In this sermon, Brother Gerard de Toit shares his experience of attending a prayer advance with his sons. He references Luke 4:16-21, where Jesus reads from the book of Isaiah in the synagogue. He emphasizes the importance of the Word of God and how it can bring light and transformation to our lives. Brother Gerard also highlights the need for brokenness, honesty, and transparency before God in order to be effective in ministry. He shares examples of individuals who experienced the power of God's Spirit and encourages the audience to seek a deeper relationship with God.

The entrance of thy words. Give us light. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold, altered or changed in any way. You are welcome to make copies in its entirety for friends and neighbors. For additional cassettes and a catalog, call 1-800-227-7902 or write to Charity Gospel Tape Ministry, 59 South Groffdale Road, Leola, Pennsylvania, 17540. I gave a little introduction yesterday, on Sunday, but many of you were not here. But I'm very happy to introduce Brother Gerard Detoy to you this evening. My sons, Daniel and Samuel, and I, we went away to a prayer advance a year ago just because it sounded like a good idea to go away for two days and fast and pray and seek the Lord. And we heard about a place where a group of men gathered like that. And I thought it would be a good idea for a father to take his boys and go to something like that. So we went, and as we were there, we met Brother Gerard, and he was speaking on prayer and revival throughout those two days. And as soon as I heard the burden that God had put on his heart, immediately I felt impressed of the Lord that He should sometime be able to come and share with us. Because I know that many, many of you that are in this room, you have some of the same burden. And I knew that His burden would unite with our burden and maybe bring us further along the road that we want to walk on. Then when we began to plan for a leadership seminar, I felt impressed of the Lord that He should come. And so we invited Him. He's originally from South Africa. He lives in Canada now, but he grew up in South Africa. Dutch Reformed background. He has a good heritage. Praise God for that. But he has a bit of an accent, so you'll have to tune your ears. He lives in Canada. He has a dear wife, one little girl. He is an overseer of faith missions in Canada. And I don't know that I can explain all what that is, but in the western side of Canada, he works with the faith mission. And he travels and prays and preaches. And he loves the Lord. And I want to recommend him to you tonight. May God bless your brother. If you have your Bible with you tonight, I would like you to turn with me to Luke chapter 4, if you will. And if you don't have your Bible with you, you need to say, May God have mercy on my soul. We're going to read from Luke chapter 4, and we will begin to read at verse number 16. The material that I would like to share with you tonight, we didn't have time to do that, but if you want, we can make copies of that, and then you would be able to receive it if you feel you can use it in the days to come. So we have sheets like that available if you would be interested in that. Luke chapter 4, and let's begin to read at verse number 16. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fixed upon him. And he began to say unto them this day, Is this scripture fulfilled in your ear? And all therein witnessed and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is this not Joseph's son? And he said unto them, You will surely say to me, This proverb, Physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you the truth, that there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up for three years and for six months, and when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Seraphta, city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, saving Naam the Syrian. And all there in the synagogue, when they heard these things, they were full of wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill wherein the city was built, that they might cast him down. But he passing through the midst of them went his way, and came down to Capernaum, the city of Galilee, and taught him on the Sabbath days. And they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with great power. Father, as we bow again for a moment in thy most holy presence, do we want to thank you tonight for the fact that we as the people of God are in the presence of God. And Father, you are in the midst of your people tonight. And Lord, the way that I have recognized it in my own heart is simply because of the sins of brokenness that you've brought into my soul as we were waiting upon God for this service tonight. You have said to us in your word, it's not by might, nor is it by power, but it is by your Spirit. And Father God, we have come these days not just to be exposed to great biblical truths, but we have come these days because we want to meet with God. And Lord, maybe some of us who are sitting here this evening, we say in our hearts, yes, I've come to meet with God, and yet I'm not sure what God is going to do with me. And so tonight we pray at the outset of these five evenings together, if you would tarry to come, I pray that the Spirit of God will come. Lord, we have not come to hear the voice of man these days. And Father, if you would have sent revival through messages, then we would have had revival a long time ago. But we have come as the people of God these days to humble ourselves before you. And I pray again for my own heart tonight, and I ask in Jesus' name that as I unburden my heart to this precious group of your children, Father, I pray that you will pour into my soul the burden of God for every life in the sanctuary tonight. And I ask that you would bless your word. And I ask that the hush of the holy presence of God will fall upon us this evening, because we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. I love reading the old Puritans in my library out in Western Canada. Some years ago I was reading the life story of a man with the name of Thomas Boston. And I found out that Thomas Boston one night had a dream, and in his dream did he see Satan preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Boston the Puritan was so taken back by what he saw in his dream that in his dream he went up to him and he said to him, Why are you preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus? He said, Surely you are doing harm to your own kingdom. But Satan turned to Boston in his dream and said to him, No, he said, I'm preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus without the unction and the anointing of the Holy Spirit of God. And he said, I have found myself, instead of bringing people closer to God, I have found myself actually driving people away from this glorious message of the gospel of Christ. If you will continue to read the life story of Boston the Puritan, you will discover that that dream revolutionized his life, and that from that day on he was never ever the same. I would like to speak to you tonight, if I may, on this great subject of what God is saying to us in our own individual lives about what it means to live a life under the unction and the anointing of the Spirit of God. Now, my brother and my sister, you and I would need to realize that whenever I study or we study a subject in the New Testament, I always ask myself, what does the Old Testament say about this New Testament subject for the simple reason that the Old Testament is revealed for us in the New Testament and the New Testament lies even within the Old Testament. We don't have time tonight to explore this, but let me mention to you that if you study the subject of the anointing of God, or rather from God's perspective in the Old Testament, well, you discover that within the Hebrew language are there no less than four wonderful words that He's trying to communicate to us, this concept of the anointing. There are two of those words that are found at 142 places in the Old Testament, and then there are two other words that you would come across in only two places in the Old Testament. And if you look at this subject, it's the extent to which you will discover that there were no less than eight material things that found themselves being affected by this concept of the anointing. For instance, the Bible is saying to us that the altar of God was anointed. God is saying to us in His Word that the tabernacle of God was anointed, and there were no less than twelve different classes of people that found themselves in this category of the anointing. For instance, the prophet was anointed so that he could become the mouthpiece of God towards the people of God, the priest in the Old Testament was anointed so that he could be wholly set apart unto God, and the king in the Old Testament was anointed so that he could become the leader of the people of God, and there were three different kinds of anointing. The Bible is speaking to us about the anointing with spices, and then the Word of God in the Old Testament is speaking to us about the anointing with oil, and then the Old Testament is speaking to us about what we would consider as the anointing of the Spirit of God. Now, I don't think this Monday night is it possible for us to understand this great subject if you and I will not be able to come to grips with it as it revealed itself upon the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Now, maybe you sit here tonight and you say to yourself exactly what I said to myself when I was sitting in my own library and I look at my own insignificant life, and I said to myself, Gerard, surely you can't compare your life with the life and the ministry of Christ, because the Lord Jesus was not only sinless in His life, but He was also supernatural in His birth. And yet you remember at the end of the Gospel of Luke how the Son of God turned to His disciples and what did He say to them? He said to them, I want you to tarry within Jerusalem until you have received this imbuement from My Father. In fact, the Greek word is a very significant word for the word tarry, because what Jesus actually did, He looked upon them and He said to them, I want you to sit down until you have received this something from My Father. I want us this evening to look upon this subject in the life of the Lord Jesus as it revealed and manifested itself upon the life of Christ. And I want us to look at it on three different hearings. I want us to consider the promise of the anointing of God's Spirit upon the life of the Lord Jesus. I want us to look upon the purpose. Why was the Son of God anointed with the Holy Spirit of God? And thirdly, I want us to look at the power of the anointing of God's Spirit upon the life of the Saviour if time would allow us to do so. So what was this promise upon the life of the Lord Jesus? Well, my brother and my sister, I think that we are dealing with two tremendous essentials that as it were revealed to us, this concept of this promise. And first of all, there was what I would consider the secret of His promise upon His life, and secondly, there was the symbol of His promise upon the life of the Saviour. And if you would ask me tonight and say, Gerard, why is it that you would say that there was a secret upon the life of the Lord Jesus, or why was it that as men and women look upon the life of the Son of God, that they had to stop and listen and that they were able to say that no man ever spoke like this man. That somehow every time when the Son of God opened His mouth and He uttered a word to the lives of men and women, that somehow it brought the division. And men and women realize exactly where they stood in the presence of God. I simply believe that the secret of His life was first of all, it was a life of holiness unto His Father. My brother and my sister, I wonder tonight if you would allow me to suggest to you in this service this Monday night and this evening, and I'm absolutely honest with myself in saying this to you, that there is no possibility for you and for me as a believer to know the unction of God's Spirit upon our lives if we don't know the secret of a life of holiness. What about the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus? Well, you remember in John chapter 17 when He prayed that wonderful life, priestly prayer, and what did He pray? He said, Father, He said, I sanctify Myself for the sake of My disciples. And my friends, the meaning of the word sanctification in the New Testament, it's not so much for us to be separate from this Word, from this world, although it means that, but it most of all means for us to be separated unto God. You see, if you and I as a believer tonight are separated unto God, then my brother and my sister, our lives would be so taken up with the things of God that this world and its influences will not have an effect upon my relationship with God. I think of that wonderful verse in the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus. You remember when they write it to the Hebrews, He's saying to us about the Son of God that He was holy and He was harmless and He was undefiled and He was separate from sinners. You see, in His relationship to His Father, He became the Holy Son of God. And His relationship to His fellow men, He was absolutely harmless. And in His relationship to His ministry, He was undefiled. And in His relationship to Himself, He became the prophet and the priest and the king. And the Son of God was set apart unto His Father. And because of the fact that He was set apart unto His Father, my brother and my sister will sit upon the life of the Son of God, something of the unction of the Spirit of God. I wonder tonight if you would allow me to ask you what about you in my life. I think, for instance, of that amazing passage that we come across in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. And you remember in 1 Thessalonians chapter 3 how the apostle Paul in chapter 1 wrote to the church of Thessalonica. And I often say to myself when I was a pastor in my own days and I looked upon my own congregation and I read that first chapter and I said, how much I would long to have a church like that. They were a suffering church. They were a giving church. They were a witnessing church. They were a church that knew what it means to sacrifice for God. Yet in the third chapter of 1 Thessalonians, what did he say to them? The apostle Paul turned to them and he said to them, I pray. And he said, I pray for you day and night. He said, because I sense that there is something that is lacking in your faith. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 he brought it to the climax when he said, I pray that the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. I'll have a German translation because of my German background. And do you know what it says? It says Heilig und durch und durch. And I think it's two wonderful words in the Greek New Testament. The first word is the Greek word hallelujah that is saying to us that God wants to sanctify us as His people extensively in our relationships with God. And the second word is the Greek word hallelujah that is saying to us that God wants to sanctify us experientially in our relationships with God. Paul explained to us the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God. And do you know what he said to us? He said, this is not just a process. He said, this is the moment where God cleanses me. In fact, theologians when they refer to the teints in the structure which is what we would look upon as the aorist imperative mood, they refer to that as punctalia noctilnia. It means that there is a moment that God is able to cleanse me from sin. And I wonder this Monday night if you would allow me to ask you, my brother, my sister, has there been a moment in our lives as the people of God when we have come to our God who is able to cleanse us from sin? You say, Pastor Al, is it possible that you are saying to me that I remember there was a time in my life when the Son of God came into my life and He saved me from the pollution of sin, but maybe from the guilt of sin. But maybe tonight I sit here and there is the pollution of sin in my life as a believer. Maybe you sit here this Monday night and you struggle with an evil temper. Oh, my brother and my sister, may I suggest to you this evening that God in His Word is not saying to us as His people that He wants us to sin and fought and worked and beat every single day of my life because if this is what He wants, why has He saved me? I will never forget I was born and brought up in Africa and I stayed with a farmer in what was called Deutsches Afrika where there were many Germans in that part of the country. And it was a wonderful time in my own life, I should say. But I stayed with this man and the night we had supper together on his farm and I was preparing to speak at a missionary convention conference and he turned to me that night and he said, Gerard, he said, I want you to talk to my servants about Christ. And by this man in his wife knew the Lord Jesus as his Savior and I began to pray about that and as I prayed about it the next morning I had my quiet time and after I had my quiet time I came down into the kitchen for breakfast and he was gone to what we would speak of as the Kral, the place where they keep their goats and their sheep in Africa. And I remember as I came walking down towards that Kral, there was an African Bushman standing and I kind of passed by and as I passed by I said to him, I said good morning to you. He never said a word. So I stopped and I looked him straight in the eyes and I said to him, good morning to you. And he didn't open his mouth and I looked into the eyes of this African Bushman and I saw the absolute hatred and the bitterness in the eyes of this man and I took his hands like this and I said, I said, I don't think you know me. I said, but if you know me you will realize I'm going to follow you all day until I know what's wrong. And he just looked down at me and he dropped his head and he lifted his arm like that and the blood was streaming down and he just pointed down to the man there at the Kral and he said, it's the man. I said, what do you mean? He said, this morning with his walking stick he lost his temper and before he knew what he did, he said, you see how he hit me? He said, it's the man. And this was the man who said to me the previous night, will you speak to my servants about Jesus? And I remember I took that African Bushman in his arm and I dragged him towards where this man was sitting and I sat next to him and I turned to him and I said to him, I said, do you think this man needs Jesus Christ? And he said, yes I do. I said, no he doesn't need him. I said, you need him more. I said, of course he needs to be saved. I said, but he can't be saved by the way that you are living. I wonder if this evening if you would allow me to say to these precious men that I believe God has brought to us these days. Listen my brethren, we have come to learn about preaching. We have come to learn about pointing people to Christ. We have come to learn about the disciplines of the souls. But all these wonderful things that we are going to learn are going to be a waste of time if God is not going to meet with us. And I know it's so easy for us to sit in a conference like this on a Monday night and you say, you know, I've flown in from Washington State, or I've driven for 12 hours or for 24 hours, and I come and I love the fellowship and I enjoy the singing and I think the Word of God is great. But in the midst of that, God is saying, what is the sense of your need? It's the life of holiness, you see. And I wonder this evening if you would allow me to ask you, if God, His Holy Spirit in these days that are going to be together around this Word is going to come to your life and say, there are some areas of your life where you have never allowed the light of my Spirit to fall. And you are seeking my face in prayer and you are crying to pray and you are saying sometimes empty words and somehow as you say those words I say, no, you need to look at your heart because there is impurity. It's possible that you sit here this evening and you're seeking God to meet you if that's what you think, you are a believer and you need to discover that you've never received the witness of God's Spirit, that you are born again. I remember counseling a man years ago at a conference in Africa who came out at meetings for 25 years to seek God for the fullness of the Holy Spirit and he said, I want to be full to the Spirit of God. And for 25 years he couldn't get through to God. And I sat down and said, share with me your testimony. And we discovered that day that he was never born of the Spirit of God. He came to the altar to be saved so that God would fill him. It's holiness, you see. You say, Gerard, why is it holiness? You know, because the Bible is saying to us, without holiness no man shall see the Lord. My brother and my sister, the Spirit of God that has come to dwell in our lives when He saved us is the Holy Spirit of God. And the Holy Spirit of God is living in my life as a believer. The Spirit of God is dwelling in my relationship with God. He wants me to live a holy life. And I wonder tonight if you would allow me to ask you as I would ask myself. If I look back over this last week, I wonder those of us who are men tonight, my brethren, I wonder if you would allow me to ask you that if we would have a piece of equipment tonight in this age of technology and we would be able to connect it to your human brain and somehow actually connect it to your human brain on a screen, we would be able to project on that screen everything that you were thinking about this last week. I wonder how many of us will be here tonight until the end of the service. You say, what does it mean? God wants to cleanse us. You say, well, how do I know that God has not cleansed my heart? How do I know tonight that I sit in this service and I need to lift up my heart and my hands to God and say, God, I can't say that my heart is clean. But many of myself were praying prior to this service here in this study and I was reminded of the Lourdes Revival in 1948-52 and the islands had stuck. And when there was a half-night of prayer and this person prayed and that person prayed and then a young man stood up and he began to quote Psalm 24 which says, Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place? And he said, those who have clean hands and a pure heart. And I wonder these days what will happen if God comes to you in my life and say, it's not clean there. I'm sure there are many of our dear wives tonight that are praying for us. You have come to this conference as a husband and as a father and there at your house where you came from in the quietness where no one knows what's going on, you have said things to your wife that have deeply hurt her and she's crying to God these days and said, God, will you please meet with my husband? Ah, when he's in church on Sunday morning, he's all wonderfully dressed and he's got a smile upon his face and he's singing these old hymns and I mean he's just the saint that you could think of. But boy, I tell you, when things go wrong in the house and he loses this and he loses that, I sometimes wonder if God is existing. Many of them tonight are on their knees crying to God and said, would you come to my husband, the father of my children? I hate to say this to you, but some of the most loneliest women I've met in my ministry has been the wives of Christian men and those who are pastors and full-time workers. And I refuse to stay in a motel when I'm involved in a conference and I refuse to go to a church unless the pastor is willing to give me two or three hours of his day every day to spend in prayer. I'm sick of God meeting with people and congregations and the pastor doesn't get anywhere himself and those people want to grow and they're not getting any spiritual food and they're scanty. Most of the times I stay in parsonages with these men and their wives and their children. And I remember about two years ago in a church out in Canada, on a Sunday morning prior to the final service, it was a Sunday to a Sunday, I ran out of the basement suite and ran up into the kitchen. I was staying there those days and ran up to just get a glass of water and as I came into the kitchen, there was this pastor's wife, just a beautiful little person. And I said, would you mind if I just have a little glass of water? And she gave me the water and I could see her shaking and I knew she wanted to say something. And as I took the water, I said, thank you so much. And she said, Gerard, can I just talk to you for a moment? And I thought, yeah, this is another one. We sat down at the kitchen table and I said, what is it? And she said, you see my husband, he's a wonderful preacher, he's a wonderful man, the church is growing, he's counselling people all over the town. And she said, you see my husband? He's a wonderful man, isn't he? I said, yeah, I guess he is. She said, my husband is a tyrant. I said, what do you mean? She said, I know my husband. The church began to scream down their cheeks and she said, you know what? She said, he refused to pray with me. She said, he treated me sometimes like a dog. I feel in the intimacy of our relationship, sometimes I feel like a piece of mechanical structure. And that Sunday night after the service, I sat down with him and I said, I think we need to talk about things. And that Sunday night, God met with him. And God met with him to such a degree that he left the ministry because he wasn't qualified for it. Ah, I wonder tonight if I can ask you, my friend, do you and I know what it means to be clean in the presence of God? Sanctify us through and through. How did Paul explain it? He said, God wants to sanctify the body and the soul and the spirit. The body and its instincts. Those emotions that come, the eyes that I look through. Oh, I wonder if I can ask you tonight, the things that we look at, how do we look at those things? Is there a sense of desire after those things? You see, my friends, what's inside has come out. And the Bible is saying for us, for out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, lasciviousness and evil eye, blasphemy. God is saying to us, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. It's the life of holiness, you see. I think of that wonderful promise in 2 Corinthians 6-7. What is the Word of God saying to us? God is saying to us, Come ye out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and my daughters. Sayeth the Lord God Almighty. And then chapter 7 verse number 1 is saying to us, Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Do you know what I've discovered in that verse? When the Bible is saying to us, Let us cleanse ourselves, the word cleanse is in the aorist imperative mood. God said, I want you to be absolutely clean. And then He went on to say, Perfecting holiness in the fear of God is in the present imperative mood. You see, there is both a crisis and a process. A place where God cleanses you. And a process where God is going to keep on cleansing you. It was the life of holiness. I would never forget, I was out three years out in the ministry in my own country, and I was converted at the end of my third year in a theological school in the city of Cape Town. Got saved and went out into ministry afterwards, and three years later, I was preaching this wonderful life, you know, that God wants His people to be separated unto God. I mean, it's the message of the Bible. It's just thoroughly true. God said, I'm coming for a bride that is clean. But my friends, in my heart I was so defeated. And in my heart, although I was preaching about a life of victory, I was speaking about the promise of the Spirit of God, I was referring to the fullness of God's Spirit. I was saying to people, now you must know, it's not a goal, it's a gateway. And I was trying to present these great concepts of a sanctifying work of God's Spirit, but in my life I was so defeated. And I remember I was asked to lead a few hymns at one of the conferences, and I made an absolute mess of that. And afterwards I went to the matron of our theological school, and she was the one that God used in my salvation. In fact, before I was saved, I was in this school, she went to the president and said, that student, she mentioned my name, she said, is that student really born of the Spirit of God? And the president said, well, he says that he is. She said, well, why is it that in a testimony meeting you always tell us what he's doing for God, but you will never tell us what God is doing for him? They began to pray, and then God worked and saved me. But I remember that night when I was leading the hymns at this large conference, and I made an absolute mess of it, and it was just absolute carnality, and I was in such disgust about everything I did. And I went and I sat down, and there was Ms. Stouter, and I turned to her and I said, I said, Ms. Stouter, I've really messed it up tonight. And she said, no. She said, you've got a far greater problem. I said, what do you mean? She said, your problem is you've never been died, you've never been crucified with Christ. Man, did I like a woman saying that to me? I thought, where did she get the right to say that to me? I mean, I was dedicated to God. I used to spend three, four, five hours in prayer every day. I would read His Word. I preached the Word of God. I knew I had a problem, but I didn't want to hear it from her. God got a hold of me. And God said, you can't go on in ministry like that. And I got serious about it. And I resigned from the ministry, not because I've done anything wrong. But I thought, God, I can't associate myself with a life, a life where I don't know it myself. And I began to fast and pray about it for two solid weeks. And I got so desperate that I was willing to die physically. I said, I'm not going to go on unless God does a work in my heart, where I know that I'm full to the Holy Spirit. And I will never forget, it was a Saturday night, but I thought the Spirit of God brought me to a place of absolute surrender. If you sit here tonight, you say, you know, I don't know that I'm full to the Holy Spirit of God. What is the first step? The first step is a realization. You know, if you and I can't see our need, listen, folks, God can't do a thing for us. I think of Moody. I think of two elderly ladies who stood at Moody Church, and he was wonderfully blessed of God, and God wonderfully worked in his ministry. And every time when he'd go out of the church on a Sunday night, these two elderly ladies would stand there and shake his hand, and everyone would say, oh, this is wonderful, this is great, God is working, this is no substitute. And these elderly ladies would take his hand and say, Mr. Moody, we pray that you will be full to the Spirit of God. And everyone would say, oh, that's wonderful. Until one night God said, aha, I'm getting home with you now. And you see, you can sit here, if it's Monday night in the service, and my brother or my sister, you can sit here and say, well, you know, I'm sure God needs to do something, but I can't say that I'm really desperate about it. But I saw my need. I was sick of defeat. And I remember that Saturday night when God brought me to a place of absolute surrender. Everything was laid in the altar for God. My ambitions and my ideas and my desires and my plans and my little possessions and my mother and my father and my longing to become this and the longing to do this. And God said, hey, I want every one of those things, they need to come to the altar of God. And I'm reminded of Dr. F.B. Meyer, who said a conference, a church convention, where the late C.T. Stott, and C.T. Stott, that man that made that great statement and said, if Jesus Christ died for me and gave His life for me, then no sacrifice is too great for me to give. And at that convention, he stood up and he spoke for 15 minutes and the late Dr. F.B. Meyer sat there and as he sat there, he said to himself, there's something in the life of this man that I do not possess. And he went up to C.T. Stott afterwards and he said, I want to talk to you, and he sat down with him. And F.B. Meyer was a very popular preacher. And he said to C.T. Stott, what is it about your life? And C.T. Stott turned to him and said, have you ever been crucified with Christ? Have God put the sentence of death upon the self-life? And F.B. Meyer said, I didn't like it. And maybe you don't like it enough. But he got a loan of God. And God said, F.B. Meyer, I want the keys of your life. And he became absolutely honest with God and he began to put those keys on the altar for God, the keys of his popularity and the keys of his preaching, and the keys of his success, and the keys of his desire. And he gave him over. And there was one key. And he didn't want to give it over. And he prayed and he prayed and he couldn't get through to God. And there was a moment when God said to him, F.B. Meyer, I want everything or nothing. And he gave the key over to God. There was a night like that in my life. I didn't want to stay a bachelor for ten years because I had the same desires as every other young man, but I knew God challenged me quite some time before that and said, Are you willing to give me the best ten years of your life? And stay on your own. And I had to hand these keys over to God. And it was ten o'clock that Saturday night when I put my head in the pillow and the first time in my life I could say with absolute honesty, lifting my heart to God and said, God, I know tonight that there is nothing between me and the Savior. I know there is a night that I'm going to put my head in the pillow that if I die tonight, there is nothing that is holding back between me and God. And I would never forget, I'd cover my knees that night and I'd say to Him that night, God, I want You to cleanse me. I want You to fill me with Your Holy Spirit. I knew the Holy Spirit was resident and yet I knew He wasn't present. And I would never forget the next morning, I was going through my quiet time, I had trusted Him to cleanse me and to fill me with His Spirit. And I went through my quiet time and I was going through the Old Testament and I came to that passage in the Old Testament when the Bible is saying that Jehi is King. And suddenly the Spirit of God took those words and just witnessed to my heart that Christ is King of my life. Ah, you say, did you speak in tongues? No, I didn't. Did you feel anything? No, I didn't feel a thing. How did you know that God did the work? The Spirit of God witnessed from the Word to my heart. And I remember I got up that morning out of my room where I was and went back to the college and I went back to that same lady, Mestalta. She was dying of cancer at that point. And I sat down with her and I said, Mestalta, I said, I trusted God to cleanse me. And I remember I said, I've asked Him to do a work of my heart. I've asked Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit. And I said, but I'm so afraid that it's not real. And she had this sermon and she just began to pray. And she said, God, thank You for what You've done for Gerard. And I remember I prayed. I was so scared of something that's not real. I mean, you get so sick of things that's not real. And I prayed and I said, God, if You've really done it in my heart, I want to thank You. And she looked me in the eyes and she said, now Gerard, you need to share it with someone. And I remember as I walked down to the college and the students knew me and I did some theory with them subsequent, you know, after studies. I mean, they knew me. They knew I had a heart for God. I was jealous of the things of God. And then I met one of the main students and I took him in his hand and I said, Harry, I need to talk to you. And he said, oh, Gerard, what is it? I said, I need to tell you that I was never really through with God. He said, what do you mean? I said, oh, there was some terrible sin in my life. I said, but Harry, last night, God brought me to the place of absolute desperation and I asked Him to cleanse me and to fill me with His Spirit. And the moment when I said that, the witness of God's Spirit came. It's a life of holiness, you know. You say, what would you call this? I call it the Spirit-filled life. You say, Pastor, don't you believe that God can do it today when He saved me? I think it is possible, but I have found very few people like that. And brethren, those of you who have come for this men's conference, I don't know if you realize this tonight, but we pray day and night that you will have such an encounter with God this week that's going to affect your life and your family and your child and your community and your fellowship. I mean, we saw it happen last year at the prayer advance. I think of the pastor about an hour ago here from here that met last year with God at a church of about 150 people. And in one year, that church has doubled to 300 people. And those of you who sit here this evening and say, you know, I've really come to learn all these wonderful things. I want to tell you, you've come to learn these wonderful things, but you have come and you are going to become honest and vulnerable and transparent with God. And you sit here and say, amen, that's what I want. I'm not sure if you really know what this is about. Because there's going to be a moment that you're going to sit in one of these services and the Spirit of God is going to come to your heart and say, no, no, you need to become really honest about this. And that little thing that you looked upon and you said, well, I think it was some psychological disorder. God said, no, it's sin. It's going to affect your life. Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and the spirit. You say, how do I cleanse myself? If I come to your house and my car would break down in front of your house, or maybe if I was really Amish, then my horse and buggy would break down in front of your house. And I mean, what can break down in it? Maybe the wheel came off or something. And my hands are full of oil and I knock on the door of your house and I say, you know, I really want to visit you, but see my hands are just filthy. And you take me there to an old basin or something, and you put water in and you give me some soap and you say, here is a towel and now I want you to wash your hands. And if I would stand there and say, I wish my hands were clean, I wish my hands were clean, you would say, you know, it's obvious you must be from Africa. You would say, make yourself available. Just put your hands in the water. You say, what is the water? The water is the Word of God. God has sent us, let us come to His Word. Let us see ourselves in the light of His Word. I was thinking tonight when I was praying with Brother Denny about the Zulu Revival, and oh, my brother and my sister, how we long for revival. And revival is not just a hype-up of emotion, and revival is not a series of special services. No, no, no, no. Revival affects the man in his sleep. Revival is what Mark Luke Jones referred to as an organized disorder. And I remember in the Zulu Revival there are the privilege to be part of how those German missionaries prayed for months and for months, and then they went and they took their tents and they put their tents in Zulu land, and they see about four or five or six hundred of these Zulu people, and every night they came and they preached their hearts out, and they made their invitations, and they tell them, and they plead, they say, come to Jesus. And then after about four or six months, six or ten of those Zulu people would come and they would give their hearts to God, and Stegan said, we will go back two months later, and some of them are back amongst the witch doctors and superstition. And they stopped and said, no, there is something wrong. And for three months they began to pray and study the acts of the apostles and said to themselves, what did those early disciples experience that we did not experience in our own hearts? But you know what happened, my brother and my sister? Those times of Bible study every day became times of sobbing in the presence of God in such a way that sometimes the pages of their Bibles were so wet, were so crumpled as it were, and their eyes were so swollen up that they could hardly read the Word of God. And in my stupidity I said to Errol, why did you cry? He said, the standards of the Word of God! He said, for three months we wept and we sobbed. He said, because a holy God came and He lifted up His standards. And we saw it and we looked at ourselves and He said, we were bankrupt. I wonder if you sit here tonight and you're bankrupt. And you say, oh, Pastor, I want to trust God tonight to cleanse me. I'm not sure if you should. I think you should wait until you know what this is about. And they say, for three months we wept and we sobbed. Then on a Saturday afternoon, the Spirit of God broke through across Isamantu and Mapamulu. The first person that came to the mission station was a black witch doctor. And she turned to speak and she said, can your Jesus set me free? And he was so taken aback by what happened, he said to her, why did you come to the mission station? She said, that's not what I asked. He didn't know that God had poured out His Spirit. And that Saturday night the villagers set alight as these African people ran from one place to the other with their torches to make restitution. Five days later, the police phoned Stegan at Kwasi Sabantu and Mapamulu and said, will you stop preaching? Stop preaching. And he said, why? They said, we don't have enough plates on the premises to put the things that they've stolen. Stop preaching. Oh, my brother, you sit here tonight and you think it's funny. Wait till God gets a hold of you, you'll be in deep trouble. Something will suddenly come to the surface. A little thing that you say, a little word that I whisper about someone, a little attitude that I reveal to my wife, my daughter. Suddenly it comes to the surface and you run for the phone tonight. I said, I'm going to talk to my wife about that. Something that I said about someone. And God said, I want you to deal with it. When I was in Dorches, Africa, there was a little town. And in that little town, a very, very conservative town, probably like many other villages around here. And in that town was a young school teacher that came from the city of Stellenbosch, outside of the city of Cape Town. And she finished her teaching at a school, at university, and she went to the school to teach. And everyone in the town knew each other, very, very conservative people. And one night it happened so she was in a boarding house and it happened so that a car stopped in front of the boarding house and a young man got out of the car and he went and he opened the door on the other side, as we do it in my own country. And this young school teacher came, got out of the car and he took her to the boarding house. And as he took her to the boarding house, to the front door of the boarding house, he kissed her goodnight and went back into the house. And across the road, there was a lady who was a believer who sat under the veranda, the veranda outside of her house in the cool of the evening and she saw that happen. And this little conservative town, she ran to the phone and she phoned her best friend. She said to her best friend, you know this new teacher that's here in the town, you wouldn't believe what I saw tonight, of a man that kissed her in front of the boarding house. For that conservative little town, I mean that was just something amazing. She said to her best friend, now I don't want to tell anyone, but her best friend phoned her best friend. And within a matter of two or three weeks, word got out in the town and it got to the school and the principal of the school heard of this and one day he called this young teacher in, this beautiful girl, into his office and as he called her in, he said, madam I want you to sit down and she sat down and he said, I'm sorry to say, but we need to ask you to resign from your position. And this innocent poor girl sat there and thought, what on earth have I done wrong? And she said, sir will you please tell me what I've done wrong? And he said, I'm not prepared to discuss it with you. He said, we've made a decision as a staff and we just would like you to resign and you're not a teacher here anymore. And this poor person, she was just about disintegrated and walked out there, didn't know what she's done wrong and began to wonder about everything and she walked back to the boarding house. She began to pack her suitcases and as she packed them, it happened so that she, look at her, look at what her mother and father has done, paid for her studies and everything and as she packed her suitcases, she came across a little revolver that her father gave her to defend herself. And she said, I can't face mummy and daddy like that. And she took that little revolver and she took her own life. It was terrible in the town that she committed suicide. And after the funeral and everything was gone, everything was over, one day the very same car stopped in front of the same boarding house. The same young man got out of the car and he stood there just in a gaze. The same Christian lady sat across the street in the shade of the afternoon. And he saw her and he walked over to her because there was no one else around. He walked and he kind of knelt next to where she sat and he said, he said, Madam, he said, I wonder if you can help me. She said, What can I do for you? He said, Madam, he said, I've travelled all the way back here. He said, Madam, I wonder if you can tell me why my sister took her own life. She threw her arms in the air and she said, God, I didn't know it was his sister. I would have never done it if I knew it was his sister. And you may be sitting here tonight and some little thing has come out here. And God said, I'm going to get hold of your life. I come out of a conservative background, you know. I know what it means to go to someone and say, you know, I just want to tell you this so that you can pray for that person. And God said, No, no, that's not why you're doing this. You may be sitting here this evening and it's a man that has travelled a distance and you've left the church and you've become part of another church and you sit here tonight with unresolved issues and you can't with an open face walk back into that church that you walked out, you had legitimate disagreements there, you had the right to leave that church, but you can't go back tonight to that pastor and to the people and to that congregation and stand in front of them and say, I left the church, I left the church with a clean heart. And God said, these days as you're going to sit in these meetings, I'm going to put my finger upon relationships. I'm going to ask you to maybe go back because maybe there is a pastor, a man who's, prior to being in ministry, I mean, he's maybe in a mess, but he's helping to be in a far greater mess than he is today. You say, what is it, Gerard? This is where revival begins. I think of the man that came to Duncan Campbell on the island of Lewis from England who had a church and people were leaving the church and he was in absolute disarray and he said, Mr. Campbell, oh, God is working a revival. I want this revival to come to my church. Duncan Campbell in his gracious, godly, determined way, looked him straight in the eyes and said, oh, my brother, you shouldn't have done that. The man said, what do you mean? He said, you shouldn't have come to the island of Lewis. He said, I want you to go back and I want you to go back to your partners and I want you to go into your study and I want you to go and sit on the floor and I want you to ask your wife to give you a piece of chalk or something and just draw a circle around yourself and cover yourself with a blanket and say, God, I want you to send revival, I want you to send it in a circle and I'm not coming out under this blanket until you're going to do it. You say, why do you say that? Do you know why I'm saying it tonight? If I'm not saying it, I'd rather stand there and just weep my heart out because I believe that this week is an absolute crucial week in every one of our lives. Do you know why I'm saying this? Because there are some of us that pray for these meetings for a year. There were about maybe 15 or 20 men or more in this very same fellowship who prayed every morning from 5 to 6 o'clock seeking the face of God. Some of them have spent days in prayer and fasting seeking God. How dare we not meet with God? And I see tonight potential and life in this Monday night service that when God will turn us around and come to our lives and our families and our children and come to our community and send a movement of His Spirit that can turn this country around. You say, Pastor, where is it going to come? It's going to come to my heart and to your heart. I said to my wife earlier this morning, I said, oh mommy, may God prevent that I come back home the same as I left. You say, aren't you satisfied? No, I'm not. I've been in revival twice. And once you've been in revival, it spoils you for life. You want to see it again. I wonder what will happen if God wants to do it. Do you know what will happen to us? God will break our hearts. God will show us ourselves. I think of Mary Morrison who was converted in the Lewis revival that when God began to deal with her own life. And listen, you can be in revival and be a Christian and not live in a spirit-filled life. She got so desperate that she said to her fellow worker one day, looking in the mirror, and she looked at her and she said, I hate that person there. So sick of herself. So hungry for God. It's the life of holiness, you know. My brothers and my sisters, I want to live as close to God as it is possible for a sinner of faith by grace to live. And I wonder tonight if there is a longing in your heart to be cleansed. God, I want you to cleanse me. I want you to cleanse me as a husband so that in my mind, the only person that I ever think of when I think of my life is the woman that you sent into my life. The only one that I want to desire after is the woman that you brought across my path and you've given her to me. I went to my wife last week and I mean, I don't know if you people do it, but I hugged my wife now and again, you know. I just took her into my arms and just stood there and I just said, Mommy, I really want to tell you that I love you. My wife is a cool, calculated, calm Canadian. And she said, I know it. And I hold her until she wept. I said, I really want you to know it. She came to me afterwards and said, Daddy, I really appreciate that. I think of a friend of mine who's a wonderful man of God. He said, I stood in the kitchen one morning and I said something to my wife. And when I said that something to my wife, he said, I knew that I hurt my wife. And he said, I went to the town to get the mail and I came back and when I was in the town, I knew that I hurt her. And I bought a beautiful bunch of flowers and got the flowers and came into the kitchen and there was my wife. And he said, I got hold of her and I said, I bought you this wonderful flower. And she said, thank you, Daddy. And she took the flowers and the tears began to stream down her cheeks. And I said, Mommy, why are you crying? And he said, my wife said to me, Daddy, I don't want the flowers. I don't want the flowers. I want you to say that you're sorry. Gentlemen, can I tell you tonight, don't try to do something for God in ministry if it doesn't work out here. Don't try and do something for God in ministry if it doesn't work out with your wife and your children. It's a life of holiness. It's a life of yieldedness. What is this spirit-filled life about? It's a life of being yielded to God. Do you remember about the Lord Jesus Christ? What does the Bible say about the life of Christ? Yet learn the obedience by what? By the things that He suffered. You see, the day when God falls as a Holy Spirit, what really happens that day is that my world becomes one with the will of God. And that can mean anything. That can mean this evening that you can sit here as a father and the Spirit of God can put His hand upon your life and the Spirit of God can say, I want you to go back to your wife and your children and I want you to tell them that I've called you into ministry in the days to come. It means that you can land up somewhere in the mission field. It means I can call you into the darkest of Africa. It's a life of yieldedness. Do you remember at His baptism, what did John the Baptist say to Him? He said, I'm not worthy to unloosen Thy shoelaces. And the Son of God turned to Him and said, So that all righteousness will be fulfilled. Ah, my brother and my sister, can you and I imagine the Son of God come to take on the form of a servant? Live amongst us. It's been about half an hour, 45 minutes every morning around our table with family devotions and singing and fellowship and just great time. And we were going through the life of Christ in December and around the birth of Christ. And as we systematically went through that, my wife and myself began to talk about this. And I said to her, I said, my darling, isn't it amazing that Jesus is born as the Son of God sinless, but for maybe 30 years or so, or maybe longer, a little bit longer, for 30 years He was only a carpenter's son. He was the Son of God. He never sinned. And we were talking about this and we began to comprehend the price, what it cost Him. To see the human suffering. To see people dying in sin. God said, it's not the time yet. It's the life of healing. Archbishop Temple, that amazing man, made a statement once. He said, every morning when I kneel at my bedside, he said, and I got on my knees before God, he said, as I get on my knees before God, I said, God, I yield my life to You afresh today. He said, God, this bed where I'm kneeling is the altar. He said, this light is the sacrifice. He said, God, yesterday, strengthen me in the light of today. Cleanse me this morning and fill me with Your Spirit today. Oh, my brother and my sister, it's not what happened 15 years ago, or what happened 5 years ago, or what happened yesterday morning when many of us in the church were on our knees and our faces here before God and we were starving, because God dealt with us about brokenness. It's what God is in the process of doing tonight in my relationship with God. It's a life of yieldedness. Jesus Christ was anointed to the Holy Spirit of God because His life was yielded to the Father right up to the end. Praying in Gethsemane and said, Father, let this God pass from me, not as my will, but as Thy will. Oh, my brother and my sister, listen. You and I can't sit here tonight and say the Son of God did not know the difficulties of surrender because He was tempted in all points just as we are. And when you and I weep in the presence of God when something is so dear and so precious to our hearts. I remember my own little daughter when God dealt with me about what He could do with the life of that child. And I was on my knees and said, God, she's the only one we have. Should I let her go to Africa one day? Should I let her go to China? We don't have any other children. And God said, if you don't let her go one day, it will cost you far more than letting her go. And my brother and my sister, it cost us far more to be outside of the will of God than to be in the will of God. It was yielded to the Father. It was not only a life of yieldedness, but you know what I've discovered? It was also a life of prayerfulness. You sit here tonight, you say, how will I know the anointing of God's Spirit upon my life? I will know it when God has cleansed me. I will know it when my life is yielded to God. But you know, how will I know it? I will know it when there is a spirit of prayer resting upon my life. And I wonder tonight if you would allow me to say to you this, Monday night in this service, my brother, my sister, if you and I want to know the unction of God's Spirit upon our lives, there are no shortcuts to it, and the reason why there are so few of us who are willing for a life of inconsistency prayer is because there is nothing spectacular about it. No one is going to come and say, what a wonderful prayer warrior you are. Isn't it great that you are spending days and hours in prayer and not get to know about it? Prayer is the only thing that you and I can do. You see, we can preach without being right with God. Or we can plant churches without being right with God. We can give out tithes without being right with God. We can come to church without being right with God. But my brother and sister, the only thing that you can do and the only way that you can do it in being right with God is to pray. Because God is saying to us, if I regard iniquity in my heart, He says the Lord will not hear. I shared with the church yesterday morning that the staff that we have out in the west coast of Canada, a number of people, we have a policy out there, and the policy is that no one talk about anyone about anyone else. If my secretary walks into my office and says, I want to talk to you about anyone, I would turn and say, I want you to sit down Elsie. And as she sat down, I said, Elsie, question number one, have you prayed about this? Question number two, have you talked to that person? And you know, since we have brought that policy in, there has been a presence of God, there has been a purity, there has been a passion, there has been a spirit of prayer. Some days ago I said to my wife one night something about our property manager, and I thought it was constructive, and I just made a statement about him, and I said, you know Jim, Jim has been doing this today, and I just wondered why he was doing that. And my wife said, oh, and we discussed it a little bit, and went to bed that night, and the next morning I got on my knees before God, and I couldn't get through to God. And I was just like a sick old hippo with arthritis, I mean, I couldn't get anywhere. And I prayed in circles, and God said, hey, the only reason why you don't get through to me is not me, I'm ready 24 hours a day to have fellowship with you. And I thought God should set your heart, and I began to set my heart, and the Holy Spirit of God came and said, what you said last night to Janice about Jim, and oh boy, I just broke down and wept, and I ran out. And there I found her having her quiet time, and I fell on my knees next to her, and I said, oh mommy, I said, I need to talk to you about something, and she said, what is it? I said, it's what I said to you last night about Jim, and she just broke down and wept, and she said, daddy, I've been struggling with what you said for the last 45 minutes, I can't get through to the Word. Well, he said, what did you do? I put it right, and I took that 45 minutes, and she couldn't get through, and I prayed for her extra, and I said, God have mercy upon me. Do you study the prayer line for the Lord Jesus? One of these nights this week, I want to speak to you in a ministry of intercessory prayer. I feel if there's ever a group that I could maybe share the burden of my heart, it's maybe this group. Do you realize that Luke's Gospel is giving us almost 60% more information about the prayer life of the Son of God than the other Gospels? Do you remember at his baptism, all the other Gospels refer to that, but oh, my brother and sister, Luke's Gospel, they don't say a thing about prayer, but Luke's Gospel said, when the Holy Spirit came upon him, he was praying, and the Greek structure of Athens says, he was in a spirit of prayer. Do you remember what he said about it? He said, Father, I thank you that you always hear of me. Jesus is the only one that could have ever said, the Father is always listening to the Son of God. Oh, I wish I could have said that. I wonder tonight if you would allow me to ask you about your prayer life. Maybe your prayer life is like the little girl who used to sing, I so often say my prayer, and she said, but do I really pray? I think of what Leonard Ravenhill said, he said, so many of our prayer times and our prayer meetings are nothing else than a dumping ground for our ills and our diseases. Oh, my brother and my sister, prayer is not a weapon, it's a battlefield. The casualties are high, and it's severe, and it costs everything. It was a life of prayer. And I would go so far tonight as to suggest to you that if I understand the life of Christ correctly, and the reason why there is so much prayer in Luke's Gospel about the prayer life of the Son of God, as simply in Matthew's Gospel, we see Him as the King of the Jews, and in the Gospel of Mark, how do we see the Son of God, the Servant of God? And in the Gospel of John, He became the Son of God. But in the Gospel of Luke, He became the Son of Man, Christ in His humanity. And my friends, dear, did you not have a necessity to pray? But humanity argues it's a man of prayer. And if it was necessary for the Son of God to pray, how much more is this necessary for us to pray? Oh, I wonder tonight if you would allow me to ask you, my brother and my sister, have you and I learned the secret of developing the discipline of a private prayer life? I can spend five minutes in someone's presence and public prayer, and I can tell you this person has learned the secret of being in those lonely hours alone with God. Do you know what God is saying about it? He says it's a very lonely life. He said to us in the prophecy of Isaiah, He said they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. And if you look at the life of the Son of God, and my brother and my sister, I want to be absolutely honest with you tonight, I know in my own relationship with God, the moment that I neglect the place of prayer and the quietness behind the scenes, it's going to affect the effectiveness of my presentation in the presence of God. And my philosophy of life and ministry is simple. My 5% involvement in public, if this is not the result of a 95% brokenness in honesty and transparency, an absolute bankruptness before God, if that's not what's going on behind the scenes, 95%, then this 5% is nothing else than an entertainment and nothing else than a performance. God said you are effective amongst people when you are effective behind the scenes. Robert Murray MacLean used to say whatever a man is on his knees before God in the closet and in the quiet hours, he said that is what that man is in the pulpit, nothing else and nothing less. And I think of that man Robert Murray MacLean, died at the age of 27 in Dundee in Scotland, was mightily and tremendously used of God in so many different ways. And when he died, there was a minister of a church in Scotland that went to the church and as he went to the church, there was the old custodian and he got hold of him and he said to him, Sir, why was it that this young man who died at the age of 27 shook this area? Why was it that as people came in on a Sunday morning and they listened to his messages that they said it was if he saw the very depths of our soul? The old custodian listened, lightened up, and he said, I want you to come with me. And he took him into a little room, a dark little room. And in that little room was a chair. In that little room was a carpet. And in that carpet were the two holes. And he turned to this man and he said, I want you to put your two knees in those two holes. And he did so. And he said, I want you to put your elbows in the chairs. And he did so. And he said, I want you to cover your face. And he did so. And he said, now let the burden of God come. And he said, as the burden of God comes, he said, let the tears come. That's how the master wept when he prayed. And he wanted to run away. The minister and the old custodian took him by the hands and dragged him into the pulpit. He opened the pulpit Bible and he opened the Bible and there was hardly a page that was not rippled with the tears of Robert Norrie McChain. And he said, I want you to put your elbows on the Bible. And I want you to cover your face. And he said, now I want you to pray. And he said, when you pray, he said, let the burden of God come. And when the burden of God comes, he said, let the tears come. He said, that's how the master wept when he prayed. I wonder tonight, my brother and my sister, if you and I have a burden. You say, what is the burden of God? Well, have you seen the burden of God upon an unconverted soul? I was reminded today as we were praying about a man with the name of Kenny MacLeod in the Highlands, in the islands of Scotland, who sat in a service on a Sunday morning, unconverted. And as they would sit, the Highlanders in Scotland sit like this, just listening to the Word of God. I was right in the middle of my simple little sermon when the Holy Spirit of God fell upon the life of Kenny MacLeod. One moment he just sat there, and the next moment he was down, under a pew. Forgive me for saying this, but he was vomiting, and he was growling, and howling, roaring, and agonizing. He thought he was sick. The elder sat behind me and he was scared to death. He said, maybe it's a heart attack. I said, no, just leave him. He will get through to God. That Sunday morning, Kenny MacLeod was converted. And the burden of conviction fell upon him. I wonder what will happen if the burden of God fall upon us these days. I think I know what will happen with me. I probably will crawl around here in a corner and plead with someone to give me a blanket because I don't want to see people. Do you know something of the burden of God? My heart is going out to people in this area, you know, and it's getting stronger and stronger. And every time when I see a little horse in a buggy, I go, Lord, there goes another soul. They're on their way to hell in the fast lane, you know. You come from a little area somewhere here in the United States and you don't know what it means to carry the burden of God. Can I be honest with you? There have been times in my life that I felt the burden of God is going to kill me. We come to church and we play church and we just sit here and we laugh and we think it's fun. We see the Son of God just with outstretched hands and say, last, people are last. You've come and you want to learn to preach and you want to learn to plant a church. Bless your heart. Keep at it. But don't do it if God hasn't broken your heart. It comes through prayer. I would never be able to not remember this life. His name was John Greer, Northern Ireland. Spent three wonderful years in Northern Ireland and two weeks of meetings for Christians and prayed every morning from about maybe 8, 9 o'clock to 1, 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I was just a young fellow out in the ministry. Every morning I prayed and these men were converted in the 1920 revival that swept through Northern Ireland and 120,000 people were saved. And God used a man by the name of Nicholson. We would pray in the hours of the morning. And this one would pray and that one would pray. And there was John Greer. He was in his 70s, just a bundle of flesh and bone and gone to glory now. I remember we would kneel and pray and this one and that one would pray. And then John Greer would begin to pray and he would just say, My Father, and God was there. And God has forgiven me but I would open my eyes and just look in amazement. And he would begin to get hold of his chair in the throne of God. The burden of God would come upon him and he would agonize and prevail and supplicate the presence of God. The Spirit of God would just sweep through his clean life. He prayed. And I would just sit there and just sob, watch this. As he would storm the throne of God and as the powers of evil would disappear, this man would get through to God. And when he stopped praying, many times I would look at my watch and two and a half hours is gone and it felt like five minutes the presence of God. It's a man of prayer. Has God ever convicted you of the sin of prayerlessness? I want to be absolutely honest with you tonight and this is probably only one of the few places I can say this in the world. But if you ever think of full time ministry, if you're not going to give God three hours a day, you're not going to make it. It's a life of prayer. And God is looking for people. You know there's a verse that has been breaking my heart every time when I think of it the last number of days. You know what the Lord said? He said, I'm looking for a man to stand in the gap. He said, I couldn't find one. And I look at my own simple life and I thought, God, where am I? Do I fit in here somewhere? Can you look at me tonight and say, there's someone that can stand in the gap. You see, my brother and my sister, the closer you and I get to God, the more sensitive we become towards sin. I think of that mountain in our farm in Africa where we spend days and nights of prayer and fasting, waking up on God. I think of those times when God just came. We felt so inadequate. God came. So what is this prayer? What is it? It's a spirit of prayer. I'm so delighted to be here this week. You know why? I'm so delighted this week because this to me is not a week of preaching, not in your life. Oh man, find someone else if you want great, wonderful exposition. This to me is a week of prayer because if it's a week of prayer when the exposition will come, God will be there because it's saturated in prayer. I mean, you need to forgive me for saying this, but when the presence of God has saturated the place, you can preach about a donkey and people see God. Because it's saturated in prayer. I mean, you need to forgive me for saying this, but when the presence of God has saturated the place, you can preach about a donkey and people see God. Because the presence of God has saturated the place. It comes in prayer. You say, don't you think preaching is not important? Oh, it's very important. God had one son and he made him a preacher. And I think of Charles Aaron Spurgeon. And the secret of the life of Charles Aaron Spurgeon was the man of George Miller of Bristol that spent hours in prayer with Spurgeon. And there were times that Spurgeon preached on a Sunday morning and Spurgeon would say, I would sense the wind of God's Spirit in my wings. And he said, as the wind of God's Spirit comes into my wings, he said, I was carried by the Spirit of God. And as the Spirit, the hush of the presence of God, fell upon the people, six thousand people would leap to their feet. When they were asked afterwards, why did you leap to your feet? Do you know what they said? They said, when the Spirit of God came upon the preaching of God's Word, they said, we leaped to our feet because we were afraid that we would miss one word that came from the lips of this man. Exposition is wonderful, but exposition without unction, without dry orthodoxy, is a life of prayer. My time, I guess, is gone. I've got something here that says to me, watch the time, watch your voice, not too many illustrations, stick to the Word, go through the material. And I'm only through the first point. Can I give you my second point of the first point? The secret was holiness and yieldedness and prayerfulness. What was the symbol? When the Spirit of God came upon the Lord Jesus, how did He come? The Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove. What is the dove speaking of? The dove is speaking to us of four wonderful things. The dove is speaking to us of peace, it's speaking to us of purity, it's speaking to us of passion, and it's speaking to us of power. You say, how can the dove speak to me about peace? Do you remember when Noah sent out this beautiful little bird out of the ark? What happened? It came back with a branch of an olive beak in its mouth. And God said, Shalom, peace. God said, I'm not going to do this ever again. The Son of God came and what did He call Him? He called Him the Prince of Peace. What did He say? He said, My peace I give unto you, not the peace of this world. He said, Let your heart not be troubled, neither let it be afraid. He said, How does the peace of God affect my life? My brother and sister, the peace of God affects our lives in two wonderful ways. If you sit here tonight and you know Christ as your personal Savior, the Bible is saying to us in Romans chapter 5, Therefore being made peace with God, therefore being justified by faith, we have made peace with God. If you are born of the Spirit of God tonight, how do you know it? One of the ways you know it is that the peace with God has become part of your life. But would you allow me to suggest to you that there is another aspect of the peace of God? When you and I live a life set apart unto God, filled with all the fullness of the presence of the Spirit of God, the Bible is saying to us in Colossians chapter 3, He said, Let the peace, not the peace with God, He said, Let the peace of God rule in your heart. And the word in the Greek New Testament for rule is our word for umpire, the word referee. He said, How do I know that I walk alive in the fullness of God's Spirit? I know it until I hear the whistle. And God said, Watch it. Block yourself to what this person is saying. I don't know how many of us here tonight know the secret of a broken heart. To serve God with a broken heart for 24 hours of the day. But if you know that secret, would you allow me to suggest to you that one of the things that you and I need to watch so carefully is that when people say things that is destructive, if you listen to those things, it becomes, it forms a little shell around the brokenness of your heart. And you find yourself when you want to get through to God, you don't get through because you've given your ear to something. And I've been in conversations where I just walk out and I tell, I can't be there. It's not going to be helpful to the brokenness of God's Spirit in my life. Or the slightest little thing that wants to come into my mind, something that I want to think about someone and it's not good and it's not right. If I let that thing come into my mind and settle there, it affects the brokenness of God's Spirit in my heart. And my brother and sister, if there's something in my life that I protect like precious silver and gold and precious stone, it's the brokenness of God's Spirit. Because it's so sensitive and so tender. Maybe it's sitting here tonight, you say, I don't know what you're talking about. Wait till God gives you a broken heart and then you will know what I'm talking about. I'm wondering if I've got the peace of God tonight. Or maybe during our conversation, during our time of the service tonight, the Spirit of God has brought things to the surface in your life that I haven't even talked about, even mentioned. The Holy Spirit is bringing it to the surface and God is saying to you, John and Peter, I'm disturbing the peace there. It's like oil upon the water. And wherever you turn, there it is. Whenever you think, there it is. God said, you maybe need to go make a telephone call. You maybe need to write a letter. You maybe need to phone your wife and your children tonight. You maybe need to go and see someone because the peace of God has been affected. There's a friend of mine in South Africa, his name is Keith Daniels. He's at one of the most amazing ministries I've ever come across on this planet. If Keith was preaching here tonight, he would spend probably 10 or 12 or 15 hours in prayer and then he will get up and stand here and he would quote the first eight chapters of the book of Romans, Word Perfect, but he doesn't quote it, he preaches it in the spirit. And I've seen people just broke down as the word of God comes to them. And then he expounded the word of God. It was with us a few years ago and one night he quoted the book of James and then he wanted to expound the book of James and at the end of his quotation he stopped and he ran down and got on his knees before God and by that time the people were so broken, we were all seeking God because of the presence of God who witnessed to the word and to the blood. And then he never expound and after everything was over I prayed to him and I said Keith why don't you expound tonight after you quote the epistle of James. He said Gerard for the first time in my life, for the first time in my life when I quoted James he said I missed one word out of the five chapter and he said when I came to the end God convicted me of it. He said I couldn't wait to get to the altar because I missed God's word by one word. I mean that's close encounter with God. It's very close. Keith have you got Keith tonight? Can I walk down the aisle and find someone there and talk to him and say do you realize me it speaks of purity. So what if the dove speaks of purity? We speak of a gull of a chicken. The dove is the only little bird that has been scientifically been proved that do not possess it. I was born and brought up in Africa you know. We did things different in Africa. Christmas time was time for us to kill the chickens. Being an African I mean of course it was before I was a Christian and I trust that you'll accept it but we had an interesting way of killing chickens. We would grab them on their heads and just swing them and swing them until head parts from body. And of course that was before I was a Christian. But when we brought those chickens to mother and father and mother would say we're going to clean these chickens and she looked at me and said son whenever you clean the chickens don't touch and we used to speak of the gull of a chicken. She said don't split it. And I would say why? She said if you split it it's so bitter it's going to destroy the meat around it. The dove doesn't possess that you know. That's why the Holy Spirit when he came upon the Lord Jesus how did he come? He came upon the Lord Jesus in the form of a dove. There was no need for him to come upon the Lord Jesus. He came in the form of a dove. There was no need for him to come upon the in the form There was no need to come upon the in the form of a dove. There was for him to come Lord Jesus in the form of a dove. There was no need to come in the form There was no need upon the Lord Jesus in the form of a dove. There was no need to come upon the Jesus in the form of a dove. There was no need on the Lord See they brought him on the Lord and I said, you know my darling, we need many more, and she said, how many, and I said, we probably need about another 105 and she said, don't even ask Gerard, they won't give you permission to buy and I said, well let's pray about it, and right across from our house, between us and the beach it's a railway track, and one morning I was working outside, and I saw, I mean for me an African, I mean this is different but I saw them putting a truck on the railway track, I mean we don't do those things in Africa but they put a truck on the railway track, and the man was driving on the railway track and I mean I was just about blown out of the water, how can this guy do that and anyway, there he went, the white truck, and he came back about an hour and a half, two hours later with 150 of these railway ties on the back of his truck, and I saw him coming and I ran out I mean we were praying about those railway ties, I mean he didn't know that, but I knew it and I jumped on the railway track, and I swing my arms like a wild Frenchman and he stopped and looked out, and he must have thought, you must be from Africa and he stopped, and I mean he just got a certain time on that thing, because the train is probably coming he said, what's your problem, and I said, one question, I said, what are you going to do with these railway ties and I think he was pretty fed up of it, and he just said, how many do you want and being an African I said, I need 105, do you know what he did, he dropped them right there I mean have you ever tried to lift those things, there was a men a night fellow with the name of Friesen that came to help me one day, and he lasted seven hours, and I've never seen him since that day but I carried them in, I mean it's a way of carrying railway ties, and I carried them in and every night about ten o'clock or so, my wife would look out of the window and she would say Daddy you're not coming into the house like that, I mean I was as black, as black as can be and I said, what do you mean, she said, I come out and on our lawn she would spray me off with a hose pipe and then she would say, run for the shower, and I would make a beeline for the shower and spend about 45 minutes in the shower a night, I would jump out and say, I said, look at me I'm absolutely clean, and then she'd say, jump back and wash the shower and then at night when we were in our bedroom, and I would stand there in my pyjamas and I would hold my answer, I said, oh mummy look at me, I'm really clean and one morning God spoke to me and said to me, are you clean in spirit? it's beautiful, it's sweet to our lives, cleanses us from all impurities something that you sit there and you say, Gerard it's a mountain, it's a mountain I can't see how God can set me free from love, I can't see how God can set me free from death God said, once I let it loose, it will come it speaks of passion, God speaks of passion you say, why does he say God speaks of passion? well, in Ezekiel chapter 7, you know what the Bible is saying to us? the Bible is referring to the morning or the cool or the dark and Hebrew poetry is beautiful they say that this little bird, once he loses his mate, that sometimes they let him mourn himself to death and quite often they stay single for the rest of their lives you say, what about the passion of the Lord Jesus? you remember, as he walked into the temple and at one point he made a statement and he said, to heal of thy houses, eat of me up and you remember as he came into the temple and what were they doing? they were selling those animals for the sake of sacrifices oh, how it must have broke his heart and what did he do? he almost went and sat in a corner and he made a whip and he came and he drove him out to the temple and he overcast those stables for the money maker he drove the animals out and he stood to his feet in absolute righteous indignation and what did he say? he said, do you not realize that the house of my father is called the house of prayer you have made it a den of the wicked see, passion and I ask you a question tonight do you remember when you just became a believer? do you remember the hunger that you had for God and His Word? do you remember the desire that you had to talk to people about Jesus? do you remember how your heart burned? and how you were just full with God? and what happened to that passion? you lost it? you say, is passion emotion? I don't think so passion is the determination that has its seat in the center of the will of God because God is a passionate God and I think of a little man with the name of John Knox who prayed and if you ever go to Edinburgh in Scotland go and visit his house who prayed and the hours that he spent on prayer on his knees before God he passionately prayed in the presence of God and that Queen of England that was called the Bloody Queen Mary that was so bloodthirsty for the lives of the believers and as he prayed she would sit in her palace and she would tremble because the little man Knox was on his knees passionately crying God, passion and I'm fascinated sometimes to see how people can get passionate about their farms passionate about their crops passionate about their animals passionate about their vehicles passionate about all the things of the world before you began to talk about passion for God and they think you're way off track I was preaching in a men and women church some time ago and I thought the pastor was going to drop down dead in the heart of that what's happened to the passion? it includes, it speaks of power peace, purity, passion and power you say, how can the dove speak to us of power? well you know what I found out? that the dove, we refer to the gentleness of the dove you remember what David said? he said, thy gentleness has made me strong my brother and sister can I suggest you something tonight and I'm thankful to God that I've learned this lesson the way up is the way down really broke my heart you know the way up is the way down and I wonder if you and I know the way down I wonder if you and I know what it means to humble ourselves before God I was preaching in a church some time ago and I said something to my wife that I never ever should say I thought it was a wonderful service I thought I got into biblical exposition in a way that I've never done it before and I was thrilled to the service we got into the car and we drove home and I turned to my wife and I said I said, mommy that was a great meeting wasn't it? and she said, uh-huh and I knew I was in trouble and I thought, well I'm going to give her a piece of my mind that I can't afford to lose anyway and I turned to her and I said there aren't many great expositors these days, are there? and she looked at me and she said, there's one left today and you laughed but for the rest of the half hour I just drove with a tear streaming down my face God, the way up is the way down the way up is the way down I don't know tonight, maybe you need to come and humble yourself tonight before God I don't know you see, if I don't know how to humble myself God can't do anything for me I sit here today like these horses and the horse and buggies were there eyes kind of just in one direction we used to speak of us as oogh clopper eyes just in one direction I mean, that horse, he just see that way now the reason why he see, because if he see all over the place I mean, they're going to turn these buggies over just like that but now he just see in one direction sometimes even I sit in meetings like this and we don't, can't see our needs I mean, we know we've got a need we know there's something, but we can't really see it I mean, God needs to come and say the way up is the way down now our heads together my father in heaven God, we thank you for speaking to us tonight thank you for making the service like prayers sometimes it just goes so quickly oh father, we pray, each one of us that you will take these words and use them, Lord may these words, Lord, thy words abide in our hearts and deal with us, Lord father, we thank you for the plowing of your word tonight we receive it we receive it in Jesus name God, we are done playing games we are done playing games, Father I pray for all these dear men for all the sisters tonight God, I pray that you will prevail upon their hearts Lord, we need to listen to your voice you're trying to say things to us some of it we heard and some of it we did not hear oh father, I pray you will lift your voice a little louder God, as we go home tonight Lord, dismiss us with a spirit of sobriety let us go home and lay upon our beds and ponder these words God, we pray for revival Lord, something real thank you for the sweet blessings you give us but oh God, mercy drops are not enough we pray for a shower God, we pray that you open our eyes Lord, deal with us whatever it is that stands in the way in our own hearts God, put your finger upon it by your spirit God, we commit all these people into your hands Lord, you know our hearts you know everything you know the way we live you know our failures Lord, you know the sins you know the secret things of our hearts you know it all God, I pray that you will rest our attention with the message of these the words of this message dear father, we trust them all into your hands, God just guide and direct each and every speaker tomorrow prevail upon their hearts with your will we thank you for this message tonight we receive it in Jesus name Amen