We Must Step Out of Our Comfort Zone

I want to affirm the declarations we have made in prayer and that appeal we have made to the Lord here this afternoon—desperate and bold, I might put it that way. At one point in my prayer, the Syrophoenician woman came to mind, and I felt led to affirm that woman’s spirit and recall what lies behind that passage of Scripture found in Mark chapter 7, verse 24, and to encourage all of us to be bold before God.

The Lord says that we should come boldly before the Throne of grace; sometimes we must come to the Lord desperately, we must come to the Lord as both our last and first resort, we must come to God as those people recorded in Scripture came: ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And people told him, ‘Be quiet, because the Lord does not have that on His agenda,’ but Bartimaeus cried out even louder until the Lord stopped, brought him into His Presence, and healed him. And he went away carrying the blanket he had used for security, like homeless people sometimes have their bundles and belongings there. The blanket a blind man or beggar used to sit on was like his home, and now he carried on his shoulders that blanket which had supported him, as a declaration of the God who had set him free so that he could see. He left his cloak of security behind; he left it to come before the Lord and receive healing from God, and sometimes we have to be like that.

We have to step out of our comfort zone, and that is what we have done this afternoon. One can pray in many ways; we have prayed for Ana in different ways, but when a congregation says, ‘You know what? We are going to put our image on the line and risk everything,’ then come what may, as Mark chapter 6, verse 24 says, and let the Lord be the One who does the rest. I believe that sometimes it is the only way God—those desperate people we see in Scripture who approached the Lord at the wrong time, who had no right to be there, who were not even on the Lord’s agenda—sometimes God does not even give them a word of affirmation or healing, but they wrest it from God because they are desperate people.

The woman with the issue of blood approaches Jesus Christ, pushes her way into the crowd, and violates Jewish law, because a woman in that state of continual menstruation was not supposed to make people unclean by touching them; but she made her way into the crowd, touched the edge of His garment, and left there with her healing and with a word of affirmation and blessing from the Lord. And God has not changed His heart; He always acts in the same way, and He honors and responds to the same kind of conduct.

When we, the children of God, come and say, ‘You know what? I have nothing to lose, so I am going to throw myself at the Lord’s feet,’ and we reason with God out of love and respect, not disrespect, sometimes I believe we even force God’s Hand—and God likes it. What father does not like it when his one-year-old little girl comes and steals a piece of meat right out of his mouth? He likes it because he says, ‘Wow, my little girl is strong; she is becoming a fighter; she loves me; she trusts me.’ I believe God sometimes likes us to press Him a little, to bother Him a little.

The Lord said that the woman who came before the unjust judge cried out and knocked on his door until he said, ‘I am fed up with this woman; I am going to bless her so that she will leave me alone.’ And He was using that as an illustration of how God wants us to knock continually at His door and to be persistent, to dare to come before Him, to pray in season and out of season, He says, to cry out and preach, to do things that are not on the agenda, to step outside what is ordinary, predictable, formal, and sometimes even proper, and to believe God for a miracle, you know?

That is why sometimes we must be careful about too much order. I am a person of order; I like order, but sometimes we have to create disorder, we have to rebel against order and formalism, and remember that God is a God whose Spirit is like the wind: He moves wherever He pleases, He is unpredictable, and we have to practice that in order to keep our faith active. I thank God for you crazy Pentecostals who sometimes—honestly, sometimes you bother me—but I say, ‘Lord, that is a pill I have to swallow,’ and you keep me accountable before God. Do not stop bothering me, you know? I need you; the Church needs you. Sometimes we will pull each other’s hair, but in that process we will find God’s precise balance. We need people who are fighters, aggressive people. If we lose that fire, we are going to lose something very special, so we need it; this Church continually needs that fire.

And this woman portrayed here in Scripture came from the region of Syria. Phoenicia was a region, which is why she is called Syrophoenician; she came from the area of Syria and Phoenicia. She was not Jewish, she was not evangelical, she was not even Catholic; she was a pagan. She came from a region the Gospel had not reached. She was not a member of God’s family, so to speak, but she had heard about Jesus Christ, and she had heard that He was compassionate and merciful, and that there was power—that the Power of God was in Him. Her theology may have been somewhat imperfect and wild, but she knew the essentials: that Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus had power, that Jesus was merciful, that He listened to those who cried out to Him, and that she could allow herself the luxury of reasoning with Him a little and pleading her case with Him so that He would answer her need.

And we know that this same Jesus is listening to our prayers and that we cannot stop praying at the first silence or on the first day that passes without our receiving what we are asking of the Lord. We must insist, we must persist, we must cry out, we must pray day and night until the Lord answers our petitions. Again and again we see that truth spread across the pages of Scripture: God honors the desperate person, God honors the person who dares, God honors the person who pushes through the crowd and makes an extra effort. God is not pleased with people who let themselves be defeated too quickly; God is not pleased with comfortable people; God is not pleased with people who are unwilling to raise their hand, to get up from a chair at a given moment, to make fools of themselves, or to walk that second mile to receive something from the Lord.

God likes it when we believe enough to risk our public image, risk our privacy, risk what people think of us, and simply go confidently before the heavenly Father and be obedient, and do what He tells us we must do. And this woman is that kind of person, which is why Scripture honors her with the portrait it gives of her.

Verse 24 of Mark 7 says that Jesus got up from the place where He was and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon, where this woman was from, in that general area, ‘and He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it, but He could not remain hidden.’ You see here—this is interesting—it makes us think a little about the complexity of the mystery of God’s absolute Will and how we human beings can apparently even change God’s plans, how we can affect God’s plans. This is a mystery, but apparently determined, bold, persistent, desperate people can change heaven’s agenda.

The Lord wanted to go unnoticed. Perhaps He was tired—who knows? Perhaps it was not the time for that region to receive the Gospel; perhaps they were not on His agenda at that moment. He wanted a time of privacy. Many times He wanted to hide and did not yet want people to know that He was the Son of God. That, too, is a mystery. God had His agenda for that God-man, and a moment had to come for there to be a public declaration that He is and was the Son of God and the Messiah who was to come. Sometimes He hid Himself, and sometimes He told people, ‘Do not tell them about this miracle I performed,’ because He did not want people to interfere with and move the agenda forward, because God has an agenda. Even when God has a plan for a man or a woman, historically He must also do other things on the external plane so that everything comes together. And the Lord had a personal agenda concerning the revelation of His Glory and His messiahship, and I believe that some of His mysteries are for that reason.

And I believe that for that reason, as part of His mysteries, He went to this place. It was a pagan area, and He did not want anyone to know He was there, but it says He could not remain hidden because His reputation preceded Him. There were people who understood that He was merciful and was not like the other Pharisees and the other religious people of His time, who thought they were more than they really were and did not allow contact with humble, ordinary people; they did not depart from their agenda. And people came and flocked to where He was. So He could not remain hidden, because there were the eyes of a desperate mother, a mother who loved and was desperate over her daughter’s condition.

Then it says, ‘He could not remain hidden, because a woman’—He could not remain hidden because of a woman. Glory to God for women; glory to God for women of faith; glory to God for anointed women; glory to God because even though there was a time in history when women counted for nothing and were not supposed to take part in the dialogue between man and God, desperate women changed the culture, changed the agenda—‘because a woman.’

Brother, the only thing that makes a distinction before the heart and Presence of God is faith—the heart, not gender; not whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are rich or poor, whether you are religious or not. It is the sincerity of your heart, it is your faith in God, it is your humility in coming before Him. God says that He shows no partiality.

Many women, many humble people, many people who were not on the agenda made their presence known, and God attends to them and listens to them. It does not matter how many years you have been in the Gospel; it does not matter whether you are a person in authority or not, whether you know the Bible or not. The only thing God wants to know is how strong your faith in Him is and how great your heart is toward Him, how much you love Him, and how much you believe His Word.

There we remember again the woman with the issue of blood, who is very much like this Syrophoenician woman. The woman with the issue of blood was not on Jesus’ agenda either. At that moment, the Lord was walking toward Jairus’s house, as you will remember. Jairus was a prominent man in his community, and he had asked the Lord to bless his daughter. The Lord was on His way to Jairus’s house; a woman with an issue of blood was not on His mind—that was not on His agenda. And the Bible says that while the Lord was on His way to Jairus’s house to heal Jairus’s daughter—which is what one would expect, because important people always have the ears of important people, and one would expect the Lord to go to the home of a prominent, important, godly man who was well known in his community—it says that the Lord was going to Jairus’s house, ‘but a woman’—that is how it puts it—‘but a woman who had suffered from an issue of blood for twelve years,’ who had spent all her money on doctors, and who, instead of getting better, was getting worse, ‘came up behind Him and touched the edge of His garment.’

This woman changed the agenda; she pushed her way in. She was not on the program. In a sense, she was not worthy; she had done nothing to deserve the Lord’s miraculous touch, but her heart intruded upon the agenda, and she injected herself into a place where she was not supposed to be—‘because a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit.’ Her daughter was demon-possessed, and there was no power on the Earth where she lived that could heal her daughter.

The Bible tells us that the Lord is Lord over every dimension of reality: Lord over storms and natural manifestations, Lord over sickness, Lord over death, Lord over every physical limitation, Lord of heaven and earth. Demons tremble before the Presence of God. Do not be afraid of demons, you know? Do not be afraid of demons, because the Lord is more powerful than any demon. Cry out to the Lord, make sure your life is right with God, and then rebuke them in the Name of Jesus with all authority. Her daughter had an unclean spirit.

‘As soon as she heard about Him’—that is so revealing, because who knows where this woman was? She was not a member of the tribe of Israel; she did not know about Jesus, but she heard about Him. How did she hear about Him? Was it some neighbor who said, ‘Look, there is a man around here who has a power from God unlike anything ever seen before, who heals the sick, and who is believed to be the Son of God, the Savior of Israel’? Did she hear it at a well while drawing water, from two or three women talking about it? But the fact is that this woman heard about Jesus, and that made all the difference; it enabled her to go in search of the answer and solution she needed.

How important it is for people to hear about Jesus from us! Sow the Word; sow the message of the Gospel. Do not worry about what happens immediately. Your part, our part, is to preach the Word and let people know that Christ has the solution, that Christ has power, that Christ is the Son of God, and that we need Him for the solution to our problems and for our eternal destiny.

This woman had heard; you never know when, at some point, a person will make use of having heard about Jesus in a broad and general way. Sometimes we have spoken to people and apparently there was no reaction or result at all, but you know what? Sometimes, at a certain point in their lives, God activates that Word, and that person then goes in search of the Lord. That Word that you gave in a general way—someone else comes along and adds to it, and the cup overflows, and that person comes to Christ, decides to come to church one Sunday, decides to give their life to the Lord because they heard about Him. That is why we simply have to sow the seed and leave the result to the Lord, as that wonderful hymn says.

She had heard of Jesus Christ, and I am sure that, again, her faith was a very imperfect faith. She did not have a one-hundred-percent clear understanding of who Jesus was; I do not think that if she had been asked who Jesus Christ was, she would have said: well, He is the Son of God, God-man, perfect God, God-man stripped of His glory, come into the world, having taken the form of a baby, born of Mary and Joseph—or of Mary and the Holy Spirit—and full of power and grace to redeem humanity from its sins, and He is going to be crucified and through His death will bring justice to humanity, and He will rise on the third day. She could not recite that Apostles’ Creed; she did not have that. The only thing she had was a raw faith that was like a sharpened stone; it was a knot of faith and desperation, of need, that she had in her heart.

That is what I say is often what God needs, and we have to ask the Lord to help us, to equip us with that level of energy, and that is why it says that she “came and fell at His feet.” Every answer to prayer has to be preceded by surrender; it has to be preceded—What I want is, as it were, to affirm the declarations we have made in prayer and the appeal we have made to the Lord here on this desperate and daring afternoon, if I may put it that way. It reminded me of the conduct of the Syrophoenician woman; at one point in my prayer, the Syrophoenician woman came to mind, and I felt led to affirm the spirit of that woman and to recall what lies behind that text of Scripture found in Mark chapter 7, verse 24, and to encourage all of us to be daring before God. Daring—what the Word calls boldness. The Lord says that we should come confidently before the Throne of grace; sometimes we have to come to the Lord desperately, we have to come to the Lord as a last and first resort, we have to come to God as those people whose stories we see recorded in Scripture came: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And people told him: be quiet, because the Lord does not have that on His agenda. But Bartimaeus shouted even louder until the Lord stopped, brought him into His Presence, and healed him; and he went away carrying the sheet he had used for security, as homeless people sometimes have their bundles and their things there. The sheet a blind man or a beggar used to sit on is like his home, and now he carries upon him that sheet which had supported him, as a declaration of the God who has set him free so that he can see. He left his cloak of security; he left it behind to come before the Lord and receive healing from God, and sometimes we have to be like that.

We have to step outside our comfort zone, and that is what we have done this afternoon. One can pray in many ways; we have prayed for Ana in different ways, but when a congregation says, “You know what? We are going to put our image on the line and risk everything, and then come what may,” as Mark chapter 6, verse 24 says, and then lets the Lord be the One who does the rest. I believe that sometimes it is the only way in which God—those desperate people we see in Scripture who approached the Lord at the wrong time; it was not their right to be there, it was not even on the Lord’s agenda. Sometimes God does not even give them a word of affirmation or healing, but they wrest it from God because they are desperate people.

The woman with the flow of blood approaches Jesus Christ, pushes her way through the crowd, and violates Jewish law, because a woman in that state of continual menstruation was not supposed to make people unclean by touching them. But she pushed her way through the crowd, touched the edge of His cloak, and left there with her healing and with a word of affirmation and blessing from the Lord. And God has not changed His heart; He always acts in the same way, and He honors and responds to the same kind of conduct.

When we, the children of God, come and say, “You know what? I have nothing to lose, so I am going to throw myself at the Lord’s feet,” and we reason with God out of love and respect, not disrespect—sometimes I believe we even force God’s Hand, and God likes it. What father does not like it when his one-year-old little girl comes and steals a piece of meat from his mouth? He likes it because he says, “Wow, my little girl is strong; she is becoming feisty; she loves me; she trusts me.” I believe God sometimes likes us to press Him a little, to bother Him a little.

The Lord said that the woman who came before the unjust judge cried out and knocked on his door until he said, “I am fed up with this woman; I am going to bless her so that she will leave me alone.” And He was using that as an illustration of the God who wants us to knock continually at His door and to be persistent, to dare to come before Him, to pray, as it says, in season and out of season, to cry out and preach, to do things not according to the agenda, to step outside the ordinary, the predictable, the formal, and sometimes even the proper, and to believe God for a miracle, you know?

That is why we sometimes have to be careful about too much order. I am a person of order; I like order, but sometimes we have to create disorder, we have to rebel against order and formalism and remember that God is a God whose Spirit is like the wind: He moves wherever He pleases, He is unpredictable, and we have to practice that in order to keep our faith active. I thank God for you crazy Pentecostals who sometimes—truthfully, sometimes you bother me, but I say, “Lord, I have to swallow that pill,” and you keep me accountable before God. Do not stop bothering me, you know? I need you; the Church needs you. At times we will pull each other’s hair, but in that process we will find God’s precise balance. We need feisty people, aggressive people; if we lose that fire, we are going to lose something very special. So we need it; this Church continually needs that fire.

And this woman portrayed here in Scripture came from the area of Syria. Phoenicia was a region, which is why she is called Syrophoenician; she came from the area of Syria and Phoenicia. She was not Jewish, she was not evangelical, she was not even Catholic; she was a pagan. She came from a region the Gospel had not reached; she was not a member of God’s family, so to speak, but she had heard of Jesus Christ, and she had heard that He was compassionate and merciful and that there was power, that the Power of God was in Him. Her theology may have been a little imperfect and wild, but she knew the essentials: that Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus had power, that Jesus was merciful, that He listened to those who cried out to Him, and that she could afford the luxury of reasoning with Him a little and of pleading her case with Him so that He would answer her need.

And we know that this same Jesus is listening to our prayers and that we cannot stop praying at the first silence, or on the first day that passes without our receiving what we are asking of the Lord. We have to insist, we have to persist, we have to cry out, we have to pray day and night until the Lord answers our petitions. Again and again we see that truth spread across the pages of Scripture: God honors the desperate person, God honors the person who dares, God honors the person who pushes through the crowd and makes an extra effort. God is not pleased with people who let themselves be defeated too quickly; God is not pleased with comfortable people; God is not pleased with people who are unwilling to raise their hand, to rise from a chair at a given moment, to make fools of themselves, or to walk that second mile to receive something from the Lord.

God likes it when we believe enough to risk our public image, risk our privacy, risk what people think of us, and simply go confidently before the heavenly Father and be obedient and do what He tells us we have to do. This woman is that kind of individual, and that is why Scripture honors her with the portrait it gives of her.

Verse 24 of Mark 7 says that Jesus arose from the place where He was and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon, the general area this woman was from, “and entering a house, He did not want anyone to know it, but He could not be hidden.” You see here—this is interesting—it makes us think a little about the complexity of the mystery of God’s absolute Will and how we human beings can even apparently change God’s plans, how we can affect God’s plans. This is a mystery, but apparently feisty, daring, persistent, desperate people can change heaven’s agenda.

The Lord wanted to go unnoticed. Perhaps He was tired, who knows; perhaps it was not the time for that region to receive the Gospel; perhaps they were not on His agenda at that moment. He wanted a time of privacy. Many times He wanted to hide and did not yet want people to know that He was the Son of God. That too is a mystery. God had His agenda for that God-man, and a moment had to come for there to be a public declaration that He is and was the Son of God and the Messiah who was to come. Sometimes He hid, and sometimes He told people, “Do not tell them about this miracle that I performed,” because He did not want people to interfere and move the agenda forward, because God has an agenda. Even when God has a plan for a man or a woman, historically He also has to do other things on the external plane so that everything comes together, and the Lord had a personal agenda concerning the revelation of His Glory and His Messiahship, and I believe that for this reason they are some of His mysteries.

And I believe that for that reason—one of His mysteries—He went to this place. It was a pagan area, and He did not want anyone to know that He was there, but it says that He could not be hidden because His reputation preceded Him. There were people who understood that He was merciful and was not like the other Pharisees and the other religious people of His day, who thought they were more than they were and refused contact with humble, ordinary people, who did not depart from their agenda. And people came and flocked to where He was. So He could not be hidden because there were the eyes of a desperate mother, a mother who loved and who was desperate because of her daughter’s condition.

Then it says, “He could not be hidden, because a woman”—He could not be hidden because of a woman. Glory to God for women; glory to God for women of faith; glory to God for anointed women; glory to God because, even though there was a time in history when women did not count for anything and were not supposed to take part in the dialogue between man and God, desperate women changed the culture, changed the agenda: “because a woman.”

Brother, the only thing that makes a distinction before the heart and Presence of God is faith—the heart, not gender, not whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are rich or poor, whether you are religious or not. It is the sincerity of your heart, it is your faith in God, it is your humility in coming before Him. God says that He shows no partiality.

Many women, many humble people, many people who were not on the agenda made themselves present, and God attends to them and listens to them. It does not matter how many years you have been in the Gospel; it does not matter whether or not you are a person of authority, whether or not you know the Bible. The only thing God wants to know is how strong your faith in Him is and how great your heart is toward Him, how much you love Him, and how much you believe His Word.

Here we again remember the woman with the flow of blood, who greatly resembles this Syrophoenician woman. The woman with the flow of blood was not on Jesus’ agenda either. At that moment the Lord was walking toward Jairus’s house, as you will remember. Jairus was a leading man in his community and had asked the Lord to bless his daughter, and the Lord was on His way to Jairus’s house. A woman with a flow of blood was not in His mind; that was not on His agenda. And the Bible says that while the Lord was heading toward Jairus’s house to heal Jairus’s daughter—which is what one would expect, since important people always have the ears of important people, and one would expect the Lord to go to the house of a leading, important, godly man who was well known in his community—it says that the Lord was going to Jairus’s house, “but a woman,” that is how it says it, “but a woman who had suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years,” who had spent all her money on doctors, and who, instead of getting better, was getting worse, “came up behind Him and touched the edge of His cloak.”

This woman changed the agenda; she inserted herself. She was not on the program; in one sense, she was undeserving, she had done nothing to deserve the Lord’s miraculous touch, but her heart interposed itself in the agenda and injected itself into a place where it should not have been: “because a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit.” Her daughter was demon-possessed, and there was no power on Earth where she lived that could heal her daughter.

The Bible tells us that the Lord is Lord over every dimension of reality, Lord over storms and natural phenomena, Lord over sickness, Lord over death, Lord over every physical limitation, Lord of heaven and earth; demons tremble before the Presence of God. Do not be afraid of demons, you know; do not be afraid of demons, because the Lord is more powerful than any demon. Cry out to the Lord, make sure that your life is right with God, and then rebuke them in the Name of Jesus with all authority. Her daughter had an unclean spirit.

“As soon as she heard about Him”—that is so revealing, because who knows where this woman was? She was not a member of the tribe of Israel; she did not know about Jesus, but she heard about Him. How did she hear about Him? Was it some neighbor who said, “Look, there is a man around here who has a power from God unlike anything ever seen before, who heals the sick, and who is believed to be the Son of God, the Savior of Israel”? Did she hear it at a well while drawing water, as two or three women were talking about it? But the fact is that this woman heard about Jesus, and that made all the difference. It enabled her to go in search of the answer and the solution she needed.

How important it is that people hear about Jesus from us! Sow the Word; sow the message of the Gospel. Do not worry about what happens immediately. Your part, our part, is to preach the Word and let people know that Christ has a solution, that Christ has power, that Christ is the Son of God, and that we need Him for the solution to our problems and for our eternal destiny.

This woman heard, and one never knows when someone will make use of having heard about Jesus in a generic, general way. Sometimes we have spoken to people and apparently there was no reaction or result, but you know what? Sometimes, at a certain point in their lives, God activates that Word, and then that person goes in search of the Lord. Another person comes along and adds to that Word which you gave in such a general way, and the cup overflows, and that person comes to Christ, decides to come to church one Sunday, decides to surrender their life to the Lord because they heard about Him. That is why we must simply sow the seed and leave the result to the Lord, as that wonderful hymn says.

She had heard about Jesus Christ, and I am sure that, again, her faith was very imperfect. She did not have a one-hundred-percent clear understanding of who Jesus was. I do not think that if she had been asked who Jesus Christ was, she would have said, “Well, He is the Son of God, God-man, perfect God, God-man who emptied Himself of His glory, came into the world, took the form of a baby, was born of Mary and Joseph—or of Mary and the Holy Spirit—and was filled with power and grace to redeem humanity from its sins; He is going to be crucified and, through His death, bring righteousness to humanity, and He will rise again on the third day.” She could not recite that Apostles’ Creed. She did not have that. The only thing she had was a raw faith that was like a sharp stone; it was a knot of faith, desperation, and need that she carried in her heart.

That is what I say God often needs, and we must ask the Lord to help us, to equip us with that level of energy. That is why it says that “she came and fell at His feet.” Every answer to prayer must be preceded by surrender; it must be preceded by a posture of worship before the Lord. When she fell down before Him, it was a highly significant gesture. It meant that, in some general way, she recognized the Lordship of Christ. She was bowing before a King; she was bowing before a being superior to herself; she was bowing as a worshiper bows before a deity to acknowledge His divinity. She was bowing down, and her life, her will, were being surrendered to Him. Perhaps she herself did not understand the implications of what she was doing. She was also humbling herself and begging the Lord to do something. These are the attitudes and elements that make up a good prayer before God and a good attitude in which the Lord delights and which He honors: worship, surrender, intensity, acknowledgment of Christ’s Lordship, humility, abandonment to His Will, crying out, urgency.

We must ask the Lord, “Help me bring my prayer to the point of red heat,” because I believe generic prayers leave the Lord cold. The prayers God honors are prayers of blazing fire, prayers so hot that they are white-hot. Before this time of prayer here, I had told the brothers and sisters about a week and a half ago that the Lord had placed it on my heart that we were going to cry out on behalf of Ana Andújar and put everything on the table. We spread the word among the people who know her—they are people of prayer—and we are going to fast and pray for her for one day, two days, a week, whatever it takes; but let us take time to pray, let us build it up.

My desire was that during that time we might build up energy. Did you know that this kind of imagery and reasoning is biblical? There are times when one must be like someone slinging a stone. I imagine that when David was about to hurl that stone at Goliath, he made sure to swing the sling around fifty times and build up momentum, right? Like one of those throwers. And when he released the stone, he hurled it forcefully at the giant’s forehead. That, I believe, is how our prayers must be.

Many times, the first prayers are simply rehearsals. If we are going to ask the Lord for something great, we had better prepare ourselves and persist, because there is an almost physical aspect to the processes of miracles: repetition, intensity, faith, physical verbal expression, the posture of the body. These are elements that form part of the prayer God answers, and this woman fell down; she threw herself before the Lord.

The Lord likes to hear cries; the Lord likes to see tears; the Lord likes to smell the bad odor of sweat because people are working. The Lord likes it when people press up against Him and touch Him, as the woman with the flow of blood did. The Lord likes it when we use our bodies and cry out to Him, and this woman threw herself down. Let us never abandon that dimension of Pentecostal life. Let us be a people who raise our hands, kneel, throw ourselves at His feet, jump, dance, and say, “Amen! Glory to God!” Let us get out of our seats. God honors that, brothers and sisters, and these things must be practiced—again, in an appropriate way, but they must indeed be done. And it says that she fell down; she threw herself at His feet. Her need, her pressing necessity, her urgency, her sense of desperation had reached that point.

Everything had failed her, and she threw herself before that Being whom she did not fully understand but whom she knew had power. It says that the woman was Greek, a Syrophoenician by nationality. Mark puts that there because it was important for it to be known that, in terms of citizenship, culture, and religion, she had no right; in a sense, she was not part of the agenda. She was an aberration, an untimely intrusion, but within herself she carried the visa and passport that gave her the right—and let the one who has ears to hear, hear.

God is very unusual in the way He works. Men have their agendas and their things, but sometimes God says, “You know what? Right now there is a total pardon, and I am going to respond to the pressing need and urgency of this human being.” “And she was Greek, a Syrophoenician by nationality,” and it says, “and she kept begging Him to cast the demon out of her daughter.” Why does it use that expression? Because it wants to emphasize the fact that she was repeating herself. It does not say, “She begged Him,” because if it had said, “She begged Him,” it would mean that she did it once and then fell silent. No, I believe this was a dialogue that took time.

What they do there is summarize for us what happened, but I believe that she reasoned with the Lord for some time. She begged Him again and again. This was a dialogue in which she argued and said, “No, I am not leaving here until You bless me.” Do you know that story about Elisha and Elijah, when God had spoken to Elisha? God had already chosen Elisha to inherit Elijah’s anointing and ministry, and God was about to take Elijah to be with Him in heaven. Elisha clung to Elijah because he wanted the blessing, and Elijah told him two or three times, “Look, leave me alone. I have to go now; this is over,” because sometimes God plays hard to get, as the Mexicans say, in order to test us and provoke a response of faith in us.

God sometimes uses many methods to stir up a combative posture in us. God likes that—do not ask me why—but He likes to play with us in that way and make us wait, because He wants our cry to reach that boiling point. I also believe it is because His blessings are worth so much that He does not like to give them away too cheaply. The person who gives up too quickly does not deserve the Lord’s blessings, and God sometimes makes Himself costly because sometimes He says, “Look, I have to do it, because if they do not value Me, I have to give Myself that value.”

God likes it when we recognize that what we want is important enough for us to inconvenience ourselves and persist. And she kept begging Him and pressing Him. Brothers and sisters, persistence in prayer is so important. I tell you that there are prayers in my life which I have been reciting since I was ten or eleven years old, and I still bring them to the Lord, you know? And I will die praying for the same things, because until I see them answered, I do not have permission to stop praying that way. We must cry out to the Lord until we see the answer, and if He does not want that, that is His problem. My part is to pray and cry out and do what He tells me to do. “Seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you,” says the Word of the Lord. We must cry out before God. We must be a combative, persistent people, almost to the point of sometimes seeming disrespectful before the Lord. God likes that, brothers and sisters.

“She kept begging Him to cast the demon out of her daughter, but Jesus said to her, ‘Let the children be filled first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.’” Wow. Brothers and sisters, I would have gone straight home. I would have said a couple of nasty things to myself and thought, “Forget it, this man is shameless, and I want nothing to do with him. Look at how he insults me.” But you know, once again, what Jesus was doing was testing her faith. God knew that this event would be recorded and that, in the twenty-first century, in the year 2016, on a day in August, a congregation of crazy Latinos would be preaching about that woman and drawing inspiration from that moment. I believe that the Lord was crafting a drama which He knew would extend far beyond this woman, transcend history, and provide countless generations with inspiration and blessing from that encounter between this woman and Jesus.

Because many times these dramas that unfolded between a man and a woman, involving Jesus, or that are recorded in the pages of Scripture, were not there solely for the benefit of those who would immediately hear or read those narratives. They were for the generations that came after them. They were dramas, narratives, living parables that would be recorded so that the people of God could feed upon them throughout the centuries until Christ came, so that they could find nourishment for the arduous path they would have to follow for centuries until God’s plan was completely fulfilled in history.

That is to say, I believe that the Lord, directed by the Holy Spirit, was there establishing a series of spiritual paradigms, of spiritual prototypes, so that the people of God might understand them and be spiritually enlightened and instructed in their walk. So when He gives this woman that insulting refusal, He is doing it for the benefit of all those who will read it. The point is that, although it may appear that a person is contemptibly far from the Lord’s Will and the Lord’s ways, God’s love is so great that it can overcome these things and bless, heal, minister, and answer that person’s cry.

And certainly this woman came from a pagan background; certainly this woman was unclean in the eyes of God, because the only thing that makes us pure and acceptable is the blood of Jesus and the Word of His Spirit. In one sense, yes, like every human being—no matter how honest, honorable, and hardworking—if a person does not have Christ in their heart, that person is a little dog, worse than a little dog, a dog, because without Christ we are unclean before the perfect holiness of God. The only thing that makes us acceptable before God and grants us access to His Presence is the blood and sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary. That is what moves us from the condition of little dogs to the condition of children. That is what changes our inner state, our inner nature. That is what makes us acceptable recipients of the powerful, healing Grace of God through Christ Jesus.

So He was saying: look, who are the children? Supposedly they are those who know the Scripture, those who belong to Abraham’s lineage, and He says to her: it is not right to take the bread that belongs to the children and throw it to those who do not deserve it, and in that sense He was drawing there upon a whole host of truths from Scripture. The people of Israel had been chosen by God, but you know what? It is clear that the Lord intends more than what He is saying here, because He Himself had said that He had come to bless all humanity, regardless of whether they were Jews or Gentiles. He knew that His Gospel, His Word, His saving work was going to reach all nations, so He was teasing her, He was playing with her. He wanted to see what she would do with that curveball He was throwing her there, and He wanted to test her faith and find out whether she was truly worthy of the blessing she was asking for, and whether she had enough spiritual substance in her to go beyond what was conventional and formal about religion.

Thank God, this woman says: “And she answered and said to Him:” And I believe this answer was illuminated by the Holy Spirit. This was such a brilliant answer, one so out of the ordinary and so much like the answer of a lawyer trained in the laws of argumentation, that it had to come from God. I do not believe that an uneducated, humble woman like her could have come up with an answer as extraordinary as the one she gave the Lord: “She answered and said to Him: Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Glory to the Lord.

She took the very argument the Lord was throwing at her and turned it back on Him, and she said: here you go—take that, and there’s more where that came from. She said: Well, Lord, You are saying that we are little dogs. Okay, I accept that, but you know what? In this world, even the little dogs under the table go beneath the table, and when something is thrown to them or something falls, they eat it. That is what I want. Do not give me chicken cordon bleu or filet mignon; just give me a little piece of bread, because one crumb from Your Hand is worth everything I need. The smallest word from the Lord is enough to meet every need.

No great declarations from God are needed; the slightest movement by the Lord in our direction is enough to change the course of the universe, brothers and sisters. That chorus we sing says: one look of faith is what can save the sinner. Many times, all that is needed is the tiniest movement of the heart, and the power of God is sufficient. The woman with the flow of blood merely touched the edge of the garment, one of the little fringes that hung from Jesus’ Jewish garment. She touched the outermost little thread on one of the edges, one of the edges of Jesus’ garment, and that healed her completely. It did what the doctors had been unable to do: it stopped and froze the flow of her blood. And she says to Him: Lord, even the little dogs under the table eat.

Let us ask the Lord always to give us the right words with which to pray, because even when we come before the Presence of God, we have to come like lawyers; we have to find the precise and proper argument. There are times when God puts a word in us and we say: But where did that come from? And the Holy Spirit put that expression in you because it is the key that will open God’s heart and bring the blessing you need.

There are times when God is so generous with us that He gives us the argument He wants to hear so that His Power may be unleashed on our behalf. Such is the greatness of the Lord’s mysteries. When God sometimes puts an expression in your heart, use it, because that expression may be the conduit that will open the Lord’s heart and bring about what needs to be done in your life. I believe deeply in those arguments, and that is why I have to ask Him: Lord, prepare my prayer.

And that is why this afternoon I began to say something to you and lost my train of thought, but while we were there during the time of praise, my heart was focused on one thing alone: Lord, prepare my heart for the time of prayer we are going to have; prepare my heart, prepare the strategy, help us arrange the logistics, the way You want us to cry out to You, and the manner, and the sequence, and the language, and the spiritual freedom, because I believe that is how it is. God is a strategic being, and He thinks that way, and prayer is more complex than one might think. The language, the logistics of prayer, and the mysteries of God’s knowledge are so profound, and we have to ask the Lord: Lord, give us wisdom so that we may understand all the chambers and rooms, and the different levels of Your mystery and Your knowledge.

She used the argument; she used the Lord’s own word to back Him into a corner. The movements of the Spirit are judicial. The devil knows it, and God certainly knows it: the world of the Spirit operates according to judicial principles, and humankind has justice and law because the world of the Spirit has justice and law, and we simply imitate what has been revealed to us in our spirit, in our genetic makeup. That is why there are laws, governments, and judicial systems: because the world of the Spirit is legal and judicial in its manner. And that is why we have to understand, when we pray, that we must also ask the Lord: Lord, give us an understanding of the mysteries of prayer.

And this woman stumbled upon one of them, which is that we must use the Word of God to bind God—and I say that with all due respect. I am not saying that we should turn the saint upside down, but I am saying that there is no better way to pray than through the Word of the Lord. When you say to Him: Lord, Your Word says that; Lord, You have declared in Your Word that; Lord, You have promised that—those legal arguments have power before the heart of God. That is why we have to know the Word; we have to study the Word.

A young man asked me at the end of the service this morning: Pastor, I want wisdom. He was talking about the sermon that was preached this morning. I want wisdom from God. And I told him: Look, the best way I know to gain wisdom is by becoming deeply immersed in the Word of God. Study it, honor it, devote yourself to it, seek it as gold and silver are sought, envision it as something living and real, as an entity that embodies the Power and life of God. Eat it every day, put it inside yourself, and that Word will give you wisdom, and God will then give you eyes to see. You will then be able to profit from and interpret everything you experience, and that will create within you an energy of wisdom and truth. One of the ways is by appreciating and valuing the Word of God like gold and silver, and that Word then allows us to come before the Throne of God; it allows us to use the proper language. The Word itself springs from our lips, and when we pray, when we preach, when we reason, the Word of God is reasoning through us. And then we should not be surprised when miracles and marvelous works come into our lives, because it is the Word of God honoring itself through us.

Then this woman said: Lord, I am going to take You at Your word. If I am a little dog, amen, but You know very well that little dogs have the right to eat the crumbs. And then the Lord said to her—I am almost certain that the Lord laughed when she said that to Him—the Lord said: You caught Me, you got Me, you got your way; what can I say to that? He was amused; He delighted in it. He was pleased by this woman’s bold response, and the Lord said to her: “For this saying,” hallelujah, “for this saying.” It is the word, it is the argument, it is that precise expression the Spirit has placed within you, it is the moment. That is what unleashes the power and the glory and the affection of God in our lives. It is the humble, simple prayer prompted by the Holy Spirit. He said to her: Because of this saying you have just given Me, the demon has gone out; it has gone out.

How interesting. He says: Because of this saying you have just given Me, the demon has gone out of your daughter. That is a mystery. It was a pregnant word; it was a word filled with the power and grace of God. God’s power is already within us to do incredible things: to part the waters of the sea, to make it rain where there is no rain, to make the rain stop where there is rain, to open doors no one can open and close doors no one can close, to tear down walls, to solve problems, to bring counsel into our lives, to bring solutions that do not seem humanly possible, to grant us favor before authorities, to do greater works than Jesus Himself did because He has promised it that way and He has given permission for it to be so. Greater works you will do, because He is multiplying the power that I formerly had here on Earth; now it is Me and God on your side, and you praying as well.

This woman’s word, her word of faith, set her daughter free through its interaction and action with Jesus Christ. Because of this saying, go; the demon has already gone out. God only knows how many miles away that girl was, but when this woman spoke that word, the girl experienced a change. Her mind became clear, her physical movements came back under her control, her will recovered its ability to act, and her daughter was completely healed. And here we have the confirmation: it says that when she returned home, she found things exactly as the Lord had told her. The demon had gone out, and she found her daughter lying down, resting in her bed. Glory to the Lord, amen, amen.

I imagine that for the first time in perhaps many months, this girl, this young woman, was able to sleep peacefully, and she was so exhausted by her crisis and by the very difficult time she had endured that she simply lay down to sleep, and she slept. And when she awoke, she was rested, healed, free, and things were never the same again in that home.

Brothers and sisters, let us believe God, let us cry out before the Lord, let us live bold and courageous lives before the Lord, because we have a God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That Christ portrayed there in that account is the same Jesus whom you serve today, you know? He is the same Jesus who wants to see that same kind of faith and who also honors that kind of faith in our lives. Let us serve that way.

Let us bow our heads for a moment, and do not move from your seat if you can, and let that Word enter your heart. Let us be silent for a moment in this place, and let us look to that Jesus who is here in this place as well and who is inviting us to make a covenant with Him. The Lord does not honor the prayer of anyone who is unwilling to bow down before Him, who is unwilling to become uncomfortable, who is unwilling to make a physical and visible expression of their respect and reverence, and their surrender to the Will of the Lord.

You can be like that Syrophoenician woman. Perhaps you came here to church, but you do not know Jesus; you are Syrophoenician, you are not part of Jesus’ family. But one gesture of drawing near, one gesture of surrender to Jesus, a public gesture, a visible gesture—and if you have not made that gesture of surrender to the Lord, I want to invite you this afternoon to give your life to Jesus Christ and not to leave this place as a Syrophoenician, but to leave this place as a member of the family of Christ Jesus, having invited the Lord to enter your heart and to become the central part of your life.