texas, closed and locked behind me. I had a brand new Oldsmobile convertible and a beautiful girl friend； I was an all-state golfer with a scholarship； I lived in a 5,000-square-foot house. (The entire second floor was mine—two bedrooms, two baths and a study.) I had a lot of “stuff.” But I went stark-raving crazy in that en¬vironment because I had everything on the outside and nothing on the inside.
 Weeks before, I had sought help from my dad, who had made his money in the oil and gas business in East Texas. “Help me, Daddy!” I begged. But my father was an alcoholic who didn’t know Jesus； his heart was as empty as mine. All he did was stare at me for a moment in disbelief, then exclaim in exasperation, “Larry, any kid who has everything you’ve got and is depressed has got to be on dope.”
 My mother, who was a Christian, rushed to my defense. “My son wouldn’t get on dope,” she retorted, shocked by my father's accusation. “He must have a brain tumor or something.”

 

 During this terrible time of depression, I went to church one Sunday morning looking for something real. I needed help so badly that at the end of the service I walked to the front of the church一while all my buddies who were seated on the back row watched. I said to the pastor, “Sir, have you got anything for me? I’m losing my mind, and I don’t know whaf s wrong.”
 Do you know what the pastor did? He just patted me on the shoulder and whispered reassuringly, “You’ll be all right, son. You’re a good boy. Here, fill out this card.”

 

 All Daddy had to offer me was money, and all the church had for me was a card to fill out. I didn’t know anywhere else to turn, so when my mother kept insisting that something must be physically wrong with me, I gave in and went to the doctor After extensive tests revealed no physical reason for my deep emotional problems, I was admitted to a hospital psychiatric ward, and the rounds of psychological examinations began.

 

 Soon the doctor walked into my room and said in an understanding tone, “You’re depressed, aren’t you? These will help.” He handed me four tranquilizers, and the next thing I knew, every four hours someone brought me four little pills. That did it： I lost it. The last lights of reality flickered out, and the fog rolled in. The doctors called it a nervous breakdown, but in reality it was a “transgression breakdown.” I was a sinner who didn’t understand Christ’s atonement for sin. I didn’t know life could have purpose.

 

 For six weeks in that ward I didn’t even see the sun. Part of the time I lay in a drugged stupor with my eyes rolled back in my head. When I would come to, I thought the black lady cleaning the floor was my mother and that the patient across the hall was the doctor. 

There I was, the heir to a fortune, and I had lost my mind. My grief-stricken parents reluctantly made reservations at the state mental hospital so I could be committed.
 But before I could be transferred, one day I strayed out of my room into the hall, where I noticed a crucifix. Being somewhat curious, I removed it from the wall and managed to focus my eyes and thoughts long enough to make out its  Latin inscription, INRI. Confused, I wandered along the corridors of that Catholic hospital, collecting crucifixes and pondering those puzzling let¬ters. Of course when the nuns spied me with the crucifixes clutched to my chest, they rushed forward to retrieve them. With the sisters in hot pursuit, I broke in¬to a run, and my befuddled muttering amplified into a bewildered wail, loud enough for the whole world to hear： “His name is not Henry...His name is not Henry! His name is Jesus!”

 

 In my room several days later, I seemed to come to my senses. I fell to my knees and began to cry out, “Jesus! Jesus! Merciful Jesus!M It was not a very religious prayen I just called out to God over and over, pleading, weep¬ing, sobbing out His name.
 Suddenly, I heard an inner voice speak in my spirit. He said, “Now you are My son. You will take My message to this generation. You will be My mouth and My minis-ter.Then the voice told me I could get up and go home. I was well, but I couldn't leave because they had me locked up. The doctor came in the next day and asked routinely, “How are you doing, Larry?”
“I’m better now,” I answered.
Puzzled, the doctor hesitated then asked matter-of- factly, “Why do you think you’re better now?”

 

 Returning his steady gaze, I said, ‘‘Because yesterday I talked to God.” 
 The doctor cocked his eyebrow and muttered skep¬tically, “Yeah, right.” But unable to deny the peace that had replaced my inner turmoil, he soon discharged me from the hospital.

 

 That psychiatric ward was a strange place to begin my walk with the Lord, but when I cried out to Him, Jesus came through the locked doors and barred windows： He walked right into my heart and placed a call on my life to serve my generation. Like a newborn colt on weak, wobbling legs, I walked out of the hospital and back into life. But this time I did not walk alone. Since that hour, Fve never been out of His care.

 

 Why was I willing to open the dusty pages of my life and share that story with you? Because my misery is forgotten一passed away一and in its place abides steady peace and divine purpose. I believe you are part of that purpose. God has drawn us together in order that you might partake of the grace He has extended to me.
 I do not know at which juncture my experiences will interface with yours or at what point the word of the Lord will come to you, but it will happen—and the truth will set you free. Constraining habits that keep you from God’s best, obsolete ways of seeing yourself or others, lifeless traditions that exert control over you even though truth long ago overpowered them—all will be defied by the Spirit of God who makes all things new.

 

 Therefore, I invite you to partake of my grace and to learn, from the Holy Spirit’s gentle, friendly instruction, what I have learned through the painful yet precious experiences of my life.
 How about you? Is your situation as desperate as mine was? Are you in a place where you can’t talk or buy your way out, and there5s no back door? Maybe you’re not there； maybe you’re just in the spiritual doldrums. 
Nothing seems new any more. You were saved years ago and now you’re sure you’ve “heard it Since when, you say skeptically, has God said anything new to anybody?

 

 Well, let me give you some advice： Stop trying to think your problem through or wait it through. Pray it through.
 Your situation may or may not be desperate, but only when you are desperate enough to get down on your knees, confess your needs to Him and call on His name will He speak peace to you and your problems. That’s your next step. Take it now, my friend. Take it now.
 And when you call out to Him, remember： His name is not Henry. His name is Jesus! 

 

Ch.2. (A RADICAL CHANGE)
 

Almost two decades have passed since that day in the psychiatric ward when I wept my way into Christ’s presence and His peace flooded my being. I know now what healed me. For the first time in my life I comprehended that God saw me right where I was and knew me, that He needed me and had a purpose for my life and that I needed Him.

 

 These same three needs are basic to every human being, including you. You need somebody to see you\ you need somebody to need you-, you need something to give your life to. Giving your life to another human being is not enough. Pouring yourself into a career and buying ‘‘bricks and sticks and stuff” will not feed the gnawing need in your heart. There will always be a ‘‘vacancy’, sign flashing in the window of your soul.

 

 When I discovered Jesus, life seemed to pulse with pur¬pose and meaning. I couldn't keep it to myself. I had to share what I had discovered. But there was a problem. Pastors wouldn’t let me preach in their churches because they thought I had “nuthouse religion,5 5 so I preached at the Dairy Queen—or wherever anybody would listen. 
 I finally got my chance, though, when they agreed to let me preach just once at First Baptist Church in Kilgore, Tbxas, my hometown.
 That Sunday a hippie sat listening to me preach. I knew by his vacant stare that either his brain was fried or he was stoned out of his mind right there in church. Some¬time during the service I realized that the hippie was Jerry Howell, the keyboard player for a rock band called The Mouse and the Traps. (Jerry was one of the Traps.) The group had a number-one song on the Dallas charts at that time. The local kids idolized Jerry, but their parents thought he was the scourge of the earth.

 

 At the end of the service, Jerry walked up to me and remarked casually, ‘‘I really related to what you said to¬day.
“Jerry, what are you doing in church, man?’’ I asked as I shook his outstretched hand.
 He sighed. “Well, my dad died six months ago, and I promised him on his deathbed that I’d drive back from the University of Texas every weekend and take my brother to church. I’m just keepin’ my word to my dad.” Jerry paused and lowered his voice. “What you had to say is the first thing I've heard here in the last six months that’s made any sense to me.”

 

 Later, I couldn’t get Jerry off my mind. I knew he was reaching out for help, so I called and asked him to go to church with me. “Jerry,” I began hesitantly, “uh...this is Larry Lea.” Dead silence on the other end of the line. “Uh, Jerry...Fm a youth director now at the First Bap¬tist Church in New London.” (I didn’t add that it was the only Baptist church in the little-bitty town.) “Jerry,” I continued more confidently, “why don’t you come out and play organ for me? You can play ‘Amazing Grace,’ can’t you? I’ll sing and you can play, and we’ll have 
church with all these young people.”
“Me?” he answered. “You want me to play organ in a church?’’

 

 Little did I know that every day for four years Jerry Howell had been high on dope. I later learned that when the phone rang, Jerry had been out in his backyard count¬ing the blades of grass, trying to keep his head on his shoulders.
 ‘‘Hey，Jerry, I need your help,” I assured him. ‘‘You have a great talent, and God can use you. He loves you, man, and He has a plan for your life. I’ll drive by and get you this evening. I’ll even get you a date!” I added, waiting for his reply.
“A date!’’ he blurted. “With a church girl?”

 

 At 7 p.m. I went by to fdck up Jerry for the service. He was dressed in his faded blue jeans and a T-shirt. He had blond hair flowing down to his waist but was bald on top. And his old van—the kind with drawn curtains on the windows and an elaborate stereo system blaring Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin rock—was in the driveway. Here I sat with my “white sidewall” haircut, my tape of Jim Nabors singing “The Lord’s Prayer” and the family Bible on the dash. When Jerry climbed into my car, his eyes darted from the family Bible, to me, back to the Bible, then straight ahead. Boy, was he quiet. We drove by and picked up the girls, but Jerry hardly said a word to anybody.

 

 As we stepped inside the church, I nodded my head toward the platform and said, “Jerry, there's the organ. You know what to do.” Jerry played “Amazing Grace’’ in a way it’s never been played before or since! I sang and preached, and we had church.
 It was about 11：30 p.m. when we pulled into his driveway after dropping the girls off. Jerry spoke for 
practically the first time all evening. “Larry, is there anything to this Jesus?” he asked earnestly.

 

 I hardly knew how to respond because Jerry was con-fused, in the middle of a nervous breakdown and bound with dope, but I breathed a prayer for help. During the first part of our conversation that night, Jerry asked a lot of questions that I didn’t have the answers to. Sometimes I honestly replied, “I don’t know, Jerry.” But God filled my mouth, and I just kept giving him Jesus.

 When we got through talking, it was 3：30in the morn¬ing. Jerry stared straight ahead, heaved a deep sigh and asked, “Well, how do I get it?”
 So I (deep Christian and experienced soul winner that I was) said, “What you do is, you open your Bible to Mat¬thew 5, 6 and 7 (because that was the only part of the Bible I knew), then you get on your knees and start hollering, ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!,’ and when it hits you, you’ll know you got it.”

 

 Well, Jerry Howell went in that night and did just that, but before he could hit his knees, God had saved him, delivered him from a four-year drug habit and called him to preach. When it was over, Jerry walked to the home of his best friend, Max, the drummer for their band. It was 6 a.m. on July Fourth, and Max was out in the back¬yard feeding his rabbits. (These were strange people.) When Jerry came around the corner of the house, Max took one look at him and gasped, “Man, what happened to you?”
Jerry grinned and explained, “I met this weird little dude named Larry Lea, and we talked all night about Jesus.”
“Hey, man, how do I get it?”

 

 Jerry gave it to him straight. “You get your Bible, and you read Matthew 5, 6 and 7, then you get down 
on your knees and....’’
  At 7：30 that morning my phone rang. It was Jerry. “Larry, I got it! I got it! And I came down here and told Max about it, and he got it, too. But you know how strange he is. You’d better come over here and check him out!”

 

 That wasn’t the only phone call Jerry Howell made that day. The local barber shop was closed for the holiday, but Jerry called the barber at home. “Mr. Buck,” he said hesitantly, “this is Jerry Howell. Would you cut my hair?”
 Mr. Buck didn’t stutter. Quick as a flash, he answered, “Sure, son. Come on over.” He couldn’t resist adding, “I’ve been wanting to cut your hair for a long time.” Six weeks later, a clean-shaven Jerry Howell with a “white sidewall’’ haircut went off to Bible college with the weird little dude named Larry Lea. One day Jerry an¬nounced, “Larry, God has called me to preach, and Fm supposed to go hold a revival.’’ And that’s exactly what he did. Within six months after his own conversion, Jerry Howell had led 1,000 people to God!

 

 Jerry is now pastor of Church on the Rock in Kilgore, Texas, the very place where he was once considered the offscouring of the earth. How did that radical change come about? You see, Jesus came along and said, ''I see you, Jerry Howell, hiding there behind your walls, and I need you for a special task. I’ve got something you can give your life to. All I need to hear you say is that you need Me.”
 

 Now I want to ask an important question. How about you, my friend? Do you need a radical change in your heart? In your home? In your relationships? Are you sick of your doubts and unbelief? Jesus sees you right where you are. He needs you for something special that only  you can do. And you need Him.
 Jesus changed Larry Lea, a 17-year-old boy in a psychi-atric ward. Jesus changed an East Texas hippie named Jerry Howell. And He can change you, too. You don’t even have to read Matthew 5, 6 and 7. Just get down on your knees and call on Jesus. (And don’t worry： When it hits you, you’ll know you got it!) 

 

Ch. 3. (READ THE RED AND PRAY FOR THE POWER)

 

 Jerry Howell and I, two growing, newborn converts, were roommates at Dallas Baptist College. Besides attending class, about all we did for three years was “read the red”and pray for the power. We devoured the words of Jesus that were printed in red ink in our black Bibles. Jerry and I were captivated by Christ’s miracles, compassion and power to help the helpless. We craved what He had. We longed to do what He did. We hungered and thirsted for more of Jesus.

 

 One night I left the dorm and went for a walk. It was a still, clear night, and the view of the lights, mirrored in the lake in the valley below the college, was serene and soothing. I strolled along the edge of the hill and talked to God.

 

 After a time, I paused and stared up at the stars, but the consuming desire in my heart stretched far beyond those shimmering pinpoints of light. “Oh, God,” I pled, my face wet with tears, “I want all You have for me. Please, Father, if there’s power in this gospel, give it to me! Give it to me, Lord....’’
I guess you know it’s dangerous to pray a prayer like that The next thing I knew, my startled ears heard my stammering lips speaking a language I had never learned. Shocked, I clamped my hand over my mouth and gasped, ‘‘But, God, we don’t believe in this!” Does that blow your theology? Don’t worry; it blew mine, too. I didn’t understand what had taken place, but it sounded an awful lot like what the disciples experienced in the book of Acts.

 

 I didn’t let it happen again for a while. But one evening I visited in the home of a minister who prayed over me. Sure enough my new prayer language came bubbling out again. This time I just let it flow. I knew this was the Holy Spirit and that He had filled and flooded my being in answer to that honest, desperate prayer. God also baptized Jerry in the Holy Spirit. Although we tried not to be divisive or to make a big deal about our ex¬periences, word about the two guys with the funny prayer languages soon got around to most of the 400 budding Baptist preachers in our dorm. Their reactions were mixed： icy aloofness, warm interest, red-hot hostility and all in between.

 

 At night when we knelt beside our beds and began to pray, we would hear doors creak open all along our hall. We’d listen as scurrying feet stopped abruptly outside our door. One night Jerry rose quietly to his feet, crept stealthily across the floor and threw open the door. There, crouched at our threshold, were several surprised, embarrassed fellow students.

 

 We all had a good laugh about it, and the guys learned that even though Jerry and I, in the privacy of our room, sometimes prayed in prayer languages other than English, we weren’t in there swinging from the light fixture or rolling on the floor. We were just experiencing praise and intercession in a powerful new dimension. And the 
Read the Red and Pray for the Power
guys who were interested soon discovered that we were willing to talk about our fulfilling new experience if they cared to risk it.

 

 For a while it seemed that Jerry and I were going to get along with most of those other Baptist preacher boys just fine. But one of my professors at the college learned of my baptism in the Spirit and tried to reason with me. “Son，” he said, “it’s all right if you want to speak in your prayer language in your private devotions. Just don’t go around broadcasting your experience and telling other people how to receive it.”
My eyes brimmed with tears as I quietly replied, “I can’t do that, sir.”
 His jaw tightened and his careful, deliberate words cut my heart like a knife. “Then in that case, Larry, you have no ministry.”

 

 That professor wasn’t the only one concerned about my baptism in the Holy Spirit. When my father learned of my new experience, he warned, “Larry, you’re gonna’ wind up out under a tent somewhere with a bunch of snaggle-toothed people who foam at the mouth.” For a while, it looked as if he might be right.

 

 But 1972 was a big year for me： I graduated from col-lege； I married my wife, Melvajo； and Howard Conatser, pastor of Beverly Hills Baptist Church in Dallas, surprised me with a generous invitation to become his youth minister.
 I appreciated his offer, but I really didn’t want to be a youth minister. My desire was to become an evangelist like James Robison, and I told Pastor Conatser so. He wasn’t upset in the least. “Just pray about it, Larry” his raspy bass voice drawled confidently. So I prayed, and to my astonishment, the Lord directed me to accept the position. 

 Back then I wasn’t one to beat around the bush when a head-on confrontation would do just as well. When I learned that the youth group at Beverly Hills existed on a steady diet of skating parties, wiener roasts, haunted houses and trips to Six Flags, I strolled in before the critical stares of fifty pairs of young eyes and announced, “Y’all, we’re not gonna’ do all that stuff anymore. We’re gonna’ read the red and pray for the power.” The response was tremendous! Overnight the youth group went from 50 to 14. Phenomenal growth!

 

 And to top it all off, a girl sauntered up to me with a smirk on her face and fire in her eyes and threatened, “Listen, if you don’t do what we want you to do, we’re gonna’ run you off just like we ran off the four youth directors before you!”
 I sucked in my breath, commanded my little of insides to stop shaking, prayed she wouldn’t notice the quiver in my voice and offered her an option. “Sister,” I said as I stared her right in the eyeballs, “you can’t run me off, because you didn’t run me in. I’m here because God told me to be here, and I’m not leaving. Now it’ll be a whole lot easier for you to move your membership to another church than for me to move my furniture!” That was the end of that conversation and the beginning of a new day for many young people.

 

 That group of 14 began meeting on Tuesday, Wednes¬day, Thursday and Sunday nights. By the end of the first summer, we had grown from 14 to 140. By the end of the second year, we had 1,000 teenagers in our youth services, and many more flocked to the Christian con¬certs we sponsored. God honored my obedience to His call and the zealous witness of those young people. (Many of those same people are now members of Church on the Rock.) 
Read the Red and Pray for tbe Power

 

 But one of the most dangerous things that can befall any minister happened to me. I became a successful preacher without developing my own personal prayer life. Don’t get me wrong； I sometimes prayed fervent, earnest prayers, but my prayer life was sporadic and inconsistent.

 

 Outside, everything looked great. I preached to crowds of kids every month. We had a concert ministry which drew thousands of teenagers weekly and was telecast na¬tionally for five years. But something was happening on the inside of me. My own preaching was convicting me. Again and again after ministering to a congregation, I found myself alone in a back room of the church, crying out to God and repenting over my prayerless life.

 Those were some of the most miserable days in my memory. But God was getting ready to give me a chance to obey another call一the highest call of all! 

 

Ch. 4. (THE HIGHEST CALL OF ALL)

 

 After Howard Conatser died in 1978,I was called to be the pastor of his 3,000 member church. That was a very tempting offer to a 28-year-old youth minister, but right away God let me know that it wasn’t for me. A man on the committee approached me with an offer that went something like this： “Son, we’re gonna’ triple your salary, put you on television and make you rich and famous. You just preach sennons that bring people down the aisle and play your cards right, and we’ll . make you a success.”

 

 This was another one of those heart-to-heart, eye-to-eye conversations that I was becoming accustomed to, so I squared my shoulders and replied forthrightly, “Sir, I quit playing cards when I got saved.” Well, that bought me a ticket back home to Kilgore.

 

 Although I was graduating from seminary and my wife and I had three small children by this time, I moved back into the same bedroom I had slept in as a teenager in high school. My future seemed to have fallen into one glorious heap. God knows how to motivate us to pray, doesn’t He! About that time I met Bob Willhite, pastor of the First 

 Assembly of God Church in Kilgore, Texas, and he in¬vited me to hold a revival in his church. Something about this soft-spoken, gray-haired gentleman captured my attention. I knew immediately this man was to be my pastor, and I told him so. I conducted the revival for him and his praying peo¬ple. It lasted seven weeks, and we saw 500 teenagers saved. We witnessed the conversion of the entire senior class of one of the local high schools. But the greatest thing that happened during the revival was my personal conversion from being a preacher in the pulpit to becom¬ing a man who was more interested in prayer than anything else in life. It came about like this.
One evening I remarked, “Pastor Willhite, I understand you are a man of prayer.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I pray. I’ve been rising early in the morning to pray for over 30 years.”
My pulse quickened and I said to myself, Oh, Jesus, this is a real one. Masking my excitement I asked, “While the revival is going on, would you let me come pray with you in the mornings?”
“Why, yes,” Pastor Willhite agreed, “I’ll pick you up in the morning at 5:00.”

 

 I might as well confess that when 4:15 rolled around the next morning and that screeching alarm clock went off, I didn’t feel one ounce of anointing to pray. No angel stood by my side and commanded, “Come, my son. Let us journey to the place of prayer.” All I wanted to do was pull the covers over my head, but I managed to stag¬ger to the shower and to be clothed and in my right mind when Pastor Willhite’s Oldsmobile Cutlass pulled into the driveway.

 

 As we rode to the church that morning before dawn, I didn't have any idea what God was going to do in my 
life, but I was absolutely certain that I was answering the most vital call of my ministry—the call to pray.
 That call will haunt each of us until we answer. It had haunted me for six years. But when I obeyed it, that choice marked the turning point in my ministry. From that day on, I rose early every morning to pray. Of course, I sought God’s band, praying, “Lord, do this for me. Do that for me.” But more and more, I also found myself seeking God’s face, thirsting for His friendship and communion, hungering for His holy, loving, compassionate nature to be formed within me.

 

 I felt like a little child who didn't know my right hand from my left. I knew there was so very, very much to learn about prayer and communion with my Father. The cry of my heart became “Teach me how to pray, Father. Teach me how to pray.” And one morning during that two-year period of traveling as an evangelist, while I was in prayer, the Holy Spirit began to reveal truths about the Lord’s Prayer that I want to share with you later in this book.
 I was in Canada conducting a youth revival when the Lord impressed upon me, “Go to Rockwall and estab¬lish My people there.” Rockwall, a town with a population just under 11,000 people, is perched on a ridge overlooking Lake Ray Hubbard, some 25 miles east of Dallas. It is a small town in the smallest county in Texas. If God had commanded, “Fall off the face of the earth,” I don’t think I could have been any more astonished. Actually, at the time, the two orders would have ap¬peared to be somewhat synonymous.

 

 But I moved my family to Rockwall and began to apply the principles God had taught me about growing a church. We began Church on the Rock (COTR) in 1980 with 13 people. We rapidly outgrew the house where we met and moved to the Rockwall Skating Rink where we had about 200 people our first Sunday. We soon overflowed that facility, so the church began holding services in the Rockwall High School cafetorium. Growing rapidly, we knew we desperately needed our own building, so we began saving every dollar we could.

 

 One day P.J. Titus, a native of India and a long-time friend with a proven ministry, walked into my office with an urgent need. The Lord had placed upon his heart a burden to begin a Bible college in India, and it would take $20,000 to accomplish that task.

 

 My thoughts went immediately to the $20,000 in the church’s savings account that was designated for our new building, and a struggle began within me. Knowing I had something critical to pray about, I asked Titus if he could return the next day for my decision.
 As we sought the Lord’s will, the Holy Spirit directed us to sow, not save, our last seed. But I was not prepared for Titus’s reaction. The next day when he returned to my office and I handed him a check for $20,000, he burst into tears, the sobs shaking his small frame.

 

 When he was able to speak, he told me why the check meant so much to him. ‘‘I told the Lord that if you would give me the $20,000 to begin the Bible college, I would leave the States where I’ve lived these past few years, return to India and spend the remainder of my life ministering to my people.”
 Titus is now doing just that. Because we dared to sow our precious seed instead of eating it or hoarding it for ourselves, the Lord has given Church on the Rock the second largest Bible college in all of India, and Titus is training men and women to reach their nation for God. But when he walked out of my office with our last $20,000 in his hand, I didn’t know how it would turn out. 

 We were still having church in a rented cafetorium, and now we were back to zero financially. I believed that God would provide, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the instrument He chose to work through!

 

 One Sunday after service, an honest-to-goodness Texas cowboy sidled up to me and drawled, “You’re either straight out of heaven or straight out of hell. I don’t like preachers, but I like you. God told me you are to be my pastor.” Then he took me out to his truck where he thrust an old work boot into my hands. Seeing the bewilderment on my face, he explained, “I’ve been a Christian for a long time, but being on the rodeo circuit for the last couple of years has kept me from having a church home. I’ve just been puttin’ my tithes down into this old boot. Now God says I should give it to you.”

 

 There was over $1,000 inside that boot. When I peered inside, the Lord immediately nudged me that He was go¬ing to use the incident for His glory.
Taking the boot to the next service, I shared with the congregation what had happened. Spontaneously, they began to stream forward and stuff into the boot money to construct the building we needed so desperately. Sunday after Sunday, the miracle continued. The building was finished without borrowing any money for its con¬struction： we moved in debt-free. Since the crowds overflowed the new auditorium the first Sunday we gathered there, we immediately went to two Sunday services—then three, four, five一to accom¬modate the people. We also had to add Tuesday and Thursday night midweek services since the Wednesday evening service could not hold the crowds.

 

 Our records reveal that the church has grown from 13 people to over 11,000 members with a 32-member pastoral staff and more than 460 home cell groups. To house the phenomenal harvest, it has become necessary to construct a sanctuary that will accommodate over 11,000 people. And if all of this were not enough to thrill the heart of any 36-year-old pastor, in the spring of 1986, Oral Roberts asked me to become the vice president of Oral Roberts University and serve as dean of theological and spiritual affairs. When I protested that I could not leave my church, that 68-year-old Indian leaned forward and said, “I don’t want you to leave your church. I want you to bring the spirit and life flow of your church into ORU.”

 

 My elders have freed me from the administrative and counseling duties which can consume a pastor’s time and released me to pray, preach in our church, direct the na-tional prayer revival which God has called me to lead and prepare spiritual leadership through ORU.
 Have you ever stopped to reflect upon the magnitude of a simple, yet life-changing choice you made years before? I think about my choice often, and I always thank God that I answered the call that is higher than my call to preach一the call to pray.

 

 Every believer may not be called to preach, but every Christian is called to pray. Prayer is our duty. Prayer is our privilege. Prayer, like air, water and food, is necessary for our survival and growth. But many believers regard prayer as an optional activity.

 

 Corrie ten Boom, the beloved author of The Hiding Place, sometimes posed this question to believers： “Is prayer your spare tire or your steering wheel?” Meditate on that question in the privacy of your own heart and remember： There is a higher call一-the call to pray. Have you answered it?

 

Ch. 5. (A DIVINE PROGRESSION)

 

 People heard God’s voice yesterday, and that was good. But it is also essential that we hear His voice today. ''Today if ye will hear his voice...” (Heb. 3:7, italics mine). Today the Holy Spirit is speaking a word to the church. God is calling His church to pray, and we had better listen because the bottom line on all that will take place from now on is： “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord’’ (Zech. 4：6).

 

 It is important for us to understand that the desire to pray is not something we can work up in our flesh； rather, the desire to pray is birthed in us by the Holy Spirit. If He has already implanted that divine desire in your heart, pause right now and thank God for it. If not, ask Him to put it there. Then pray God will help you transform that divine desire into daily discipline. As the discipline to pray is formed within you, discipline will "shift gears.” Prayer will no longer be duty or drudgery. It will become a holy delight!

 

 God longs to see your heart transformed into a house of prayer. Why? Because there is so much He longs to do for you and through you. Therefore, as you begin to pray, a divine progression will take place within you. Let me explain what I mean.
 It was a normal business-as-usual day in the temple at Jerusalem until the moment Jesus walked in. His grief joined hands with holy anger. After fashioning a whip from small cords, Jesus strode purposefully toward the moneychangers and the buyers and sellers of oxen, sheep and doves, forcefully driving them and their mooing, cooing, bleating wares out of the temple. Before the amazed onlookers could react, Jesus was back, this time to overthrow the tables and seats of the moneychangers and dove sellers. The scattered coins still spun and rolled across the floor when He thundered, “My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

 

 Aware that only the guilty had anything to fear, the blind and lame thronged to Him in the temple, and He healed them there amid the laughter and happy hosannas of children. When the chief priests and scribes angrily demanded that Jesus quiet the children's joyful cries, He calmly countered, “Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?” (see Matt. 21:12-16).

 

 Take a moment to observe the beautiful progression in these verses. First, Jesus cleansed the temple causing it to become a house of purity (v. 12). Then He made the pronouncement: it would be called a house of prayer (v. 13). Next the temple was transformed into a house of power as the blind and the lame came to Him and He healed them there (v. 14). And finally, the temple became a house of perfected praise (v. 16).
 Shouldn’t this same progression take place in the church and in the individual believer today? To echo the words of Paul, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of 
God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). You and I are part of the church that is the habita¬tion of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2:20-22). But sadly, our temples, too, are often polluted by grasping greed, maneuvering motives and selfish sins.

 

 It is a mockery for believers to talk one way and live another. God will not bless an impure church. His church will not become the house of power and perfected praise until it allows the Holy Spirit to purify its sanctimonious soul and transform it into a house of prayer.

 

 Listen to God’s solemn warning to His church： “Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness...’’ (Heb. 3：7,8). These verses indicate that because the children of Israel heard but did not heed, their mission to possess the land of Canaan was thwarted.

 

 God had promised that land to the children of Israel. But, when ten out of twelve men sent by Moses to spy out the land returned fearful and faint-hearted because the land seemed unconquerable, an entire generation died in the wilderness. Although two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, confidently affirmed, ‘‘Let us go up at once and possess it； for we are well able to overcome it” (Num. 13:30)，when the vote was in, the tens had it over the twos.

 

 God does not operate on our timetables. He was ready to march them across the Jordan River, but the people were caught up in petty daily routines. A self-seeking leader remarked smugly, “Have you noticed? Moses just isn’t anointed anymore.” A dissatisfied wife nagged her weary husband, “You’ve got to get more manna for our kids!’’ A well-meaning elder warned, “Joshua and Caleb are off on a ‘hyper-faith’ tangent. How can they run around proclaiming, ‘We’re able to overcome,' when everybody knows that the enemy is stronger than we are?’’
 They feared the giants instead of God. They focused on the problems instead of the promises. They saw walled cities instead of the will of God. And because they missed what the Spirit was saying, they wandered in the desert 40 years. They died there and their bones bleached in the wilderness.

 

 It’s no different today. We’re here to possess the land, my friend, but instead we’re busy redecorating the house, watching Monday night football, trying to pay the mortgage and worrying about our “stuff.” All the while, the interceding Holy Spirit is calling us to pray, and we are not listening.

 

 The contemporary church is far from biblical Christianity. Mediocrity has invaded the body of Christ, and we think it’s normal. God is accelerating everything in these last days, yet 99 percent of us are lagging behind. We long to see God’s power, but before the power of God can be revealed, we must develop the discipline of prayer.
 I don’t know if you have ever uttered a prayer like this, but I have： “God, I want You to take everything out of my life that’s not like Jesus. I don’t want anything in me except that which glorifies and magnifies Jesus Christ the Lord.” In order for that prayer to become a reality, things that can be shaken must be shaken so “that those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27).

 

 After I shared that thought in a sermon, a teenager remarked, **Sounds to me like you’re talking about a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.” The girl was right. There is going to be a lot of shaking.
 If you could talk to me right now, would you confide, “Larry, a whole lot of shaking has gone on in my life 
these last few years”? Some of you might say the same thing about the churches you’ve attended. A lot of stirring, a lot of shaking, a lot of changes have taken place. Why? In order that we can take the next step in this divine progression.

 

 Today if you hear His voice calling you to pray, don’t harden your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you no rest until your prayer life moves from mere desire to daily discipline and on to holy delight. Let Jesus drive out and overturn the things in your life that are preventing your temple from becoming a house of prayer. Smelly oxen, bleating sheep, cooing doves and tarnished coins are poor substitutes for the satisfying, holy presence of God.

 

 Face the facts. If you do not begin to pray, you will not be any further along with the Lord next year than you are right now. There is always the agony of choice before the promise of change. So what will it be： business as usual or are you ready to take your next step with God?
 Jesus is waiting for you to pray, “Lord, make my tem¬ple a house of purity, prayer, power and perfected praise for Thy glory.” He is ready to begin that divine progression in your temple right now. Are you? 

 

Ch. 6. (LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY)

 

 After his father’s funeral, my friend Bob Tyndall thumbed through the worn Bible that had been one of his dad’s closest companions. His glance fell upon this hand-written notation in the margin： “Jesus didn’t teach us how to preach. He didn’t teach us how to sing. He taught us how to pray.”
 Robert Tyndall Sr. was right. Prayer was a priority with Jesus. Regarding the beginning of Christ’s ministry the Gospel of Mark says, “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (1:35). Regarding the middle of Jesus’ ministry, after He miraculously fed the 5,000, Matthew 14:23 says that Jesus went up alone into a mountain to pray. Regarding the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry Luke tells us Jesus went out, as was His habit, to pray (Luke 22:39-41).
 

 Jesus made a habit of prayer, and He taught others to pray by His words and example. In the Gospels we discover that the most exacting work Jesus did was to pray； then, overflowing with anointing and compassion, He went from those places of intercession to receive the fruits of the battles He had won in prayer - mighty miracles, authoritative revelations, wonderful healings and powerful deliverances. Because prayer was a fixed habit of His life, it is not surprising that, even as He faced the jeers and curses from scoffers at the foot of His cross, the first words He uttered as He hung there were a prayer (Luke 23:34).
 

 Jesus faced death as He had faced life： unafraid. As He died, He committed His spirit into His Father’s keeping and said, “It is finished” (John 19:30)，but we must not think that Christ’s death marked the end of His prayer ministry.
 The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus’ ministry in heaven today is intercession：Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (7：25). Jesus’ continuing ministry in heaven is prayer. I am on His prayer list, and so are you.

 

 Jesus would never do anything that was worthless or dry or dull, and He would never ask you to either. Right now He is extending to you the highest call of all. He is repeating to you what He said to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane： “Could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temp¬tation： the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:40,41). Jesus wants you to learn how to spend time with Him, how to tarry with Him one hour in prayer.

 

 I think I know how you feel. I had said yes to Him so many times. I had the desire, but not the discipline.
 I remember a night when I preached at a place called the Bronco Bowl in south Dallas. (That’s the bowling alley where   Beverly Hills Baptist Church met after we outgrew our church building.) Three thousand teenagers 
were in the auditorium that night, and when I gave the invitation we saw 500 come forward for salvation, fll never forget it.

 

 As I stood before that sea of earnest faces and commanded, “Get right with God,” something inside of me asked, “When are jow going to get right with God?” As I left the platform, others thought I was slipping away to talk to the converts, but I was actually go¬ing into a back room to lie on my face before the Lord. I was frustrated about this matter of prayer. Looking back, I believe it was holy frustration. The Spirit of God simply would not let me settle for anything else, anything less, than the ministry of prayer.
 I don’t want to leave the wrong impression. We prayed at Beverly Hills. Sometimes we prayed all night. We prayed in a great harvest. The church grew from 400 to well over 3,000 in four years! But God was asking me to make a practice of rising early in the morning, pray¬ing through to the place of victory, and walking in the authority and anointing of God. I needed a day-by-day walk—not a frantic race to get “prayed up” for some special event.
 

 During those days when I was minister of youth at Beverly Hills, I was invited to hold a youth revival in Hereford, Texas (on the west side of Amarillo way out in western Texas.) Ever since my conversion, I had longed to be an evangelist； I was delighted by their invitation to come. All but one denomination in town was cooperating so each service was to be held in a different church.

 

 The revival didn’t start off too well. That first night, we went to the Church of God. It was cold outside, and it was cold inside, too. I preached as well as I could and gave the invitation, but nobody came forward for salvation. 
 The next night we went to the Assembly of God church. We had a good praise and worship service, but the preaching and altar call were a repeat performance of the night before. I felt as if everybody was wondering, ‘ ‘ When’s he gonna ’ do something? When’s it gonna ’ happen?” That’s certainly what I was thinking.

 

 The third night we went to the Methodist church. I made sure I arrived a little early so I could get alone with God. Just as I was looking for a place to pray, two Catholic nuns with a guitar walked through the back door. They made a beeline for me and asked, “Brother Lea, would you tune our guitar for us?”
 Startled by the strange request, I just stared at them and said, “Well—I—ah—yes, I will.” (How do you say no to two Catholic nuns?) So we slipped away to a side room where I tuned the guitar.

 

 Sensing my nervousness as my preparation time before the service slipped away, one of the nuns put her hand on my arm and said reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Brother Lea. We’ve prayed for you today for eight hours.” I could hardly believe what she’d said, but nevertheless felt grateful, even relieved. She laid her hands on me and began to speak in tongues. The other one began singing in tongues. Within a few seconds I didn’t know if I was terrestrial or celestial, but I knew I was with two women who really knew God!
 

 When they got through, one of them said to me, “Does the phrase ‘It is finished’ mean anything to you, Brother Lea?”
Chills went all over my body, because that was my text for the evening.
 The service began, and I preached from one of those right-handed Methodist pulpits way up high in the air. At the end of the sermon I gave the invitation, and 100 young people walked forward!
 Well, the next night I was to preach at the Catholic church. I got there early and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the two nuns walk in the back door carry¬ing their guitar. This time I ran right up to them and asked, ‘‘Could I tune your guitar for you?” My heart hadn’t been in it the night before but it sure was this time.

 

 We went through the little guitar-tuning ritual, and I got down to business. Without batting an eye, I said, “Let’s do it again； you know, what we did last night.’’ So they laid their hands on me, and it happened again. Then the nun who had never spoken a word of English in my presence asked casually, “Brother Lea, you remember the woman who had the issue of blood and reached out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment?(You guessed it. That was the text I had chosen for my sermon that evening!)
 

I preached, and 100 more people found God that night. By the end of the week, 500 people had been saved in that small town.Well, as I flew back to Dallas, I tried to figure out just exactly how, in my most humble way, I would announce at the staff meeting what God had done through me. “How did the youth revival go? Oh, not too bad—we had 500 saved. It was a pretty good week.”
 I had always wanted to be an evangelist. Now I knew I was an evangelist, and it felt wonderful. I was gloating over the number of people saved, thinking about how I could report it meekly, when the Holy Spirit abruptly interrupted my musings. “Son,” He said, “let’s get one thing straight You had nothing at all to do with that revival.”
My mouth dropped open, but I shut it fast!
The voice inside me continued： “What happened was simply that somebody prayed the price:’

 

 Those words rang in my ears for years afterward. Prayed the price! Somebody prayed the price.” By 1978 when Pastor Conatser passed away and I was extended the call to become the pastor of Beverly Hills Baptist Church, my holy frustration had reached a climax. I was to the place where nothing mattered anymore ex¬cept the call to pray. I had to answer this call, this call which was higher than the call to preach. That’s when I took my little family and went back home to Kilgore, Texas. That’s when I met B.J. Willhite and my desperate desire to prayer shifted into holy discipline.

 

 It was during those days, while I searched for wisdom as a person would search for lost money or hidden treasure, that the Lord began to reveal to me new things, hidden things about prayer that I had not known before. As I continually cried out to Him, He poured revelation into my spirit. By the time He commanded me to go to Rockwall and establish His people there, I had been delivered from the theology that says, “Big is better.” I went to Rockwall with one thought in mind, and that was to equip some people and teach them how to pray. I did not know I was moving right into the taproot of the very thing that blossomed into the outpouring of the power of God in the first century. I just knew I had to pray and I had to teach other people how to pray. Our church was about a year old in 1981 when I went to New Orleans to hear Paul Yonggi Cho, pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea, the largest church in the world. The Lord helped me get in to see him, and we met in a small back room of the church hosting the seminar. As my eyes met his, I felt as if I were looking right into the man’s soul.

 

 I knew we had only a minute and my one-liner had better be good, so I blurted out something like, 

“Dr. Cho, how did you build such a great church?’’
He smiled back at me and, with no hesitation, replied, ‘‘I pray, and I obey.” And then he laughed.
 I chuckled with him, but inside I was rehearsing his words. That's the key, I muttered to myself. That's it right there. Pray and obey, Larry. Pray and obey.
 I will never forget his words. You see, there are a lot of people who want to obey, but they do not pray. And there are some people who pray, but do not have the courage to obey. But prayer and obedience must go hand in hand if we are to move into the power and anointing of the Spirit of God.
 

 I’m convinced that the disciples weren’t much different from you and me. Like us, they had to beat their brains out against one brick wall after another before they came to Jesus and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
 That's the way it was for me. I tried to pray on my own, but I knew there was something missing. I kept cry¬ing out to God, “Lord, teach me how to pray. Teach me how to pray!” And one day, no sooner than those words were out of my mouth, the lessons began. 

 

Ch.7. (COULD YOU NOT TARRY ONE HOUR?)

 

 When I asked the Lord to teach me how to tarry with Him an hour in prayer, I remembered that Jesus instructed His disciples, “After this man¬ner therefore pray ye” (Matt. 6:9). I opened my Bible to the verses we have come to call “the Lord’s Prayer’’ and pondered those 66 words：

 

 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temp¬tation, but deliver us from evil： For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for
ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

 

 I was puzzled, and I said so. “Lord, I can say that in 22 seconds, and I can sing it in a minute and a half. How is this ever going to help me tarry with You an hour?” The Spirit of God answered： “Say it r-e-a-l slow.” Like an obedient child, I began reciting the familiar words, pausing after each short phrase： “Our Father... which art in heaven...Hallowed be Thy name....” Just as those words were out of my mouth, the Spirit of God began to drop into my heart a series of revelations and visions that planted me once and for all in the discipline of prayer and shifted my prayer life into holy delight.

 Now I hope it doesn’t upset anybody when I admit that I saw a vision. I can almost see the eyebrows going up. Do you know what’s wrong with believers today? We’ve studied the counterfeit for so long, we don’t even recognize the original anymore. It’s a shame that a boy who had attended church off and on for 17 years wound up in a psychiatric ward before he found out God could talk!

 

 If only I had known someone like those two little Catholic nuns I told you about. One of them came up to me some time ago and asked with a smile, “Do you know how I know things?’’
I returned her grin and asked, “How?”
She replied matter of factly, “I know ’em in my ‘knower’!’’
 If you are a believer, you, too, have a “knower.” It is the witness of the Holy Spirit.
After I asked the question, “Lord, how can I learn to tarry with You one hour?,” the Lord made me a prom¬ise. “When you learn to tarry with Me one hour,” He pledged, “something supernatural will happen in your life.” And then He showed me that what we call “the Lord’s Prayer” is actually a prayer outline.
 You see, the first-century rabbis usually taught by giving topics of truth. They listed certain topics and then under each topic, the rabbis provided a complete outline. In His model prayer, Jesus enumerated topics and instructed： “After this manner therefore pray ye” (Matt. 6：9-13). We have memorized, quoted and sung the Lord’s Prayer, but we have not seen it as a group of six topics to be followed in prayer under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

 

 My friend Brad Young, author of The Jewish Back¬ground to the Lord's Prayer, says that certain ancient writings contain prayers of early Christians which are based upon the Lord’s Prayer and require about one hour to pray through.

 Young also made a fascinating observation based upon Acts 1：14. You remember that the disciples, along with Mary the mother of Jesus, Christ's brothers and other believers, gathered in the Upper Room after Jesus1 ascen-sion, in obedience to His command to wait for the Holy Spirit. Scripture records：”These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.” Young pointed out that the Greek does not read “in prayer”; rather this verse actually states： “These all continued with one accord in ‘the Prayer’ and supplication.” He said that ancient literature often refers to the Lord’s Prayer as “the Prayer.”

 

 Today a new generation of disciples is discovering the principles, purpose and power behind the familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer. And, as we rediscover the power and necessity of prayer, our prayer lives are moving from desire to discipline to delight.
 As you discipline yourself to take this prayer outline and come into God’s presence, prayer will become your life flow as it was the life flow of Jesus and the early church. But I should sound this warning： This is no little 10-watt truth； it’s a powerful 220-watt revelation that can illuminate your temple with the glory of God and transform your house of prayer into a house of power and perfected praise. If you’re ready, plug in.