The Child His Church Prayed For Twelve Years

The Child His Church Prayed For Twelve Years

by Reginald (Reg) Goff

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I do not know how a person can grow spiritually the way God wants them to grow without belonging to a prayer group. I just don’t know that. There are some people like myself and our brother, E. Stanley Jones, who used to be with us, and those who can’t belong to a prayer group because we travel. But the people in your homes, you can’t see yourself like others can. You can’t always administer the things like somebody else can. You need other people. You need them to help you, to advise you, and for you to bless them and so on. There’s something about a prayer group that gives for growth. And my next book is going to be Help for Praying People, and it will be for types of things to help people in prayer. Now, in this, on this sheet, I’m going to hurry through as fast as I can and just take a few of them. The new sheet has 24 on it. Perhaps we’ll have about 30 before the book is published. But first of all, the overall goal, and I think we do wrong by joining prayer groups to become gimme groups. We go there to get things from God, to get answers to prayer, to get mother healed, to get our children help, and so on.

Now, when that excitement is over, you begin to lose interest in prayer groups. And if it doesn’t just fit you, you quit. Whereas if you have a goal in that prayer group, something to happen to you. And again, let me say, the basic to everything I teach in prayer is that you don’t have to whine to God to get things that He already wants to do. You simply have to offer yourself as channels. So, the prayer group ought to be more for your development than for getting answers for somebody to prayer. I mean this. The answers will come if you develop properly. God is using all of us this morning to the fullest extent He can use us. Now, that doesn’t make me happy any more than you. God is using us today to the fullest extent that He can use us. Now, if you don’t believe that, then you’re saying God is leaving lying all around good material and won’t use it and let the world go to pieces. I don’t believe that about God. I think God is using every person He can use. So, if we’re not being used as much as we ought to be used, then maybe we better turn our prayer groups into changing ourselves so we can become the kind of people that God can use.

And this is my whole philosophy in prayer groups. Now, first of all, then, the overall goal should be spiritual development and maturity of both the individuals and the group. Now, I have to say individuals and the group too, because sometimes we get off as an individual and need fences around us, and sometimes we get off as groups and need fences around us. So, there’s the two angles of this thing. I think in my book I said that one of the goals for developing a prayer group was to be a redemptive group. Now, you can’t be a redemptive group unless it’s made up of redemptive persons. You see? You can’t have an American society that’s made up of American people. You can’t have a redemptive group unless the people enter redemptive. So, a redemptive person, by the way, is a person that every situation you are in is better because you’re there.

That’ll kind of burn you for a little while, but it’s pretty good. A redemptive person is one that is always on the good side, always on the positive. That means he’s never criticizing the preacher and he’s never against the church and damning it and yacky about it. He’s doing all he can to make it better. And you can’t do that negatively. You’ve got to do it positively. All right. Now, number four… or number three, rather, I want to take. Emphasis on the present and the future without ignoring the past. We in America have gone through 50 years of being psychoanalyzed by psychiatrists and psychologists who have helped some people but have left a trail of broken lives behind them that is almost immeasurable.

Unless a man is a psychiatrist, is a Christian, what is the use in giving him the dirt of your life to look at? If he doesn’t know a power greater than just psychiatry and manipulating the mind, then he isn’t going to help you one bit. All he’s going to do is give you a reason to be bad. Huh. Yeah, your mother kicked you into the kids, so you can’t expect you to be too good, you know. And nobody loves you when you’re a child, see, so you’re just not going to work right. That is all wrong. Today we are changing this, and two of the great psychiatrists in the world, Dr. Glasser from University of Southern California and Dr. Hobart Mowrer from the University of Illinois, both of them have come out with a new idea. One of them calls themselves Reality Therapy, Dr. Glasser. And the other, by the way, that’s a book worth buying: Reality Therapy by Dr. William Glasser. And the other one can be bought in paperback, Integrity Therapy by Hobart Mowrer, M-O-W-R-E-R. These two men have said, “Yes, let’s look at the past, but quit dwelling on it. The problem today is not the past, the problem is how I am reacting wrong today.” That’s the problem. Not what happened to me as a kid. Now there may be a reason why I’m reacting.

So the idea now is, look at the past. Take a look at it. Then see why we’re reacting wrong now. And I am here to help you learn how to react right in the future. That’s a totally new approach. Now if your prayer groups don’t get this approach, you can mull over and bog down in the things of the past, my friends, until you’ve lost your feet and lost everything you’ve got. Let’s not do that. Let’s not talk about, you know, what is it Hal Hill says? Pity parties. And I call them organ recitals. You know, when you talk about all the organs that went wrong in your body.

I think we’ve got to get rid of these things. We’ve got to have a new approach to the whole thing in our prayers. Now, emphasis on the present and the future without ignoring the past. The past does have something to do with it. You know that. And I believe earnestly in the healing of the memories, which does take care pretty well of the past. However, I am a little uptight on that because I think some people are abusing that today. And some people are praying for the healing of the memories that don’t know what they’re talking about. And sometimes people are left out on the limb. All right. Number four. Change is encouraged and helped, but never forced. My friends, when are we Christian people going to quit trying to make somebody else like us? Just when?

I don’t know how to say this as strong as I’d like to say it. If I did say it, you’d get mad. What better not do it? Change is encouraged. But because I changed today doesn’t mean Ed has to change tomorrow and Joyce the next day and Jimmy the next day. It does not mean that. We may not be ready. And all changes come when you and I are ready to face what the problem is now and change for the future. And that doesn’t come the same time to everybody. It just doesn’t. I took up faith, so let’s jump that one. Let’s take seven. This is a tremendous thing that came to me about a year ago. I think too often we are praying too small. Now there’s two areas. One, we can pray too big and we’re not big enough to pray that way. One is we don’t pray pinpointing enough, and we mess it up by praying about everything in general. There’s two things here. Now, this thing I learned. Well, let me give you an illustration. Supposing you’re praying for the President of the United States. Now, my friends, we know enough about government, I’m sure, in our democracies to know that the President cannot read all the reports of all the research people that he has working for him.

He has to pay people to get ideas. He has to evaluate those things and then take them or not take them. So when you pray for the President, you better pray for the ones that are advising him. You see? Instead of praying for the President, include the whole situation about that thing. All these men that are giving him their advice. And so it’s the same thing even in a home. What’s the use in praying for a woman who is ill? Who has become ill because her husband is mean and not good to her. What’s the use in praying for her? If he’s going right on doing the same thing tomorrow. You may get her healing, and she’ll be back in Slavdospon six months later. Right back down there. So I have learned that you need to pray for the situation a person is in as well as the person themselves. And number eight, I have it much different, but the idea is here. The majority of healings are done gradually. Now, my friend, I love the sudden healings just as much as you do. I was in the CFO camp one time when there was a man there who was all like this, all crippled up and bound. And the meeting was over, and I was sitting on the platform counseling with a person.

Nearly everybody had gone. And suddenly I heard an unearthly scream. And I turned and looked back in the audience, and here was this man with his hands straight up above his head. That was something to scream about. I mean, he had literally been released. It was fantastic. Now we’re all happy about those things. But let me clue you. I have talked to some of the greatest people in the healing movement in the world today. I can name them. You know them all. There is no one of them that doesn’t say there are more healings gradual than instantaneous. There is no one of them.

And the gradual ones, where we lose our faith, isn’t it? Because we don’t think it’s done instantaneously. The thing nothing was done when God may have redirected the whole process and your body is about to get well. So we’ve got to watch that. So situational praying is tremendous. And the majority of healings, troubled situations when solved, are done so over a period of time, not instantaneously. And by the way, do you know the great percentage of our sicknesses that comes out of our married life?

Oh, yes it does. The tensions of the relationship between man and woman will cause all kinds of physical disabilities. And we need to realize the fact that it may take time to change a family situation. God may change you, but what about that ornery husband? It may take you six months on him. You see? Ha! We’ll let that slide. Now, but the trouble is this, folks. We pray for people and then drop them.

That’s right. Now, let me use a simple illustration. Here is a lovely soul over here that most of us have been praying for a long time. Now, don’t raise your hands and don’t distort your face so I don’t know what you’re saying, thinking. How much do you pray for her when you don’t see her?

That’s a dirty question, isn’t it? Oh, we all pray for her when she’s here, we see her. That’s fine. But what about it when I’m in Arizona and she’s in Iowa, is it? Michigan. Oh, that’s right. What about that? Now, I’m just using hers as an illustration. How long do you pray for people once you’ve started to pray? This is one of the reasons why I don’t think churches ought to have large prayer groups. They ought to have a lot of little ones.

Wednesday night prayer meeting and somebody brings a real need. Oh, boy. We all get excited and we all pray in a big deal, see? Next week we have another way of prayer meeting and there’s a new one that needs help. So we all get on that bandwagon. Next week there’s a new one and we get on that bandwagon. By the time six weeks has gone, we’re not praying for the first one at all, hardly. And they have lost out and they’re not getting any prayer support. And if it’s a gradual healing, they’re not getting any support.

But if little groups can learn to find the mind of God, call the Holy Spirit, call it wherever you want to. But if the little groups can learn to listen to God, and God say, “This is your project,” and that little group can carry on in that project and keep at it if there’s a dozen new things come up. Let them go. Pray when you can, yes. But this is our project. We have a starting one in our last church. A child that was born in our family, which the doctors rudely said is a chunk of flesh. It had never spoken, never cried, never whimpered, never taken hold of anything. It had six months. Just lie there. Feed it. Just lie there. Just like a perfectly limp little thing.

That child today is earning his own living and not even living at home. And the doctor said it had no mind. But let me tell you something. That child had a praying church. And I mean a praying church. Perhaps 300 praying people in that church. And they prayed for that child for 12 long years.

And as it progressed, they kept praying, until there came almost a complete total restoration. Now you tell me anywhere a church would pray for one thing, eight or twelve times. And I believe that prayer is a tool that you and I can take into our hands, or our life, however you want to word it. We can take into our hands and can change situations.

I believe this. If it is, my friends, then let’s get it out of the emotional binge. Praying when you’re excited. Praying when somebody lifts up a real problem. Everybody gets excited and forget tomorrow. If you’re going to take prayer as work, you’re going to take it and pray till the answer comes. If it’s six years, fine.

And some of us men may take six years too. We’re kind of tough. Now then. Number nine, really is a part of one above. I’ve changed this a little bit. Sharing about deep personal problems only when one feels ready and no probing by others.

I have seen so many people hurt. One person comes to the dumping out stage and they feel relieved and they finally feel they’re with a group they can trust. And they feel the love of God in that group and they pour out something they’ve never told anybody. They know it’ll never go beyond that group. And then tomorrow, next week, we think Mary ought to do the same thing.

No, not at all. And nobody ought to be ever forced to look into their lives and bring out things they don’t want to talk about until they are ready. And it’s not very good Christianity not to see that and not to act that way to our fellow man. That’s very, very important. Number ten, spend most of the praying time in silence. Praying in union and listening to what God will say to us. Now you can’t pray in union in silence unless there’s some direction. In other words, we’ll say, here is John who needs prayer. So we all pray silently for John. We can’t have union if you don’t know what other people are praying about, you see. So you lift up things and pray together. Praying in union and listening to what God will say to us. Our own chatter can prevent our listening. I was a man fifty years old before I learned that you can’t learn a thing while you’re talking. You’re only giving out what you already know. But if you shut up, somebody else might tell you something.

And this is tremendously serious. God has never spoken to me but once or twice in my whole life when I was busy with my active mind or talking. No. Now I have learned in later years, as we learn more about the Holy Spirit, I have learned that the Holy Spirit can speak through me and I don’t know until it’s all over what I’m going to say. I know that. And I believe in that thoroughly. But ordinarily speaking, as long as we are chattering, as long as we are talking, we’re only giving out what we’ve already known. And we never get anything new. And in prayer, this is disastrous. Now, spend most of the time praying. Our own chatter can prevent our listening. It may be easier to recognize God’s voice in the silence. You all know that’s true. Audible praying can be distracting and hinder union of thought and meditation. Here is Mrs. Jones who’s known for her long praying. And she goes on and on and on and on and on and on, you know. And you get fed up with it and you start thinking, “What am I going to pray with? She’s done because she’s covered everything.” See? “What’s left for me to pray about?” And you get confused. Now, don’t tell me you don’t think these things.

I thought these things as a kid when I wasn’t even a Christian in the old fashioned prayer meeting. You know something? We had a lady at our church when I was a kid. Of course, I was a preacher’s kid. I had to go to church prayer meeting. We had a lady, I could tell you exactly what she was half true.

Do you know why? Because she got to China. Half true. And listen, she did that year in and year out. And another funnum, like remember since I was a kid. A wonderful, godly old man that I just loved like a grandpa. But I hated what he did. He always prayed at every night. Of course, he always prayed. You know, in the old fashioned prayer meeting, you had to pray or ever thought you’d lost out. You’d backslidden. You’re Baptist, can’t have that. But we Methodists believe in it and do it.

But this dear old man would pray, and he always closed up his prayer with one sentence. Now listen carefully to what he said. And I heard him say this scores and scores at times. “And, dear Lord, please break down this middle wall of partition.”

I heard him say that for 10 years. And nobody ever told the old boy he wasn’t even quoting the scripture. But anyway, now, always pray. And this 11, I think, is about the most important one in the whole page.

Always pray, remembering that God always wants good for everyone, or for that one you’re praying. We do not feel we need to change God’s mind. Now listen, folks. If you don’t think you’re changing God’s mind, why do you beg and whine, “Please, God, please, God”? Why? If you don’t think God doesn’t want to, and you’ve got to beg Him to do it.

Now, folks, we’ve been in some awful ruts in our pyramid and curlers. Terrible ruts. And we need to break them. I’m a little bit unhappy because the charismatic movement came in and just busted nearly all the ruts we had. Thank God. But you know what? They’re getting almost as bad a ruts today as we were. Just almost as bad. You’ve got to do it the same way. You’ve got to say the same thing. You’ve got to have the same experiences or you’re not in it. We’re just getting right down in the same ruts. And if we do, God will lose the tremendous power He’s got in this world today for good. And God is moving through the groups and through the Holy Spirit today such as I’ve never seen in my life. But when we start putting a box around the Holy Spirit, the same thing will happen as conversion did in the Methodist church when we put a box around it. One day we opened the box and it wasn’t there.

You had to get into an altar under heavy preaching. You had to cry and weep. People had to beat you on the back. You had to get up and shout or you didn’t have anything. And when we did that, conversion and the newborn experience began to disappear out of the Methodist church. That’s right. And we’re doing the same thing today with the Holy Spirit. We’re boxing it in. It’s got to be our way. Nobody else has it but just the ones who do certain things. And that is not true. I beg of us. And maybe I’m as guilty as anybody else, but let’s not be guilty. Alright. I’m not going to take number twelve because… Well, let me finish that one. Always pray, remember that God always wants good for everyone. And we do not feel we need to change God’s mind. But we are praying and offering ourselves as channels through which God can work His will. Not our will. God’s will in the lives of those for whom we pray. I can take an hour of that but we have in time. Number twelve we’re going to skip because I want to take more time on it in one of my later talks.

Number thirteen is poorly worded. It didn’t quite mean what I said here. What I really mean is that you grow and develop new cells. But you don’t split the old cell. Which it almost sounds like here. You don’t split the old cell because the old cell has grown along quite a ways in understanding, meaning, and power. And now if new people are going to come in, they don’t know where you’re at. They don’t know what you mean. They’re not with it. There’s no union. So we start a new group on their level and they begin to grow to where we are. And we help them and shepherd them and help them. But we don’t split up the group and do this. Because I think a group who really finds union with God, which we will talk about later, may stay together for years and years and years. The strongest prayer groups I know in the world today have been together with the same people for over 20 years.

That’s right. Now then, number 14. Persons in small, closely-knit groups who know each other intimately are less tempted to display feelings of spiritual superiority. I wonder, have you ever heard any parading your religion, you know, bragging on what we do and what God does through us like as if we are really something. But somebody who lives next door to you may know that you didn’t act that way the next day. And you’re not so free to brag a bit in front of him as you are somebody who doesn’t know you. And I do think that there’s a lot of ego left yet in all of us. A lot of ego. And we have got to chisel away at that and ask God to help us until it’s God only and Christ only and it’s not us. Number 15. The real ultimate goal of persons in these groups should be that they will grow into the very likeness of Christ and be the kind of a person that God will love to use to build the real kingdom of God on earth and for eternity. God said to me one day, He said, “There are two criteria if I’m going to be able to use you. The first is to be usable. The second is to be available.”

Now we Methodists have turned that around. We’re all available. We’re the most activists if anybody ever lived. Man, we can have more committees and projects. I’m telling you, you can buy sheets of paper. We just got them every direction. And General Conference is made up of a group of people who have decided on some new projects for the next four years. That’s General Conference. All we come together for is to say yes so they can go ahead.

Now, these projects. Oh, brother. We’re going to be able to do it. When the real ultimate goal ought to be that you and I become usable so God can get His project going and include us in it. I pray morning after morning after morning. I lie along before… I’m one of those guys who clock goes off up here about 4.30 and I can’t help it. I’ve never… I often wonder if I could offer it and take it up. It isn’t. It’s still there. I just wake up bright, shiny-eyed, general bushy-tailed at 4.30 or 5.00. I might just as well get up. Now, I think I lie and pray. That’s a great kind of pray. After I had my heart attack and the doctor said, “You cannot get up at 4.35. You can’t do it. Your body won’t stand it. You’re getting older.” And so I learned to lie. He said, “You don’t have to sleep to rest unless you fuss. Now, if you lie there to fuss because you can’t sleep, you’re not resting. But if you lie there and rest, you don’t need sleep.” There’s nothing great about the eyes being closed. Not at all. It’s relaxation is what the body needs to get itself in tune again and be able to carry itself.

And so I’ve learned how to relax. And that takes time, by the way, too. I’ve learned to relax and pray. And I love to wake in the morning and say, “Good morning, Lord. What do You and I have to do together today?” Or I like to say, “Lord, let me find out where You’re working today and get in on it.”

Not, “Lord, get in on where I’m going to work, my field, you know, of service.” No. I want to pray to find out where God is working and help Him. He knows who’s ready. I don’t. He does. Listen, my friend, let me talk here. I don’t care who you are. We think we know an awful lot about our friends, our relatives, our loved ones, especially husbands and wives and parents and children. My, how we think we know them so well.

We didn’t know we never know each other fully. Let me give you an illustration. May I take time to do it. This was one of the greatest heartbreaks I’ve ever had in my life. I had a father who was a great minister. He was a great minister. I mean great. I think he started, built 32 churches and over 200 young men into his ministry out of his work and he was just a great man. But you know, my father didn’t know his own son.

And the day I gave my heart to God, I wish I had time to tell you the whole story. It’s a beautiful story. For two solid years I had walked toward God and nobody knew it. Not a soul. I had cut off every known habit I had. One by one I could name them. I had more sense of some people. I didn’t try to take them all at once. I took one sin and beat it. And quit it, and then I’d take another one. I did that for two years. When I came up to this day, this faithful, tremendous day of my life, I did not have one known sin left in my life. And I still wasn’t a Christian. Yes, I had one known sin. One. That was rejection of Christ. I had to give in and say God will be a preacher. So help me God, I didn’t want to be a preacher. Don’t get if he’d left me off. But lots of other things I’d rather do.

Now, I gave my heart to God and I thought, well, I better go tell Dad. He was a preacher, he’d been praying. I was his prodigal son. I was a thorn in his family. And had brought disgrace to him and all that. And I knew it and he knew it. And I thought, Dad ought to be the first to know it. And I went to where my father was. I found him at a table in a dining hall eating with a group of friends. And I put my arm around the back, from the back, my arm around his neck and whispered in his ear and I said, “Dad, I’ve given my heart to Christ.” I literally believed, honestly believed, that my dad would knock the dishes off the table getting up and hugging me and we’d have a hallelujah Methodist camp meeting. But do you know what happened? He turned and said, “Did you?” And I went right on eating.

I’ve never been hurt like that in my life. I turned and walked out, a heart as big as this building, heavy as this building. I sat under a tree for two solid hours and bawled my eyes out. I just couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t because Dad didn’t love me, but Dad didn’t think I was near the kingdom at all. He didn’t know that I was ready to step into the kingdom, the very thing he wanted. And of course, because I didn’t get it the way he wanted it, he didn’t quite accept it. I really had gotten much, you see. Now I’m telling you this, folks, very carefully. You rarely ever know which one of your family is in need today or near the threshold of God today.

Isn’t there just maybe, isn’t it just possible that if you were close to the Holy Spirit enough for Him to guide you, that you know who to give extra prayer for that day? That boy that is up against the wall and struggling and he won’t tell you and he won’t say a thing, but he’s aching and bleeding inside.

I think we need to get to the place where we sometimes maybe quit talking about the Holy Spirit for a while and use Him. I really knew. We talk an awful lot about the Holy Spirit. How much do we depend on Him for whom I should pray today? Who should I spend the time today really giving power to this person? Only the Holy Spirit knows that. You don’t know him. You may think you do, but you don’t. Now, avoid 18. Avoid all gossip. How often I have been told that they’re going to tell you all faithfully, things about a sickness so you can pray better. That is the devil’s lie. The bigger the problem, the less faith you’re going to have. Now, don’t you say you don’t. Because if you’ve got a cold, why, you’ve got lots of faith for that. But let them mention that little word cancer and see where your faith goes. Yeah. Let them mention a runaway boy on drugs and see where your faith goes. No, it doesn’t build your faith to know all the dirt about a situation. You see, you become problem conscious then. And you literally are thinking about the problem when you pray instead of being God conscious. The God who is big enough for that problem, no matter what it is, that God is big enough.

And until you and I begin in prayer to become God-centered and ignore the problems in so much as thinking about it, talking about it. I have seen prayer groups come and talk about situations and everybody threw their dirt in and the pile got so big nobody can pray about anything. Just for a bunch of whining kids to God. There’s no faith, no outreaches, no uplift. Everything was down. Isn’t that terrible, you know? So terrible, really nothing can happen, you know? And God may have a time Himself to do what’s on the mind. Now this is not the way to live. This is not the way to pray. The way to prayer is to say, “This situation may be bad, very bad, but I’ve got a God in front of me bigger.”

I’ve got a God that’s bigger than all that problem together. And I’m going to get my face on Jesus. That’s why I have a hang-up on this demon worship among Christians. Did you hear what I said? Demon worship. Actually, there are people running around our country, and there are great Christians too, who are everything is emphasis on demons, not on Christ. And my friend, I don’t believe this is good. I literally don’t. I believe you’ve got a face… Listen, I know all about… I don’t know all about you, no, I didn’t mean that. I know plenty about demons. I have faced them, and they’ve talked to them, and they’ve talked to me, and we’ve cast them out and bound them. I know what I’m talking about. But don’t come running around talking to me about it every time you see me. Because I have something else to talk about, and that’s Jesus.

I want to give glory to Jesus. You can advertise the power of the devil until half the people in your congregation think they’ve got a devil. Now, there may be one around us all chasing us. But I don’t let mine get very close. I just shoo them all.

Oh, let me tell you a story. This is a good one. This is a real one. I have a friend in our city, by the way, one of the greatest illustrations of the Jesus kids in the whole world. And second to Anaheim. Now, I think it’s the greatest in the world. But second to that is Tucson, and it’s hardly ever written up or broadcast a thing about it. But what’s going on there is really something. One couple whose son was taken by an addict to him, they tried to help. And instead of turning bitter, turned to love. One of the most glorious stories I may tell you before I leave, I don’t know. It’s one of the most glorious stories. They have over 400 kids in Tucson who were straight-blind drug kids, who are today Jesus kids, and were instantaneously taking off drugs every one by prayer. It is simply a story that needs to be told all over the world. Let me tell you about one girl. She told me this her own self. She’s a brilliant girl. She has three degrees. She’s a daughter of a very brilliant professor at the University of Arizona in our city. Beautiful, wonderful Christian family. But somehow this kid got off the wrong track. And she got dabbing in drugs.

And it got worse. And she couldn’t pay it. And she couldn’t get enough drugs. And she was in trouble. And then she realized there’s too many girls have found out that the easy way to get your drug money is sell your body. And she was faced with that. But there was something in her that was too good. And there was something about her parents praying no doubt for her that held her. And she said, “I can’t go that route. I can’t do that. I’m not going to become a prostitute for money.” Satan came to her and said to her, “I will give you all the drugs you can use for all the rest of your life. Free. On one condition. And that is that you give away all the drugs you can’t use. Don’t sell them. Just give them away.” Well, that wasn’t hard to say yes. So she said yes. Now listen. That girl told me that she would come into her locked apartment and find drugs on the kitchen table. She would go to put a pair of shoes on and wouldn’t go on. And she’d pull down there and pull drugs out of her shoes. She would put her hands in her coat pocket to get some of you. And there would be a package of drugs.

She said drugs just came and came and came and came. And she said, “Boy, this was great.” She had all the rubbish that she could use and didn’t cost her time. And all she had to do was give it away. But one day again, oh, many things I’d like to say here. I’m having to get time. This girl, the good girl inside her, like the boy, the prodigal who came to himself. And I hope you read that first chapter of my book, because I’ll tell you frankly, I think it’s great. Excuse me for saying so. Well, I think it’s great. It’s a loving father, not a prodigal son we’re talking about there. Anyway, this girl, the goodness in her rebelled again, because it dawned on her what Satan was doing. He was starting other kids on drugs. Free drugs, you see. And he just started dozens of kids in the university on drugs. And she couldn’t take that either. Now, in the meantime, it’s a long story, but in the meantime, we had a great outdoor rally in Tucson that shook our city. It shook our city largely because of the negative side. They were going to have this in the auditorium at the University of Arizona, which is legally to anybody can rent it.

And they rented it. And then some people found out about it. And they besieged the university to cut them off. And the university canceled them and wouldn’t let them have it, which was illegal. And then when they found that out, the city found that out, they said the university couldn’t do one thing for three days because their phones were all tied up. And the people called them up and asked them why they wouldn’t let that Jesus kids in that auditorium. And they couldn’t even do business for three days, as many people called. So then they recanted and decided they let them have it. And the kids said, “We don’t want it.” And they went out to the city and got the big city park. And they had 5,000 kids sitting in that city park there and talking about Jesus. And this girl stood on the other side of the ring and listened to what they said. And she heard these kids talking about being freed and about trusting Jesus. This was new to her. She’d been one of these real nice little, you know, church girls, you know. And Jesus was kind of an addition to your life, you know, coloring on one side of the face. But not real. And she heard this and it seeped in her mind.

And they heard her, them telling that you could put the blood of Jesus over you and the devil couldn’t hurt you. She heard this. She didn’t know what it meant. And Satan came to her and said, “You betrayed me. I have given you all the drugs you wanted. I made a pact with you.” And she said, “But I’m not going to do it anymore.” He said, “I will kill you.” She said, “You can’t. I’ll cover myself with the blood of Jesus.”

Wasn’t that something? And he left. And that girl today is one of the beautiful Jesus kids in that city. Just beautiful. What I’m saying here, folks, just let’s get rid of talking about the devil. Let’s talk about Jesus. Let’s talk about the power of Almighty God. We need to do this. Now then. Well, where were we? We got off the track here, didn’t we? Gossip and needless chatter about problems. Keep God-centered and not problem-centered. Now, I want to give you two things here, and I’ve just got time enough to do it. One, there’s a tremendous power in finding somebody that you can be a telephone prayer partner with. You never have to have meetings. You don’t have to go away from your family for a whole evening to have a meeting. But you find somebody that you feel union with. Real union. You’re really something. And you can say, well, let’s say as mothers, and once the kids are gone from school and hubby’s gone away, there’s a little period in there, you know, you can’t do what you want to. And if you pick a time like this and say, “At nine o’clock each morning, one of us will call the other,” you see. And then, don’t hold up your line for hours, but have three or four minutes of prayer time together on the telephone.

And this can be tremendous. The prayer partners by telephone are just fantastic. And then the next thing I want to give you, which I think you need when you go back home, is calling card praying. This, I have found, to be one of the most powerful things in all the field of prayer. I think I’ll tell you a story and you can catch the inferences from the story. We had a boy in our community that was going to penitentiary. He had done everything and had been the means of the death of his father and his mother. Now he was left underage, received a lot of money when he became of age, but they were going to send him to penitentiary because of the things he’d done. He’d been kicked out of school. He never could go back to school. He had done the awful things he’d done in the school. I wouldn’t even report to you publicly the things he did in that school. But anyway, here he was, standing before the judge. And I went before that judge and stood there and cried. I said, “Judge, please don’t send that boy to the penitentiary.” I had been a chaplain for 19 years of those institutions and I knew what it was. And I did not want that boy sent there.

The judge paroled him on two agreements. One that I could find a home for, imagine, a home for that kid. And the second was that I’d find a lawyer that would take care of his money. It wasn’t hard to find the lawyers. They’re always looking for money anyway. So I found a lawyer right quickly, but I couldn’t find a home. And then finally a home in another state called me long distance and said, “We’ll take this boy.” And I’ll tell you frankly, I would not have done what they did. I couldn’t have done what they did. They had three high school kids of their own. And then took that kid in to live with those three kids. I couldn’t have done that. I really don’t think I could have. They did. Now, I knew there could be tragedy in that home. I knew what could happen. For I went to seven men in our community, responsible people. Now, I’m not the kind that boils down because a man is the president of the bank. But let me say something very honestly. I have found that a man that gets to be president of the bank, there’s quite a bit of dependability to that man too. Let’s face it. You don’t become a senator without something behind you.

You don’t become a head of a big business without some evaluation. And I found these men, when they find Christ, are tremendous. They have leadership and they’ll do what they say. And I went to seven men, bank president and all that kind of thing, senator. And I laid the whole thing before them. I said, “This could be tragedy in that home.”

And they said, “What do you want me to do?” I said, “I want you to become a prayer partner of mine.” And they said, “Well, what?” I said, so I took little calling cards and I wrote this boy’s name. This isn’t his name. You know, see, Jimmy Goff, that’d be me, but a red Goff. I wrote his name, just a name, on the card. And I handed each one of those men separately. Now, I did this personally, one by one. And by the way, ministers, we better wake up to the fact that you don’t get men in mass. You get them by going out to seek them one by one. Now, I have caught two fish and I had two flies on, but I never caught two fish and one fly.

Never yet. And we do too much to expect you to do things in mass instead of going out and seeking men and selling them on the job. Anyway, I did this. Every one of these men I went to, and I said, “I want you to put this card where you’ll see it many times a day.” For instance, the banker. I said, “Now you’ve got a big desk here where you sit behind people come in and out to talk to you. I just stick that card under the glass. Not way up where the visitors are going to see it, but where you see it. And in between times, you’re talking to people coming in and going out, just offer a prayer for Jimmy. That’s all. Every time you see that card, pray for Jimmy.” Now, he’s in another state and that was good, so we didn’t know how to pray, see. That was good. We couldn’t tell God what to do. And so we just prayed, “Send love to Jimmy and to that family.” Now, listen, I want to take just a minute. Listen, the first thing that happened to that boy was this. He was a chain smoker and nobody in that home smoked. Imagine taking that kid into your home. And about 30 days, this kid came to the man who took him in and said to him, “Sir, I want to say something to you.

He said, you were the only person in the world that I know that would help me. And I would have been in penitentiary today if you hadn’t helped me. None of your family smoke and I have done nothing but stink your house up ever since I’ve come here, chain smoking. And he said, I don’t feel good about it. Here’s my cigarettes.” That man has never smoked in that day to live. And he’s an adult now. The next thing was, he came to him and he said, “You know, I was kicked out of school back there in the state where I was. I can’t go to school. But couldn’t we work to get me into school here?” Now, there’s always ways of working those things. And I know them too because I worked with boys. You can work through your senators and through mayors of cities and a lot of things and school boards. And boy, you can get a lot done. We got him into school. That kid never took anything but a straight A from the time that he graduated high school. Straight A. And he’d been kicked out of school. And I see the other thing. Things went and went. I got to jump here. This boy never knows to this day we prayed for him.

Thank God some people can pray without wanting to get their brownie points. You know. Give me my credit. You know, I prayed for you too, Mrs. Jones. And this boy doesn’t even know today that we prayed for him. And it’s very important that these people don’t know you prayed for them. He was a man in a small business. And most of you men or businessmen know that in every business you come to a point sometime where you have to go forward or you’re going to go back. You can’t stay where you are. You know. You’re either going to expand or stop. And he’d come to that place. Gone to the banks and they said, “We can’t give you more credit. We’ve extended all the credit that the federal regulations allow you. Yes, you’re good and we’re on and we trust you, but we just can’t go on. We can’t give you more.” He called me on the phone. And he said, “Reg, I don’t know what to do, but I need prayer. Please pray for me that I’ll somehow find the financing to develop and go on because the business was good and it was worthwhile putting money into.” I said, “Yeah, we’re glad to do that,” not knowing what would happen. Two days after we prayed for him and God to bless him financially, this boy came to this man and said to him, “Hey, you realize I’m going to receive a lot of money pretty soon when I get to be 18?

And I don’t know a thing about business. Is there any possible chance you can let me buy into your business and become a partner?” Every problem was solved. Every problem. Today that man and this boy have three fine stores in Denver together as partners. What a marvelous thing God wrought out of a court case or out of a bad boy, if you want to call it that. So what I’m saying here to us that this calling card praying, you can do it, get three or four people together that you have trust in that aren’t going to talk. And just get them and say, “Send love to this person many times a day.” Now, if you take several different kinds of people and they see their cards at different times, it’s going to mean that that person is literally almost surrounded with prayer. Every waking hour, somebody’s going to be praying for them. I think too often, excuse me if you get back on the devil’s track, but I think sometimes we leave very big holes where he can get in.

Pray, yes, now, but not till tomorrow. And the guy’s left there. If we can get several people praying at different times, we can literally surround that person with God’s love and prayer. And I’ve found that this calling card praying, which doesn’t take any meetings, doesn’t take any get-togethers and all that, that is one of the most dynamic things I know in prayer. God bless you. That’s another one more.