<TITLE>03. Par 9-11</TITLE>L-9 You know there's something about getting alone to yourself. Many people never pray until they come to church. Many people thinks that the only place to pray is at church, but the Bible said for men to pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. And then when we get by ourself, we'll usually pray different than what we would if we pray it in church. It's the secret prayer that Jesus spoke of, saying, "Enter ye into a secret closet, and close the door, and when you have did so, pray to your Father Who sees in secret; and He that seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."
And when we're praying like that, there seems to be something to the prayer that takes all the hypocrisy out of it. It seems like that we get in a better connection with God, to get alone. And there's been many times in my life, as perhaps in your life, that you just have to get alone once in a while with Jesus. I've took my car and drove down the road and just studying. After I got to the highway where it was free, or off on some country road, till I would become so filled with His mercies and goodness, till I'd just stopped the car and held the wheel and wept like a baby.

L-10 That being alone... Many times I've climbed up into the mountains. Where every man thought (was with me), I was going hunting. Go up there, and set down on a rock, and just look up to the sky until looked like that my whole innermost being become filled with something that you could just feel... Oh, everything of the world seemed to pass away. Oh, for those precious hours alone with God.
And it's there that when the greatest revelation and inspiration comes, is when we're alone with God. We'd take more time on that, I'm sure, that we would live a better life, more victorious life in Christ.
And maybe Bartimaeus had pulled off over in the warm sunshine after setting in the shadows of the morning to catch the first people coming by for a coin. But he got cold, and he goes out and sits down by the side of the wall and perhaps feeling his way along till he got to the warm sun, and then leaning back...

L-11 Let's see if we can break in on some of the thoughts that he perhaps had. Here he was, maybe that day that no one had given him a coin. And maybe with a family at home, and what would he do then? He had no capital to go on. And if he didn't get something, his little family would do without, and his wife, and how that they would be without maybe all day long...
And it's usually when we are right at the end of our senses that God usually steps in, right at the end of our abilities.
And as we see him sitting there in the warm sunshine, his mind goes back many, many years to when a little Jewish boy on the Palestinian hills was frolicking and running and the shock of black hair around his head. He could look up and see the stars at night and could see the pretty flowers blooming along the Jordan. And to see the beautiful blue skies in the daytime...
And one of his greatest thoughts was of a sweet, old mother that he used to have, that had passed on many years before. And how she used to take him in the afternoon out on the porch that faced over towards the Jordan, and when she would rock him and talk to him and tell him the Bible stories, as it used to be a custom of Jewish mothers to always drill in their child the Bible.


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