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Give Time To Prayer, Part Four | Nancy Dufresne | Jesus the Healer Broadcast
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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne, welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message. Turn with me if you would and let's go to Acts chapter six and I'm going to start in verse one it reads this. Now about this time when the number of the disciples was greatly increasing, complaint was made by the Greek speaking Jews against the native Hebrews because they, their widows were being overlooked and neglected in the daily ministration. Now notice, I want you to see something here in verse one it says when the number of the disciples was greatly increasing, what was happening? The church was growing, the church was thriving. The number of people getting saved was on the increase. And right in the middle of increase, what happens? Strife starts trying to stir up and notice it's the Greek speaking Jews against the native Hebrew. It gets to be an ethnic thing. I tell you, you have to make sure that this doesn't become a distraction in a local church. Of all the differences in our congregation, we have so many different cultures and races and I absolutely love it because that's what the body of Christ is comprised of. That's not a difference for us. That is a plus for us. And we don't get destroy by what the world gets distracted by. You know, racial issues become a distraction to the body of Christ. We are one in him. I mean in Christ there's neither Greek nor Jew, there's neither male nor female. I mean all of those natural distinctions become unimportant and we cannot keep. We can't treat those natural things as important because if we do, it will have an effect on our effectiveness in the spiritual realm and in the things of the Spirit. In strife got in, offense got in. And there's nothing that will shut down increase like strife will. So we have to make sure that these things don't become strifeful, that we don't become distracted by the unimportant. And strife gets. In verse 2 it says the 12 apostles convened with the multitude of the disciples and said it's not seemly or desirable or right that we should have to give up or neglect preaching the word of God in order to attend to serving tables and superintending the distribution of food. Now that's the way the amplified reads that we don't neglect the preaching of the word. The King James says we must give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. So notice this that they said this is a legitimate in the church. We need somebody to help handle the distribution of the food and make sure that everyone is treated honorably and respectfully. But we can't allow this legitimate need to pull us away from what we should be doing. So when they were faced with this legitimate need, they had to make a definite choice. They had to choose that they're not gonna be distracted from their calling, from their office, and from what God was expecting and requiring of them. So what did they do? They appointed others in the church to take care of this need so that they could give themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. Now, this is not a license for a leader, a pastor or minister to just pass all the work off to others just because he wants to be freed up so he can maybe have his own hobbies or interests. No, they wanted to keep themselves freed up for the purpose of prayer and the ministry of the word, not so that could overindulge in natural things. So the apostles were devoting themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. They weren't devoting themselves to hobbies. They weren't devoting themselves to more social life. They were developing their spiritual lives. So ministers have to make certain that we aren't distracted by the unimportant or even by legitimate activities, even in the church, even within our ministry and within the business of the ministry. You know, when ministers are distracted, it's going to show up. And when they're. The way it shows up is through a lack of revelation and a lack of anointing. You know, the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing. And if the anointing is lacking, then people aren't going to receive the help that they need. If the anointing is not present, if the anointing is not to a degree that people can be helped in a way, we have to make sure that we're protecting as ministers the flow of the anointing and the revelation. How important that we have revelation. You know, it's revelation that causes people to walk free from all the things that the devil would try to attack them with. You know, dad Hagin said this when he was on his deathbed, of course, he was dying with an incurable heart disease. He had a blood disease, and he was given up by medical science to die. But. But revelation of the word began to come to him. And it was that revelation of the word that when he acted upon that and became a doer of that revelation, he was raised up off his deathbed. It is so important that when we minister that revelation is flowing to the people because that's what's going to raise them up out of the positions that they're in that they need to come out of. There's nothing that changes until someone gets light or revelation. And dad Hagin made this statement. He says, you can't believe beyond actual knowledge, meaning this. If you don't have revelation of something, you can't believe for it. You have to know about it. You have to be taught and instructed on it, or you're not going to be able to receive of what belongs to you. As ministers, we're not just up here delivering something that is just going to be, you know, an encouragement. Yes, people should be encouraged, but they need revelation. Encouragement won't get you past the devil. You have to have the light of the Word. You have to have revelation of what the Word says. You have to have some knowledge of what the Word says and not just a pep talk. And so we have to make sure that there's revelation of the Word flowing. If we're too distracted by legitimate things, even legitimate ministry needs, we have to go back and measure and say, wait a minute, we need to put some things back in perspective and back in order. Notice this. Distractions are expensive. It can cost us a lot and it can cost congregation members a lot. It can cost us so much when we don't have the things in place that we need. You know, Smith Wigglesworth made the statement. He said sometimes people wait too late to try to get faith. Well, what did he mean by that? Well, faith always works. The word always works. Healing always works. But sometimes people are not in the position where they can even take in the Word that heals. You know, dad Hagin made a statement. He said, of course, the condition when he was a young man and he was given up to die by medical science on his deathbed with an incurable heart condition, incurable blood condition, and he said my condition was slow working. He was on that bed for 16 months. And nearly all that time, God was bringing him more and more into the light of the Word. And he said, if I would have had a quick working disease, he said, I'd have been dead. He said, because my condition was slow working, I had time to get the Word in. Now, this is what Smith Wigglesworth was referring to. He said sometimes people wait too late to try to get faith. What's that mean? It's not that it takes the Word long to work. It can take long for people to get past wrong thinking. It took 16 months for dad Hagin to get past some of the denominational wrong thinking he had concerning healing before he could even receive and believe God for healing. So it's not that the Word takes long or God takes longer, that the power takes long. It's that it takes time to get past wrong thinking many times. And so because of that, if people don't have time, so to speak, on their side, that they can wait too late. And that's what Smith Wigglesworth made the statement of being distracted and not being prepared and not putting the Word in. It can be expensive because it can cost us sometimes with things that could have been avoided if we would not have been distracted. Demas Shakarian made a statement about Kathryn Kuhlman. He said Kathryn Kuhlmann's fellowship with God the made it easy for others to receive their miracle. So he's saying this because she was so skillful in her fellowship with God. People who didn't have that same level of skill could still be blessed and receive because of her skillfulness with God. That's a goal. That's what we want to do. We want to become so skillful in the Word and the Spirit that we can be a help to the those who don't know, maybe all that we've been taught. My husband used to make this statement. He said, the lies of others depend on me hearing from God. Now think about that. Whether or not someone else is going to receive their answer sometimes is going to depend on us in the leadership or us as ministers being skillful and recognizing God's voice, recognizing the the Spirit's leading. And so he said, the lives of others depend on me hearing from God. Well, see, then we have to protect that time that we need to take to learn God, to learn to hear his voice and not be distracted by that which is not important. How much is lost if we aren't sensitive and we aren't skillful to the leading of the Spirit and aren't sensitive to the anointing and recognizing the different flows of the anointing in a service. You know, there's times that I've missed the leading of the Spirit just because of lack of time in the Spirit. I remember years ago there was this. There was a relative of mine. And you know, when we were growing up, we played, we were so close. We got to see each other often and we had a good time together. And I hadn't seen seen them for the longest time. And here I was probably. I was probably in my late 30s and I remember exactly where I was standing. I was getting ready to go to the office one day and I was finishing up getting ready And I was doing my hair. And as I was standing in front of the mirror, her name came up to me. And when her name came up to me, you know, I just. I just started reminiscing. I didn't recognize that as a cue from the Holy Ghost. So I just started reminiscing. And I got to thinking, well, I wonder what she's doing today. Oh, I remember, you know, the times. And I started recounting and rehearsing those things. And I didn't pray when that came up. I should have prayed, but I didn't recognize it as a leading of the spirit. I just thought. I just thought of her name. Now, let me insert something here. Following the Holy Spirit, listening to the Holy Spirit and when he speaks. Sometimes, you know, if we're recording, we'll have a cue card that somebody may hold up. You've got five minutes, or you've got one minute. And they'll just flash that cue card just like this. Maybe it's an instruction to me or something. And they'll just put it up, and then they'll put it back down. And they're expecting me to, you know, just catch a glimpse of that and see it. They don't want to just hold it there because they don't want to distract me from, you know, what I may be doing, what I'm recording. And so they'll just. Sometimes just hold up something real quick that's much like the Holy Ghost. He'll just flash up something real quick. Just a name will flash up. It'll come to you, and then it'll go down. And if you're not careful, you'll think, oh, that was just my own mind thinking that name up. But you have to. If we have time with the Holy Ghost, time in the spirit, time with God, when those things flash from him, we'll recognize them as coming from him. Well, see, in this situation, I didn't recognize it. So I'm just reliving, so to speak, the memories of the past. I didn't pray. I should have stopped and just prayed about it. And so about a week later, my mother called and she said, nancy, do you remember your cousin? And she called her name, and I said, I sure do. And when she said that, I go, oh. Because it sounded like I was going to hear something I didn't want to hear. And. And then it dawned on me. Oh, yes, her name came to me. That wasn't just me reliving a sweet memory. That was the Holy Ghost bringing her up to me. And she Said, well, you know, she's in her mid-40s now. She has some younger children. She had her children later in life, and she has some younger children. And they went in this morning and they found her dead in her bedroom. And I just go, oh, my, my, I missed that. I missed that. Well, you say, pastor Nancy, what do you do when you miss it? Well, I know this. You can't carry the weight of that on you because the devil will take advantage of that to defeat you with it. He'll take advantage of that to accuse you with it or get you under condemnation. All you can do is say, father, I repent. I missed that. And all you can do is repent and go on. But then that means this. Try not to let that happen again. Do something to become skillful. Spend more time in the spirit. Spend more time getting acquainted with how the Holy Ghost moves and how he leads and how he speaks to us so that we don't miss those cues because they are so, so important. I was talking to a precious minister friend of mine and this was years ago. She was telling me something of a like story that had happened to her. She was at home one morning and she would. She had planned to go into the office there at their ministry around noontime. And she said while she was getting ready, she said a really strong burden of prayer came on her. And so she recognized it and so she started praying. And she had just been praying for a short while and somebody from the office called her, their ministry office called and there was, so to speak, an emergency that had come up. And so they said, would you please come down here, we've got. So she picked up and she left that place of prayer and she went down to the office and was dealing with this emergency, so to speak. And when she did, she completely forgot about the prayer burden, which would be easy to do. And so she goes down to the office, spends the day fixing this situation that had come up. And when she did, she got a phone call later that afternoon and her son called her and said, mom said, my wife and I were in a car today and said we were in a car wreck. And she was killed in the car wreck. And they had an unborn child and so they lost the baby and he lost his wife. She lost her daughter in law that day and she, the Holy Ghost was trying to alert me, but I stepped away from that burden to go take care of something that came up as an emergency. Let me tell you, the devil has strategies and he will attack your prayer life and he will Use all kinds of natural things to divert you. That when God puts something on your heart, like she had that prayer burden on her heart, no doubt that the devil had something to do with causing a commotion over in this other arena to try to get her to tend to that. I tell you, distractions are not always subtle. Sometimes they're very bold and demand. Right now we demand attention. We have to learn to recognize that because many times those distractions are strategies of the enemy. They're not just a daily life distraction. They are sent by the devil to interrupt your effects effectiveness in that prayer assignment that God may have you on. So you have to recognize that. You know, I remember another time that I missed it. I grew up in Altus, Oklahoma and had a wonderful home life there and went to school. School was not my favorite. Not because I didn't like learning. I was so much of a loner, I guess that the social side of it was not my preference. But there was one, and I did well in school. But there was this one particular class that I struggled with. It was the only one in my whole school career, so to speak, that I really, really struggled with. And I had a particular teacher that was in that class. And he started out the school year by saying 70% of my students fail this class. So he was letting us know your chances and percentages are pretty low. And so I fell into that 70%. And so he was not easy for me to understand. I mean, I just struggled in his class. And basically I turned it into nap time. When I realized I can't even get this, it became nap time. Well, one day, probably about 25 years ago, here I'm grown, you know, and I'm at home and this schoolteacher's name comes up to me. And all I did was, again, I missed it. All I did was start reliving and rehearsing that school year with that teacher and that problem and that class. And all I did was relive all the details, difficulties of that. And then I just let it drop. Well, then about a week later, my mother calls me and she says, nancy, do you remember the schoolteacher you had and called this man's name? And I go, uh, oh, this sounds familiar. Oh yes, yes. And she told me of a great tragedy that had happened to him and he had died. Well, see here, if I would have yielded to that, I. I certainly believe that could have been changed. Why? Because the Holy Ghost was trying to find someone that would give them give the time to cooperating and laboring with God and bringing about this change. I missed it. And again, what do you do? All you can do is repent. But the thing is, is we don't want to keep missing it. We want to keep spending time in prayer, keep developing, keep growing so that we can bear fruit in prayer. I'm so grateful for the times I didn't miss it. I'm so thankful for the times that God used me and allowed me to be used. And I got to participate in some things. I remember one in particular I had. I was laying in bed one night, just getting ready to go to sleep, and I would just lay there and pray in the Spirit as I was going off to sleep. And while I was praying in the Spirit, right in front of me, this mini vision that I had. And I see a car wreck and there's a certain pastor. I didn't know who it was, but later it was a certain pastor I knew, but at the time I didn't see who it was. I couldn't tell. God didn't reveal who it was. You know, the Bible says that he that speaks in an unknown tongue speaks not unto God, speaks not unto men, but unto God. For no man understandeth him howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. I'm so grateful that in seeing that vision that I didn't see who it was because I knew the person. It could have been troubling to my soul to know who it was. But God was able to involve me without, you know, my soul being troubled by what he was involving me in. And so I saw this car wreck, and I saw that this one car was driving and another car came and hit on the driver's side. And I knew this. I just had the sense of it, that it meant certain death. Well, there again, just me seeing that is not the victory. I have to deal with that. God shows us when we take time to see things and we see things and God shows us these things, it's so that we'll deal with it. If we're just saying, well, I saw it, that's not going to be the victory of it. That's not going to change anything. Just to say you saw it. God shows it so that we will use our authority, because we're the ones with the authority on the earth to deal with things. Jesus said, I give you the authority, the power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all, the power of the enemy. Then the Word tells us that whatever we bind will be bound in heaven. Whatever we loose will be loosed in heaven, which means heaven Will back us up. But this scripture shows us if we don't do the bind, if we don't bind, some things won't get bound. If we don't loose some things, some things won't get loosed. So things are waiting for us to use our authority. When I saw that vision of that car wreck, that's exactly what I did. I started using my authority. And I spoke and I said, satan, you take your hands off that situation. And I said, death, you take your hands off that situation. And I call for the angels of heaven to be around that vehicle, to be around that person, to protect and guard and keep their life in Jesus name. After I used my authority and did that, then I just spent a few moments praying in other tongues. Now, the reason I prayed in other tongues was I wanted to see if there was something else further I had I needed to do. Was I missing something? Did I need to address something different? What did I need to do differently or in addition to what I already done? Well, after I prayed in the spirit, then I had a release, a sense of release that once I had spoken to it, spoken with my authority to it, and I prayed in the spirit that I didn't sense to do anything else. So that was the end of that, of what I did that night regarding that vision. About three weeks later, I had been away on a trip, and when I came back home, my husband was awake. And it was around midnight when I got in. And he woke up and he said, nancy, he said, you got a phone call that there's this certain pastor that has been in a wreck and they're wanting you to call. So I called and found out that this pastor was coming home from church. And on the way home from church, there had been a drunk driver that was out and ran right into the side of this pastor's car, hit him on the driver's side. And of course, the pastor's car just wrapped around this other car. And so when the emergency team came to help, all they did was pull out the jaws of life. They had to cut that car away. And it took them an hour to cut the car away from him. And they just pulled out a body bag and just laid it beside the car. They said, there's no way that anybody could have survived this kind of an accident. And so they just pulled out the body bag and laid it alongside the car. And after an hour, they finally were able to cut the car away from the pastor. And when they did, they got him out, and he only had minor injuries. And I mean, they were completely shocked by that because there's no way that man should have walked away from that situation. Well, see, there are so many things that our prayer life can reach into our faith and our authority can reach into. And I think that we have really not even scratched the surface of knowing how far our authority will reach. We can't change everything from everyone else, but there's a lot we can change. And God is looking for somebody who is sensitive and skillful and perceptive when he's looking for someone to labor with him to bring about change and rescue for somebody. Now, people would maybe think, well, you had that vision about that car wreck because you're a minister, because you're a pastor. No, that's not why I had that. I had that because I had been taking time to pray in the Spirit. And by taking time to pray in the Spirit, I positioned myself to see in the Spirit. And so then God could show me this, and then God could work rescue through me on behalf of this pastor. And I'm so grateful for that. This is such an exciting thing that God allows us to participate in. So I encourage you. Take time, spend time, give time, cut away distractions, see what needs to be changed so that you can give the time to developing spiritually. I want to pray with you. Father, we're so grateful for your word. These are wonderful times that we live in. They're sober times that we live in. And we purpose to take our place and be doers of your word. It's part of your plan that we be skillful in prayer. Father, we choose to be skillful in prayer. And we know that that's going to come as we take time to pray, as we take time in the spirit. And we're so grateful for the Holy Ghost, our great guide, our great teacher, who helps us in this divine work. We give you thanks and praise for it. And everybody said amen. We trust you've enjoyed this message. Visit us@DefrainMinistries.org to learn of our upcoming meetings, share your testimony, become a partner, or visit our online store. This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Dufresne Ministries.