In this sermon, the speaker shares his experiences of preaching the word of God in different countries. He mentions that they often have a lot of material to share, but they try to condense it into the most important points. The speaker also talks about the importance of prayer and how they rely on God for their expenses. He shares a specific story of being led to pray for a community and seeing God work in amazing ways.

We want to thank you for coming back here this evening. And how many of you, this is your first session tonight that you've been able to be with us. Can you put up your hands? Ah, thank you. You were out of the will of God this morning and last night, by the way. You say, you've really set me up, haven't you? No, I don't mean that. But you know, I was reminded today again, because we go to so many places as it relates to prayer, and sometimes I come across very interesting little things or incidents of what happened. And so I was reminded today of the family that always prayed together at the table at night. And so every night, the daddy would pray, and he would thank God for something that happened that day. And so the children were always excited and thought, what is daddy going to thank God for today? And one day, absolutely everything went wrong. I mean, from the moment that they woke up until they were praying together as a family that night. And so the children were all excited because they knew that nothing went right during that day. And so when they prayed together that evening, daddy prayed and he said, Lord, thank you that every day is not like today. So I thought, well, you know, sometimes it's just like that. And then I was thinking of these two elderly gentlemen, and they were praying together and spending extended times in prayer together. But the one fellow, you know, like a man once when I was speaking, and he got up to give his testimony, and he said, I don't know where to start. And before I knew what I did, I said, as long as you know where to start. Anyway, this gentleman began to pray, and he was praying all over the world, country after country after country. And so the other elderly man that was praying with him couldn't handle it, and he fell asleep. And the other fellow just kept praying and praying. And so after he prayed, he turned to the gentleman who fell asleep, and he said to him, brother, when did you fall asleep? And he said, I think it's when you were in India. So anyway, it's been tremendous. I've been so blessed in my own heart just to be with you last night and also this morning. And you know, I mean, we're just scratching the surface. In fact, what I'm really trying to do in these sessions together is to try to give you the cream of probably 80 to 100 hours of material that we sometimes share in countries or in Bible colleges or in seminaries where we have the privilege of being able to go. And so I wish I would have had time to share with you some of the things that God is doing in these countries, maybe tomorrow night at our last session together. But we have made some of this material available, and so we want to encourage you to help us. One of the things that we have said is that if you study the teachings of Christ in prayer, you will discover that there are eight principles that are coming out of the teachings of Christ in prayer. And I have material about those principles because when you study those principles, you will discover that those eight principles are based upon eight words in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament that is speaking to us about the understanding of what does it mean to wait upon God. You know, we have this concept that when we speak about prayer, that we put prayer in one category and we put this in another slot and this in another slot. And when you study those eight principles and those eight Hebrew words, you will discover that they are all based upon the understanding of what does it mean to wait upon God. And we don't have time in the limitation of our time. I said earlier on, I was dreaming this afternoon and I thought how wonderful it will be to take those of us who have been out last night and this morning and tonight and probably tomorrow evening when we come together. If we get one more flash, I'm going to charge $50. How's that? I mean, we can do with a lot of it because you know what we do? We send it to countries that really need it. Anyway, you know what I was thinking? I thought it would be wonderful if it is a group of maybe 50 or 60, 70, 80 people here at Fineland Baptist Church and one somehow in the future, what we are doing is that we go away for a weekend of prayer. And brother and sister, we just saturate ourselves. There we are, we have $50. We saturate ourselves in the place of intercessory prayer. You know, I worked under a man in what is called the land of Namibia today. But I was a young evangelist and I worked under this man. And we started the year with 16 days of prayer. You say, how did you pray for 16 days? I don't know. But he was a wonderful man of God. He was a Scotsman. His last name was McLeod. Big, tall gentleman. And I became a young evangelist in my own homeland of southern Africa. And we were in the city of Inuk. And he came into my room. And he said to me, you don't understand this, but we started the year with 16 days of prayer. And he said, nine Christian farmers and their wives, we go together to a campground in the middle of the land of Namibia. And he said, we just saturate the year in the place of prayer before we try to do anything for God. And you know, by that time I had a great interest in the reality of prayer. But to spend those extended times in prayer was something that was in one sense new to me with the intensity of what he was speaking about. And so I was just in my early twenties. And he took us to this place. And this is what we did. We would get up early in the mornings. We had our choir times. And then we would have breakfast together at this campground. He and his wife and nine Christian farmers. So there were just more than 20 of us together. And then by about nine o'clock we would have our first session. Most of the time he would speak to us at that first session. And God would really search our hearts. You know, he was a wonderful, wonderful man of God. And God would really search our hearts at that first session. And then we would go into the first session of intercessory prayer. And we would pray through until about lunchtime. And because prayer is not necessarily a weapon, but it's a battlefield. And it's intense and it's draining physically and emotionally and spiritually because of what you are dealing with. In the afternoons he would give us about two hours off because he was talking about 16 days. And then we would meet by about four o'clock, pray through until about six, have dinner together. We would go for a walk. And then we'd come back and about eight o'clock or ten o'clock we met. And so for 16 days we would spend, I would say, oh, probably five to seven hours, maybe a day, just waking up on God. And you know, I think it was about the third or the fourth day when he turned to us and he said to us, God has given me a burden to pray for the community of Walthus Bay. It was a coastal town in the land of Namibia. And he said, we're going to climb underneath the burden of God and we are going to pray for that community. And I would say probably for the next three or four days, session after session, we would climb underneath the burden of God for that community to know when we speak about the burden of God, what we need to learn, brother and sister, is to dissect the burden of God. You see, if God brings to us the fullness of His burden, none of us would be able to survive it. Because this Hebrew word, masal, that's based upon revelation that you discover in the life of Moses, given to us concepts or insights in which we are able to dissect the burden of God. You remember Christ in Gethsemane, in the Gospel of Luke, three times He went and He prayed exactly the same words. And you discover in the New Testament, as you explore the theology of prayer, this understanding that God will not just give us the land at once, because spiritually and physically and emotionally, brother and sister, none of us would be able to carry the burden of God. I mean, if I can be honest with you this evening, if there is a moment in this gathering this evening when God will bring to us the fullness of the burden of God, none of us would be able to get out of this place tonight. And so, session after session, in about three or four days, all we did was to pray for the community of Walthus Bay. And I think it was about the fourth afternoon when He stopped us. And He turned to us and He said to us, I believe that God has helped us to pray through for the community of Walthus Bay. You know, this concept of praying through and the biblical principles that is coming out of the Scriptures that give us indications of how you and I can know when we have really touched the throne of God and we have prayed through. And let me just say this to you, if I'm not through with God personally, I will never be able to pray through, because God first needs to get through to me before I can get through to Him about those issues. But He stopped us, I think the fourth afternoon, and He just said, I believe that God has helped us to pray through. And so we prevailed for the sixteen days, praying about many other things during those days. And after the sixteen days, we went back to the city of Vintook. And He came into my room, and He just turned to me and He said to me, Brother Gerard, He said, I want you to go to the community of Walthus Bay. And I said, what do you want me to do? And He said, I want you to go and do a series of evangelistic services. And so I said, why do you want me to do it? He said, because God has helped us to pray through. And He said, I want you to go and preach a series of evangelistic services. And I turned to Him and I said, where do you want me to do it? It was about 450 miles away. And He said, I don't know. And I said, how many Christians are there in the community of about 4,000 people? And He said, I don't know. And I said, where will I stay? He said, I don't know that either. And I said, why do you want me to go? He said, because we pray through. Because we were a faith mission, where we trusted God for our expenses. He turned to me and He said, you know, to be honest with you, I can give you a little vehicle, but you're going to need to use your own allowance for fuel and for gas because of the lack of funds in the organization. It was an evangelistic organization. And then He turned to me and He said, I want you to go, and you're not allowed to come back until the Spirit of God broke through. I mean, what an assignment. And I said, why? He said, because we spent 16 days in prayer. And you know, I'll never forget it. I drove up. And He told me that there was one couple who had a trailer in the back of a yacht. And He said, they are Christians as far as I know, and maybe you can stay with them. And I drove up to 450 miles with this 1967 red Pickle Volkswagen. And as I was driving up, you know, brother and sister, there was one verse of Scripture going through my heart. You say, which one was it? Let me give it to you. As the sheep I was led to the slaughter. That's the only thing that I could think about. I thought, you know, here am I, Lord, crucify me. I don't even know if I'm going to come back. And He said, you're not going to come back unless God has broken through. I came into the community of Office Bay. And I was looking for these people, Mr. and Mrs. Newman were their names. And I couldn't find the house, and I knocked at the door of the house, and the lady opened the door, and I said, Madam, I'm looking for the Newman's. And she said, well, they just live around the corner. And I said, Madam, I'm an evangelist, and I'm coming into this community to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus. And, you know, you wouldn't believe it, she just brightened up, and she said, I'm a Christian. And I said, oh, that's wonderful. I said, what's your name? You know what she said? My name is Lydia. I mean, you talk about the Bible, you know. And I thought, oh, you know, I must be on track here. And so I went to the house of these Newman people, and this lady, Hannah Newman was her name, was suffering from a nervous condition. So I sat in this house, and in my heart, I said to God, Father, I can't ask Him to stay in the trailer, because, I mean, physically she's not well. And I was in that house, I don't know, maybe five or ten minutes, when Lydia Phillips, the lady whose door I knocked, walked into the house, and she turned to me, and she said to me, I just talked to my husband. She said, I'm a Christian, and she said, my husband is not a Christian. In fact, you know what she said? She said, my husband is a German. And she said, and he's not a Christian. And she said, we have an apartment in our yard, and I've just asked my husband if you can come and stay in the apartment, because she wanted to see him coming to Christ. So I had a place to stay. And you know, I'll never forget this. We got this school hall in the community to have these special evangelistic services, four little African lads were helping me to give out these pamphlets, these invitations. I still remember them. They were referred to as all-time gospel meetings. I like that, you know. And so we were inviting these people, and the first service was a Thursday night. We were going to start at twenty past seven. At seven o'clock I spent that Thursday, I spent the day in prayer and fasting. And do you know what happened? God gave me a message for that night. No idea what was going to happen. We spent sixteen days in prayer. Went to the service that Thursday night, and I was there probably quarter past six or something like that. Put out about seventy chairs in the school hall that we were able to use, and put out literature that we were selling, Christian books and hymn books. And so I was waiting for the people to come. A quarter to seven, brother and sister, there was no one. And we spent sixteen days in prayer. Seven o'clock came, not a soul. I mean not even a cat, you know. There was nothing. Quarter past seven, no one came. Twenty past seven, not a soul turned up to my first evangelistic service. And so you say, what happened? Well, I'll tell you what. God gave me a message that day, and I had a service. You say, what did you do? I made the announcement, I sang the hymns, thanks to the Lord, He was the only one who listened. I sang the hymns, I made the announcement, and I preached my little message. I still remember, it was out of Luke chapter nine. And I was not discouraged. And after the service, I packed up the books, and I went back to the apartment. And do you know what happened? I was in this apartment, probably, I don't know, ten minutes or so, when there was a knock at the door. And when I opened the door, this big German was standing there. His name was Fred Phillips. He was a brilliant man, and he had fled out of Nazi Germany, worked under the great scientist Wernher von Braun, fled out of Nazi Germany, and was living in the land of Namibia. He knocked at the door, and I opened the door, and he stood there, and I introduced myself to him, and he just looked down at me, and he said, my wife said you should come to have a cup of coffee. And so I said, thank you Mr. Phillips, and I was following him the little pathway, and as I was following him, he stopped, and he turned around, and he looked at me, and his wife told him there was a service, and I think he just wanted to be nice to me, and he just turned to me, and he said, by the way, how did it go with that service tonight? And I looked him straight in the eyes. That's what you do with Germans, you know. I looked him straight in the eyes, and I said to him, I mean, and it's just as bad as Mennonite sometimes, by the way. Anyway, that's what you do with Germans. I looked him straight in the eyes, because I'm partly German. I looked him straight in the eyes, and I said to him, Mr. Phillips, I felt that God was there tonight. And so he looked at me, and he said to me, how many people came? And so I looked him straight in the eyes, and I said to him, Mr. Phillips, there was no one. You know, I thought afterwards, I should have said four. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and me. But you know, I didn't have enough theology. Maybe that was the good thing. I said, there was no one and so he looked at me, and he said, so what did you do? And I looked him right in his eyes, and I said to him, Mr. Phillips, I preached tonight if there were a hundred people. And I will never forget this German. He just looked at me, kind of staring me down like this. He never said a word. He just turned around, and he was walking down the aisle halfway to the house. And as he was walking, he was just shaking his head like this. I mean, I could tell the elevator was not going to the top, and there are some ants in the attic. There's something not right. He never said a word. We were coughing together. He hardly said a word. But you know what happened? That night, Fred Phillips couldn't sleep. Right in the middle of the night, he woke Lydia up. And she said, what is it? And he said, I can't sleep. And she said, why can't you sleep, Fred? And he said, it's this man. And she said, what about him? He said, he spoke when there was no one. And she said, what do you think? He said, I think we should go. And Friday night, two people in his service, did you know what happened? Friday night, God came from heaven and saved him. Word got out into the community that Fred Phillips was converted. Very well-respected man in the community of about 4,000 people. He had two shops in which he was selling high-quality men's clothes. Word got out that Fred Phillips has been converted. You know, 11 nights later, there were about 70 people coming to these services. And brother and sister, I'm not one of these people that easily make public invitations when it comes to evangelism because through the years, I've seen people walking down the aisles and some of these campaigns and some of these to give their lives to Christ with a smile upon their face and you think they are doing God a favor. And I'm just not there. But you know what happened? The 14th night, the Spirit of God broke into those services. You know what happened that evening? 35 people were gloriously saved. Can I tell you something tonight? I never counsel one of those people personally. God just came and there was a consciousness of a conviction of sin. There was an awareness of the presence of God. There was a seeking after Him. And 35 people were wonderfully saved. If you go to Walthers Bay today, there's a Baptist church of about 250 folks. And they've asked me many times to come to that church because that church was started as a result of Jesus Christ. Now let me tell you something. If you ever go to that church, I don't think they will remember me. But I tell you something. You know what they will remember? They will remember that they were a group of people, brother and sister, that spent 16 days in prayer. 16 days of just waking up on God. And I was thinking of this church, you know. We said last night that we are not interested in a church full of people, but we long for a church that will be full of people, that will be full of God. And I was thinking of this fine Baptist church and thought, what will happen if God will pour out His Spirit upon us and puts us in the order of His presence and the greatness of the Spirit of prayer as the burden of God will come upon us. We're going to pray together and we're going to do what we did this morning. I know we're not in church, so it's maybe not going to be as easy as this morning, but what I would like you to do is turn around and just find two or three people and then what we are going to do, we're just going to spend some time in prayer together. So if it's possible, I know we are in pews and it's not as easy, but I want us to do that. So turn around and find three or four people and we're just going to spend some time. Ask them how you can pray for them. I don't want you to take too much time to share with one another because our time is so limited in our times together, but just turn around and find three or four people and ask them how you can pray and then we spend some time in prayer. So let's do that.