Please open your Bibles to 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3 verses 1 through 5.

Finally brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed on and triumph as it did among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men for not all have faith.

But the Lord is faithful.

He will strengthen you and guard you from evil

And we have confidence in the Lord about you

that you are doing and will do the things which we command.

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the

steadfastness of Christ. Perhaps most of you remember from last week in Ephesion 6 where Paul says, take the sword of the spirit spirit which is the word of God praying as though prayer is the way

you take the sword of the spirit, the prayer is the power that

the weapon of the word and wields it.

But you remember that we said the sword is not a dead lifeless thing, but when the arm of prayer picks it up, a bolt of electricity, spiritual power, goes from the word into prayer.

So that the power and the arm of prayer that wields the word in spiritual battle is a power that comes from the sword.

And the focus last week was on how the sword affects the arm,

or how the word helps the praying power that wields it.

It's as though the brain of the nerves in this arm of prayer is not in the head, it's in the sword.

So that the brain of the word of God is sending impulses to the nerves that governs the muscles of prayer that returns then and wields the sword in the most effective way in spiritual battle. The magnificence of prayer is that God has put

his word in the hand or in the arm of prayer.

It is just an astonishing thing when you think about it.

But before we get to the text and think about it from the text, I want to try to put my finger on a universal starting point in your hearts. I believe it's universal. I think somewhere within your heart, everybody that's here, even if you're an unbeliever and not a Christian. Somewhere within every heart I think there's a desire to be an

instrument of God's power. And therefore, even if you don't feel it, there is buried perhaps in your subconscious a longing

to be a man or a woman of fervent and powerful prayer.

Now let me try to show you why I think that is there in every one of your hearts,

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